New Science of UAP Paper

[NorCal Dave]

It appears there is a new paper on UAPs. I debated which thread to include this in, but after a bit of reading it deserves its own discussion. As will be seen, it touched on many threads we already have, so I'll link to them at the end of this OP and perhaps add a link to this thread in each of those threads. Cross-pollination if you will.

To start off, the paper is titled The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena and is published in astro-pm (?) and Cornell University, it's a bit unclear. It is available on the arXiv platform as a PDF, so heads up copy and paste with PDFs sometimes get wonky, I tried to fix those but might have missed some weird syntax or spellings. Unless noted, all the External content below is from the paper here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.06794

Of interest in the very beginning is the list of authors. Kevin Kunth, of the UAPx program, is listed as lead author, but the list of coauthors is a venerable who's who of the current UFO/UAP scene (bold by me):

Kevin H. Knuth, Philippe Ailleris, Hussein Ali Agrama, Eamonn Ansbro, Tejin Cai, Thibaut Canuti, Michael C. Cifone, Walter Bruce Cornet, Jr., Fr´ed´eric Courtade, Richard Dolan, Laura Domine, Luc Dini, Baptiste Friscourt, Ryan Graves, Richard F. Haines, Richard Hoffman, Hakan Kayal, Sarah Little, Garry P. Nolan, Robert Powell, Mark Rodeghier, Edoardo Russo, Peter Skafish, Erling Strand, Michael Swords, Matthew Szydagis, Gerald T. Tedesco, John J. Tedesco, Massimo Teodorani, Jacques Vall´ee, Michael Vaillant, Beatriz Villarroel, Wesley A. W
atters

I've only highlighted the names that jumped out to me as I'm writing this. I'm sure we can track down some of the others. Following up on our discussion of the paper on Stealth Aliens, link below, I'm thinking this is another attempt to just push UFO/UAPs as a legitimate subject for academic study. In addition, I have to wonder how much actual work some of these coauthors actually performed in terms of writing the paper, as opposed to providing some description of their work here and there and then getting coauthor listing. This would help to make a number of these individuals part of a "peer reviewed academic paper" as many, such as the Tedesco brothers have claimed.

To be complete here is the harder to read author list with all of their affiliations. It just doesn't copy over well so it's a screen shot(s):

Here is the abstract:

After decades of dismissal and secrecy, it has become clear that a significant number of the world's governments take Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena (UAP), formerly known as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), seriously–—yet still seem to know little about them. As a result, these phenomena are increasingly attracting the attention of scientists around the world, some of whom have recently formed research efforts to monitor and scientifically study UAP. In this paper, we review and summarize approximately 20 historical government studies dating from 1933 to the present (in Scandinavia, WWII, US, Canada, France, Russia, China), several historical private research studies (France, UK, US), and both recent and current scientific research efforts (Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, US). In doing so, our objective is to clarify the existing global and historical scientific narrative around UAP. Studies range from field station development and deployment to the collection and analysis of witness reports from around the world. We dispel the common misconception that UAPs are an American phenomenon and show that UAP can be, and have been, scientifically investigated. Our aim here is to enable future studies to draw on the great depth of prior documented experience.

It would appear the study is twofold when looking at the main purpose:

In this paper, we review and summarize approximately 20 historical government studies dating from 1933 to the present (in Scandinavia, WWII, US, Canada, France, Russia, China), several historical private research studies (France, UK, US), and both recent and current scientific research efforts (Ireland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, US).

On the one hand this is what I believe is called a "meta-analysis". It sounds like they're going through all the previous studies looking for useful information and evidence. Turned out it really isn't, it just a review of older programs. And by including some "current scientific research efforts" with some older, including official government efforts, seeks to categorize these newer amateur efforts as on par with official ones. That is, this combination puts something like the Tedesco brothers filming UFOs, likely aircraft, on Long Island in the same category as Project Blue Book.

It also seeks to create the illusion for lots of UFO folks to be involved in a "published peer reviewed" paper, something Graves, the Tedescos and others can now lay claim to.

I think they're off to problematic start right in the first few paragraphs. While the paper notes that UAP are difficult to study they then equate them with other difficult to study phenomenon:

The study of UAP suffers from two main difficulties. First, the phenomena are neither repeatable nor controllable. This makes scientific data collection extremely difficult, since one must be resigned to setting up observing stations and waiting for events. In some ways this makes collecting data on UAPs similar to collecting data on earthquakes, gravitational waves, dark matter, or rare astronomical events, such as supernovae, except that the observation of particular UAP of interest is potentially more rare.

I would think the difference is that in the case of something like Earthquakes, while unpredictable, they do happen, they are studied and they are understood. As for the other things listed, many of them are at least predicted by various theories in astrophysics and other fields. None of this is true for UAP.

This is followed up with a complete misunderstanding of AATIP and AAWSAP:

The problem and opportunity that we face today is that the situation has changed dramatically. In December 2017, the New York Times (NYT) published an article [20], which revealed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had conducted a six-year covert program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), to study UAP. AATIP, which was led by Luis Elizondo [21], focused on military-only encounters and existed 6 by operating under the more extensive Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP), which was funded by $22 million secured by Senators Reid, Inouye, and Stevens.

AATIP was an unfunded side-gig run by Elizondo and Jay Stratton after AAWSAP had been canceled. It was never part of it. The authors go on about AAWSAP:

The objective of AAWSAP was to study the many aspects of UAP, which included the psychic and paranormal correlates to UAP interactions [22, 23, 24, 25], while identifying "potential breakthrough technology applications employed in future aerospace weapon systems."[26, 25] AAWSAP was managed by veteran intelligence analyst and rocket expert James Lacatski [27, 24, 26, 25, 21]. At its peak, the effort employed 50 full-time investigators (far more than any other program), which compiled the largest UFO data warehouse covering more than 200,000 cases.

Sorta. As we've discussed before, AAWSAP contracted Robert Bigelow's BAASS company to carry out a number of tasks. The musings on "potential breakthrough technology" was the only thing AAWSAP was officially supposed to be about according to its own RFP (Request For Proposal). To that end BAASS subcontracted to Hal Puthoff's EarthTech for 36 or so DIRD papers. As the authors note, AAWSAP, through BAASS looked into all kinds of weird stuff, like werewolves, often at Bigelow's supposedly haunted property, Skinwalker Ranch.

As for the "50 full-time investigators", that's a bit confusing. There were a number of employees at BAASS that worked on the AAWSAP contract. It appears though, that a number, if not most, of the "investigators" that went out to research UAP in the field were actually members of MUFON, a civilian amateur UFO organization. In fact, the "200,000" cases were almost certainly NOT investigated by employees of BAASS, or more importantly the government's AAWSAP. Rather these are just cases sourced from MUFON's database, which BAASS/AAWSAP paid MUFON ~$350K for access to. Link below to a thread on AAWSAP, but suffice it to say, it's not a good place to pull data for a serious academic paper.

The authors even mention George Knapp:

George Knapp, in his statement to Congress [26], notes that the AAWSAP Program produced more than 100 research papers on UAP, some of them more than 100 pages long.

Just a reminder that Knapp's career in UFO journalism started with John Lear and really took off with Bob Lazar. Knapp has always stood by Lazar's often fanciful and completely evidence free stories of working on flying saucers at Area 51 in the late '80s.

They continue with the report from the UAP Task Force (UAPTF):

In June 2021, the UAPTF presented its preliminary report to Congress, reconfirming that these UAP are not of American origin and are unlikely to come from any other country. The possibility was left open that they are craft of potentially non-human origin.

It should be noted that the UAPTF was led by Elizondo's former ATTIP side-hustle partner Jay Stratton at one point and had as its chief scientist Dr. Travis Taylor, famous from TV shows like Ancient Aliens and Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch. The report in question contained a number of misidentifications of mundane things like bohka, drones and stars as "unidentified".

I'm not trying to harp on the AAWSAP/AATIP stuff, however the paper demonstrates a fundamental flaw in understanding the relationship between these two entities that results in erroneous data points that the paper builds on. For example, here is their attempt at defining UAP:

The term UAP refers to an object / phenomenon that cannot be immediately recognized as prosaic, e.g. for aerial phenomena: human-made craft, 9 flying animals, or other well-known natural phenomena. "Unidentified" only means that one does not know what something is—at least initially—until additional analysis is possible.

I would agree with this as a good starting point. But then they go on to say:

Since this is essentially a study of unknowns, it could be more helpful to define a UAP in terms of the relevant characteristics identified by the Pentagon's AATIP Program. These characteristics are known as The Five Observables: [27, 21]

1. Positive Lift without Flight Surfaces

2. Sudden/Instantaneous Acceleration

3. Hypersonic Velocity Without Signatures

4. Trans-Medium Travel

5. Low Observability or Cloaking. In some close encounter scenarios, a sixth, albeit more disturbing, observable is sometimes noted: [27, 21]

6. Biological Effects on Humans and Animals

No. These are not the Pentagons definitions of UAP, these are Elizondo's 5 Observables that he came up with on his own. Again, Elizondo's AATIP was NOT an official Pentagon UAP program, despite what a 2017 NYT article said. It was an unofficial, unfunded side-hustle conducted by Elizondo, Stratton and maybe a few others. Lacatski, who ran AAWSAP makes this clear in his own book about AAWSAP. And Elizondo's own book pretty much backs that up. Again, links below.

The authors of this paper, out of ignorance or disingenuousness, are using a nearly 8 year old concept about AATIP from a flawed NYT article. It blends Elizondo et. al.'s side-gig with the $22ml boondoggle that was AAWSAP to create an overarching narrative that makes Elizondo's 5 Observables appear to be officially sanctioned Pentagon policy.

Sorry to harp on this, but it's right at the beginning. The authors are trying to tie their work into an official government program that is part of a false narrative. They go on to describe what we might call the LIZ:

While many UAP are ultimately identifiable and of mundane origin, some remain unidentified. It is only this unidentified residuum that is of interest. The degree of identification depends on the amount of detail that can be provided by the various sensing methods used as well as the investigative and scientific resources brought in.

Some things can't be identified, not because they're aliens, but because there just isn't enough data. They acknowledge most of these observations are indeed prosaic, but some aren't. It's these objects lacking sufficient data that are of interest, but how many there are seems to be a bit of a guess:

There is little doubt that the majority of UAP are misidentifications, but anywhere between 4-40% remain unidentified after careful investigations [47, 48, 49, 50], depending upon the sources and quality of the reports

.

4%-40% seems a pretty big spread.

A chunk of the paper goes on to rehash various claims and studies dating back to the 19th​ century. Honestly, I skimmed it a bit. As @Mendel has noted in other threads, going back over Project Blue Book notes is not going to suddenly reveal some long kept secret.

Like a lot of this paper, I think this review section serves multiple purposes: 1. It lists all kinds of cases and studies covering over 100 years, so a type of "sum is greater than the parts" argument or a paper Gish Gallop. 2. It links all this accumulated historical UFO evidence with the newer program, such as from the Tedesco brothers, into one overarching narrative. It legitimizes what people like Graves and the Tedescos are doing now and gives it historical gravitas. 3. It offers the authors the chance to make the usual arguments about past government UFO programs, this time in academic paper. This is the standard UFO argument that all previous government programs that did not confirm UFOs as alien, were flawed and or part of the cover up as the authors describe the Condon Committee:

Although not being able to "unscientifically" vent in print, Condon in his correspondence and other interactions makes his overemotionalism against the UFO subject undeniably clear. Almost everything about the structure of the organization, the choice of personnel, and the behaviors of all involved are classic examples of how not to do science. For example, there was never even a published list of the project staff [65].

After thousands of reports had been collected, the Condon report, which has been highly criticized, concluded that UFOs did not constitute a direct threat to national security and that the scientific study of UFOs was unlikely to be productive [121]. The Air Force used this conclusion to close Project Blue Book in 1969.

In addition to calling out the bad programs, the paper praises other programs for talking UFOs more seriously. As an example the describe the Pocantico workshop like this:

As we will describe, the Pocantico workshop stands as a refreshing and unique example of how the scientific community can be brought in, and introduced to this complicated UFO problem. The workshop was structured so that there was a Review Panel of nine minimally-biased scientists who were introduced to the UFO research performed by scientific investigators.

While I've never heard of this workshop, it should be noted that it was organized by Peter Struck of Stanford, a college of Garry Nolan and someone that spent countless hours and days trying to track down a likely fictional tale of a UFO crashing in 1953 at Ubatuba Brazil. Struck is the custodian of bits of magnesium that were supposedly collected at this crash site for which he could never find any evidence of. He and Nolan have repeatedly tested these bits and found them to be, well, magnesium.

More accurately I would argue, what the authors are suggesting is that when UFOs are studied, the right kind of scientist should be doing the studying (bold by me):

The Scientific Steering Committee consisted of Thomas E. Holzer, Robert Jahn, David E. Pritchard, Harold E. Puthoff, Yervant Terzian, and Charles R. Tolbert [127, p.xi]. Sturrock thanked the following scientists (the investigators):2 Richard F. Haines (Sec. Appendix A.4), Illobrand Von Ludwiger, Mark Rodeghier, John F. Schuessler, Erling Strand, Michael D. Swords, Jaques F. Vall´ee (Sec. Appendix A.16), and Jean-Jacques Velasco for pro[1]viding a crash-course on the UFO topic, and the following scientists: Von R. Eshleman, Thomas E. Holzer, J. R. (Randy) Jokipii, Francois Louange, H. J. (Jay) Melosh, James J. Papike, Guenther Reitz, Charles R. Tolbert, and Bernard Vayret

The paper does note that in praising how well and scientific this obscure workshop was organized and orchestrated, some of that praise is being done by people that participated in said workshop:

The astute reader will note that Drs. Haines, Rodeghier, Strand, Swords, and Vall´ee are all coauthors of this present work.

A bit circular it would seem. There is a long discussion of this workshop that others can break down if desired. Then the paper gets back to AATIP with a mish-mash of what it was, confusing it with AAWSAP, likely because that makes Elizondo much more important to the effort than he really was. They do note the involvement of Bigelow's NIDS and BAASS and our old friend Hal Puthoff gets a quote:

The scientists working for BAASS were involved in producing a number of De[1]fense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) [134] including topics such as materials [135], advanced propulsion [136], and space access [137][138]. Harold Puthoff, the Chief Scientist for BAASS described the situation as: [129]

You've got these advanced aerospace vehicles flying around, that we don't know where they come from, what the intent is, possibly off-world even...

They go on to describe the Canadian governments UFO program, Project Magnet which only lasted 3 ½ years. It was concived and run by a Wilber Smith who thought a piece of industrial slag was from a UFO and wrote an obscure book about the "Space Brothers" talking to him. Again, proper thread linked below.

Then the French governments program, the Soviets, the Chinese and so on. It just seems like a lot of padding and rehashing of stuff that is readily available in other places. As I said, piling on to make the sum greater than the parts.

Next the authors describe current programs studying UFO/UAPs that are quasi-academic, in that some of them are at least housed at academic facilities and sometimes associated with coauthors, including:

Project Hessdalen, Hessdalen Norway. 1984 – Present
Research had shown that anomalous phenomena sometimes tend to occur in specific areas with reasonable recurrence, and this inspired the creation and maintenance of Project Hessdalen as one of the longest-running instrumented "targeted search" studies of UAP research.

IFEX The Interdisciplinary Research Center for Extraterrestrial Studies
(Interdisziplin¨ares Forschungszentrum f¨ur Extraterrestrik, IFEX) is an institution of the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Julius Maximilian University of W¨urzburg

SETI Kingsland Lough Key, County Roscommon, Ireland. 2000 - Present
SETI Kingsland, situated at Kingsland Observatory and directed by Ea[1]monn Ansbro, was founded in 2000 and funded by Space Exploration Ltd. to establish permanent instrumentation for UAP astrophysical research.

The Galileo Project
The Galileo Project (GP) is led by Avi Loeb of Harvard University and was established in July 2021 with co-founder Frank Laukien [267]. The goal of GP is to search for extraterrestrial artifacts in the solar system.

VASCO
The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project [276, 277], led by Beatriz Villarroel, is focused on studying and comparing astronomical photographic plates taken over the last century to identify transient objects.

And as some of the above programs are headed by co-authors, there is also a description of lead author Kunth's program:

UAlbany-UAPx Collaboration
The Physics Department at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), collaborates with UAPx to study UAP through the collection of field data. UAPx is a federal 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, cofounded by US Navy veterans Gary Voorhis and Kevin Day, who were involved in the 2004 Nimitz carrier strike group tic-tac encounter [131].

Then there is a list of "private" groups or researchers, some now defunct, and again some run by co-authors of the paper. These include:

The Hudson Valley - Pine Bush Studies. 1980—2003
Hynek et al. [284] provided detailed accounts and witness descriptions for more than 62 individual sightings and some group sightings, selected from more than 7,000 reports from six Hudson valley counties.

Eye on the Sky
The Eye on the Sky platform is a fully instrumented mobile sensor developed by John and Gerald Tedesco, enabling the observation, detection, tracking, data collection, and identification of unidentified objects in our skies and along our coastline.

The UAP Tracker Project
The UAP Tracker Project [291] was founded in and has been operational since October 2021 [292]. It is a citizen science project designed to monitor the skies for possible UAP events.

UFO Data Acquisition Project (UFODAP)
The UFO Data Acquisition Project (UFODAP) system was developed as a collaboration between Ron Olch [294] and the previous UFO Camera Project team: Wayne Hollenbeck and Christopher O'Brien, to develop a low[1]cost optical tracking system for UAP studies.

Sky360
Sky360 is an open-source international sky observation project. Their observation stations consist of an AllSkyCam with a wide angle fish-eye lens and a Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) camera, for which the wide-angle camera registers all movement and enables the PTZ camera for tracking.

Then we get a list and descriptions of a number of UFO organizations, and no you don't have to read through this whole list, just skim and find the ones you already know:

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) estab[1]lished the Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Integration and Outreach Committee (UAPIOC) in 2021 to advance the scientific understanding of 68 Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) and improve aerospace safety.

National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP)

The Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies (SCU)

The Sentinel Center

3AF-SIGMA2

The Society for UAP Studies (SUAPS)

The Sol Foundation

UAP Check

Then the authors rehash the UFO-nuclear threat, using the scarry sounding but totally debunked Malmstrom AFB story:

The most famous of these events are the 1967 incursions at the nuclear weapon sites near Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB), in Great Falls, Montana, which resulted in the shutdown of almost twenty nuclear missiles [238, 232, 239].

Then more unsubstantiated claims from Knapp which I wont even bother to copy:

Even more disturbing, journalist George Knapp testified before the US Congress [26] that Russian Col. Boris Sokolov shared information about a similar event that took place at a Russian ICBM base in Ukraine where:

Even more surprising, after bringing up the UFO-nuclear threat, the authors then say it's not in the scope of this paper. Huh?:

This topic, while important to mention, falls outside the scope of this paper on scientific efforts to study UAP.

Worse they suggest seeing the works of Hastings and Salas:

We direct the interested reader to the work of Hastings [232], as well as Robert Salas and James Klotz [238, 239].

Hastings has been disingenuously pushing the Malmstrom story with the confabulated and hypnotically recovered memories of the elderly Salas. Again, link to proper thread below.

It's like they just through this in because it's part of modern UFO lore, so they had to at least mention it.

Then, as the title indicates they move on to "trans-medium" or UAPs that can go underwater. Honestly, this partial paragraph here just seems like a stretch:

The three videos released by the US government were taken by Naval aircraft at sea, and in the 2004 Nimitz encounter case (FLIR 1 video: Sec. 3.3.10) the Tic-Tac-shaped UAP was first observed hovering over the roiling sea surface, which could have been an effect of the UAP on the water, but could have indicated the presence of a larger submerged UAP [131, 231].

The description of the Tic-Tac as provided by Lt. Fravor, while related to the Tic-Tac video, is NOT that video. The video was recorded by someone else after Fravor had left the scene. It may have been the same object, but that is unknown. Furthermore, the idea that the Tic-Tac had anything to due with a "larger submerged UAP" is pure speculation!

They then bring up the Aquadilla case, likely wedding balloons:

In addition, the US Homeland Security video of an object observed over the Rafael Hern´andez Airport (BQN) in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, in 2013 showed an ellipsoid-shaped object, which after flying over the airport, headed out to sea where it dipped into the ocean multiple times and traveled underwater without significantly slowing down or creating splashes, waves, or other disturbances [243].

To conclude:

To use a colloquialism, it does not take a rocket scientist (or an aerospace engineer, for that matter) to recognize and appreciate that craft with effective and capable transmedium abilities are quite beyond human competency. A seaplane is both a very poor airplane and a very poor boat! For this reason, the observed transmedium behaviors of UAP should perhaps give us the most pause.

So, pure speculation concerning Fravors account and some likely wedding balloons is proof of transmedium craft that are "beyond human competency".

Next the authors move on to a critique of trying to understand UAP from a social science perspective. With out getting into the whole thing, they basically say that trying to understand UAPs as a social phenomenon ignores the reality of physical UAP. This little bit kinda sums it up:

An analogy with climate change helps to clarify this point. Beliefs about climate change have significant social consequences that merit study, but cli[1]mate change itself has tangible societal effects that extend beyond individual or collective beliefs.

People believing in UFOs for cultural reasons, means the researchers may not realize that the UFO are physically real objects. Social aspects of UFOs also brings up religious components, which they mention in reference to Diana Pasulka's work:

Moving beyond these questions of governmental dynamics, scholars like Diana Pasulka [324, 325] and Jeffrey Kripal [326, 327] have offered fresh perspectives on the UAP phenomenon by examining its intersections with religious and mystical experiences. They argue that UAP encounters bear remarkable resemblances to experiences recounted in religious and mystical texts, blurring the lines between the sacred and the secular, the technological and the spiritual.

But fail to recognize putting UFOs into a religious category, means they may not be physically real. I suppose they chose Pasulka for this, as she does seem to be a physical UFO believer, having accompanied Garry Nolan into the desert to find crashed UFO scraps.

They then move on to a long discussion of how to study UAP scientifically, which giving no one can agree upon what a UAP is this seems problematic. To their credit, what they focus on is gathering data, however this data collection is needed to convince the scientific committee that "truly anomalous data" exists:

It is generally agreed that the optimal methodology to study UAP relies on many different types of instruments, spatially separated, to dramatically reduce the possibility of error. This is the only way in which the scientific community will recognize truly anomalous data.

They are starting from the position that UAP exist, and they produce "anomalous data". A bit backwards, they are looking for ways to record that which they know exists but hasn't been properly recorded to date. There is no possibility that all UAP are in fact prosic.

As has always been the case, the need for ever more extensive and complex data collection methods are needed for UAP to be properly studied:

However, it is recognized that a more extensive project with appropriate funding would be needed to realize the satellite concept. This concept could also be expanded to larger satellites for more varied and higher quality measurements or multiple satellites for more frequent coverage, depending on available funding. As emphasized by military and scientific experts, a greater understanding of the UAP will be very valuable. With high enough reliability, the satellite could also be linked to other systems, either on the ground or in orbit, notifying them of a detection to collect more data when needed.

I would argue this has never worked in the past. More complete, numerous and sophisticated collection systems have only left UAP still undetectable. At least to the point that they can be identified. I suspect that is the point, recording and observing things that can't be identified means they're UAP and thus alien.

More is better is also their basic conclusion:

We have seen that, as a class, UAP describe a wide range of at least initially unidentifiable aerial and sometimes undersea phenomena with char[1]acteristics that present to the sciences a number of challenges — both in terms of their physical properties and also in terms of the manner in which they manifest. The latter is perhaps the key difficulty in studying the phenomena strictly scientifically, as their seeming randomness or ephemerality (or "elusiveness", as the French philosopher Bertrand M´eheust recently described it) requires constant monitoring of wide swaths of terrestrial parameter space, which in turn requires significant resources (technological and personnel) to be devoted to the research for long periods of time.

If anyone made it this far and are looking for actual data that can be peer reviewed, there is none. Despite the title, this paper is largely a rehash of old cases, some discussion of more modern ones, some lists of various groups, programs and organizations (often associated with a coauthor) that try to study UAPs and some recommendations for ever bigger or more sophisticated collection systems. There is no real scientific discussion that I could find, but others may due better, as I'll admit at times it got a bit repetitive and speculative as well as praising the authors own works.

Links for useful threads related to this discussion:

AATIP & AAWSAP:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/errors-in-luis-elizondos-ufo-book-imminent.13613/
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/the-origins-of-aawsap.12484/

UAPx:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/a-tear-in-the-sky-nimitz-tic-tac-catalina-ufo-documentary.12367/

Project Magnet:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wi...d-his-claims-of-ufo-debris.13011/#post-292793

The Tedesco Brothers:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/news-nation-light-in-the-sky-video-tedesco-brothers.13684/

The Malmstrom nukes UFO:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/uf...-flight-skeptical-resources.3284/#post-272656

Aquadilla transmedium UFO:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/ag...-ufos-probably-hot-air-wedding-lanterns.8952/

Stealth Aliens academic paper:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/cl...on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon-or-alaska.13504/

 

[JMartJr]

I would argue this has never worked in the past. More complete, numerous and sophisticated collection systems have only left UAP still undetectable. At least to the point that they can be identified. I suspect that is the point, recording and observing things that can't be identified means they're UAP and thus alien.

Phrased differently, more complete data collection does in fact identify UAP... as boring stuff. The only remaining "mysterious" UAP remain in the Low Information Zone, which is merely pushed farther out by better data collection efforts and sensor technology. This is evidence that there is, in fact, no new phenomenon to be studied here.

And, from the last bit you quote...

We have seen that, as a class, UAP describe a wide range of at least initially unidentifiable aerial and sometimes undersea phenomena with char[1]acteristics that present to the sciences a number of challenges...

This is just wishful thinking. There is, so far, no evidence at all that UAP actually represent A CLASS of objects/phenomena. To the contrary, where there is enough data that they can be identified, it is invariably shown that they are a variety of phenoema only lumped together because they were not reaidly identified -- birds, balloons, planes, stars, flares, planets, drones, butterflies, regular old flies, satellites, helicopters, meteors, etc. (Leaving out the large subset that are hoaxes!) They appear to do amazingly impossible things because the data is bad and misinterpretted -- they do not Go Fast but seem to if you misjudge the distance to them, they do not rotate like a Gimbal but can seem to do so if you do not understand how a particular rotating camera system works.

Anyway, great post, Thank you for the work you put into it!

 

[Mendel]

To start off, the paper is titled The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena and is published in astro-pm (?) and Cornell University, it's a bit unclear.

Cornell University runs arxiv.org. ArXiv is a platform to self-publish papers. It is not a journal, and the papers are not peer-reviewed. You can often find peer-reviewed papers as pre-prints on arxiv.org that have been accepted for publication in a regular, peer-reviewed journal, but this is not one of them.

Article:

Operations are maintained by the arXiv Leadership Team and arXiv staff at Cornell University.

Registered users may submit articles to be announced by arXiv. There are no fees or costs for article submission. Submissions to arXiv are subject to a moderation process that classifies material as topical to the subject area and checks for scholarly value. Material is not peer-reviewed by arXiv - the contents of arXiv submissions are wholly the responsibility of the submitter and are presented "as is" without any warranty or guarantee.

Source: https://info.arxiv.org/about/index.html

The staff will have noticed that the primary author is a proper physics professor, and that probably would've made it pass the check for "scholarly value".

The arxiv staff also assigned the paper a subject (astro-ph.IM), much like a library would.

Article:

Subjects:Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Popular Physics (physics.pop-ph)

Source: https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2502.06794

 

[Ann K]

There are a few phrases in there that should make it apparent to any scientist that "science" is not being applied here.

the psychic and paranormal correlates to UAP interactions

Moving beyond these questions of governmental dynamics, scholars like Diana Pasulka [324, 325] and Jeffrey Kripal [326, 327] have offered fresh perspectives on the UAP phenomenon by examining its intersections with religious and mystical experiences. They argue that UAP encounters bear remarkable resemblances to experiences recounted in religious and mystical texts, blurring the lines between the sacred and the secular, the technological and the spiritual.

The words "psychic", "paranormal", "sacred" and "spiritual" all refer to concepts that have never been shown to exist in reality, yet they wave around such terms as if they expect them to be meaningful and well-defined. There are a lot of red flags to go with the already-debunked examples they rely on.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Cornell University runs arxiv.org. ArXiv is a platform to self-publish papers. It is not a journal, and the papers are not peer-reviewed.

Thank you for the clarification sir. I usually go to my grad student kids for journal questions or access. Alas, even though they are adults, they still enjoy playing the card game Magic The Gathering to such an extent, they were off at MagicCon in Chicago this weekend and I didn't want to hear about a nerd fest centered around a fantasy card game from their youth bother them .

 

[FatPhil]

It appears there is a new paper on UAPs. I debated which thread to include this in, but after a bit of reading it deserves its own discussion. As will be seen, it touched on many threads we already have, so I'll link to them at the end of this OP and perhaps add a link to this thread in each of those threads. Cross-pollination if you will.

Thanks for the effort you put into this.

I'm not being dismissive of what you've summarised, I'm being dismissive of he same-old-same-olds publishing the same-old stuff:
This "new science" paper had *no* science. It was just what people have said historically, and similar fluff. It doesn't even approach a meta-study, as there is no systematic analysis of the prior results, mostly as there are no results in the prior papers that themselves could qualify as science. This is nothing but anecdotes about anecdotes. It matters not that there is a telescope, rocket, or particle accelerator in the room next to where you have having your discussion, that doesn't make your discussion magically advance any field of science. I'd like to coin the term "science by association" for this, but some postmodernists seem to have already given a non-negative meaning to that phrase (which is antithetical to post-modernism, but I'm sure they don't care about that).

The paper is as much to do with fashion as it is to do with science. Proof - cop a load of this neckclothitanian masterpiece:

 

[FatPhil]

Phrased differently, more complete data collection does in fact identify UAP... as boring stuff. The only remaining "mysterious" UAP remain in the Low Information Zone, which is merely pushed farther out by better data collection efforts and sensor technology. This is evidence that there is, in fact, no new phenomenon to be studied here.

A similar argument has been made to try and get the supersymmetry guys to not bother continuing their expansive and expensive searches for squawktralons. It has failed. When your search is predicated on the belief that there is actually something out there to be found, no number of negative results can temper that.

 

[Mauro]

A similar argument has been made to try and get the supersymmetry guys to not bother continuing their expansive and expensive searches for squawktralons. It has failed.

At least, supersymmetry is a mathematical theory cool in itself.

 

[MapperGuy]

Thanks for the effort you put into this.

I'm not being dismissive of what you've summarised, I'm being dismissive of he same-old-same-olds publishing the same-old stuff:
This "new science" paper had *no* science. It was just what people have said historically, and similar fluff. It doesn't even approach a meta-study, as there is no systematic analysis of the prior results, mostly as there are no results in the prior papers that themselves could qualify as science. This is nothing but anecdotes about anecdotes. It matters not that there is a telescope, rocket, or particle accelerator in the room next to where you have having your discussion, that doesn't make your discussion magically advance any field of science. I'd like to coin the term "science by association" for this, but some postmodernists seem to have already given a non-negative meaning to that phrase (which is antithetical to post-modernism, but I'm sure they don't care about that).

The paper is as much to do with fashion as it is to do with science. Proof - cop a load of this neckclothitanian masterpiece:

Same-Old-Same-Old indeed.
It would be an interesting challenge for the True Believers is you asked them to make their claims based ONLY on things see/collected/experienced after the year 2020. No re-visits to old stuff that is impossible to really do any science on. They would never accept of course, because all of their good stuff is long past its sell-by date.

 

[NoParty]

It appears there is a new paper on UAPs...The New Science of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena and is published in astro-pm (?) and Cornell University...

Holy moly! This is an impressive look at this, Dave! Nice job!

Of interest in the very beginning is the list of authors. Kevin Kunth, of the UAPx program, is listed as lead author, but the list of coauthors is a venerable who's who of the current UFO/UAP scene (bold by me)...

My mind immediate thought: "He can't mean 'venerable,' but I better read on in case there's a big surprise."
Well, no surprise...no venerable names here...I'm guessing "veritable" is what you said, & AI decided to help.

If we ever do get a venerable who's who of the current UFO/UAP scene, I think it'll blow all of our minds!

But thanks again for a thorough look, and a good read...

 

[NorCal Dave]

his "new science" paper had *no* science

Absolutely. As I read through it, having seen that people like the Tedescos were coauthors, I thought for sure we would at least get some actual data. Giving that several folks here have conclusively shown that they were pointing their cameras, not just into some of the busiest airspace in the US, but directly at Newark International, I thought it would be interesting to see how they presented that data here. But there wasn't any.

They seem to have been included as coauthors based on providing a glowing description of their efforts spending a year in a park on Long Island that looks west to the aforementioned airliner crowded skies and their own various versions of DIY research trucks from the original Twister movie:

An '81 Jeep Honcho. Yes please!

But there is no data, aside from rehashes of old cases and no science. But I figured it may come up as a legit a "scientific study of UFOs" at some point, I'd get thread up for it with a link so others can see for themselves.

Same-Old-Same-Old indeed.
It would be an interesting challenge for the True Believers is you asked them to make their claims based ONLY on things see/collected/experienced after the year 2020. No re-visits to old stuff that is impossible to really do any science on. They would never accept of course, because all of their good stuff is long past its sell-by date.

Indeed! There is definitely a constant rehashing of old cases. If something gets debunked, they just bring it up again. In the case of this paper's lead author, Kunth and one of his coauthors, Szydagis there may be some genuine ignorance. Both are PhD level physicists, both are part of UAPx and both have brought up the Malmstrom nuke event as claimed by Hastings and Salas. I linked to our thread on this event, and to be sure, it's all a bit complicated. Salas was a legit Air Force nuke guy in the area at the time, so disagreeing with him seems like sour grapes and unpatriotic. There are records that some nukes shut down, but not on Salas' watch. Salas has changed his story multiple times over the years, but others, Hastings in particular has woven a complex narrative that is more compelling than it really is.

I don't think Kunth and Szydagis are actually aware of the complex real story that got turned into the modern claim we have now. But that's what research is all about. One has to look into all aspects of a claim. I've argued before that many of us here know these stories as well if not better than those that believe them. We have to, if we want to understand and discuss them.

 

[NorCal Dave]

My mind immediate thought: "He can't mean 'venerable,' but I better read on in case there's a big surprise."
Well, no surprise...no venerable names here...I'm guessing "veritable" is what you said, & AI decided to help.

My bad! As I'm a horrific speller, for posts like this I write in Word, then copy it. Alas, sometimes I get corrected to what Word though I was trying to spell even though it's not the correct word for the situation. I guess I should have just said "Lots of UFO people are involved in this paper".

 

[Mendel]

this paper's lead author, Kunth

please teach your spell checker the name "Knuth". In the OP, it occurs next to a quote of the correct name, but when it doesn't, there's potential for confusion.

 

[FatPhil]

My mind immediate thought: "He can't mean 'venerable,' but I better read on in case there's a big surprise."
Well, no surprise...no venerable names here...I'm guessing "veritable" is what you said, & AI decided to help.

If we ever do get a venerable who's who of the current UFO/UAP scene, I think it'll blow all of our minds!

I barely noticed the word, for me it was as correct as something like saying you'd gathered the A-list of TikTok make-up influencers. It's not us who would compile such a /Who's Who/, or the in-group A-list. There's no need for them to even be good at what they do. They just need a following, are they "big names", and that seems to be true. The usage is my kind of deadpan irony.

 

[yoshy]

This was a phenomenal write-up!

On the one hand this is what I believe is called a "meta-analysis".

The term you're looking for is "literature review". Like @FatPhil mentioned in #6, "meta analysis" refers to using statistical techniques to combine results from a collection of existing studies to get a more precise estimate of the value of interest.

 

[MapperGuy]

This was a phenomenal write-up!

The term you're looking for is "literature review". Like @FatPhil mentioned in #6, "meta analysis" refers to using statistical techniques to combine results from a collection of existing studies to get a more precise estimate of the value of interest.

It might also be called an 'encyclopedia' of past events.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The term you're looking for is "literature review". Like @FatPhil mentioned in #6, "meta analysis" refers to using statistical techniques to combine results from a collection of existing studies to get a more precise estimate of the value of interest.

Yeah, I think I know what a "literature Review" is, presenting the background and previous research pertinent to one's own new research. I guess I got the impression, possibly in error, that they were going to try and do more with previously collected data instead of just essentially listing various UFO programs.

But in looking aback, it's pretty obvious that most of the paper is a series of "reviews". Past programs through to present day programs, with little actual data. As I was reading and writing, I found myself going back and correcting myself given what was actually in, or not in, the paper. For example, this line here:

In addition, I have to wonder how much actual work some of these coauthors actually performed in terms of writing the paper, as opposed to providing some description of their work here and there and then getting coauthor listing.

was first writing with the phrase "as opposed to providing some data here and there" but I had to go back and change it to "descriptions or their work here and there" as it became apparent there was little to no data.

So, I'll stand corrected on this one. I thought maybe they were going to attempt some sort of meta-analysis, while they really just provided a condensed, and often erroneous, history of UFO studies.

The usage is my kind of deadpan irony.

Yeah, that's it. I was being ironic all along

 

[yoshy]

I thought maybe they were going to attempt some sort of meta-analysis, while they really just provided a condensed, and often erroneous, history of UFO studies.

The final sentence in the abstract "Our aim here is to enable future studies to draw on the great depth of prior documented experience." definitely gives that impression!

And then it turns out there's essentially no actionable data at all, and there's only 4 pages of 158 that provides anything possibly useful for future researchers (Section 9 The Scientific Methodology and Best Practices for Collecting UAP Data). But even that section doesn't really provide anything technical or insightful, and can be summarized as "use satellites, cameras, and AI".

There's a sentence in the Conclusion section that gives the real point:

Forensic cold case chases will not break this loop. Only well-funded, transgenerational university research can.

"Give us money!"

 

[FatPhil]

This was a phenomenal write-up!

The term you're looking for is "literature review". Like @FatPhil mentioned in #6, "meta analysis" refers to using statistical techniques to combine results from a collection of existing studies to get a more precise estimate of the value of interest.

Some would even go so far as to subcategorise the review-based papers into soft "review articles" and harder and more focussed "literature reviews"[*]. And this was definitely more the former than the latter.
No idea who these guys are, but their description (emphasis mine) isn't too far from my view, and, as you can see, it's got its own fluff issues:

Review articles
Review articles provide comprehensive summaries and evaluations of existing research on a particular topic. These papers synthesise findings from multiple studies to give an overview of the current state of knowledge. Moreover, they highlight key trends, debates and gaps in the literature. Review articles are valuable for researchers looking to quickly understand the breadth of research in a field. They often include a methodology section explaining how studies were selected and analysed. Even though review articles do not present new experimental results, they are crucial for identifying future research directions and informing evidence-based practice.
...
Literature reviews
Literature reviews systematically identify, evaluate and synthesise research on a particular topic. Unlike review articles, literature reviews often follow a more structured approach, including a detailed methodology for selecting and analysing studies. They summarise findings, identify trends and highlight gaps in the research. Overall, literature reviews are foundational for any new research project, providing a comprehensive background and justifying the need for the study. They help researchers avoid duplication and build on existing knowledge.

-- https://www.mwediting.com/10-types-of-academic-papers/

Sometimes the distinction can be just whether the paper's ordered chronologically, or by subtopic.

As an aside - some journal families won't publish review articles uninvited, so I'm curious whether this was actually intended for publication in a journal at all? Data about the sublission on Arxiv shows no hint in that direction, and they're mostly happy to host any old nonsense, so its presence there tells us nothing.

[* EDIT: 'er indoors correctly informs me that there's a preference for calling the latter "literature surveys" nowadays, as any paper or thesis can have a "literature review" section as part of it.]

 

[jdog]

Some would even go so far as to subcategorise the review-based papers into soft "review articles" and harder and more focussed "literature reviews". And this was definitely more the former than the latter.
No idea who these guys are, but their description (emphasis mine) isn't too far from my view, and, as you can see, it's got its own fluff issues:

Review articles
Review articles provide comprehensive summaries and evaluations of existing research on a particular topic. These papers synthesise findings from multiple studies to give an overview of the current state of knowledge. Moreover, they highlight key trends, debates and gaps in the literature. Review articles are valuable for researchers looking to quickly understand the breadth of research in a field. They often include a methodology section explaining how studies were selected and analysed. Even though review articles do not present new experimental results, they are crucial for identifying future research directions and informing evidence-based practice.
....

As an aside - some journal families won't publish review articles uninvited, so I'm curious whether this was actually intended for publication in a journal at all? Data about the sublission on Arxiv shows no hint in that direction, and they're mostly happy to host any old nonsense, so its presence there tells us nothing.

The review articles that I've dealt with with are also written by recognized authorities in the particular field who are distilling the current state of published knowledge of that field into a (more or less) comprehensive statement about what is known and what work needs to be done.

That requires a) a credible journal with competent editors b) commissioning the review from a recognized authority in c) a field that has an existing base of credible work to review.

None of which are in play here.

 

[NorCal Dave]

As an aside - some journal families won't publish review articles uninvited, so I'm curious whether this was actually intended for publication in a journal at all? Data about the sublission on Arxiv shows no hint in that direction, and they're mostly happy to host any old nonsense, so its presence there tells us nothing.

Yeah, the whole thing is a bit curious. On the one hand it's nothing I, a retired contractor with a long ago BA in Communications, couldn't put together sitting here at my breakfast bar. It's a basic history of UFOs and studies about them. Then some listing of various groups and organizations that try to study UFOs. No higher degree needed.

And yet, of the ~33 authors, at least 5 are legit PhDs that I know of, including physicist, and I suspect several others are by looking at their university affiliations. So, for these folks this is an attempt to suggest the study of UFO/UAPs is being tackled on the university level. However, according to this same paper JMU was the first, and only(?), university to "formally recognize UAP as a legitimate subject" in 2022:

In 2022, the Julius-Maximilians-Universit¨at ofW¨urzburg (JMU) made history by becoming the first prominent western university to formally recognize UAP as a legitimate subject for academicinquiry. The University's Interdisciplinary Research Center for Extraterrestrial Science (IFEX) expanded its scope to include UAP research alongside its primary focus on space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life.

It would seem then, that all this UAP research going on at other universities, like Loeb at Harvard, Knuth at UNYA and Nolan at Stanford are side-gigs with only JMU making UAP studies a kind of official side-gig.

Having suggested that a large number of universities are officially working on the UAP problem, these professional academics are then grouped with non-university, non-PhD level lay people that only seem to be part of this paper by virtue of providing descriptions of their attempted UFO studies. It elevates the non-PhD, non-university affiliated activities, like sitting in a parking lot on Long Island, with what's going on at Harvard or Stanford.

As @Mendel noted up thread, this is not published in any sort of peer reviewed, or even non-peer reviewed, journal of any kind. It's published on Cornel's free hosting site arXiv.org, something I didn't understand when first reading it:

arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for nearly 2.4 million scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

https://arxiv.org/

Many articles on arXiv are pre-prints of papers that do go onto peer review and publication, but I doubt that is happening here. So, this appears to be a review article, at best, with some recommendations for further study.

My own suspicion is that is designed to look like an actual reviewed journal article for lay people. I'm sure my kids that are constantly reading, and sometimes publishing, academic articles would immediately recognize this for what it is. As such, it's not really for academics, despite the number of academics listed as co-authors. It's for lay people. It's for people like Ross Coulthart or Matt Ford to wave in people's faces and say "See, real scientific article from a journal about UAP!" It's for some of the lay people that are listed as co-authors, so they can say their own unique UAP projects are legit science.

 

[Mendel]

As such, it's not really for academics, despite the number of academics listed as co-authors. It's for lay people. It's for people like Ross Coulthart or Matt Ford to wave in people's faces and say "See, real scientific article from a journal about UAP!" It's for some of the lay people that are listed as co-authors, so they can say their own unique UAP projects are legit science.

I assume the purpose is to impress politicians, to send government money their way.

 

[yoshy]

Many articles on arXiv are pre-prints of papers that do go onto peer review and publication, but I doubt that is happening here. So, this appears to be a review article, at best, with some recommendations for further study.

At the bottom of page 1 of the PDF, it says "Preprint submitted to Progress in Aerospace Sciences". https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/progress-in-aerospace-sciences. They describe themselves as

Progress in Aerospace Sciences is an invitation only international review journal designed to be of broad interest and use to all those concerned with research in aerospace sciences and their applications in research establishments, industry and universities. The journal is devoted primarily to the publication of specially commissioned review articles designed to bring together under one cover current advances in the ever-broadening field of aerospace sciences.

So @FatPhil nailed it in #19! "Review article" is a better description here than "literature review" as I suggested.

I took a look at the editorial board and I don't see any of the familiar names from the UFO community. I am curious who commissioned this.

 

[Mendel]

At the bottom of page 1 of the PDF, it says "Preprint submitted to Progress in Aerospace Sciences".

Thanks, I missed that.

Note that "submitted to" is different from "accepted by", and unlike other pre-prints, they don't give an issue it's scheduled to appear in.

 

[yoshy]

Perusing previous issues of the journal, other submitted work seems so much more professional, academic, detailed and useful. Sharing actual data, diving into complex mathematical frameworks, running simulations, reviewing previous and prospective experiments. Like...actual science stuff. The UFO paper really stands out as unfit, even for this journal that has a less traditional mission. There is a peer review process so we'll have to wait and see if it does get accepted, and if it does, if there are any changes from the preprint to published version.

I am strongly agreeing with those suggesting here that the goal is to have the ability to say "See we have peer reviewed real science" to present legitimacy (and my previous suggestion it will be used to legitimize more funding).

 

[Mauro]

The publisher is Elsevier and is peer-rewieved, so it should be a legit journal

https://journals.scholarsportal.info/browse/03760421/v112icomplete


I wonder how they got an invitation to submit a review...

 

[NorCal Dave]

I am curious who commissioned this.

One possible connection, is the VASCO project described in the paper:

4.1.6. VASCO The Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations(VASCO) project [276, 277], led by Beatriz Villarroel, is focused on studying and comparing astronomical photographic plates taken over the last century to identify transient objects. This project has the unique advantage of involving a century's worth of trusted professional astronomical data, much of which is free of contamination by artificial satellites, which did not exist prior to the launch of Sputnik-I in October of 1957. In addition to providing an opportunity to observe the variability of astronomical objects on scales ranging from decades down to hours, this project has the capability of identifying photographic evidence of unidentified aerospace phenomena in the near-Earth space environment.

It sounds like they are going back through old photographs looking for UFOs. A hyped up version of the common claim: "I didn't notice anything unusual at the time, but when I went back to look at the photos, I saw a UFO". While a common claim, I would think the Costa Rican flying saucer serendipitously photographed during an aerial survey mission in the '50s and only discovered later is the most famous case. Link to discussion below.

They also speculate that old plates from pre-satellite days may contain solar reflections from UFOs in orbit that appear as transients:

Furthermore, the team proposed that solar reflections from artificial objects could produce sub second transients. The team followed up with a prediction paper in Acta Astronautica [279] on how to identify potential nonhuman artifacts more clearly in geosynchronous orbits around the Earth by searching for several transients aligned in a row. Aligned transients help to secure the separation between potential plate defects and nonhuman artifacts, and, indeed, two such statistically significant examples were identified[280]. More recently, the team identified a bright triple transient that also appears and vanishes in 50 minutes, also without explanation [281]. Ironically, the triple transient and the most improbable candidate alignment occurred on 19 July 1952 and 27 July, respectively [282], two dates associated with the Washington UFO flyovers when multiple UFOs were observed by highly credible witnesses, both visually and over multiple airport radars.

As is the case with this paper, Dr. Villarroel's description of her program resulted in a co-author listing. The paper lists Villarroel's affiliations as KFT Royal Institute of Technology, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Stockholm University all in Sweden:

A look at the Progress in Aerospace Sciences editorial board includes a Prof. Rizzi at KTH:

Professor A. Rizzi
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Maybe they know each other. The "Our Team" page for the VASCO program only lists Villarroel but includes a number of photos of supposed team member. Villarroel herself is on the second row and I recognize the guy at the lower right from somewhere:

I want to say that's an older photo of Chris Mellon he used to use on Twitter but can't find it right now. Or maybe Tinder?

Interesting too, VASCO's own website describes it as also looking for UFO crash sights:

Together with UAP Sweden, we are interested in hearing from you regarding possible UFO crashes in Europe in the European UFO Crash Retrieval Initiative. You can either email us or fill the form below.

Our mission is to map alleged UFO crash incidents in Europe, both historical and recent. Rather than relying on government disclosures, we hope to:

• Identify probable crash sites using techniques from criminal forensics, science, and psychology. We collaborate with experts outside the fields of science and see this effort as a community project that we do in our free time (rather than a scientific project).
• Visit these crash sites to gather materials.
• Share our findings with scientists for further examination.
• Share any remarkable discoveries with the public, always respecting your consent regarding your name.
• Create a community-driven project empowering ordinary citizens to uncover answers, rather than waiting for government disclosures.

If you've witnessed or possess information regarding a potential UFO crash in Europe, we kindly request you to complete our form. You may choose to remain anonymous or provide your name and contact information.

https://vascoproject.org/european-ufo-crash-retrieval-initiative/

Costa Rica UFO photo:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/1971-lake-cote-lago-de-cote-ufo-aerial-photo.11729/

 

[Ann K]

I wonder how they got an invitation to submit a review...

Did they? I don't know their process, but it seems possible that an invitation is given only after they have reviewed at least an abstract of the paper. In other words, does the submission (which is what they claim) precede the invitation?

 

[yoshy]

Did they? I don't know their process, but it seems possible that an invitation is given only after they have reviewed at least an abstract of the paper. In other words, does the submission (which is what they claim) precede the invitation?

From their Guide for Authors page:

Article types

If you have an idea for a review paper please contact, in the first instance, one of the Commissioning Editors. Please send a brief CV and affiliation/position title for all co-authors as well as a list of relevant publications, the title of the article, an abstract (at least, 200 words) and a detailed list of contents. Also, a brief summary of your professional experience, list of relevant publications, affiliation and position title will be appreciated

So it looks like your hypothesis is correct!

I am now confused why they describe themselves as "invitation only" when it appears you have to approach them with an idea first. Isn't asking to get in the opposite of "invitation only"?

 

[NorCal Dave]

I want to say that's an older photo of Chris Mellon he used to use on Twitter but can't find it right now. Or maybe Tinder?

Took me a while, but yeah, Mellon on X:

So, Mellon is on the "team" in some capacity for VASCO. But again, the VASCO "Team" page just list photos of anonymous people and a link to a bit about the main person behind the project, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel:

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Maybe I am getting paranoid but the handsome young man in a suit left of Mellon gives off strong AI vibes. What is he supposed to be wearing? A mixture of a bow and neck tie? Or a half open bow tie?
If this is a real person, he's a supermodel on top of an UFO researcher.

 

[deirdre]

Maybe I am getting paranoid but the handsome young man in a suit left of Mellon gives off strong AI vibes. What is he supposed to be wearing? A mixture of a bow and neck tie? Or a half open bow tie?
If this is a real person, he's a supermodel on top of an UFO researcher.


View attachment 77782

He looks like DJ Chris from Northern Exposure.

 

[Ann K]

He looks like DJ Chris from Northern Exposure.

John Corbett, now a lot older than that!

 

[MonkeeSage]

Interesting too, VASCO's own website describes it as also looking for UFO crash sights:

https://vascoproject.org/european-ufo-crash-retrieval-initiative/

So, Mellon is on the "team" in some capacity for VASCO. But again, the VASCO "Team" page just list photos of anonymous people and a link to a bit about the main person behind the project, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel:

She is apparently the founder of the European UFO Crash Retrieval Initiative, and on the Natural Sciences Advisory Board at SOL Foundation.

https://www.ecr-initiative.org/who-we-are
https://thesolfoundation.org/people/beatriz-villarroel/

Also on the EUCRI team is Dennis Åsberg, who has told Ross Coulthart an undersea rock formation might be a crashed UFO or an alien base.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/space/ufo/underwater-object-baltic-sea/

Also Anneli Sarre, a Witness Support Counselor, Linus Holmlund, a remote viewer.

Perhaps lending credence to the idea that papers like this one are being published to provide "UAP Science" an appearance of bona fides, Dr. Villarroel says this in an article she authored in The Debrief discussing her EXOPROBE project (bold mine):

To work around this issue, the VASCO project has teamed up with SpaceLaserAwareness for an entirely new research program called EXOPROBE. SpaceLaserAwareness has developed a system for careful searches for interstellar communication lasers and has a record of publishing peer-reviewed papers in well-respected academic journals (as does VASCO).

https://thedebrief.org/a-new-era-of...h-for-artificial-objects-of-non-human-origin/

The goal of EXOPROBE is to capture an alien spaceship in space and bring it back to Earth.

Compared to other projects, the new design of EXOPROBE allows us to detect, localize, verify, and reproduce the finding in real time. All this becomes possible when instead of looking for the "unknown" among millions of objects crossing the sky ("UAP science"), we focus on searching for an identifiable signature of the unidentified object: in our case, bright, short flashes occurring outside the Earth's atmosphere. An important aspect of our design is that we use a technique to remove human-made objects and space debris, minimizing the number of false positives.

We want to do everything to achieve 1-meter accuracy in locating the unidentified object. This is also where the second phase of our project enters. Upon the discovery of such a probe, we plan to bring it down to Earth. What could we humans not learn from putting our hands on another intelligent civilization's masterful creation? What mysterious secrets can be held by a small ET box? Any organization that lays its' hands on an ET probe, especially an active one, will push the expansion of human knowledge beyond our imagined boundaries. Why shouldn't we do this program ourselves rather than wait for a government agency?

This ambitious goal of bringing down a non-human surveillance probe is not unproblematic. If the probe is discovered, it may have plenty of time to move out of orbit or hide before a government mission to fetch it has been approved in a long bureaucratic battle. Government missions of this kind usually take a decade or two. But time is precious when dealing with such a probe. Ideally, a space mission to fetch it cannot wait more than a few days – a time window needed for reproducing and validating the authenticity of the finding but also minimizing the risk for the probe to "vanish." There are several ways of traveling a few million miles to reach the probe, and the greatest challenge will be to identify the proper pathway for collecting it.

https://thedebrief.org/a-new-era-of...h-for-artificial-objects-of-non-human-origin/

 

[Ann K]

The goal of EXOPROBE is to capture an alien spaceship in space and bring it back to Earth.

Ooh, she envisions causing an interstellar war! If I believed there to be aliens zipping around in our atmosphere, I would be sincerely concerned about someone like Dr. Villarroel leading the hunt with the position of an antagonist. Considering that they have yet to find the remaining hardware from any such crash or any undersea alien base, I'm not worried. I think of the search as just an extremely expensive (and so far unproductive) hobby ... which is fine, except the attempt to pretend it falls in the realm of science is insulting to science.

 

[NorCal Dave]

She is apparently the founder of the European UFO Crash Retrieval Initiative, and on the Natural Sciences Advisory Board at SOL Foundation.

And is affiliated with 3 universities, when not giving TED talks. She really...has a full schedule:

But let's keep thickening the plot:

Also Anneli Sarre, a Witness Support Counselor, Linus Holmlund, a remote viewer.

A remote viewer you say? Yet another co-author of this paper is one Richard Dolan who has a rather extensive website and extras for members:

I'm going to pass on a membership for now, being notoriously miserly with content subscriptions. YouTube Premium and Spotify ($20 total) is my limit. And I'm not sure I see the value...

https://richarddolanmembers.com/

...given that Mr. Dolan has been researching UFOs for 30 years, and to my knowledge has yet to prove their existence:

Richard has dedicated three decades to uncovering the truth about UFOs. He adds a sophisticated understanding of global geopolitics, world history, and futurism to explore this complex subject. By becoming a member of this site you are encouraging and supporting Richard's research.

His main contribution to the paper under discussion seems to be 1 paragraph where he's mentioned once along with Ivan Sanderson because they both have books on USOs (underwater UFOs) (bold by me):

The connection with the UFO phenomenon has been greatly reinforced by sightings of flying objects descending from the sky and submerging into seas (or lakes), as well as observations of UFOs seen coming out of the water and taking flight. One of the first authors to dedicate a full book to USOs was the British-American biologist Ivan T. Sanderson [228]. However, Carl Feindt has compiled the most complete worldwide catalog of USO reports, both as an online database called Water UFO [251] and as a book [229]. Richard Dolan has published the most recent study [6].

That someone would use a book by Sanderson as evidence of anything fantastical seems problematic. While an actual biologist and writer of travelogs, he is best known for believing that a giant penguin stalked the beaches of Florida:

Sanderson's credibility was damaged with his endorsement of the giant penguin hoax. In 1948 (and the next decade), giant three-toed footprints were found at Clearwater Beach in Florida.[7]​ Sanderson proclaimed that the footprints were impossible to fake and were made by a fifteen-foot tall penguin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_T._Sanderson

To be fair, I remember a podcast* that made a good case that Sanderson was well aware the penguin tracks were hoaxes at the time, but in later years figured the story made better copy as being real. Not sure which is worse.

As for Mr. Dolan, one notes that he and Mrs. Garbutt-Dolan will be guest speakers at a Memorial Day shindig in Coachella:

I'll be passing through in early April, so looks I'll miss this one, and no, this event should not be confused with THE Coachella music festival. Important here is the presence of Mrs. Garbutt-Dolan, as it appears she is "professionally trained remote viewer":

Tracey Garbutt Dolan is a professionally trained remote viewer, co-host of the weekly livestream program, "Intelligent Disclosure" with her husband UFO historian Richard Dolan, and is co-founder / Director of Richarddolanmembers.com.

Who also has contact with NHI (you know, aliens):

Many of Tracey's remote views have been regarded as exceptional, including a striking example of accurately perceiving a location 2600 miles away through the eyes and sense organs of another person. Tracey has also had a number of direct contact experiences with apparent non-human intelligences, all of which she has carefully recorded, and one of which occurred while present with another witness.

And like, Dr. Villarroel has given a TED talk:

her presentation for the prestigious TEDx series in 2017 entitled "Saving Our Hidden Visionaries."

Her biography mentions a BA in Psychology and International Studies from University of South Florida, but no specific mention of where the "professional remote viewing" training took place, though I would suspect it was at Ramtha School of Enlightenment. This is New Age huckster J.Z. Knight's cash cow program where she claims to channel the ancient being Ramtha a place in Yelm WA, where one can learn how to remote view, among other things from the ancient entity Ramtha:

She views her contact experiences and her work on remote viewing as an outgrowth and extension of her lifelong spiritual and philosophical endeavors. These include extensive explorative training at the renowned Monroe Institute in Virginia, as well as the Ramtha School of Enlightenment.

https://richarddolanmembers.com/about/about-tracey-garbutt/

While admittedly tangential, it's just more of the blending of Psy with UFOlogy, something people like Hal Puthoff have been doing for decades. What I find interesting is that lead author Knuth and his UAPx buddy Szydagis really cloak their UFO research in hard science and physics, yet the field is filled with Psy and the paranormal. I'd like to ask them how they reconcile this.

* I know I heard this story of Sanderson changing his mind later to sell more books. Trust me bro! But I can't seem to find it anywhere. I thought it was on @Brian Dunning Skeptoid podcast, but again, I can't find it.

 

[yoshy]

An important aspect of our design is that we use a technique to remove human-made objects and space debris, minimizing the number of false positives.

I hate the use of weasel words like this. Which technique?!?! That's kinda a very important step in the process.

 

[deirdre]

a giant penguin stalked the beaches of Florida:

what the hell? you knew about a giant penguin and never told me! i'm so mad at you. finding "new" cryptoids is so rare.

we might need a thread, i dont think this is possible to do this for 2 miles with a 4 to 6 foot stride.

Article:

To create the illusion of a long stride, Signorini would stand on one leg, swing the other one back and forth to build momentum, then take a leap.

Each foot weighed about 30 pounds. His son, Jeff, tried walking with them a few years ago and "I went over on my butt."

Source: https://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/two-feet-from-clearwaters-past-fathers-funny-legacy-leaves-a-deep/2159682/

Article:

No, Sanderson argued, it was a big bird. Really big.

"The imprint is, in fact, very much like that of a vast penguin," he wrote, although admitting the idea of a 15-foot penguin in Florida sounded "balmy."

Source: https://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/two-feet-from-clearwaters-past-fathers-funny-legacy-leaves-a-deep/2159682/

 

[Bernd Lauert]

This is Prof. Martin J. Ward, last in the 3rd row

https://ras.ac.uk/journals/Editorial-Boards-and-Team/prof-martin-j-ward

You can see the James Webb Space Telescope in the background

He is indeed listed as last author of the paper "Launching the VASCO citizen science project", 2022, MDPI's Universe, 8, 561
https://www.mdpi.com/2218-1997/8/11/561

He published another paper with Villarroel, again listed as last author - "Is there a background population of high- albedo objects in geosynchronous orbits around Earth?", 2022, arXiv: 2204.06091
https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.06091

Unfortunately he is not listed in the authors contribution. I would be interested what Prof. Ward contributed to those 2 papers and if he ever read them.

It looks like the usual scheme of a group of people publishing together and acquiring a number of funds and grants to fuel their hobby of looking for UFOs.

I just wonder how many of the people in the pictures are actually aware that Villarroel is hunting UFOs. But on the other hand, if you are giving your name for papers you do not read my pity is very limited.

 

[Bernd Lauert]

Most authors that published with Villarroel turn up in the VASCO images. Can you help fill in the rest?