The Defense Department’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) released a report that will finally end all that UFO/UAP nonsense. Just kidding — nothing will end the human capacity for self-delusion. But it’s a start.

AARO found no evidence that any USG investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology. All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification. Although not the focus of this report, it is worthwhile to note that all official foreign UAP investigatory efforts to date have reached the same general conclusions as USG investigations.

• Although many UAP reports remain unsolved or unidentified, AARO assesses that if more and better quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena. Sensors and visual observations are imperfect; the vast majority of cases lack actionable data or the data available is limited or of poor quality.
• Resources and staffing for these programs largely have been irregular and sporadic, challenging investigatory efforts and hindering effective knowledge transfer.
• The vast majority of reports almost certainly are the result of misidentification and a direct consequence of the lack of domain awareness; there is a direct correlation between the amount and quality of available information on a case with the ability to conclusively resolve it.

I thought this was an amusing comment on the quality of the evidence.

Another program brought to AARO’s attention, Kona Blue, was alleged to be a Homeland Security Department effort “to cover up the retrieval and exploitation of ‘nonhuman biologics,’” the report found. In other words, alien bodies.

The origins of those suspicions, investigators found, traced back to some of those earlier Pentagon researchers, backed by Reid, who had strayed into studying UAPs.

When the Defense Intelligence Agency canceled that effort in 2012 “due to lack of merit,” its supporters proposed that Homeland Security fund a new version to investigate paranormal research, including “human consciousness anomalies,” the report found. The program, which they proposed calling Kona Blue, also would reverse-engineer “off-world spacecraft that they hoped to acquire.” The Kona Blue backers assumed that biological evidence of aliens was already in the government’s possession, the report found.

They proposed to study aliens and spacecraft that “they hoped to acquire”. Cool. What are the chances of my getting funding for my NSF proposal to study spiders from Mars that I “hope to aquire”? I’m sure, though, that we’ll be hearing about the unauthorized, unsupported, imaginary Kona Blue project for years to come. The only thing you need to do to captivate the Ancient Aliens crowd is to invent a catchy, enigmatic name.

In related news, you may recall that Avi Loeb claimed to have scraped tiny molten balls from an exploded UFO in the ocean off New Guinea. He launched his expedition years after the fireball was observed, and claimed he had mapped the location from real scientific data, seismographic recordings that caught a little jiggle at the precise time of the supposed crash.

Except it wasn’t. He was chasing a trivial seismic glitch.

In January 2014, a meteor scorched its way through the atmosphere, a brilliant ball of fire over the Pacific Ocean.

Before it plunged into the sea, strange sound waves were picked up by a seismometer in nearby Papua New Guinea.

Could it have been an alien signal? Perhaps a desperate SOS?

Sadly for UFO fans, it was not. The sound waves were actually from a truck, distinctly Earthly in origin, trundling along a nearby road.

‘The signal changed directions over time, exactly matching a road that runs past the seismometer,’ said Dr Benjamin Fernando, a planetary seismologist at Johns Hopkins University who led the research.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter. It never does. I’m going to see Loeb’s grinning, gnomish face popping up on web pages for the rest of my life, aren’t I? It’s of no importance that he has zero evidence, his thesis is ridiculous, but he wields that fading authority of Harvard, so every kook in the world will lap up his dribblings.

I regret to inform you all that an atheist blog network, OnlySky, has announced that they are ceasing publication. We first announced that OnlySky was setting up shop 2 years ago, mentioning that Hemant Mehta had snubbed us casually.

There aren’t any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists,” he said. “All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but don’t do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.

I could cruelly remind them of the irony of that “falter and die” comment, and that despite our lack of business-savvy we yet continue, but I honestly regret that we’re losing such an attractive and well-designed website (and that I’m jealous of their professionalism), and hope that the good writers working there can find new homes. I’ll read them where ever they end up.

If you’ve ever wondered how smart people can get suckered into religion or conspiracy theories, here’s the answer.

I’m just an ape in a post-religion, post-authority, post-trust society looking for a large man to organize my community and tell me who the enemies are.
SMBC

I am bearded and not balding, which hampers my ability to identify with one of the characters in the cartoon.

In a bit of happy news:

In a victory for climate scientists, jurors in Michael Mann’s defamation case against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn awarded Mann $1 million in punitive damages for defamatory comments made in 2012.

In a unanimous decision, jurors agreed that both Simberg and Steyn defamed Mann in blog posts that compared Mann to convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky, former assistant football coach at Penn State University. They announced that Simberg will pay $1,000 in punitive damages and Steyn will pay the larger $1 million.

Before the free speech fanatics start whining, this is something more than a guy suing someone to stop them calling him names. Simberg & Steyn were trying to undermine significant scientific claims by using ad hominems (hey, I’m actually applying that logical fallacy correctly) against Mann by defaming him. They can’t defeat the science with evidence, so instead they accuse a scientist of pedophilia…with absolutely no evidence for that, either.

Mann’s lawyers pointed this out, too.

“One million dollars in punitive damages makes a statement,” he said in an exclusive interview. “This is about the defense of science against scurrilous attacks, and dishonest efforts to undermine scientists who are just trying to do our job.”

Mann also noted that the trial was about defamatory statements made in an effort to discredit scientists “whose findings might prove inconvenient to certain ideologically driven individuals and outlets.”

“It’s about the integrity of the science and making sure that bad actors aren’t allowed to make false and defamatory statements about scientists in their effort to advance an agenda,” he added.

More than a defense of Mann, this was a trial about defending science. Simberg & Steyn’s lawyers, though, simply resorted to more personal attacks against Mann. Even if those criticisms were valid (they aren’t), they wouldn’t have constituted a good defense of the climate deniers claims. It was just more ad hominem!

But in the trial, these questions about “tenor” around the time of so-called “Climategate” seemed designed to legitimize attacks on Mann.

Roger Pielke Jr., another witness for the defense, called Mann “thin skinned” and “quick to attack.”

Much of the defense testimony seemed designed to “victimiz[e] the victim,” Williams said in his closing argument. For those who oppose climate action, “Michael Mann has become a huge target.”

This strategy of “victimizing the victim” not only shifted days of trial away from Simberg and Steyn’s articles comparing Mann to Sandusky — it also gave the defense an opportunity to put the hockey stick chart, and climate science more broadly, on trial.

My one complaint would be that the award of $1.1 million was not adequate. The bad guys, Simberg & Steyn, are backed by a whole vast industry with deep pockets, and that much money is just loose change to them — they’ll extract that much from their sofa cushions.

It’s no reward for Mann, either. I’ve been through this particular wringer with one petty, low profile accusation, and it required paying a lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars to win. This was a big case — I imagine all Mann has won financially is more debt. But it was worth it!*

* At least, that’s what the lawyers say.

A quack found a gullible market.

A midwife in New York administered nearly 12,500 bogus homeopathic pellets to roughly 1,500 children in lieu of providing standard, life-saving vaccines, the New York State Department of Health reported yesterday.

Jeanette Breen, a licensed midwife who operated Baldwin Midwifery in Nassau County, began providing the oral pellets to children around the start of the 2019–2020 school year, just three months after the state eliminated non-medical exemptions for standard school immunizations. She obtained the pellets from a homeopath outside New York and sold them as a series called the “Real Immunity Homeoprophylaxis Program.”

The program falsely claimed to protect children against deadly infectious diseases covered by standard vaccination schedules, including diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (covered by the DTaP or Tdap vaccine); hepatitis B; measles, mumps and rubella (MMR vaccine); polio; chickenpox; meningococcal disease; Haemophilus influenzae disease (HiB); and pneumococcal diseases (PCV).

Ms. Breen is a crook who deserves to have the book thrown at her — she has been fined $150,000, so I think she got off easy. I would point out, however, that you know the people who took the stupid pills knew exactly what they were doing, explicitly and knowingly avoiding giving their kids a real prophylactic, and that they ought to at least get a token slap. Their kids have been kicked out of school, punishing the victims, until the parents provide genuine proof of vaccination.