Making the Grade

The Atacama remains

A recently published paper on the infamous "Atacama humanoid" set off criticisms of poor ethical practices from qualified experts throughout the international professional research community. If you haven't heard by now, the tiny remains featured in a Steven Greer crowd-funded documentary are conclusively human. More at issue have been the research protocols - or lack thereof - observed by those who handled and dissected the six-inch mummified female body. Also of concern is the lack of attention given to such issues by the publishing journal, Genome Research.

Scientists quoted by The Atlantic say the researchers, which included Dr. Garry Nolan of Stanford and (for better or worse) To The Stars Academy, feel the mummified remains were obtained under extremely questionable circumstances. This, they say, makes any subsequent research unethical. The rationale of the researchers - and their facilities and funding entities - is called into question for failure to adhere to established protocols for working with human remains and verifying a proper chain of custody. What's more, so is Genome Research, for publishing the paper absent what scientists recognize as complete documentation.

In layman and UFO blogger terms, if somebody emerges with a corpse or a skull they call alien, a team of educated scientists is supposed to have a better idea of what to do than what apparently went down. I'm far from the first to notice things often go way outside the lines when ufology tries to swerve around real life, but such issues are pretty much why people with credentials and respected reputations often avoid the genre altogether.

There are a number of ideas about what may be taking place when educated and/or what should be competent people seem to suddenly forget how to present a point in a cohesive and documented manner. I'm not going to dive into why that may happen, as there are certainly several reasons, but ambiguity indeed often reigns when speculative UFO talk overlaps into reality. Perhaps most frustrating to those who long for fact-based info, many in the UFO community don't even care about chains of custody and such as long as UFOs get headlines.

To The Stars Academy

Meanwhile, the boys in the band over at TTSA have repeatedly made numerous claims about videos and implications about how they were obtained, yet, as of this writing, remain clouded in much more convoluted confusion than they've served up verifiable information. Several researchers, including this one, filed multiple FOIA requests on the much discussed Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, but are yet to obtain documents. Some requests were submitted to the Defense Intelligence Agency, identified as an overseer of the project.

Sen. Reid

Throwing gas on the fire, Sen. Harry Reid stated there are "hundreds and hundreds of papers" on the project, "80 percent, at least is public," and "the press has never even looked at it." Maybe he'd like to tell FOIA officers where to look, because they're yet to produce any of those hundreds of public papers.

To be clear, the AATIP was confirmed by the Pentagon to have existed. It is much less clear why Sen. Reid and those acting on behalf of TTSA have failed so miserably at presenting proper documentation of their claims, or why AATIP docs have not yet surfaced.

Luis Elizondo, a Pentagon-slash-TTSA name now familiar to those following the narrative, identified the Navy as a source of reports obtained by the AATIP. John Greenewald of The Black Vault made a social media post explaining he submitted an FOIA request to the Navy, specifically citing Elizondo's statement. The Navy responded it's got nothin'.

A lack of ability to present documentation of one's assertions does not bode well. Similarly, when a person's education and career path suggest they should fully well know how to present evidence and follow established norms of research protocols, yet fail to do so, conspiracies are often born because it can be difficult to think them incompetent. Whatever the reasons may be from one instance to the next for credentialed people entering the UFO fray yet failing to present work up to professional standards, it should neither be overlooked nor rationalized. They, of all people, should be making the grade.