transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Hey, everyone, Michael Shermer here. Time for another episode of The Michael Shermer Show. This is another solo commentary. This one on the mystery of missing and dead scientists explained. Yeah, I'm going to be one of the few that actually doubts this story. I've been often asked ever since my conspiracy book came out, what's the craziest conspiracy theory you've ever heard? Well, the moon landing would have to be up there with the craziest. Now, displaced by this one. As I write this, the week of April 20th, 2026, both mainstream media and social media are chock-a-block full of coverage of the disappearance or death of 11 US scientists who worked on UFOs, nuclear weapons, military defense, propulsion systems, or well, the field keeps getting broader and broader, and the number is increasing as I'll get to in a moment. House Oversight Chair James Comer, for example, told Fox News, Congress is very concerned about this. Our committee is making this one of our priorities now, because we view this as a national security threat. Adding, there's a high possibility that something sinister is taking place here. Right. Aren't we at war with Iran? Isn't that more of a concern? Well, okay. Congressman Eric Burleson told Fox News, this has all the harmarks of a foreign operation, and suggested to Elizabeth Vargas at News Nation, who never heard or met a UFO, UAP, alien story she didn't like, that it could be China, Russia, or Iran behind the cabal. Famed physicist Michio Kaku opined to Fox News Digital, If ten scientists suddenly die or vanish, who all have access to sensitive research, this is cause for national concern. Michio, you're a physicist. Study some psychology of how statistics and generalizations like this get worked over by the brain. Well, you're going to hear that here. Even President Trump admitted to Fox News, that this is pretty serious stuff. Some of them were very important people. But added, I hope it's random. It's random, Mr. President. Connecting a small cohort of individuals from a wide range of fields to deaths or disappearances is an example of what I call patternicity, or the tendency to find meaningful patterns in random noise. It's also a case study in what cognitive psychologists call base rate neglect, or the tendency to focus on specific, vivid, or anecdotal evidence, and ignore statistical generalizations that better explain the phenomenon. I sometimes just call this the Hanny Youngman effect, when the old comedian when asked, how's your wife, replied, compared to what? Okay, so, 11 scientists, dead or disappearing, somehow loosely connected to UFOs, and nuclear weapons, and so on. Sounds spooky, but compared to what? Let's go through some of these. One of the 11 scientists, for example, Amy Eskridge, who was president of the Institute for Exotic Science, and worked on anti-gravity propulsion and electrostatic propulsion systems, died by suicide of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. How unusual is that? According to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 27,300 people die every year by gun-inflicted suicide in the US alone. That's the base rate, and Eskridge's own non-conspiratorial family accepts the fact that Amy was another lamentable casualty of gun violence and suicidality. Not the victim of a vicious UFO cabal. I just saw before logging in here to record this that Elizabeth Vargas has on News Nation today. Another ufologist who thinks she was murdered. But to her credit, she quoted her father, Eskridge's father, saying, There's nothing conspiratorial about this at all. She was suicidal. Okay. Most of the other scientists have similar prosaic, albeit heartbreaking explanations. Monica Riza, who worked on orbital communication systems. How is that tied to UFOs and nuclear weapons? Anyway, orbital communication systems disappeared while hiking in the Angeles National Forest near Mount Waterman in California, which is a remote forested area near where I live, in which people go missing every year. Okay, I've been in these mountains. I've hiked up there. I've ridden my mountain bike up there. It's very cliffy. You could fall off the cliff. I have a broken left collarbone here from falling off a cliff in these mountains on my mountain bike. Back in 1991, it was a long time ago. It's not that unusual. Although Reza was accompanied by two other experienced hikers who reported that she was just dropped off the side of the trail behind her. They looked back and she was gone. I've done a fair amount of hiking and mountain biking in those areas, in those mountains, and that's not that unusual. Comparatively, there is the case, comparably, there is a case of retired Major General William Neil MacLassland, who was Director of Air Force Research Lab, who worked on hypersonics, directed energy systems, and advanced propulsion technology, who went missing during a wilderness hike on February 27th, 2026 in New Mexico, outside of Albuquerque. Apparently, taking with him his wallet and a 38 caliber revival revolver and the leather holster for it, leaving behind his phone and prescription glasses. According to his wife, Classland had been experiencing short-term memory loss, medical issues, anxiety, and a lack of sleep, adding that she suspected, quote, he planned not to be found. In any case, quote, he retired from the Air Force almost 13 years ago, and has had only very commonly held clearances since. It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him, close quote, from his wife. Before we jump to conspiratorial speculations on these particular vanishings, consider the fact that somewhere between 1200 and 1600 people disappear in America's national parks alone every year in the United States. A stunning number that actually shrinks by comparison to the over 500,000 people who go missing each year, according to the FBI. That's half a million people that go missing. Okay, that's a base rate one should never neglect. And likely is the explanation for the disappearance. 48-year-old government contractor Stephen Garcia, in August of 2025, also in New Mexico, who worked on nuclear and aerospace research, again carrying a handgun and also leaving behind his phone, keys, wallet, and car. Anecdotally weird? Yeah, sure. Statistically out of the ordinary for missing persons? No. The rest of the outcomes are equally prosaic. Michael Hicks, undisclosed cause of death is what we're told, was, according to the LA County Coroner, in reality caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease. First, the CDC and the American Heart Association document over 900,000 Americans die of each year due to this and related heart diseases. Plasma physicist Nuno Larrillo was murdered by a revenge-seeking ex-classmate back from the 1990s, who confessed that he had been planning it for years. Okay, the guy was murdered by a guy who said he did it. And he did it for personal reasons that date back to their relationship of the 1990s. That's disturbing, but it's not mysterious. Astronomer Carl Grillmar, a 67-year-old Caltech professor who worked on exoplanets, stellar streams, and near-Earth objects, was shot to death in February 2026 on the front porch of his rural home in Antelope Valley, California. Again, that's out in the desert. Maybe 100 miles from Caltech or so. Was he shot by 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, a known criminal with a long rap sheet that included carjacking and burglary, including on Grillmar's property months before, which the astronomer responded to by calling the police on him. Again, this is a troubling and tragic story, but it's not inexplicable. It's not grand conspiratorial. It's not UFOs. And they are not doing it. And so on. The Internet, especially X, is rapidly filling up with additional confessions over these alleged cabals. One Dr. John Brandenburg, a self-unidentified plasma physicist who works on fusion energy and advanced space propulsion, with Ph.D. in his X username, I'm just reading here from his X page, told his 22,000 followers that the death of an anti-gravity researcher named Dr. Ning Li, who was struck by a vehicle and sustained brain damage that would take her life many years later, was actually the victim of a murderous conspiracy. Here is what he wrote on X. Dear friends, like Dr. Ning Li, anti-gravity researcher, Professor John Mack of Harvard, Pulitzer Prize winner, and a psychiatrist researching UFO abductees, was also run over by a car. This happened in London in 2004. This must end. And whoever is responsible must be brought to justice. Okay, John Mack was in London. He looked the wrong way, and he got hit by a car. This happens all the time. If you go to London, you'll see, stenciled into the ground at every sidewalk and crosswalk, look both ways. Okay, because people forget to do this. In any case, Dr. Lee died of Alzheimer's disease in 2021, at the age of 78, following a long health decline after this 2014 automobile accident, where she was struck by a vehicle while crossing the street at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and sustained permanent brain damage. As I explained to Dr. Brandenburg in my response to his post on X, in the US, 7,500 pedestrians are killed in traffic crashes annually. Globally, the WHO reports 1.19 million deaths a year by pedestrians killed by cars. So before you can cock wild conspiracy theories about UFO people being run over, stop neglecting the base rate. More generally, this phenomenon is also emblematic of what I call the fallacy of excluded exceptions. An illustration for which can be seen in a 2 by 2 matrix of 4 cells. Okay, so just draw a little square and then divide it vertically and horizontally. So you have 2 by 2, 1, 2, 3, 4 cells. And cell 1 represents our mystery, namely, UFO and nuclear slash military scientists who go missing are found dead before old age. What about all the UFO and nuclear military scientists in cell number 2, who do not go missing or not found dead before old age? Or the non-UFO and non-nuclear military scientists who go missing or found dead before old age? That's cell number 3. Or the non-UFO and non-nuclear military scientists who go missing or not found dead before old age? That's cell number 4. Suddenly, our mystery just disappears. There's nothing unusual to explain in the broader context of everything else that could happen but are ignored and are focused on just the combination we're interested in exploring. So keep this matrix of possibilities in mind as we hear about additional Cell 1 examples in the coming days and weeks, such as the one posted yesterday by Representative Anna Paulina Luna. She's a Republican of Florida about the quote tragic passing of David Wilcox, citing the biblical passage of John 832, which reads, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. What truth is that? David Wilcox was an American paranormal writer and YouTube influencer. He has over 500,000 followers. Deeply involved in the UFO disclosure movement, who suggested that he might be the reincarnation of the famed early 20th century psychic Edgar Cayce. That he is in telepathic contact with space aliens, and that reptilian aliens inhabit parts of Antarctica, where they are preparing for an invasion to take over the world's governments and banks. Sadly, Wilcox died by suicide the morning of April 20th, 2026. Although Luna suggests otherwise, according to the Boulder County Sheriff's Office, this is what they said, the emergency communication specialist who took the call suspected the caller was experiencing a mental health crisis. Additional details noted that the officers reportedly reached around 1102 a.m. and tried to make contact with the male who was outside his residence holding a weapon. Okay, again, regretfully, but necessarily, we must consider the base rate for this issue. According to the CDC, around 50,000 Americans every year die by suicide, around half of which are struggling with mental health issues. As such, and woefully but realistically, I think most of us can agree that if you think you are telepathically communicating with alien beings and you think they might be trying to take over the world, you may not be fully sound of mind. Anyway, thanks for listening, everybody. It's a crazy, crazy, crazy conspiracy theory. Hopefully, it'll pass. There are a few skeptical commentators online, but again, astonishingly, scientists, good journalists, otherwise good journalists just lose their mind when it comes to UFOs. They can't think clearly. Okay. Well, that's it. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.