| Long time, noted skeptic, Michael Shermer, in his new column on UFOs/UAPs is a familiar, articulate expression of classical skepticism: most sightings are misperceptions, the evidence for extraterrestrials is thin, and extraordinary claims still demand extraordinary proof. As a broad framing, that much is uncontroversial. The difficulty is |
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The UFO Chronicles 1-30-2026 © All Rights Reserved |
The result is an essay that reassures hardened skeptics but does not quite engage with the data-rich environment that has emerged since 2017.
© The UFO Chronicles. All rights reserved.Shermer of course is correct in that the overwhelming majority of UFO reports historically turned out to be mundane, post investigation, this—for the record, is demonstrated by decades of government and civilian investigations. To no surprise that pattern continues in current U.S. government data. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) reports that hundreds of recent UAP cases have been resolved as balloons, birds, satellites, conventional aircraft and recently added to the list is drones. In one recent reporting period, about 70 percent of closed cases were attributed to balloons, with smaller fractions going to drones, birds, and satellites.
Likewise, he states (again) the obvious in his reference to aliens, that “grainy photographs, blurry videos and stories about strange lights in the night sky,” are lackluster at best, in support of the ETH (Extraterrestrial Hypothesis). At the same time, regarding data/evidence he glossed over the fact there is more, a lot more; a fair reading of the same record leads to several conclusions that Shermer either minimizes or omits.
Shermer portrays the modern UAP story as essentially a rerun of past UFO enthusiasm: lots of hype, no hard core. The official record is more nuanced.
First, AARO is not reporting a clean sweep of prosaic explanations. Its latest public statistics describe a large majority of investigated cases resolving to ordinary objects, but they also explicitly acknowledge a residual set that defies quick categorization. In one recent year, 21 cases were flagged for deeper technical analysis due to apparently anomalous characteristics or behaviors, with further evaluation by defense and intelligence partners. The data indicates a different conclusion because the government’s own office stops short of saying all cases are explained; it instead carves out a technically interesting subset for continuing study.
Second, the March 2024 AARO historical report, which reviewed U.S. government involvement with UAP from 1945 onward, did indeed state it found no verified evidence of crashed craft or non-human technology. That point supports Shermer’s skepticism about secret alien programs. But the same report did not claim that all UAP events are trivial, nor that further study is pointless; it focused on historical crash-retrieval narratives and found them unsupported by available records. Treating that narrow negative finding as a blanket verdict on the entire UAP problem overstates what the report actually says.
Third, Shermer invokes former astronaut Scott Kelly to underscore a familiar skeptical point: even highly trained observers can misinterpret what they see in the sky. Kelly’s own public anecdote—he recalled his co-pilot seeing a mysterious object that turned out to be “a Bart Simpson balloon.” The lesson is not trivial: astronaut wings do not confer immunity from optical illusions, perceptual bias, or incomplete situational awareness.
But the data indicates a different conclusion because individual anecdotes, even from an astronaut, cut both ways. Kelly’s story demonstrates how ambiguous, single-observer encounters can collapse to mundane explanations once you have corroborating data. It does not, by itself, tell us how to treat multi-sensor, multi-witness military incidents or structured datasets that embed radar, infrared, and environmental information around a case—the 2004 Nimitz case for example. Elevating one astronaut’s cautionary tale to a stand‑in for the entire evidentiary landscape risks overstating its scope.
A more balanced use of Kelly’s comments would be to treat them as a guardrail, not a verdict. They remind investigators to demand hard data and to expect that a large fraction of “weird” sightings will evaporate under scrutiny. At the same time, they do not negate the rationale for systematic, instrument-driven inquiry into the residual cases that remain after that scrutiny is applied.
Shermer classifies UAP into three categories—ordinary terrestrial, extraordinary terrestrial (advanced foreign tech), and extraordinary extraterrestrial—and then expresses strong confidence that everything we’re seeing belongs in the first bucket. Contemporary evidence does not justify that level of certainty.
Yes, many reports, especially those with poor data, will collapse into the “ordinary terrestrial” class with proper investigation. Yet the very need for a dedicated, multi-agency office and a NASA-linked scientific framework stems from the fact that a non-trivial remainder involves sensor data, multi-witness military incidents, or unusual kinematics that resist immediate explanation. The official response has shifted from dismissive to structured, precisely because some cases survive first-pass debunking.
Importantly, AARO has indicated that when UAP exhibit characteristics suggesting potential breakthrough foreign capabilities, those cases trigger deeper intelligence and technical review. That is a tacit acknowledgement that at least some events may fall into Shermer’s own “extraordinary terrestrial” category and therefore have real-world defense significance. A simple, sweeping relegation of everything to misperception does not reflect how the Pentagon itself now parses the data.
Shermer rightly emphasizes the staggering distances between stars and the absence of confirmed interstellar visitors. Astrophysics supports his caution: even at a fraction of light speed, travel between potential habitable systems is a multi-decade to multi-millennia endeavor. However, invoking distance, while negating (space) time as a near-dispositive argument for the ETH is dead on its face. Time comes into play in two ways: skeptics routinely offer the same old counter-argument for ETH; i.e., “they can’t here from there” as it would take too long. Those arguments are made in the moment, or that time is static—what if they left long, long ago (or are already here)? Moreover, using humankind as the exemplar, 150 years ago we were all riding around on horses and wagons; today we have propelled spacecraft beyond our own solar system. Technology is expanding exponentially, our own advancements in a 1000 years may have us visiting the stars that are unreachable by today’s standards.
Exoplanet and astrobiology research has rapidly expanded the catalog of potentially habitable worlds, while technosignature studies are actively exploring how advanced civilizations might be detectable through non-travel means. None of this proves anyone is here, and the present UAP database does not supply that proof. But the data indicates a different conclusion because modern astronomy treats extraterrestrial intelligence as a serious, open question, not a fringe fantasy; the low a priori probability of visitation must be weighed against empirical observation, not used as a veto in advance.
The strongest version of skepticism today would do three things simultaneously:
• Realize that the observation of a phenomena has no inherent bias—it is what triggers scientific and or journalistic investigation, and is the unwritten, first step to the scientific method.
• Rather than operating by any form of confirmation bias, during investigation—verify or eliminate mundane or prosaic explanations. (Devil’s Advocate approach).
• Understand that regarding Ufology specifically, it is most often a transient phenomenon, the legacy, experimental, scientific method doesn’t apply; it must shift to Observational/Forensic Science.
A more balanced reading of the record would say: yes, at present, as far as the public is concerned, there is no confirmed physical evidence of extraterrestrial craft or bodies; the higher percentage of UAP cases, post investigation are of prosaic origin (a historical constant); conversely, a minority not only remain unresolved (another historical constant), but some are extraordinary on their face and deserve further, serious investigation.
In that light, the choice is not between credulity and condescension. It is between freezing the conversation in the past culture-war stage or allowing the data—imperfect, fragmentary, but real—to drive a cautious, structured inquiry. On that question, Shermer’s column looks backward, while civilian organizations and (now) government agencies move forward.
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