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The White House, Congress and several federal agencies are currently investigating a loosely defined list of recent deaths and disappearances of about ten scientists and staff with potential ties to classified research. Congressman James Comer — who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and congressman Eric Burlison — who chairs the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy and Regulatory Affairs, stated officially here that they are investigating the cases as a potential threat to national security.
Publicly available information shows the circumstances surrounding these deaths and disappearances vary widely.
Related families deny a connection between the tragedies associated with their loved ones and prior classified work. In particular, Susan McCasland Wilkerson, wrote here that she wanted to dispel misinformation, since her husband William McCasland was retired for more than a decade before he disappeared, and therefore “It seems quite unlikely that he was taken to extract very dated secrets from him.” Julia Hicks, stated here that her father, Michael Hicks — a JPL scientist, had been struggling with known medical problems before his death a few years ago, and added: “From what I know of my dad, there’s no train of logic to follow that would implicate him in this potential federal investigation … I don’t understand the connection between my dad’s death and the other missing scientists.” In another case, MIT professor Nuno Louriero was killed by the same person who killed two students at Brown University three days earlier, Claudio Valente, who was a classmate of Louriero at the University of Lisbon in Portugal between 1995–2000 but failed to pursue an academic career after struggling socially and dropping out of a physics PhD program at Brown. Valente’s behavior is likely a case of academic grudge and resentment, as Louriero — with similar initial conditions, had a flourishing academic career.
President Trump called the pattern of missing scientists possibly random and stated to reporters: “Hopefully, I don’t know, coincidence, whatever you want to call it. But some of them were very important people, and we’re going to look at it over the next short period.”
So far, there is no reason to connect the dots or identify a pattern among the different cases. But humans tend to search for patterns even if they do not exist. There are thousands of nuclear and aerospace scientists in the U.S., and people die or go missing all the time.
In dozens of television and radio interviews that I had over the past week, I was asked about the missing scientists. This morning on “Wake Up America” in Newsmax, I clarified that I do not believe the cases are connected but the FBI should check if there are adversarial nations behind any one of them.
Nevertheless, I also added that the main problem we currently have is that science is missing from our national priorities. Instead of entertaining budget cuts in federal science agencies like NASA, NIH or NSF, the U.S. government should celebrate the benefits of science to global leadership, national security, economic prosperity and national pride, as evident from the success of recent projects like Artemis II, the Webb telescope or the LIGO gravitational-wave observatory. Cutting funding for science while supporting AI and quantum technologies is equivalent to cutting the roots of a tree while watering its branches. American superiority in science and technology will not last long this way. The computer chips used in the latest AI systems were designed based on the scientific understanding of quantum mechanics through fundamental curiosity-driven research.
In short, the problem the U.S. has is not about “missing scientists” but about “missing science” in our national conversations.
True, the current culture of science has its challenges. Whereas, evidence-based science offers the best opportunity for us to learn, the pride and prejudice of dogmatic scientists can block that opportunity. As gatekeepers to new knowledge, scientists have the power to suppress innovation. With great powers comes great responsibility.
The efficiency of the scientific engine is measured by the number of breakthrough discoveries made relative to the resources allocated to research. Historical evidence suggests that disruptive science has been declining in recent decades, despite the increases in resources and size of the scientific community. Large communities are dominated by regression to the mean. They foster a dogmatic culture that bets on one possibility as the most likely to succeed. The reduced efficiency of scientific discovery in recent decades begs an alternative approach which will span alternative strategies to explore the unknown.
The more we learn, the better we get at coping with our societal challenges. The technologies which make our quality of life better than that of past generations are based on the scientific knowledge we gather. Paying attention to anomalies, namely facts that do not line up with our expectations, could foster revolutionary discoveries.
Rather than obsess with depressing cases of death and disappearance of scientists, our federal agencies should promote an inspiring future for U.S. scientific leadership. The best is yet to come, if we will only let it be.
