The failure of the press to keep its wits during the recent reemergence of UFO mania has come down in no small part in its inability to think clearly about credentials, be it government official, decorated pilot, NYT reporter, or Harvard astrophysicist.
Avi Loeb has the kind of resume that really screws with journalists, highly impressive, but when you think about it, not quite as relevant as it first seems. On one level, he is a legitimately major player, responsible for seminal work, so when he claims to have convincing evidence that we've directly observed alien technology, you can can understand why reporters felt safe running credulously with the big, fun story. But the coverage often downplayed just how far out of the mainstream Loeb is on this subject, and almost completely omitted the fact that he wasn't an expert in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics that were relevant here.
Jason Thomas Wright, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, and director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, has taken a lead role in trying to tamp down the hype. He previously co-authored the excellent "Oumuamua: Natural or Artificial?" He has updated that with a blog post which is considerably more blunt and reflects the community's waning patience with Loeb.
From "Avi and Oumuamua: Setting the Record Straight"
Loeb, you might know, recently rose
to public prominence with his claims that the first discovered
interstellar comet, ‘Oumuamua, is actually a piece of an alien spacecraft passing through the Solar System. Since then he has headlined UFO conventions, written a very popular book about his claim,
and raised millions of dollars to study UFOs with his “Galileo Project”
initiative. His latest venture with that money is to sweep a metal
detector across the Pacific to find fragments of what he claims is
another interstellar visitor that the US military detected crashing into
the ocean, resulting in the headline “Why a Harvard professor thinks he may have found fragments of an alien spacecraft” in the Independent.
...
But his shenanigans have lately
strongly changed the astronomy community’s perceptions of him. His
recent claims about alien spacecraft and comets and asteroids largely
come across to experts as, at best, terribly naive, and often as simply
erroneous (Loeb has no formal training or previous track record to speak
of in planetary science, which has little in common with the plasma
physics he is known for). His promotion of his claims in the media is
particularly galling to professionals who discover and study comets, who
were very excited about the discovery of ‘Oumuamua but have found their
careful work dismissed and ridiculed by Loeb, who is the most visible
scientist discussing it in the media.
Most recently, his claims to have
discovered possible fragments of an alien ship in the Pacific have been
criticized by meteoriticists at a recent conference. Loeb claims the
metallic spherules he found trawling the ocean floor are from the impact
site of an interstellar object (dubbed 20140108 CNEOS/USG) but they
point out that they are much more likely to have come from ordinary meteorites
or even terrestrial volcanoes or human activities like coal burning
ships or WWII warfare in the area. And, they argue, 20140108 most likely did not come from outside the Solar System at all. (It also appears that Loeb may have violated legal and ethical norms
by removing material from Papua New Guinean waters—you’re not supposed
to just go into other countries and collect things without permission.)
Also frustrating is how Loeb’s book
and media interviews paint him as a heroic, transformational figure in
science, while career-long experts in the fields he is opining on are
characterized as obstinate and short-sighted. His Galileo Project has
that name because it is “daring to look through new telescopes.” In his
book claiming ‘Oumuamua is an alien spacecraft, he unironically compares
himself to the father of telescopic astronomy, Galileo himself. The
community was aghast when he blew up at Jill Tarter,
a well-respected giant in the field of SETI and one of the best known
women in science in the world. (When Tarter expressed annoyance at his
dismissal of others’ work in SETI, he angrily accused her of “opposing”
him, and of not doing enough for SETI, as if anyone had done more! Loeb
later apologized to Tarter and his colleagues, calling his actions
“inappropriate”).
...
So it is against all of this
background that, even when asked, I have generally stayed quiet lately
when it comes to Loeb, or tried to give a balanced and nuanced perspective.
I do appreciate that he is moving the scientific “Overton Window”,
making SETI, which used to (unfairly) seem like an outlandish corner of
science, seem practically mainstream by comparison. I appreciate the
support he’s given to my work in SETI, and I generally discourage too
much public or indiscriminate criticism of him lest the rest of the
field suffer “splash damage.”
I have noticed, however, that Loeb’s
work and behavior have been seen as so outrageous in many quarters that
it essentially goes unrebutted in popular fora by those who are in the
best position to explain what, exactly, is wrong about it. This leaves a
vacuum, where the public hears only Loeb’s persuasive and articulate
voice, with no obvious public pushback from experts beyond exasperated
eye-rolling that feeds right into his hero narrative.
