The National Science Foundation organized a private UAP Workshop with AARO
Dr. Salman Hameed declared in a recent interview that he attended a workshop in Virginia, under the umbrella of the National Science Foundation, regarding UAP, with representatives of the DOD’s AARO.
UPDATED 27/5/2023
Interviewed by Monte Belmonte on Kainaat Astronomy, Dr Halmeed specifiied that the 25-people workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation. The NSF is an independent agency of the United States federal government supporting fundamental research, engineering, and education.
Salman Hameed has a PhD in astronomy and is Charles Taylor Chair and Professor of Integrated Science & Humanities at Hampshire College, and a member of the Five College Astronomy Department (FCAD) in Massachusetts, USA. He is also the CEO of Kainaat Studios, a non-profit organization.
Admittance to the workshop was limited, with an application process requesting applicants to explain how they could contribute to the workshop. Dr. Hameed explained his interest in the workshop by the tremendous impact the discovery of extraterrestrial UFOs could have. He noted that there is a huge public interest on this subject both in the western countries and south-east Asia.
He described how the workshop consisted of a varied audience, including believers of the existence of non-human UAP as well as skeptics. According to him, the workshop’s purpose wasn’t to show evidence of UAP, but to find ways of removing the stigma in “thinking about and investigating the nature of UAPs”.
He explained how military and civilian pilots could be sent for mental evaluation in the case they reported UAP sightings, but that there was an effort to stop penalizing people when they would report their observation.
According to Dr. Hameed, the main task the workshop was trying to achieve was the creation of a common language across the spectrum of attendees to allow for dialogue. Also talked about during the workshop were types of detectors that could be used to record UAP, as well as how to “respond” to them.
He then insisted:
There are things that are unexplained. I mean, let me be very clear about it. It's not that we know what all the sightings are. The question is, my problem comes in, is the jump from “we don't know what something is” to “it is an alien spacecraft”. That is a fallacy, that is a jump that you cannot make, because you need positive evidence for claiming something is there rather than ‘I don't know what it is, and hence, it is something’.
He seemed to take offense to the testimony of David Grusch, who declared under oath that non-human biologics were recovered by the US after a 4-year-long investigation.
He was, I think, a former intelligence officer or something like that, in which he had made claims that they were in the congressional testimony, he says non-human biologics. And in non-congressional testimony, he has actually explicitly said that people who talked to him have seen alien bodies over there recovered, crash, and so on, so forth. That is a much bigger claim and things like that. So again, there is a bit of a terminology issue. So when you're talking about alien bodies, for example, but those are not UAPs, unidentified anomalous phenomena, that is not the case. But it actually gets looped in there. So one part of this workshop to a certain degree is how do we define these things? What are we talking about? We have to define these various things. Otherwise, it just gets swept into just one category.
Dr. Salman Hameed then mentioned that officials from the Department of Defense UAP study group, the AARO, distributing business cards without names, took part in the workshop.
Their goal to be there was actually, no, they are open to anything that is out there, like, “come in and tell us’ and they have asked, for example, David Grusch, who testified at Congress last year. They have asked him to come in and talk to AARO, because they are looking for any kind of, if you have experiences, if you have evidence, go and talk to them. And apparently, David Grusch has so far said no, to come and talk to them. But to me, I mean, that was a really open thing, that was a really important thing. And there is another group, NASA also has a working group that is also dealing with this evidence - I think those things are there.
If the presence of AARO during the NSF meeting is interesting, Dr. Hameed forgot to mention that David Grusch’s refusal of testifying to AARO was based on the lack of authorization the DOD’s office had regarding Special Access Programs. Exchanges revealed by FOIA recently revealed that the AARO was unable to prove it could access such data, or even that it had a legal team able to ensure the safety of witnesses regarding classified information.
One could wonder if the apparent openness of the AARO isn’t a facade designed to collect information on possible leaks confirming the existence of an illegal UAP crash retrieval program. Indeed, a still secret guidance council, allegedly constituted of the very same executives tasked with this alleged illegal program, seem to have a large influence on AARO’s activities.
For example, the last historical report, published recently, manages to avoid talking about the Nimitz case, the very reason that prompted the U.S. Congress in ordering the creation of AARO.
Dr. Hameed continued the interview, stating that one of the main problems is to reconcile the experiencers, sure of their sightings and sometimes trauma following close encounters, with scientists studying aerial phenomena:
Do we have evidence that aliens have visited us? Well, for that, you require a different type of evidence. And so bridging those together, I think that's the problem that comes in when people experience things. So just like alien abductions, those abduction experiences are real. Those are life changing. People, in fact, even have PTSD, they actually show signs of trauma. But we also know that those can be explained potentially, by sleep paralysis, by things that have happened, things that happen physiologically, and those physiological things you explain through the cultural frame that you have.
But on the other hand, it's like this is something that people do without an alien interpretation, because if those are aliens, then you need a different type of evidence that comes from physical sciences.
I'm not trying to minimize the experiences because the experiences are absolutely true. But if you're asking the question ‘were those experiences because of an external factor’, that's a different question that you're asking.
I think that's an interesting frame to think about these things, in the 20th and 21st century, and I'm not the first one to make this claim, but we can think about this stuff as a modern technological manifestation of religion.
He ended the talk by stating that a new workshop was in the works.
Hopefully the National Science Foundation will not follow in the steps of the National Academy of Sciences, which validated Edward Condon’s questionable conclusions, ultimately leading to the end of Project Blue Book.
Indeed, May 22nd, Senator Warner published a summary of the Intelligence Authorization Act 2025 requesting "a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office regarding unidentified anomalous phenomena reporting and Federal agency coordination.”
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
UPDATE 27/5/2023
The Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP): A Dialogue on Science, Public Engagement and Communication Workshop was organized by the Global Network for Accelerating Synergies Through Research on Astronomy Culture, Communication, Education and Learning (ASTRO ACCEL) Project. ASTRO ACCEL is an NSF-funded initiative dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary research and education in astronomy and related fields. By promoting collaboration and innovation, ASTRO ACCEL aims to advance scientific understanding and public engagement in astronomy and space sciences. Gretchen Stahlman (see the Sentinel News article "An analysis of the scientific literature on UAPs from 1967 to 2023") is one of the collaborators of the group that hosted this workshop as part of the ASTRO ACCEL project.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed through the UAP Workshop are those of the organizers and participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.