What People Are Misunderstanding This Week: the ‘Missing Scientists’ Conspiracy Theory
It’s a story straight out of a Hollywood thriller: over the past five years, up to a dozen scientists working on some of the most advanced and secretive US aerospace and nuclear programs have mysteriously disappeared or died. The FBI is working with the Department of Energy , the Department of Defense, and local law enforcement to find answers. The House Oversight Committee has launched its own investigation. Congressman Eric Burlison declared the mystery “has all the hallmarks of a foreign operation.” The president called it ” a pretty serious matter .”
Congressman James Comer suggested someone is targeting the country’s nuclear program. Representative Tim Burchett claimed a cover-up of UFO activity. Some claim the target is people with knowledge of American security secrets . Or perhaps it’s an attempt to hide evidence of time travel. So what’s really going on?
Literally nothing. It’s a hastily assembled collection of unconnected deaths and disappearances. As a conspiracy theory, it’s, as Daniel Engber noted in The Atlantic , ” incredibly stupid .”
Scientists die, but so does everyone else.
There are approximately two million scientists in the US, and, as science journalist and whistleblower Mick West has noted, more than 700,000 hold Top Secret clearances in the US aerospace and nuclear sectors. If 10 or so people from this group died or disappeared inexplicably over a five-year period, it wouldn’t be statistically significant, but this theory is even more ridiculous. Many of the people on the list don’t appear to have had Top Secret clearances, and many weren’t scientists. The list includes a foreman formerly employed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a former janitor at the Kansas City National Security Campus, and an administrative assistant. And almost all of these deaths and disappearances have specific explanations. The list includes physicist Ning Li, who died at 78 from Alzheimer’s disease, and Carl Grillmeir, who was murdered during a home invasion by a man with a criminal record who had a prior conflict with Grillmeir that had nothing to do with science.
Conspiracy theories about missing scientists have all the hallmarks of apophenia (when people see meaningful connections in random data) and selective bias, and even if we give credit to the most “mysterious” items on this list, the theory quickly becomes convoluted.
The Strange Life and Death of Amy Eskridge
The death that perhaps most convincingly supports the “murder mystery” theory is that of Amy Eskridge. This avant-garde scientist, who founded the Exotic Science Institute in Huntsville, Alabama, to study antigravity technologies, died at age 34 of a suspected suicide by gunshot in 2022, after telling friends she was being stalked and targeted by unknown forces.
Conspiracy theorists claim that Eskridge was a brilliant scientist who made a breakthrough discovery in antigravity and was destroyed by mysterious progravitational forces before she could make her discovery public. At first glance, this seems like a plausible theory, but a closer look reveals the half-truths and exaggerations that are always present in conspiracy theories.
Who is the real scientist?
Whether Eskridge deserves a place on the list of scientists remains debatable. Some online users consider her a prominent researcher with a background in physics, but her undergraduate degree is in biochemistry, and she appears to have published no research in peer-reviewed journals. Eskridge also lacked professional experience that would indicate access to top-secret government programs.
Perhaps Eskridge’s gravity research was too esoteric to be accepted by “mainstream science,” but even that is questionable. Judging by this public presentation ( and the accompanying slides ), which Eskridge gave shortly before her death, she doesn’t seem to have been close to any breakthrough. In her speech, she points out that it’s impossible to create an antigravity machine without first developing a theoretical basis for its practical application, and that such a theory doesn’t currently exist. That’s exactly what the scientific elite would say.
Eskridge’s presentation wasn’t a revelation of revolutionary new technologies. It was a catalog of past attempts to conquer gravity, culminating in an attempt to find a benefactor to fund fundamental, early theoretical research. Despite conspiracy theorists’ claims, there’s no indication that Eskridge or anyone else has overcome the idea that “based on everything we know about how the physical world works, antigravity is impossible.”
Eskridge’s death is (relatively) mysterious.
Eskridge’s death raises questions. Police and the medical examiner ruled it a suicide, but conspiracy theorists believe it was murder, and they have evidence to support it.
On May 13, 2022, a month before her death, Eskridge reportedly sent her business partner Samuel Reed a message that read: “If you see any messages saying I killed myself, I definitely did not. If you see any messages saying I overdosed, I definitely did not… If anything happens to me—suicide or accident—it was not suspicious, treat it as such.”
She also reported receiving multiple death threats and other forms of harassment, and posted a video of alleged burns on her arms to prove that a directed energy weapon had been used against her.
On the other hand, Eskridge’s family members have publicly stated that she suffered from chronic pain and have expressed no suspicions regarding the cause of her death. Eskridge has not released recordings of threatening phone calls or hidden messages she received, nor has she provided any other evidence that she was harassed.
However, this doesn’t prove she wasn’t murdered. The Eskridge case and the other scientists face a common problem with debunking conspiracy theories: we don’t know enough to say for sure, and we can’t prove otherwise. This forces us to ask which explanation is more likely: a mysterious, nameless group of assassins targeting a woman interested in antigravity, or a woman paranoid about a nonexistent group who committed suicide.
As far as we know, Eskridge was interested in developing the antigravity hypothesis. Some claim she intended to make a breakthrough in the field by publishing her results, but in fact, she never published anything. Even if we accept that her theory existed, the argument still remains the same: “assassins targeted a man for thinking about antigravity,” which is still an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. And there isn’t any.
Eskridge’s death, as heartbreaking as it was, would have attracted little attention had she not made predictions in her final months that some later believed came true. But that’s not enough to prove anything. All we have is Eskridge’s word that she was being stalked, and it could all have been the result of her paranoid delusions.
While many intelligent, mentally healthy people hold unconventional views on physics and government secrets, Eskridge believed she was being persecuted for her research. Psychiatrists call this “persecutionary thoughts,” and it is associated with serious mental illness and correlates with suicidal tendencies .
We have no proof that Eskridge suffered from mental illness, just as we can’t prove she was murdered, but mental illness is generally a more common cause of death than secret assassination rings targeting people based on scientific theories. Approximately 800-900 Americans aged 34 commit suicide each year. As Eskridge’s father, a former NASA employee, told NewsNation , “Scientists die just like anyone else.”
The families just want the theorists to stop their speculations.
Eskridge’s father isn’t the only family member of someone on this list to speak out. Carl Grillmair’s widow, Louise, told the BBC that she receives calls from conspiracy theorists, despite the fact that her husband’s alleged killer has been charged with murder. Relatives of other people on the list have publicly called the conspiracy theories “horrible” and “disgusting.” And not a single family member has publicly voiced anything suspicious about these deaths or disappearances.
It’s fun (and sometimes politically advantageous) for conspiracy theorists to invent connections between unrelated events, just as it’s fun for people like me to debunk their theories, but these were real people with families, friends, and, in many cases, genuine scientific legacies. They deserve better than a cameo in a conspiracy theory.