FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX

https://fortune.com/2026/04/21/scientists-disappear-die-nasa-space-blue-origin-spacex/

by ineedasername • 3 months ago

233 159 3 months ago

Doesn't seem connected, but makes a nice film. I think ignorance is bliss and due to the current climate, many people checking out...

F7F7F7• 3 months ago

Turns out scientists die too?

ozten2• 3 months ago

the concentration of deaths and disappearances within such a small, specialized field as defying ordinary probability.

The best conspiracy theory I've seen online is that top-secret energy/weapons plans were sold by a traitor, and these scientists were kidnapped to be the worker bees.

Terribly dark and implausible, but also, we are living through a storyline that writers wouldn't even consider a draft because it's too on-the-nose.

deathlight3• 3 months ago

Now that's a fun one, where did you hear that from? Other ones I've seen include; tit for tat revenge for the assassination of Iranian nuke scientists; a global conspiracy of illuminati/masons/"jews" (defined so broadly as to be useless); chinese interdiction (kidnapping, a-la the reverse of the subplot in nolan's the dark knight film - that is essentially what you said); bankers who own everything and subvert everything to their interests (which remains stickily plausible to me); of course we can't forget our favorite: ancient aliens been doing all of this from the beginning. Anything to absolve people of confronting their own DNA and the predator/prey dichotomy that rules most life forms.

bawolff3• 3 months ago

I imagine it is difficult to get good work out of scientists at the point of a gun. With physical labour you can tell if someone is doing a good job, but with intellectual labour its much harder to tell if someone is intentionally being slow or if its a hard problem that is difficult to solve.

Cytobit3• 3 months ago

defying ordinary probability

Improbable events do not defy probability.

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

Specialized fields such as property custodians, administrative employees and managers

imglorp• 3 months ago

How many of the disappearances were defections?

himata4113• 3 months ago

This appears to be for investigating how many scientist have left the US sponsored by state powers. But this also seems like bad communication on the FBI and perhaps poor publishing.

I think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying.

Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.

Cytobit3• 3 months ago

It's hard to believe that this administration would suddenly care about brain drain, after decimating all academic grants and generally exhibiting anti-intellectual behavior.

swed420• 3 months ago

True. It seems more likely they're using this to drum up fear of tHe eNEmY to manufacture consent for more conflict.

Lord-Jobo• 3 months ago

The decline in quality of both investigations and information/studies by the FBI over the past year and a half has been extremely noticeable.

This is just not a serious organization anymore, and the lack of such a thing at the federal level leaves us insanely vulnerable to our own criminal operations.

The same thing happened with the IRS even earlier, multiple rounds of intensive they just cannot pursue criminals of a certain type, and the criminals know it. So they can run basically unchecked, looting all of us for billions.

wmf• 3 months ago

I don't have the link but someone estimated the number of scientists working in the defense field (it's a lot) and the number of deaths per year you'd expect (over 100). There's probably nothing here. It probably doesn't hurt to have the FBI take a second look at any death of somebody who has a security clearance or is working on export-controlled tech, but OTOH that might be a lot of work.

xbar• 3 months ago

Deaths and mysterious deaths are not at all the same. Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb.

It is not surprising that the FBI did not detect an actual pattern before now, considering the various ways that the entirety of it spent the entirety of 2025.

platinumrad3• 3 months ago

Dying while experiencing nature is "mysterious" but also not uncommon among upper-middle class people. I would bet that the average victim of a backpacking or cross-country skiing mishap is wealthier than average.

cucumber37328424• 3 months ago

Mysterious deaths and vanishings become increasingly rare the higher up the socio-economic curve you climb.

Is it? Or is there just more scrutiny when more important people die?

When someone who ain't worth shit OD's nobody takes allegations that they were murdered seriously. When someone who's worth a lot of money ODs, the "they only bought fine cocaine, their dealer never would have cut that shit" allegations get looked into because "more equal animals" is more of a scale than a binary when it comes to this particular issue.

deathlight3• 3 months ago

So are you saying that each of these "experts" is not an actual top of field expert but merely one of hundreds of expert cogs (per field!) in a giant machine so vast that of course some of them will crashout, be kidnapped, blackmailed, die outright, agree to a global government psyop, etc? But that's so much less fun, especially when you consider the espionage angle.

bulbar• 3 months ago

I believe the probability to die or get missing for a middle aged person is extremely low.

So no, it's not expected that "some of a group of 5.000 Persons" would die or go missing.

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

Not even expert cogs, only 6 of the 11 are scientists or engineers

zimpenfish3• 3 months ago

Steven Novella did one[0] - "Well, there are about 2 million researchers in the US. There are about 25 deaths per million people per day in the US, that’s 50 scientists dying each day, or 73,000 scientists over a four year period. Finding 11 that have some vague connection does not seem unusual to me."

He goes into greater detail further down to assuage the "BUT BUT that's genpop not JPL!" whatabouters and does some "how TF are these people connected?" musing.

[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/whats-with-the-dead-or-m...

neurocline• 3 months ago

Once I saw “James Comer” I knew I could ignore this.

t0lo2• 3 months ago

James Coomey

defrost2• 3 months ago

From article:

  Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), the chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent letters to FBI Director Kash Patel, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, requesting staff-level briefings no later than April 27.

James Richardson Comer Jr. (R-Ky.)

  Not to be confused with James Comey.

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comer

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey

themafia• 3 months ago

This is one of those "That's weird. Why are you telling me?" stories.

kelnos2• 3 months ago

Yeah. Even without that it feels like one of those things where people see something that looks fishy, but given the large number of potential people involved, it's not actually weird at all.

But Comer... oof, it's hard to take seriously anything he focuses on.

But who knows? Broken clocks, twice a day, etc.

JKCalhoun3• 3 months ago

A clock with no hands though?

;-)

mmooss• 3 months ago

The article doesn't seem to reveal the source of its information about these alleged disappearances. Is it the letters from the members of Congress?

Also, what interest would a foreign power have in planetary defense against asteroids? Is there some dual-use technology in that?

ytpete• 3 months ago

Intercepting a meteor falling to Earth may be not too unlike intercepting a ballistic missile in its terminal descent from high altitude.

snowwrestler• 3 months ago

“Planetary defense” is a fig leaf covering the development of technologies to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles above the atmosphere.

The belief is that the first country to have this reliably at scale breaks the “mutually assured destruction” paradigm that has governed nuclear weapons policy for decades. If the U.S. can send nuclear ballistic missiles, but can’t be hit by nuclear missiles, what stops them from just nuking anyone who disagrees with them?

m3kw9• 3 months ago

Something about ufo conspiracy theories.

xer0x• 3 months ago

Odd, I saw this bubble up on social media this week as a tinfoil hat curiosity. I don't know what's real anymore.

contingencies3• 3 months ago

There's good news and bad news. Unfortunately they're the same news. Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet, and the abject commercialization of media, plus the doublespeak of politicians and businesses, the PR industry, self-censorship in response to cancel-culture and other divisive popular behavioral trends, and the replication crisis in science - it's not just you. It's everyone.

cucumber37328424• 3 months ago

Given the rapid dissolution of any sort of publicly verifiable 'news' outlet

When was the news ever publicly verifiable? If Walter Kronkiue said that the North Vietnamese shot at our naval vessels twice on two different days you had no way of even accessing alternative viewpoints and that the 2nd day was questionable, you just had to trust him.

Today with all the contrarians and competing alternate sources it's arguably better because if there's some smoking gun that something is BS it almost certainly will get talked about. It might be bullshit on both sides but at least it's there to look at if you want.

nickandbro• 3 months ago

A lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by

laughing_man3• 3 months ago

True. Whether or not it's coincidental they have to look into it.

King-Aaron3• 3 months ago

Unfortunately the people 'looking into it' have currently demonstrated that they are incapable of looking into anything in good faith.

pj_mukh• 3 months ago

Could be nothing, or could be a new Havana Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome

What's sad is, 5-10 years ago, no adversary would think simply off-ing American scientists was effective strategy, America was a new scientist generation machine.

Now thanks to Research funding falling off a cliff and massive immigration restrictions, this is no longer true.

arisAlexis• 3 months ago

they probably torture them for secrets and kill them

King-Aaron3• 3 months ago

Amy Eskridge - who publicly stated she was not suicidal before "committing suicide" reported to her friends that she received burns to her arms and hands through her window in an attack that sounded similar to this microwave/havana syndrome stuff. She was very vocal about the fact that she was being harassed over her work before she died.

trhway5• 3 months ago

Lets say an American scientist in a strategic area was offered a boatload of money (or some other piece of mice) from China or similar. Legally probably he can move, though export control probably applies to the brain content too. How sure the said scientist would be that he isn't going to have a car accident? Gerald Bull would have a word on it. So, "disappear" may start to look like an attractive alternative. A related example - Russia has put a bunch of top hypersonic missile related scientists into prison for supposedly working with China (and may be they worked, though official charges have so far been obviously fabricated - like for publishing in a journal of an research article on a non-secret project with that article making all the typical rounds for months through peer-review, etc) as well as making a law giving FSB full control over any scientific interaction between domestic and foreign scientists and institutions.

I suppose the top AI talent may become subjects of a similar game.

willis9362• 3 months ago

Havana Syndrome seems to be a CIA psyop to soften the US public to warhawk policy. The proposed mechanism is... magic. Incredible stuff.

Cytobit3• 3 months ago

So it could be nothing or it could be nothing?

yencabulator• 3 months ago

simply off-ing

What if they're interrogated in an attempt to extract something very specific? The deaths could be kidnappings gone wrong.

dvh• 3 months ago

"Let's stop with the accusations. It was an old cat. He just happen to fall down while we were shooting." -- Adams aebler

slim• 3 months ago

it does not pass the smell test, because what's the purpose of communicating about this FBI ongoing investigation ? at best it won't harm the investigation. it's probably propaganda

blks2• 3 months ago

It’s a list of scientists, admin workers, janitors, assistants, and one person is a pseudoscientific grifter.

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

And retirees

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

I'm not sure what you could do, you didn't even notice there was only one rocket scientist in the list.

Zigurd• 3 months ago

The problem is that a lot of people not idly sitting by are UFO enthusiasts. They've done their own research.

thisisit• 3 months ago

if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by

The "if" is doing the heavy lifting here. And universe has lot of "ifs". Here's one:

If this was a perfect distraction spun up to distract from Epstein files, it has succeeded and you have been had.

coppsilgold• 3 months ago

One more addition to the conspiracy theories:

    The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months. NASA and other meteor experts can’t agree on what explains it.

...

    In response to growing public interest, a NASA public affairs official said in a blog post at the end of March, “While it may seem like meteor reports and sightings have been more frequent recently, it is not out of the ordinary.” The post explained that from February to April, there is often a 10 to 30 percent increase in the number of extremely luminous meteors — and nobody is quite sure why.


    Mr. Hankey said that this 10 to 30 percent increase was already baked into the American Meteor Society tally, and that it doesn’t explain the apparent doubling of fireball sightings in the year’s first quarter.

<https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/science/march-fireballs-m...>

zavec• 3 months ago

Homestuck is finally happening?

onion2k• 3 months ago

The scientists are being killed by space fireballs!? This is conspiracy bigger than I thought!

lesostep• 3 months ago

Can you, please, also quote how this sightings are tallied? Is that an astronomical observation by same people or is that based on self-reporting citizens?

"People see more stuff in the sky" is a common sign for people getting more anxious about attacks from the sky. To my knowledge, first UFO reporting waves happened during cold war when people started to get paranoid about soviet spying.

nephihaha2• 3 months ago

The first true UFO wave was the phantom airship wave of the 1890s. But there were similar bouts before then.

JetSpiegel2• 3 months ago

They might be counting sightings over Israel, Iran, and GCC countries.

I have seen many social media videos of fireballs in the sky in the last few months.

zimpenfish3• 3 months ago

The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months.

It feels reductive to point out that this has coincided with a massive increase in the number of small satellites with limited lifespans up there.

(And yes, you'd expect NASA and the AMS to have thought of that but I honestly wouldn't put it past them to be deliberately ignoring Starlink satellites given Musk's political power and petulance to people who cross him.)

etaweb• 3 months ago

It reminds me of The Three-Body Problem novel/series. At the beginning, the police is investigating on multiple suicides by scientists.

bawolff3• 3 months ago

I think its a fairly common plot. Its also the plot of So many steps to death by Agatha Christie.

nephihaha2• 3 months ago

It reminds me of the plot of Alternative 3 where the scientists aren't disappearing, they're moving to Mars.

pavel_lishin• 3 months ago

That part was genuinely the least plausible part of those books to me.

red_admiral• 3 months ago

I'm sure there's something behind deaths and disappearences of key rocket, defense, and nuclear scientists in Iran. Has been going on for a while.

For the US, my money is on "more evidence is needed". I could imagine the more "diverse" among the scientists deciding it's time for a career/employer change over the past year or so, though.

Frieren• 3 months ago

Later on Monday, Comer said the string of deaths was unlikely to be a coincidence.

Release the rest of the Epstein files. This seems the kind of conspiracy that could be found there.

kelnos2• 3 months ago

Of those who are missing and not dead, I wonder if they are largely not US citizens, or citizens who have strong/stronger ties outside the US. It would not surprise me if people like that have decided to take their talents elsewhere, given the current state of anti-intellectualism in the US.

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

I don't think that the one who left by foot with a gun without money or phone planed to go abroad

anthk3• 3 months ago

Also, some plasma/antigravity researches like the Chinese-origin one in America, among others.

bawolff3• 3 months ago

11 people over 4 years doesn't seem like that much. Its not clear to me how big a population that is out of but if its government scientists i assume there are tens of thousands of those if not hundreds of thousands.

Still, FBI should be investigating every suspicious death of people with high level clearence.

redleader55• 3 months ago

Statistically, I would look at deaths from that age group among space flight science and compare this "blip" to the p50. I don't think it's easy to say if 11 deaths/disappearances over 4 years is high or not, without looking at the problem this way.

jagermo• 3 months ago

Is there a polymarket bet that they have been abducted into some billionaire's lair? There is a lot of Bond-type villain vibe going around there.

heikkilevanto• 3 months ago

Why would FBI ever announce that they are investigating something? Is it that time of the year where they have to convince budget makers about their importance? Or are they trying to direct attention from something else? Epstein?

Jamesbeam• 3 months ago

It is good that there is a proper investigation, and I think it’s likely just a statistical anomaly.

My personal opinion is that scientists should be off-limits for any military as long as they are not directly involved in operational planning and execution in an active state of war.

That said, targeting and capturing scientists is a military policy with a long history.

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/

The United States and Israel have allegedly carried out the most attacks on (nuclear) scientists after WW II.

There is a rather extensive scientific discussion about the legality and morality of this kind of targeting.

https://www.legitimacyasatarget.com/books/drones/

The overall conclusion in the broader scientific context, though, is that this approach is not effective.

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760341/all-...

Removing individual expertise may delay strategic asset acquisition, but targeting alone is unlikely to destroy a programme outright and could even increase a country’s desire to strengthen research and acquire even more expertise.

You can see good examples of this with how the Israelis fail horribly over and over, preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade nuclear material. They failed so hard that the President is telling the public that Iran was within weeks to have a functional nuclear weapon and has set the world economy on fire over this with millions all over the planet suffering right now as a direct consequence of that decision.

Just a few days ago, a Ukrainian electronics expert for drone tech was hit in his home with five Shahed drones by Russia.

https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-shahed-drone-h...

The result of his survival will likely be that more Ukrainians want to learn what he does and result in an even stronger drone electronics programme to gain a further advantage over Russia even quicker, especially in the midrange strike capabilities of the Ukrainians. If he had died, the same effect would have likely occurred. So touching this scientist / engineer was a huge long-term strategic error by the Russians.

Just like when the Ukrainians car-bombed Alexander Dugin’s daughter https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139, which resulted long-term strategically in a Ukrainian brain drain by bullets behind ears.

https://acleddata.com/report/personal-payback-assassinations...

Regardless of my or your opinion on this, this practice will likely persist as part of the foreign policy toolkit for states aiming to prevent proliferation.

And if you allow the US and Israel, or Russia or the United Kingdom, who all did kill scientists, to follow this policy unpunished, you need also to respect that their adversaries have the same right to do so.

Which means US scientists will end up as targets. Reality is, it has never been easier to kill a person with drones without risking capture or even consequences for the assassin, so the US might get some of its own medicine, and the only one who can stop that is the average citizen by putting enough public pressure on this issue to force a policy change.

If you care about your scientists, start calling your representatives and make sure to tell them how unhappy you are with the US targeting acquisition and policy, and ask them what they are going to do about it if they want to deserve your vote.

Kaibeezy• 3 months ago

Came here looking for the SC comments, was disappointed. (doorbell rings)

Melatonic2• 3 months ago

Surprised they don't mention any of the scientists and engineers that were on flight MH370 (disappearance still unsolved) from Freescale

panda-giddiness• 3 months ago

I'm surprised this article is gaining traction on HN when it's propping up such obvious conspiratorial drivel. For a counterpoint I would recommend this article [1], but I'll summarize the main points here:

- The investigation concerns somewhere between four and a dozen people spanning nearly half a decade. A dozen people dying or disappearing over the course of 4 years is hardly the statistical anomaly the articles claims it to be.

- Despite attempts to link these scientists together, there really is no common thread. One person was a biologist, not a rocket scientist; and two of the "scientists" weren't even scientists at all.

- Many of these purported "mysterious" deaths are hardly that mysterious. Two likely died of natural causes, one was murdered by a former classmate, and one disappeared while hiking. Most of the others appeared to have suffered from psychological distress.

And look, I don't want to minimize these people. These deaths and disappearances are all tragedies. The families and friends deserve closure. But dragging them into the conspiracy theory circuit is not going to do them any favors. If anything, it will likely make matters worse.

And as a scientist myself, the administration's "concern" about missing scientists feels like a slap in the face. This administration has been more hostile towards us than any other in modern history. I'll leave the article with the last word because I couldn't have worded it any better.

Ironically, America doesn’t seem to need much help when it comes to disappearing scientists. About 1,000 employees have been laid off from NASA’s JPL in the past few years. One senior scientist who is still there told my colleague Ross Andersen last October that he’d never seen the place so empty and lifeless. In the meantime, the Trump administration has repeatedly proposed cutting NASA’s science research funding in half, a plan that would surely lead to further loss of staff at JPL, not to mention the abandonment of probes that have been sent into our solar system.
And while the FBI looks into potential foreign involvement in professors’ deaths at MIT and Caltech, the Trump administration says that it intends to halve the budget of the National Science Foundation, which in recent years has furnished those two schools with hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. Already, more than 40 percent of the NSF’s scientific staff have left or been fired.
This is just a subset of the harms that have been done to the U.S. research enterprise since the start of 2025. In response, some top scientists have been getting up and walking out the door. Their absence can’t be blamed on China, Russia, or Iran. Maybe the White House should look into it.

---

[1] "The Single Dumbest Conspiracy Theory of 2026." The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis...

f30e3dfed1c9• 3 months ago

Came here to post this if it wasn't here already.

I'll point out, though, that it's still only April. Plenty of time for even dumber conspiracy theories to take hold!

littlecranky672• 3 months ago

McCasland, 68, disappeared from his Albuquerque home on Feb. 27 of this year, leaving on foot with only a .38 caliber revolver. [...] Government contractor Steven Garcia, [...] disappeared from Albuquerque in August 2025, last seen on surveillance footage leaving on foot with a handgun.

Not american, so I can't judge if this is a common thing or irregular, but both were last seen carrying firearms as if they'd be thinking someone is after them.

actionfromafar3• 3 months ago

Suicide by gun isn't uncommon either.

littlecranky672• 3 months ago

It is probably more uncommon that they leave by foot in New Mexico - I mean where are some 60-year old going to go by foot and shot themselves without their bodies being found.

breakpointalpha• 3 months ago

Retired USAF Major General McCasland disappearing from his house is probably the most serious.

He was the commander of the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This would have given him direct oversight of all of the Air Force's most sensitive technology for decades. His intelligence value to a hostile adversary, even retired, is incalculable.

He was an avid hiker and biker in his neighborhood trails, so it's very unlikely that he just got lost.

Left behind were his prescription glasses, along with all his personal electronics (phone and watch).

It's shocking and alarming that there wasn't a full blown military search and rescue operation mounted within hours of his wife calling him in as missing.

How far could a 68 year old man travel on foot within 8 hours?

He was reported missing within three hours of his last contact with his wife.

New Mexico Search and Rescue wasn't dispatched until Sunday, two days later.

Again, why wasn't the DoD tasked to find him at all costs on the same day he went missing, given his knowledge of the Air Force's most sensitive technologies?

Henchman21• 3 months ago

Again, why wasn't the DoD tasked to find him at all costs on the same day he went missing, given his knowledge of the Air Force's most sensitive technologies?

They know where he is and we (the public) don't have a need to know where he is?

My personal theory is: He's offworld with the other non-terrestrial officers Gary McKinnon found :)

poulpy1237• 3 months ago

11 disappearances over 4 years and 4 states :

- 1 rocket scientist lost while hiking - 1 astrophysicist killed at home by someone arrested a few months before at his home with a gun - 1 physicist in another field killed without cause of death made public - 1 engineer in instrumentation killed also without the cause made public - 1 schizophrenic crank woman died by suicide - 1 plasma and nuclear scientist killed at home by a jealous former classmate who went just after on a mass killings spree - 1 pharmatical scientist found in a lake after missing - 1 military executive who left with only his gun and disappeared - 1 administrative employee walked from home and disappeared after leaving her car and personal phone behind - 1 decade year old retiree from the same laboratory who did the same - 1 property custodian from a totally different place also left with a gun and disappeared

Totally aliens https://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/51395638721_freesize.jpg

buran772• 3 months ago

The three companies mentioned have together maybe up to 50k employees (quick internet search, don't quote me on that). 11 of them (various roles, some out of the game for years) dying or going missing over many years in a country with a pretty high criminality and suicide rates rates doesn't sound very surprising.

MagicMoonlight• 3 months ago

They’re also some of the most strategically valuable companies if you are say an evil country that wants to build long range nuclear missiles or advance your space programme.

ineedasername5• 3 months ago

Out of 50k people? These specific of backgrounds and scenarios of their death/disappearence?

No. That is surprising. Any statistics you'd find about the rates of any one or more of these kinds of disappearances are going to be population level, averaged out over groups that are much higher risk and therefore skew the average rates to seem higher than their priors actually dictate for many sub populations, eg, working professionals at large corporations of this specific type.

Surprising != something actually being connected, but it sure as hell is surprising and isn't something to dismiss as "well, law of large numbers so ::shrug::"

tomjakubowski• 3 months ago

annual suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100k, murder is ~5 per 100k. so from a cohort of 50k people, we'd expect about 9 to die from one or the other per year. and these 11 deaths under investigation were over 4 years. so, yeah: my suspicion is that nothing special is happening here.

the big grain of salt: this doesn't take into account the differences in social and economic demographics of researchers and suicide + homicide victims. I'd suspect scientists skew wealthy and are less likely than average to be victims of suicide or homicide, but I don't know.

fp64• 3 months ago

I also don't think there's anything to it, but do not forget that any serious state-level actor with the means and interest to remove such people also has the means and interest to cover it up. IIRC there are manuals how to drive somebody into a desperate situation so they don't see a way out (Stasi in GDR), or manipulate any of their acquaintances in a similar manner, and you have a huge amount of the weirdest drugs available to help with that.

JKCalhoun3• 3 months ago

Yeah, Devil's Triangle level of coincidence.

rbanffy• 3 months ago

Did the missing ones, by any chance, manage to assemble interocitors?

zimpenfish3• 3 months ago

A good rule of thumb is that whatever James Comer believes, believing the opposite is correct 99% of the time.

The man is, for want of a better word, a full-on Republican dipshit performing dipshittery in an attempt to get Trump to notice him.

(His wikipedia page is an excellent summary of his asshattery.)

rickydroll• 3 months ago

An update on this conspiracy theory, err, umm, mystery from that One true source of truth, J.D. Vance. err umm @DaveJorgenson

https://youtube.com/shorts/wJcjMfJbgio?si=HzDXoR-_3-aiJoPy

TruffleLabs• 3 months ago

National Center for Health Statistics Deaths and Mortality

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

iamfromk• 3 months ago

This looks like a case worthy of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully

ndsipa_pomu• 3 months ago

I blame the Trisolarians

ozten2• 3 months ago

Napkin Math by Sabine Hossenfelder:

- people working in space top secret research 20,000 (conservative estimate, probably much smaller)

- adult disappearances 1/50k to 1/100k per year

- demographics are stable, high earners, so more like 1/100k per year or less

- so for the pool of 20k, then 0.2 per year on average

- these disappearances are a 1:10,000 to 1:20,000 probability

- homicides made this situation even more unlikely 1:100,000

Conclusions: A conspiracy is highly unlikely, but the situation is very unlikely. Shrug.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEnvorobhEE

frcadwaladyr• 3 months ago

Everything old is new again… https://www.chicagotribune.com/1988/04/17/scientists-deaths-... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/scientists-deaths...

lofaszvanitt• 3 months ago

Ooooh, people with above average intelligence.... mmm, juicy bits for the otherworldy entities.... :D

FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX

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