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Posted by acdanger 4 hours ago

At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared(www.cnn.com)
99 points | 67 commentspage 2
mjd 4 hours ago|
Last time I looked into this (last week, I think) it was a big wad of nothing. The people had disappeared over a span of many years. They weren't tied to any particular program, employer, or even any particular area of study, just “uh, tech stuff”. Some of them were technical experts, some weren't; one was an administrative assistant. One was killed by a campus shooter who also killed two students.

Typical example: “In the years since, several others connected to JPL have also died or disappeared: Frank Maiwald, a specialist in space research, died in Los Angeles in 2024 at 61.”

cyanydeez 4 hours ago|
Yeah, it's like "At least 10 people with a red sweater on Tuesday have gone missing".

Or stupider: At least 10 people flipped a coin and it ended up on Heads!

The fact that it reached CNN levels of stupid means journalism is part of the overall USA's intentional brain drain.

mjd 4 hours ago|||
It's worse than that, it's 11 people who wore sweaters in various shades of red, orange, and pink, at some point in the past ten years.

“Anthony Chavez, 79, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory until he retired in 2017. He reportedly disappeared on May 8, 2025.”

hrldcpr 3 hours ago||||
To be fair to CNN, this article is about an FBI investigation.
walletdrainer 3 hours ago||
It’s sanewashing.
GorbachevyChase 2 hours ago|||
I suspect this is narrative shaping for future purposes. I think the military trying to frantically modernize and adapt is also a sign.
jasonlotito 3 hours ago|||
4 separate government agencies are putting time and effort into something.

The headline is accurate. The reporting is accurate.

Should CNN not report what the government is doing?

Or are you confused and assume that the investigation has returned and finding? Or maybe, we should highlight the things the government is doing.

Why do you find what the article is saying sane?

walletdrainer 30 minutes ago|||
CNN should accurately report just how bizarre the reasoning behind these investigations appears to be.
mjd 17 minutes ago||
I wonder if it is reasoning. To me the sequence looks something like this:

1. The story is promulgated by a long-retired ex-FBI analyst

2. Fox News picks it upand runs with it

3. Fox News watchers get excited about it on social media

4. Someone behind a desk at the FBI is assigned to pick up the phone and say tiredly “Yes, yes, we're investigating it all very seriously”

5.The FBI waits for the new Flavor of the Week to distract the Fox News people, then closes the investigation

Meantime, CNN reports on phase 4.

wat10000 3 hours ago|||
If the weather service starts an investigation into Tuesday’s rain shower, that should be reported. But if that rain shower was completely within the normal range of weather for that location and time of year, that should also be part of the reporting. This article takes everything from the government at face value.
walletdrainer 4 hours ago|||
This is the same network that breathlessly covered the obviously fake “drone swarms”.
Zigurd 4 hours ago||
Color me skeptical. Whenever I see this come up in a social media feed it's a UFO influencer. It's leaked out into the legacy news presenters who have great haircuts and no critical thinking skills.
petre 2 hours ago||
Maybe he wants to frame it as the scientists being abduced by aliens. We now know that the whole UFO narrative of the 90s was a government psy ops to distract people from stealth fighter testing and dismiss the sightings as 'aliens'.
OutOfHere 3 hours ago|||
The critical thinking skills you need are that they were connected to nuclear research. UFO is a distraction. The purpose of the investigation is to determine whether the deaths are connected.
wat10000 3 hours ago||
The critical thinking skills you need are the understanding that people die sometimes, and the question is how it compares to the normal rate of death among this population.
notahacker 2 hours ago||
And not just rates, but also how they died and whether malicious actors were particularly likely to bother about disappearing them in ways which are actually really much harder to stage than happen naturally like disappearing someone trailwalking in mountains with friends, or whether someone so incompetent they were arrested on the retired professor's property a couple of months before he was shot and then caught still driving a car full of the victim's stuff after the murder was discovered is particularly likely to be part of a big cover up.

An disappearance of a retired major general without his personal possessions and someone committing suicide whilst due to testify in court, sure those things warrant an investigation even though those things happen as the result of mundane crime or mental breakdowns as well as conspiracy. But another thing entirely for the "nothing much to see in those Epstein files" FBI to spin the grand narrative that connecting all these dots is a legitimate question because UFOlogists on YouTube.

walletdrainer 3 hours ago|||
Same legacy news presenters which have a track record of pushing UFO conspiracy theories?

CNN was one of the biggest pushers of this hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_drone_sight...

HauntingPin 3 hours ago|||
CNN is basically on the same level as Fox News now. I'm not surprised.

Here's a more substantial take on the whole thing that doesn't just blindly repeat everything without question: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2026/04/missing-scientis... You know, what journalism is actually supposed to be like.

This BBC article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyw9rpdl4po also has this tidbit:

> "The US Top Secret-cleared aerospace and nuclear workforce is ~700,000 people," science writer, investigator and pseudoscience debunker Mick West wrote on 16 April on his Substack.

> "Ordinary mortality over 22 months predicts ~4,000 deaths, ~70 homicides, and ~180 suicides. The list has 10 … The deaths are real. The families' grief is real. The pattern is not."

OutOfHere 3 hours ago||
If you are going to rudely link to a paywalled articles without an unpaywalled link to read each, then people can't be motivated to read them.
HauntingPin 3 hours ago||
I guess being an asshole is just the standard now on HN? How is this attitude acceptable? What did I do to you? I didn't even realize it was paywalled until you mentioned it. But don't let that stop you from being a dick to somebody who's just trying to help fight misinformation. I guess I'll just go fuck myself.

But here, your paywall free link: https://archive.is/KNECz

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3 hours ago|||
Unfortunately, this is a sign of the times we live in now. Nobody extends a little grace to others. They assume every act is an intentional slight.

There's no room for mistakes or even differences of opinions, and it's tearing us apart.

Part of it, I think, comes from the anonymous nature of online communications, and little to no ramifications to bad behavior. It's the end result of "I can do whatever I want, the established rules and societal norms don't apply anymore."

OutOfHere 37 minutes ago|||
If anything, it is you who were closer to being the a by posting what you did without corresponding unpaywalled links. Moreover, it is you who resorted to namecalling, not me. You should know what you're posting; you don't get to be ignorant about it. Even the BBC link you posted is paywalled and therefore unreadable.

Whether the concern is real or not is precisely for the FBI to determine. National security is too serious to leave in the hands of random journalists and overly-comfortable citizens. I fully understand that the data is almost certainly a coincidence, but the consequences of being wrong are so serious that it's best to definitively rule it out.

jasonlotito 3 hours ago|||
> The FBI now says it “is spearheading the effort to look for connections into the missing and deceased scientists,” adding that it “is working with the Department of Energy, Department of War, and with our state … and local law enforcement partners to find answers.”

> Separately, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee announced Monday it will investigate ...

So, do we not want the news reporting what the government is doing? That's the FBI, DoE, DoD, and the House Oversight Committee putting effort into this.

Like, no, i want this reported, not because there is anything that will come from it, but because we should report one what the government is doing.

Why do you think CNN should NOT report one what the government does?

walletdrainer 2 hours ago||
You can report these stories without sanewashing.
baq 3 hours ago||
Pizzagate was conspiracy theory once, too.

Epstein is on record ‘silencing’ Pons cold fusion research.

Michael Hastings’ car crashed into a tree without signs of braking.

mikeyouse 3 hours ago|||
Michael Hastings was on DMT, smoking weed, and having a manic episode. His family was so worried about his erratic behavior that his brother had flown out to try to get him to check into rehab.. His brother met with Michael the day before he died and realized he was going to need more help, so he called his other brother to fly to LA to try to convince Michael to go to rehab or check into an inpatient psych ward. Michael snuck out in the middle of the night while they were waiting for their other brother and crashed his car into a tree.

In his brother's own words, "I really rule out foul play entirely. I might have been suspicious if I hadn't been with him the day before he died. After all, he definitely was investigating and writing about a lot of sensitive subjects. But based on being with him and talking to people who were worried about him in the weeks leading up to his death, and being around him when he had had similar problems when he was younger, I was pretty much convinced that he wasn't in danger from any outside agency."

It's an exceptionally dumb conspiracy theory among many other exceptionally dumb ones.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-hastings-interview_b_...

b9apratus 3 hours ago||
Unless that agency is a mob culture who manifests as the voices in our heads.

Remember those navy seals who were murdered by schizophrenic brothers of girlfriends?

Look into all the research of “voices in our heads.” And I’m sure you’re impressed by how well “gang stalking” and “targeted persons” is handled. Crazy crackpot schizophrenic conspiracy theories. And signs of a truly diabolical secret war upon us all.

I know, take meds and get help. That’s the byline of those who consider themselves sane.

k12sosse 3 hours ago||
Go watch gangstalked people on YouTube. It is as close to 100% mental illness as you can get. They light holograms on fire. Find me one that doesn't look and act cuckoo and link it here.
b9apratus 2 hours ago||
“They”? You act like those disorganized persons have similar backgrounds or training.

I was gang stalked for years before being “press ganged” into a hooligan army or Power. I know Americas secrets, you just won’t listen. Like Cassandra, such are the most genuine prognostications among the incredulous.

The crazy people are those driven crazy. Look for those stories where otherwise normal people were “gaydon”. That where random people pretend the subject is “gay” even though they are not. Those sad people sometimes shoot up gaybars or gaybash because “they have the devil inside them.”

The “true” conspiracy of conspiracies is that we are not alone in our own minds and entire subcultures are dedicated to screwing with us. Everything these unfortunate peoples experience is sheer insanity. Their mental illness is cultivated.

And if you don’t “believe in” extra sensory perception (more apt term than the alternatives), then why do you know what “gaydar” is? Manipulating the sexuality of others (gender dysphoria) are among the games these so empowered love to play.

Hidden within the silliest things are occult secrets belying an unnatural order among us.

Zigurd 3 hours ago||||
"There's no basement at the Alamo."
OutOfHere 3 hours ago||||
Pizzagate still is a nonsense conspiracy.
walletdrainer 3 hours ago|||
Pizzagate is still a (particularly nutty) conspiracy theory, if you genuinely believe otherwise you should seek urgent treatment.
gruez 2 hours ago||
Unfortunately the Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files has added fuel to pizzagate and adjacent "pedophile elites" conspiracy theories.
Mistletoe 4 hours ago||
I need to see stats on how many would be expected to die or disappear from natural causes and I’m never seeing that on these stories. Weird things happen all the time to people in any field of work, it’s only concerning if this is rising above the natural noise. The fact that the current administration, which has proven time and time again it is ignorant about statistics and pretty much all things science, is raising the alarm does not bode well for this being an actual issue.
zimpenfish 3 hours ago|
Via [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."

(there's more detail at the link, obvs.)

[0] https://www.stevennovella.com/neurologicablog/whats-with-the...

abcd_f 3 hours ago||
Show some rigor.

> 25 deaths per million people per day

That's not the same age range as actively practicing researchers.

zimpenfish 1 hour ago|||
> Show some rigor.

Yes, perhaps by reading the link.

"I should point out I am using numbers for the general population, which may not match the rate for scientists. [...] I also looked at CDC data – about 800,000 people in the US between 25 and 65 die each year [...] About 6% of the population work in the science field, which would be 192,000, or half that if you use a narrow definition of 3%, so close to the 73,000 figure I calculated the other way."

He also looks at how that compares with the individual institutions.

But yes, "show some rigor" indeed!

notahacker 2 hours ago|||
But then if we're doing age ranges, the 10 people "tied to sensitive research" who have disappeared or died are 59, 61, 60, 68, 53, 60, 78, 47, 67, 39 (with the two youngest identified as homicide and suicide). How does a cohort with an average age in their 60s compare with the age range of actively practising researchers?
zimpenfish 1 hour ago||
I should imagine you could look at the CDC data for those cohorts and perform the same kind of analysis as he has.
rekrsiv 3 hours ago||
Yet another statistically misleading headline.
rglover 3 hours ago|
[dead]