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Saturday, April 25, 2026
How a fringe conspiracy theory about missing scientists got the FBI’s attention
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Anonymous
WSJ: How a Fringe Conspiracy Theory About Missing Scientists Got the FBI’s Attention
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-a-fringe-conspiracy-theory-about-missing-scientists-got-the-fbis-attention-d61de97c
Private investigator Thomas McNally sees no link between the disappearance of Melissa Casias and some 10 other missing or deceased scientists. The internet disagrees.
Casias’s family hired McNally to hunt for clues after the New Mexico administrative assistant vanished last June. In the past couple of weeks, he’s found himself working to dispel conspiracy theories. Her disappearance has nothing to do with UFOs, he says. Nor was the Los Alamos lab worker—responsible for purchasing office supplies—caught in a government assassination plot because of a top-secret life, McNally adds.
Speculation linking her disappearance and the losses of several scientists has for months churned through fringe online communities. Now, President Trump and the House Oversight Committee are paying attention. Earlier this week, the FBI said it was spearheading an effort to look for connections, working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, as well as state and local officials.
“I hope it’s random,” Trump told a reporter last week. “But some of them were very important people and we’re going to look at it.”
The questions center on deaths or disappearances from 2022 through this February. They include an independent researcher, a long-retired Air Force general, and Casias, the administrative assistant. Some were connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Two had ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has long featured in UFO conspiracy theories.
Fringe narratives percolate constantly. But few rise to national attention—or prompt federal inquiry.
“Your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies them. “What makes this unique is you have government agents, with guns, investigating this.”
The narrative evolved over months of internet speculation. Many of the deaths and disappearances were first covered individually, sometimes with a conspiratorial bent.
Right-wing media personality Tim Pool dedicated a 2025 podcast episode to the killing of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro outside Boston, which Pool argued could have been motivated by Loureiro’s research into clean energy. Authorities said the shooter was Loureiro’s former classmate, who also allegedly opened fire in a Brown University classroom days earlier.
A few creators, including the popular conservative writer and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, suggested a possible connection between Loureiro’s death and the February 2026 killing of Caltech astronomer Carl Grillmair. Kraus’s post went viral, quickly becoming one of her most shared, she says.
“When I put it on IG, it went crazy,” she said in an interview. “And it just kept going.”
Their messaging amplified speculation that was already swirling online about possible connections among prior deaths, including Loureiro’s and Novartis researcher Jason Thomas’s, both in December 2025.
The February disappearance of a 68-year-old retired Air Force general, William “Neil” McCasland, kicked the theorizing into high gear, particularly once a local FBI field office joined the search early last month.
“What is happening to our space scientists?!” one popular UFO account wrote on X, attaching a photo collage of Loureiro, Grillmair and McCasland.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/how-a-fringe-conspiracy-theory-about-missing-scientists-got-the-fbis-attention-d61de97c
Private investigator Thomas McNally sees no link between the disappearance of Melissa Casias and some 10 other missing or deceased scientists. The internet disagrees.
Casias’s family hired McNally to hunt for clues after the New Mexico administrative assistant vanished last June. In the past couple of weeks, he’s found himself working to dispel conspiracy theories. Her disappearance has nothing to do with UFOs, he says. Nor was the Los Alamos lab worker—responsible for purchasing office supplies—caught in a government assassination plot because of a top-secret life, McNally adds.
Speculation linking her disappearance and the losses of several scientists has for months churned through fringe online communities. Now, President Trump and the House Oversight Committee are paying attention. Earlier this week, the FBI said it was spearheading an effort to look for connections, working with the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, as well as state and local officials.
“I hope it’s random,” Trump told a reporter last week. “But some of them were very important people and we’re going to look at it.”
The questions center on deaths or disappearances from 2022 through this February. They include an independent researcher, a long-retired Air Force general, and Casias, the administrative assistant. Some were connected to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Two had ties to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has long featured in UFO conspiracy theories.
Fringe narratives percolate constantly. But few rise to national attention—or prompt federal inquiry.
“Your average conspiracy theory, someone comes up with it and it dies on the vine,” said Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami who studies them. “What makes this unique is you have government agents, with guns, investigating this.”
The narrative evolved over months of internet speculation. Many of the deaths and disappearances were first covered individually, sometimes with a conspiratorial bent.
Right-wing media personality Tim Pool dedicated a 2025 podcast episode to the killing of MIT physicist Nuno Loureiro outside Boston, which Pool argued could have been motivated by Loureiro’s research into clean energy. Authorities said the shooter was Loureiro’s former classmate, who also allegedly opened fire in a Brown University classroom days earlier.
A few creators, including the popular conservative writer and influencer Jessica Reed Kraus, suggested a possible connection between Loureiro’s death and the February 2026 killing of Caltech astronomer Carl Grillmair. Kraus’s post went viral, quickly becoming one of her most shared, she says.
“When I put it on IG, it went crazy,” she said in an interview. “And it just kept going.”
Their messaging amplified speculation that was already swirling online about possible connections among prior deaths, including Loureiro’s and Novartis researcher Jason Thomas’s, both in December 2025.
The February disappearance of a 68-year-old retired Air Force general, William “Neil” McCasland, kicked the theorizing into high gear, particularly once a local FBI field office joined the search early last month.
“What is happening to our space scientists?!” one popular UFO account wrote on X, attaching a photo collage of Loureiro, Grillmair and McCasland.
Thursday, April 23, 2026
trump invokes Cold War-era law
The US is ramping up energy production as the Iran war intensifies. trump has invoked emergency powers to boost oil, gas and grid infrastructure under a Cold War-era law.
Is he going over his head?
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Trump's energy secretary
Our DOE secretary seems is so sycophantic, I wonder how DOE workers feel about him.
At the 16'55" mark of this video is a clip of his interview with Fox News.
You be the judge.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Dead Los Alamos chief's secret UFO files revealed
Anonymous contribution:
Interesting. Not sure who the (recently?) deceased cyber security guy from LANL would be. Knowing some of the fiascos from the early-mid 90s did it even have a head of cyber security then?
LANL UFO files:
Friday, April 10, 2026
China is pulling ahead
https://www.science.org/content/article/china-now-tops-u-s-r-d-spending-one-key-measure
China now tops the U.S. in R&D spending by one key measure
China reached long expected milestone in 2024.
Still, the OECD analysis suggests China has hit “a significant milestone,” one “in a series of indicators showing China’s increasing strength as a world scientific superpower, if not the world superpower,” says Caroline Wagner, a science policy scholar at Ohio State University. She notes that in 2022, China edged out the U.S. in the number of most cited papers. In 2024, China surpassed the U.S. in the total number of publications indexed in the Web of Science database. The same year China topped the U.S. in the number of papers listed in the Nature Index, which tracks publications in 145 leading science journals.
Thursday, April 9, 2026
Is Pacific Fusion a fraud?
Does anyone here have some relevant information or opinions about Pacific Fusion? I live in ABQ and they’ve been getting a lot of attention since they’re building a facility, near the airport. I looked at some of their white papers and they sound like a classic fraud scheme. For example, they mention a success, the NIF machine, as justification for their business, even though they are using a completely different fusion scheme. I’m concerned because I’ve had local people tell me they want to invest in the company. Hopefully the city doesn’t take a financial hit when they’re finally exposed, like Theranos was.
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