Dec. 6, 2025, 6:03 a.m. ET
A group of researchers say it’s time for academia to get serious about studying UFOs.
The movement, championed by the Society for UAP Studies, is wrapping up an international conference aimed at establishing a new discipline dedicated to studying unidentified anomalous phenomena (or UAPs, the more formal term for UFOs).
Michael Cifone, the society’s co-founder and president, said he’s interested in what he calls “the empirical weird.”
His catch-all phrase encompasses things that blur the lines between the real and the possible, phenomena that defy easy explanation: the spiritual, the paranormal, the parapsychological and UAPs.
Cifone, who holds a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Maryland, College Park, is hoping the study of UAPs can become the subject of serious, rigorous academic study, with the same scientific objectivity of any discipline.
The Society for UAP Studies knows it’s a tall order that requires an open mind and an unusual amount of collaboration. Studying UAPs should be scientific, but can’t be done in a lab — so researchers would have to collaborate in a study of the physical and theoretical.
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Cifone spoke with USA TODAY one day before the Dec. 4 start of the international conference of the Society for UAP Studies. He’s the nonprofit’s executive director and co-founder along with Michael Silberstein, a philosophy professor at Elizabethtown College. Cifone is currently a research fellow at the Center for Alternative Rationalities in Global Perspectives at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany.
The Society for UAP Studies‘ board of advisors, advisory council and leaders include dozens of academics from all over the world, representing a variety of disciplines including philosophy, law, the sciences and humanities.
“We’re not necessarily taking a position” on whether UAPs are evidence of extraterrestrial life, or what their existence could mean for humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe, he said. “But we are interested in taking on these topics that don’t fit neatly anywhere. As academics, our skill is in establishing a framework so we’re not simply speculating, but situating it within historical, cultural and scientific frameworks.”
From YouTube to UAPs
Cifone wasn’t initially interested much in the celestial or the supernatural, he said, beyond watching “The X Files” and having a passing curiosity. But when the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, he found himself watching a YouTube video featuring Kevin Knuth, a professor and former NASA research scientist and physicist who’s studied quantum information, robotics, planets and UAPs.
Intrigued and realizing that their academic circles often overlapped, Cifone set out to learn more about Knuth’s work, reading his writings in scientific and academic journals.
At some point, he realized that “while (the study of UAPs) was a topic of ridicule, there was still something strange and odd for which there seemed to be some good anecdotal evidence and witness evidence, evidence that was not easily dismissible by conventional analysis.”
In search of ‘enduring and rigorous understanding’
It wasn’t just Knuth, and it wasn’t just ordinary people reporting strange, unexplained sights. In 2004, U.S. Navy pilots and radar operators aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz and the U.S.S. Princeton reported seeing “anomalous aerial vehicles,” or AAVs high above where commercial and military craft can fly, performing maneuvers that seemed impossible to their trained eyes. In 2024, Congress conducted hearings on the issue, and the Pentagon, while saying it found no definitive evidence of extraterrestrial beings, also said there were “definitely anomalies.”
Congress held additional hearings earlier in 2025 based on hundreds of reports of UAPs. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office determined the data instead show a “continued geographic collection bias based on locations near U.S. military assets and sensors operating globally.”
During the Society for UAP Studies’ conference (its second), keynote speaker Steve Fuller, an author and professor at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said that he is “completely agnostic about whether (extraterrestrial) creatures are already here or if these blips on the screen” are evidence of intelligent life. But, he said, we (the global “we”) should prepare for and be open to the possibility. Fuller discussed the nature of humanity, and how we might fit into a galactic or universal collective.
Cifone, in his interview with USA TODAY, said the society’s goals are to bring scientific and academic rigor to phenomena that to many is still a fringe idea. They’re not trying to convince anyone, including themselves.
“We like to emphasize positional neutrality,” he said, “the methodology and standards of evidence” that would be a part of any other academic pursuit.
He acknowledged the challenges — starting an entirely new higher education discipline requires not just the professionals willing to do it, but also resources and institutional backing. The society is funded now through private and philanthropic donations and receives no government backing (he declined to name any funders, explaining he didn’t ask permission to name them publicly).
He’s taking a long-term view, and said thus far, he’s encountered little resistance.
“It’s a self-selecting group,” he said. “People who interact with me are already interested and they like that it’s science, scholarship and research first. The subject is the thing we do. We’re the people doing the work. We’re focused on the research for an enduring and rigorous understanding of the phenomena in all its aspects.”
Contributing: Eric Lagatta, George Petras, Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY