Michael Shermer
PersonAuthorMichael Shermer
PersonAuthorMichael Shermer is a science writer and founder of Skeptic magazine whose public work evaluates UFO, paranormal, and conspiracy claims from a skeptical perspective.
Michael Shermer is a science writer and founder of Skeptic magazine whose public work evaluates UFO, paranormal, and conspiracy claims from a skeptical perspective.
AuthorMichael Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, and founder of the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine. After an early career in competitive cycling, he pursued graduate study and became a prominent public advocate for scientific skepticism. His books examine belief, conspiracy thinking, morality, and the psychological processes that produce pattern and agency detection.
Shermer came to skepticism after experiences in evangelical Christianity, competitive cycling, and alternative health claims. He founded the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine, wrote extensively about belief and pseudoscience, and became a familiar participant in public debates. That personal trajectory shaped his approach to UFOs: he is interested not only in whether a report is mistaken but in the cognitive and social processes that make an explanation compelling, especially when it aligns with a community’s prior expectations.
Shermer has debated and interviewed UFO advocates, witnesses, and researchers while arguing that unexplained observations should not be converted into extraterrestrial conclusions without stronger evidence. He emphasizes misidentification, memory, incentives, and the base rate of ordinary explanations. Critics within the UAP community argue that broad skepticism can underweight converging testimony or classified data; Shermer responds that missing evidence cannot support a specific extraordinary claim.
Shermer supplies a critical counterpoint in UAP analysis and media coverage. He is not an official case investigator, and skepticism alone does not resolve a sighting. His relevance lies in stress-testing arguments, identifying reasoning errors, and requiring advocates to state what evidence would distinguish non-human technology from mistakes, secrecy, or fraud. That argumentative role has kept him prominent whenever extraordinary interpretations enter mainstream scientific discussion.
RT @DrBeaVillarroel: @MiddleOfMayhem @ProfAviLoeb @michaelshermer Steve gave me an idea, even if unintentionally. This is something we genu…
RT @DrBeaVillarroel: @MiddleOfMayhem @ProfAviLoeb @michaelshermer Steve gave me an idea, even if unintentionally. This is something we genu…
RT @michaelshermer: In today's Zoom meeting we agreed: “The UAP Science Advisory Council https://t.co/ZzBLX2APIp fully supports requests m…
Burlison: "The time is now" Video posted on X: Burlison: "My name is Eric Burlison. I'm a Republican congressman from Missouri and a member of the Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets. We continue to receive credible claims of recovered crafts of non-human origin and reverse engineering programs that may have operated for decades outside of any government oversight" Burlison: "Those claims point to specific facilities, contractors, records, and people. We continue to depend o...
RT @MvonRen: @MiddleOfMayhem @michaelshermer Your bad faith hand-waving is irrelevant, @MiddleOfMayhem. Grusch educated AARO and offered t…
Note that @michaelshermer avoids answering the question. https://t.co/I0wkAPzh22 [Quoted] The answer, of course, is “less likely,” given your existing priors. But that is beside the point. Officials with the clearances and access to know are making extraordinary claims to the American people. The serious response is not to mansplain the scientific method to them from Twitter. It is to establish an independent inquiry outside the DoD, with the authorities necessary to test those claims until t...
RT @FernandoFLongo: @ProfAviLoeb , this has gone beyond healthy skepticism. Michael Shermer takes a four-year investigation involving more…
Here is the reason Michael: https://t.co/BkTrIutLKr https://t.co/EkfkTaarIX [Quoted] Note the shift in the narrative from "I've never seen any aliens or spaceships myself but I know and have talked to people who have" to "it's true, we have aliens here and they communicate using telepathy." No. By his own words Grusch does NOT know that. He knows people who SAY they know that. Can we at long last move past these secondary & tertiary accounts and see for ourselves the actual aliens and spacesh...
Davis said he only saw photos and reports? Damn, he should have said so! Oh, he did. To be clear, you're a 🤡. Sorry, but you make this too easy. https://t.co/jjPTBdJRZZ [Quoted] To be clear: Eric Davis has not seen any aliens or spaceships himself. He says he has seen photographs & read testimony by people who say they have (or examined physical materials he can't explain), so this is secondary (or tertiary) whistleblower level. Further, Trump has already lifted NDA restrictions, but if addi...
RT @GarryPNolan: @StantonsLab @michaelshermer @ProfAviLoeb No. And to be honest, we've spent a fair amount of time giving the data the "ch…
