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At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

cnn.com

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Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#81

Post by abcd_f »

zimpenfish wrote: post #74
abcd_f wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show some rigor. > 25 deaths per million people per day That's not the same age range as actively practicing researchers.

> 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…

> by reading the link

The link didn't inspire any confidence given the quote you provides.

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#82

Post by zimpenfish »

abcd_f wrote: post #81
zimpenfish wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> by reading the link The link didn't inspire any confidence given the quote you provides.

Should I have posted the full text?

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#83

Post by gaigalas »

Amy Eskridge made publications about concrete deterioration. A scholar, no doubt. Also, outside of her field, a nutcase with conspiracy theories about energy weapons and a troubled individual. No doubt a tragedy, but clearly an outlier (of possibly many).

This is super weird, and I can't buy the narrative when clear outliers like this are in the mix.

This is, as far as I can tell, sensationalist work that disgustingly aggregates troubled individuals deaths to put forward a patriot narrative that might not hold water.

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#85

Post by dualvariable »

What is missing is a denominator and some standardization.

There could be 100,000s of people in the US who have jobs where their disappearance could be considered "concerning".

And then we need a base rate for people of similar socioeconomic status. They're probably disappearing at a far smaller rate than the general population, since they're not poor, not sex-workers, not troubled teens, etc. However, there is still a base rate, and you still need to show that it exceeds that base rate--and I kind of doubt that it actually does.

We have a large population, and over the course of a few years 10 weird things happening seems entirely normal to me.

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#86

Post by gpjt »

shoubidouwah wrote: post #28

Nice writeup on the whole thing basically being hyped politically with actual nothing behind it https://unherd.com/2026/04/behind-the-disappearing-scientist... Also ~10 in a year, modal age of established scientists + collaboration with us gov, the background rate is basically that... Basically a conspiracy theory at that point, and not even a good one.

Thanks for the link -- I read that when it was published, then the other day I wanted to send it to someone but I'd forgotten where it was.

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#87

Post by notahacker »

odyssey7 wrote: post #32
jdw64 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, sorry for the earlier sarcasm. I agree that people in administrative or support roles can still have access to sensitive information and could, in theory, be targets. But that still defines a very large group. If we include anyone with potential access across different institutions, roles, and locations, then it becomes easy to see patterns in what could simply be unrelated cases. The key question is whether t…

I think this is an interesting pattern, but I see your point. The network effects of ~people a degree removed from direct nuclear research~ gets big.

People a degree removed from direct nuclear research or something vaguely linked to aerospace or studying faraway planets like these guys is about 90% of the people I've encountered in a work capacity.

And I can assure you my knowledge is absolutely worthless to spies or other nefarious entities, and the same applies to most of the others :)

Re: At least 10 people tied to sensitive US research have died or disappeared

#88

Post by notahacker »

zimpenfish wrote: post #76
notahacker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I should imagine you could look at the CDC data for those cohorts and perform the same kind of analysis as he has.

I agree, my point was more along the lines the poster demanding rigour wanted to use the death rates for the entire age range of "actively practising researchers" as a comparison baseline for a group of people averaging in their 60s. Don't even need the look at CDC data to know that they die more than the average working age person...
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