The White House has appointed Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb to lead the newly established UAP Science Advisory Council, a joint effort by the Pentagon, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI, and “the intelligence community.” The Council’s mission: provide scientific reports and advice to the UAP Governing Board in order to “resolve the nature of UAP,” which is government-speak for UFOs.

On paper, Loeb’s credentials are solid, and he’s assembled a team ranging from physicists to a pathologist, a computer scientist, a philosopher, a psychologist, and even the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine. But here’s the thing: Loeb has spent recent years claiming he’s found evidence of aliens everywhere from interstellar object Oumuamua (which he says is an alien probe) to tiny metal spheres dredged from the ocean (alien spacecraft wreckage, he insists). This has earned him plenty of TV airtime, but his colleagues in the scientific community largely dismiss him as a fraud, a crackpot, or a grifter. His Harvard pedigree and decades-long career lend him some legitimacy, but he’s been making eyebrow-raising claims about extraterrestrials since at least 2015. So naturally, he’s now the go-to guy for official UFO oversight.