What’s Really Underpinning the ‘Missing Scientists’ Conspiracy Theory

In Rough Edges, Mike Rothschild writes about fringe groups, conspiracy theories and how the Internet broke our brains. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

When the researchers began dying, it was so mysterious and intertwined that outside observers determined it had to be done with intent. 

First the project’s biggest funder died preposterously, of an infected wound from shaving. Soon death came for others linked to the inscrutable and important work — a visiting diplomat, the lead funder’s half-brother, and a string of scientists involved with the project. They died of suicide, of strange illnesses, in a gruesome murder. There were so many deaths that there was no way they could not be connected. Finally, the project’s lead scientist and most famous face died unexpectedly, years after the project’s completion.

Anyone following the news lately might think the above paragraphs are about the “disappearing scientists” story, alleging that a number of researchers and scientists connected to the defense industry or astrophysics have all died of unusual causes over the last year, with some vanishing while on walks and others horrifically murdered in seemingly random shootings. 

This conspiracy theory has jumped from obscurity to global coverage in just weeks, with more names being added to the “death list” every day.

But the opening anecdote is actually about the so-called “Curse of King Tut,” which saw a number of people connected to the opening of the tomb of Egyptian monarch Tutankhamun in 1922 die in short succession. When the patron of the excavation, Lord Carnarvon, died of an infection caused by accidentally cutting open a mosquito bite while shaving, it kicked off a run of newspaper stories and whispers that the opening of the tomb had unleashed an ancient curse. Sure enough, more people linked to the excavation died in the years after, including the archeologist who opened the tomb, Howard Carter. 

For decades, both curse believers and skeptical scientists struggled to explain why so many people died after visiting or participating in the opening of Tut’s tomb. A variety of causes were put forth: toxic fungi in the tomb, radiation, the awakening of ancient demons. But none could be proven. And an honest look at the “victims” proves there wasn’t a spike in mysterious deaths at all. 

Relatively few of the people involved in opening the tomb actually had untimely or mysterious deaths. Some died of causes that would be easily treated now. Many were older and already in ill health, or worked in professions where risk of death was common. The “curse” was a media creation, ginned up to sell newspapers and books, and it had a real effect on the people who were its subject matter. 

Jump ahead 100 years and the same story is playing out with the “missing scientists.” A string of unexpected deaths in a variety of adjacent fields in science and technology has been turned into a new version of Tut’s curse. The story jumped from obscure UFO blogs and Reddit threads to some of the biggest podcasts and news outlets in the world. It’s sparked discussion and investigation by the FBI and Congress. It is churning speculation at such a frenzy that the White House has been asked about it, with President Trump unhelpfully offering that “I hope it’s random, but we’re going to know in the next week and a half.”

What is there to know? 

Believers that the scientists are being kidnapped or murdered by dark forces are sure they might be connected to something that changes the trajectory of humanity. Nobody quite knows what it is, because this is a conspiracy theory, after all. But it might be something to do with extra terrestrial life, plasma physics, free energy, exoplanets, a secret alien technology reverse engineered from the Roswell crash, or something nobody can even dream of. Or all of the above. 

Like many other conspiracy theories, the list of “missing scientists” becomes more alluring and less convincing the bigger it gets. And like other conspiracy theories, there is no consensus about who gets added to the list or why, only that they are being killed or kidnapped in a conspiracy.

Numerous past “death lists” have functioned the same way: long lists of “victims” with little connection to each other or reason why anyone would kill them other than someone seeing noise and mistaking it for a pattern. 

A list of “murdered holistic doctors” from 2016 grew to over 60 names, individuals who had almost no link to each other other than working in some form of medicine that could be considered “fringe,” usually involving supplements or unproven treatments. 

A similar list of “murdered witnesses to the Kennedy assassination” encompassed over 100 people, most of whom had only the thinnest connection to anyone involved in the assassination. 

And the well-worn “Clinton Body Count” of the early ‘90s has grown from two dozen “suspicious deaths” that conservative activists claimed were connected to the Clintons in 1993 to some versions that have hundreds of people. In some modern versions of the list, the Clintons have supposedly killed everyone from a former Arkansas state lawmaker to Jeffrey Epstein himself.

Every iteration of every one of these “death lists” begins with just a few people. In the case of the “missing scientists,” it’s two people who might have been linked through their work, but only in the most tangential and inconsequential of ways.

The first is Monica Reza, an aerospace engineer at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena who disappeared on a June 2025 hike in the Los Angeles area, apparently vanishing after falling about 30 feet behind her hiking companions. Reza specialized in metallurgy, and in the 1990s had co-invented a nickel-based artificial material called Mondaloy, used to shield engines in rocket designs. It was adapted by the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and numerous private contractors, and versions of it are still in use today. 

After an extensive search of the area, Reza was declared dead. The hikers out with her reported no unusual occurrences, and while both hiking forums and UFO websites are replete with theories and accusations, there’s really no way to know what happened to her except that she’s gone. 

About eight months later came the vanishing of retired Air Force general William “Neil” McCasland in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On Feb. 26, the 68-year-old former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory left his house without his glasses, phone or fitness tracker; investigators say his wallet and .38 caliber revolver are still unaccounted for.  He hasn’t been seen since. The retired general had health issues that might have contributed to his disappearance, though in a social media statement, his wife made it clear he did not have dementia, and later stated that he might not have wanted to be found.

McCasland’s role was in overseeing the funding and development of special aerospace projects, and he may have had something to do with the development of Mondaloy. That, along with his public links to the UFO community and mentions in hacked John Podesta emails as having “firsthand knowledge” of alien ship crashes started an immediate frenzy of speculation about what “really” happened to him, even if nobody actually knew.

While Reza and McCasland were both linked to the Air Force research apparatus, and both likely had some form of top-secret clearance, there is no indication they knew each other or directly worked on the same projects. Two slightly-connected people going missing within months of each other is simply not a story.

So UFO cranks and conspiracy theorists had to make it a story, the same way the tabloid rags of the 1920s needed to make King Tut’s curse a story.

Besides McCasland and Reza, most versions of the list offer around a dozen other names as of this writing. They are:

Anthony Chavez, 78, a former construction worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who went missing in 2025

Amy Eskridge, 34, a paranormal researcher and daughter of a former NASA engineer who took her own life in 2022

Steven Garcia, 47, a government contractor at Kansas City’s National Security Campus who went missing in 2025

Carl Grillmair, 67, a retired exoplanetary astrophysicist at Caltech who was shot and killed outside his home in the Los Angeles in February, 2026 by a man who had trespassed on Grillmair’s property while armed

Michel David Hicks, 59, a scientist formerly at JPL who studied comets, and who died of natural causes in 2023

Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center until he was shot dead in December 2025 by a former classmate who had  fatally shot students at Brown University days earlier

Frank Maiwald, 61, an applied physics researcher at JPL who died in 2024 of unknown causes

Jason Thomas, 45, a pharmaceutical researcher at Novartis whose body was found in a lake in 2026 after he went missing in December 2025

Melissa Casias, 53, a Los Alamos employee who went missing in June 2025

Certainly, there are connections between some of the people on this list. Reza, Hicks, Maiwald, and Grillmair all worked in Pasadena either at JPL or Caltech, which manages JPL. Several others worked at Los Alamos, the birthplace of the American nuclear program. Many worked on advanced technology, aspects of the space program, or research in energy or physics. All had at least some link to some form of science.

But then again, so do a lot of other people who are not on this list. According to debunker and author Mick West, as many as 700,000 people have top-secret clearance and work in some type of aerospace or nuclear research. What makes them irrelevant to the plot,  and these twelve so crucial? Nobody knows what the plot is, so nobody can say.

More than that, many of the people on this “missing scientists” list are not missing, but died of natural causes or from murders that were quickly solved and had nothing apparent to do with their work. 

Others are not scientists at all, merely working at places where science is done. Casias was an administrative assistant, while Garcia was a property custodian, and Chavez was a retired construction foreman at Los Alamos. Several had long-term mental and physical health issues, including McCasland. Amy Eskridge, who founded something called the Institute for Exotic Science to supposedly study antigravity technology and quantum computing, said online she was being targeted by a directed energy weapon — a claim often made by those suffering from “gangstalking,” who believe they’re being followed or threatened by shadowy adversaries.

And what would a pharmaceutical executive be working on alongside a plasma physicist, while also alongside an expert in comets, and alongside a construction foreman that would require them all murdered? There is a great deal of speculation, but none of it has any evidence to support it.

Statistically speaking, it is not unusual that several people who are linked to massive hubs of research and development happened to die. Eighteen-thousand people are employed at Los Alamos, while about 5,000 work at JPL — though it recently went through protracted cuts due to Trump administration budgetary priorities. 

At least a few of these people will pass away every year, and of those, at least a few will be from causes other than illness, including homicide. This does not mean they were “disappeared” or murdered as part of a conspiracy, because even the people claiming this is a conspiracy don’t know why it’s happening or who is doing it. “Something about classified research or free energy or aliens” is just not enough to allege a pattern or something more than coincidence.

Finally, there are all the names who are not on these lists and really should be, if someone was killing people on a hit list. The Clintons are alleged to have murdered a small theater full of enemies, many of whom they had no link to, but spared the lives of their biggest critics and foes, including Donald Trump. The “missing scientists” list includes random low-level employees and retirees, but not senior executives at JPL or NASA, private space entrepreneurs, or even Monica Reza’s co-founder of Mondaloy, the Australian scientist Dallis Hardwick, who died in early 2014 of cancer. Why spare them, and not administrative assistants?

If the “missing scientists” list continues the way past “death list” conspiracy theories have grown, it will bloat out to gargantuan proportions, pulling in even more people with even less reason to be on such a list. Given the frenzy over the conspiracy theory in fringe media, there is clearly money to be made and clicks to be generated by exploiting these sad stories.

And ultimately, that’s what these are.  All of these names left behind loved ones, family members, and friends desperate for closure and certainty. Many are likely finding themselves in an unwanted spotlight from people who only seek to exploit them.

There is no conspiracy to silence a great scientific discovery or energy breakthrough — or if there is, there is no evidence of it. There are only questions left behind when someone is unexpectedly killed or vanishes. And the makers of these lists don’t have any interest in answering those questions.