The US government should release more detail alongside its UFO files to reduce public anxiety and allow unexplained incidents to be properly assessed, a psychologist advising on UAP has said.
Jennice Vilhauer, who sits on the advisory board of the Disclosure Foundation and is a member of US President Donald Trump’s Scientific Advisory Council on UAP, said she welcomed the publication of military records but wanted greater context about each case.
UAP refers to unidentified anomalous phenomena. Vilhauer said the information currently available through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE, offered too little detail for experts to understand the individual incidents.
“Although the PURSUE website provides some general context and explains that the materials represent unresolved cases, it provides very little information for understanding individual files or incidents,” she wrote in a blog post.
She warned that a lack of detail could leave the public to form its own explanations, creating an environment in which misinformation and polarised views flourished.
“Those who are inclined to believe the objects are signs of non-human intelligence (NHI) will argue that they provide proof, while skeptics will continue to believe there is nothing worth seeing,” Vilhauer wrote.
She said people who remained undecided could become more confused or lose interest, while additional information could help scientists investigate the cases and potentially resolve them.
“If scientists can’t make sense of what is being released, what good is the data doing the average person?” she wrote. “Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly support these releases and want to see more, but transparency without context isn’t really transparency.”
Vilhauer said each file should explain what investigation had taken place, why no conclusion had been reached and whether missing information had never been collected or was being withheld.
She argued that providing such explanations would not necessarily threaten national security or require every detail to be made public.
“Explanations reduce anxiety even when they do not provide certainty. It doesn’t require revealing every detail. The general public understands the need to protect national security,” she wrote.
Vilhauer added that greater context would not tell the public what to believe, but would allow people to assess the released material more accurately.
