AARO's UAP narrative-data workshop
On 5-6 August 2025 AARO, Associated Universities, Inc. and Florida State University brought 40 researchers together near Washington, DC, to work out how to collect and analyse witness reports of UAP.
2025 CE · 38.90, -77.04 · status: official
The account
The meeting ran under ethics-board rules and was not publicised in advance, and participants could attend under first names only. Its report (AARO document 26-P-0344) calls for common reporting templates and metadata on time, place, provenance and shape. It says credibility is best judged by corroboration from several witnesses or independent data such as radar and weather records, and that AI tools help with triage but can amplify hoaxes, so human oversight remains essential. It also says stigmatised or 'low quality' reports should be kept for future study rather than discarded (pp.3, 5, 9-10). It built on an NSF-funded workshop held in 2024.