David Kipping

And I have no evidence directly in terms of a scientific sense to support this hypothesis.

And it just became really difficult to reconcile my growth as a scientist.

And I know some people find that reconciliation.

I have not.

maybe I will one day.

But as a general guiding principle, which I think I obtained from that experience, was that I have to be extremely guarded about what I want to be true because it's going to sway me to say things which

which are not true if I'm not careful.

And that's not what we're trying to do as scientists.

Yeah, I think that's true, that whenever you're

Whenever there's something you want to be true, it's the ultimate seduction intellectually.

I worry about this a lot with UFOs.

It's true already with things like Venus, phosphine, and searching for astrological signals.

We have to guard against this all the way through from however we're looking for life, however we're looking for whatever this big question is.

There is a part of us, I think I would love there to be life in the universe.

I hope there is life in the universe, but I'm somewhat

been on record several times as being fairly firm about trying to remain consciously agnostic about that question.

I don't want to make up my mind about what the answer is before I've collected evidence to inform that decision.

That's how science should work.

If I already know what the answer is,

then what am I doing?