And yet, even with the possibility that we will find life elsewhere in the universe, the key players within this new religiosity continue operating in the shadows. The reason for Thomas’s and others’ secrecy is what I refer to as “the John Mack Effect.” Dr. John Mack was a Pulitzer Prize–winning research psychiatrist working at Harvard University. His credentials and prior research accomplishments placed him in a category that is rare for most academics, as he had achieved the pinnacle of academic success. But in the 1990s he began a study of people who believed that they were in contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. He followed the conventional research protocols of his discipline, and in the end, found that his subjects were normal in every way except for their belief in extraterrestrials. He concluded that they were neither delusional nor pathological. The book about his findings, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, was an instant best seller, but its release prompted Harvard University to conduct an internal investigation of his research; they questioned why he would be studying people who believed such things. Mack’s research choice threatened his career, and the publicity generated by the book as well as Harvard’s investigation portrayed him as a kook. In stepped Alan Dershowitz, an attorney and Harvard Law School professor long fixated on the idea of academic freedom. Dershowitz was among several academics to publicly defend Mack, and although Mack’s research was proved to be sound, his reputation had taken a hit. The aftermath produced a chilling effect on scholarship related to the study of UFOs, as scholars became unwilling to risk their reputations to study the phenomena.