That hearing discussed an unclassified report issued by a Department of Defense task force in 2021.
There is precedent for the Defense Department, scientists and the media playing down reports of UFOs rather than prioritizing truly open scientific inquiry.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Air Force established a UFO task force named Project Blue Book and commissioned an independent scientific study of the phenomena.
There is now a danger that the NASA study, which is also supposed to be objective, may not live up to this scientific ideal.
If government and academia don’t do so with UFOs, we may end up with another independent scientific panel in another 50 years, but be no closer to the truth.