On September 12, ufologist and journalist Jaime Maussan introduced what he claimed to be evidence of alien life to the Congress of Mexico. On September 19, Mexico’s scientific neighborhood gathered for a convention to ask a easy query in return: “Extraterrestrials or Llama Skeletons?”

The reply was proper there within the subtitle of the convention itself: “Science responds to the charlatans and the gullible.” If Maussan had shocked Mexico and the world along with his outlandish claims, this was Mexico’s scientific neighborhood preventing again. Toward the top of the convention, Alejandro Frank, a professor of mathematical physics at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the host of the occasion, summed issues up: “Faced with the serious problems we are experiencing in Mexico and the entire planet, starting with climate change, war, and pandemics, it is sad to gather to talk about the misdeeds of a professional charlatan.”

Frank stated the scientists had not gathered to debate Maussan’s “decades of ridiculous conspiracy claims,” however reasonably due to the place Maussan had delivered his newest outlandish claims. Maussan’s look in Mexico’s Congress had, Frank argued, “turned the world upside down” and made scientific rationality in Mexico the topic of ridicule. “What is at stake here is whether our country will follow science or superstitions and quackery.”

While Maussan’s extraterrestrial claims are laughable, the injury they threat doing to science in Mexico, and worldwide, is a critical matter. Frank pointed to the polarization of Mexican politics, particularly round pressing points just like the local weather disaster, as an particularly alarming instance of how the nation’s scientific status was already struggling. Following the alien debacle, Frank had known as on Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, or National Council on Science and Technology, to talk up and take motion. “The agency has been silent about the facts surrounding the Nazca mummies, which are increasingly becoming famous as the ‘Mexican mummies.’”

José Franco, a researcher at UNAM’s Astronomy Institute, began the convention with a presentation entitled “Life in the Universe,” the place he spoke about DNA and RNA, interstellar chemistry, the radio spectra of Orion’s KL nebula, and cloverleaf quasars.

He spoke of exobiology, the world that research the potential for life exterior Earth; the direct seek for microbial life in celestial our bodies; meteorites, the moon, Mars, Europa, Enceladus, and Venus. He additionally spoke about humanity’s oblique seek for alien life—in regards to the messages despatched from the Arecibo telescope; the Pioneer plaques; the Voyager 1 and a pair of Golden data; the message despatched from Ukraine to Gliese 581c, a planet with some situations much like Earth’s, in 2008; and one other transmission, additionally in 2008, of the Beatles music “Across the Universe,” directed towards the star Polaris.

“Hayabusa2 was sent to the Ryugu Asteroid, returned to Earth, and is already in the hands of scientists in Japan, and NASA,” Franco stated. He talked about the Osiris-Rex pattern assortment mission, which collected round 250 grams of rubble from an asteroid. He additionally touched on the 9 probes despatched to Mars, amongst them the celebrated Perseverance. “No life has been found anywhere, and neither has intelligence been found in Congress,” Franco joked.

Gabriela Frías, a philosophy of science researcher, described current occasions in Mexico’s Congress as “a pseudoscientific event, which appeals to our fantasies, desires, and fears.” During his presentation, Maussan pointed to a “carbon-14 analysis” performed on the Nazca mummies by scientists at UNAM. Maussan had claimed this, partly, as proof that he was presenting “nonhuman beings.” UNAM has since distanced itself from “any subsequent use, interpretation, or misrepresentation of the results.”

In an announcement, UNAM stated it was important that the seek for alien life be approached “with the support of scientific research institutions, and following the rigorous ethical standards inherent to research.” Maussan’s look in Congress was the alternative of that.

This article was initially printed by WIRED en Español.