I can't see how anyone associated with Harvard isn't embarrassed to be connected to this guy. He's been making claims like this, without real evidence, for years now.
The most generous take I can muster is that he's discovered evidence of stupidity amongst the wealthy on this world and that they'll throw money at him if he says, "I'm saying it's aliens." The least generous is that he's become an outright crank.
One way to tell the difference is to offer him a bet.
It's an academic exercise, he doesn't actually believe these things are what the media quotes him as saying.
If he doesn't believe this sort of thing, well, he certainly had me fooled after having spent hours listening to him talk about it all.
I only listened to that one podcast and it was at the time of oumuanua I don't know if in the meantime he veered completely on the crackpot side.
I don't know that he is a crackpot. However, he's been seeking out money for his research effort to identify alien objects. Which is why I offered up my non-crank option, that tossing a bit of alien dust on things helps him get funding.
> The simplest hypothesis is that 3I/ATLAS is a comet and we are missing the spectral features of its gaseous coma because of its large distance from Earth. However, in case future data .....
I can't find the post unfortunately.
"Our paper is largely a pedagogical exercise, with interesting realizations worthy of a record in the scientific literature. By far, the most likely outcome will be that 3I/ATLAS is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and we await the astronomical data to support this likely origin."
He's doing what scientists are supposed to be doing. He's proposing hypotheses that match the current data. Then science can continue gathering more data to try to disprove the various hypotheses that currently exist, to try to reduce it down to the one that fits best.
If you refuse to entertain hypotheses that match the data, even if they're unlikely to be the true hypothesis, you are not doing science.
It's the same pattern for the other times he's been in the headlines. He never says "X is aliens". He always clearly states that his various alien hypotheses are incredibly unlikely. You've gotten suckered into an incorrect view of reality by sensationalist headlines.
It's fine to have a few fringe theories under the table and take a look from time to time, but before publishing them is important to get enough evidence. Otherwise it removes the credibility of science for important topics.
[Anyway, the important thing is not that a guy/gal with a white coat said it, it's understanding that the claim has enough support. You don't trust science, you analyze the evidence.]