{"id":1212305,"date":"2022-01-12T19:19:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-13T00:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1212305"},"modified":"2022-01-12T19:20:02","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T00:20:02","slug":"fact-check-has-nasa-just-hired-24-theologians-to-study-how-humans-would-react-to-alien-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/fact-check-has-nasa-just-hired-24-theologians-to-study-how-humans-would-react-to-alien-life\/","title":{"rendered":"FACT CHECK: Has NASA \u2018Just Hired\u2019 24 Theologians To Study How Humans Would React To Alien Life?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">34<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffact-check-has-nasa-just-hired-24-theologians-to-study-how-humans-would-react-to-alien-life%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1212305&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>A post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/chris.bentley.56\/posts\/10160070453191332\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">shared on Facebook<\/a> claims the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) \u201cjust hired 24 theologians to assess how the world would react if we discovered alien life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span><strong>Verdict: Misleading<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>NASA partially funded an independent research project that brought 24 religious experts together in 2016 and 2017 to study how humans might react to the discovery of alien life. The researchers selected, however, were not hired by NASA and the project concluded in 2017.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span>Fact Check:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>NASA is <a href=\"https:\/\/checkyourfact.com\/2019\/11\/25\/fact-check-nasa-165-million-develop-space-pens-fisher\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">frequently<\/a> the <a href=\"https:\/\/checkyourfact.com\/2020\/07\/22\/fact-check-nasa-new-13th-zodiac-sign\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">subject<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/checkyourfact.com\/2020\/01\/13\/fact-check-nasa-satellite-image-australian-wildfires-anthony-hearsey\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">online<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/checkyourfact.com\/2019\/12\/23\/fact-check-image-nasa-cassini-saturn-space\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">misinformation<\/a>. The most recent example of the trend appears to be a Dec. 28 Facebook post that claims \u201cNASA just hired 24 theologians to assess how the world would react if we discovered alien life.\u201d <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/checkyourfact.com\/2019\/11\/25\/fact-check-nasa-165-million-develop-space-pens-fisher\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(RELATED: Did Nasa Spend More Than $165 Million To Develop Pens That Work In Space?)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The post appears to be based on a Dec. 23 article from The Times, a U.K.-based newspaper, titled, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.is\/iiqsU#selection-955.8-955.36\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Heavens above: Nasa enlists priest to prepare for an alien discovery<\/a>.\u201d The article describes how Rev. Dr. Andrew Davison, a priest at the University of Cambridge, participated in a program along with 23 other religious experts aimed at studying how humanity would react to the discovery of alien life. The article explains this program took place at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ctinquiry.org\/new-page-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Center for Theological Inquiry<\/a> (CTI) in Princeton, New Jersey, was partially funded by NASA and occurred between September 2016 and June 2017.<\/p>\n<p>There is, however, no evidence that any of these religious thinkers were \u201chired\u201d by NASA. The article from The Times makes no mention of this claim. Check Your Fact searched NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/news\/releases\/latest\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">press releases<\/a> and found nothing about the agency hiring theologians to study human reactions to alien life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe NASA-funded portion of this research concluded in 2017, and the researchers involved in this study were selected exclusively by CTI,\u201d explained a NASA spokesperson in an email to Check Your Fact. \u201cNASA&nbsp;was not involved in the selection of researchers for this study, and individuals who receive grant funding from&nbsp;NASA&nbsp;are not employees, advisors, or spokespersons for the agency. Thus, the researchers and scholars involved with this study were not hired by&nbsp;NASA, but instead received funding through CTI to conduct this work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The notion that any of this occurred recently, as the Facebook post suggests, is likewise incorrect. Both the NASA spokesperson and the article from The Times state the program concluded more than four years ago in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post shared on Facebook claims the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) \u201cjust hired 24 theologians to assess how the world would react if we discovered alien life.\u201dVerdict: Misleading &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":351,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1212305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}