Neil deGrasse Tyson has never been kind to UFO believers. For years, the astrophysicist and host of Cosmos was the go-to voice when media outlets wanted someone to dismiss UAP claims with a polished eyebrow and a condescending laugh. So when his New York Times opinion column landed on May 7, 2026 and read like something else entirely — open-minded, curious, and willing to grant that the whistleblower phenomenon might be pointing at something real — the disclosure community did not just read it. It dissected it.

What Tyson Actually Wrote

In the column, Tyson did not convert. He did not claim to believe that alien craft are parking in American airspace. What he did do was step away from the wall of dismissiveness he had spent a career building. He wrote that the volume and credibility of whistleblower testimony surrounding UAPs has reached a threshold that makes casual dismissal unreasonable — a position published in the New York Times opinion section and backed by growing evidence that trained military observers are reporting encounters with objects displaying flight characteristics that defy conventional physics. He cited the congressional testimony of whistleblowers like David Grusch as the kind of evidence that can no longer be waved away.

He also wrote that if the United States government is not hiding something about the UFO phenomenon, it owes the public a clearer accounting of what it does know. The distinction matters. A skeptic demanding transparency is fundamentally different from a skeptic closing the conversation.

A Scientist’s Shift

Tyson’s past public statements on UFOs were not ambiguous. He has repeatedly attributed sightings to weather balloons, swamp gas, misidentified aircraft, and the well-documented human tendency to see patterns where none exist. His general position was that the burden of proof rested entirely on the claimant, and that claimants consistently failed to meet it.

But the current wave of UAP reporting is structurally different from the blurry campfire photos of the 1970s. Military pilots have captured infrared video of objects that defy conventional aerodynamics. Former defense officials have testified under oath about recovery programs. Congressman Tim Burchett has gone public with claims that members of Congress who were not previously interested in UAPs became believers after being briefed on classified material. Even the reports of multiple pastors being privately informed about disclosure have entered the broader conversation around who is getting briefed. Tyson’s column acknowledges that something has changed — not necessarily the phenomenon itself, but the quality and volume of what is being reported by people whose job it is to observe the sky.

Why the Disclosure Community Cares

For years, Neil deGrasse Tyson was the face of scientific opposition to the UFO question. His name came up constantly in believer communities as the archetype of the arrogant dismissive scientist who would not even look at the evidence. So when he publishes in the New York Times and says that the whistleblower problem is worth taking seriously, it reads like a boundary stone has moved.

The argument is not that Tyson has become a believer. The argument is that he has stopped being a hard blocker. And for a movement that has spent the last decade arguing that mainstream science refuses to engage, a mainstream scientist engaging on the merits is the best kind of validation.

What Remains to Be Seen

Tyson’s essay does not resolve the UFO question. It does not confirm the existence of non-human intelligence. It does not validate the recovery claims that circulate through UAP forums and congressional hearings. What it does is create space — a small crack in the wall that has always separated the scientific establishment from the people who claim to have seen something real.

Whether that crack widens depends on what happens next. The Pentagon’s disclosure timeline remains uncertain. Congressional pressure is growing. Trump has hinted that the next batch of released files will contain “things you wouldn’t believe.” If the evidence that emerges from those files is strong, Tyson’s early willingness to take it seriously may look like prescience. If the files are empty, his column may read like a momentary lapse of skepticism.

Either way, the man who spent years as the UFO question’s most vocal scientific dismissor has just said it deserves a closer look. That alone is worth noticing.

What did Neil deGrasse Tyson say about UFOs in 2026? In a New York Times opinion piece, Tyson wrote that the volume and credibility of whistleblower testimony on UAPs has reached a level that makes casual dismissal unreasonable. He did not claim to believe in alien craft, but said the evidence deserves genuine scrutiny.

Is Neil deGrasse Tyson a UFO believer now? No. Tyson’s column stops short of endorsing the existence of non-human technology. What it signals is a willingness to consider the evidence on its merits rather than dismissing it in advance.