By
Avi Loeb Medium
(Image credit: newspaceeconomy.ca)by Konrad Szocik (1) and Abraham Loeb (2)
(1) Department of Social Sciences, University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, Poland; (2) Astronomy Department, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge MA 02138, USA
(Submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal)
Abstract
Recent work on the Loeb Scale has provided astronomy a structured framework for assessing anomalous interstellar objects, including a quantitative mapping of a classification ranking, its evolution with the addition of data, and a broader observational strategy for firming its verdict. What remains unclear is the epistemic and methodological meaning of the threshold built into that framework. Here we argue that the central philosophical issue is no longer whether astronomy can define such a threshold, but how a threshold already in place should regulate scientific inquiry under uncertainty. We suggest that candidate technosignature status, such as Level 4 on the Loeb Scale, should be understood as an intermediate epistemic status: stronger than permissive openness, weaker than confirmation, yet sufficient to justify methodological escalation. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, it reconstructs the recent philosophical debate through the work of Lomas, Lane, and Cowie. Second, it turns to historical cases discussed by Kaplan (2026) to show that important discoveries are often delayed not only by weak evidence, but also by paradigms, prestige, and institutional filtering. Third, it interprets candidate status as a form of structured scientific commitment under uncertainty, one that justifies intensified observation, broader hypothesis management, and more deliberate allocation of attention and resources without licensing belief in artificial origin. The paper concludes by arguing that AI should not be the arbitrator in deducing an extraterrestrial origin, but can support the detection, comparison, and prioritization of anomalies once a candidate status has been formally recognized. Ultimately, a wealth of scientific data could identify an extraterrestrial technological signature beyond any reasonable doubt, but its availability requires a commitment by the mainstream scientific community to collect the evidence in the midst of uncertainty.
Keywords: technosignatures; interstellar objects; Loeb Scale; extraterrestrial hypothesis; philosophy of science; scientific discovery; AI
Introduction
Debates about anomalous interstellar objects are not only about whether extraordinary hypotheses may be considered. The deeper question is when an anomaly becomes serious enough to justify a change in scientific practice. Recent philosophical work has clarified one important point: extraterrestrial-technological hypotheses should not be excluded a priori. Tim Lomas argues that the extraterrestrial hypothesis should be treated as a serious scientific possibility in light of growing institutional attention to anomalous cases, ongoing research on extraterrestrial life, and the fact that interstellar travel cannot simply be ruled out as physically impossible (Lomas, 2024). William Lane goes further and argues that the extraterrestrial hypothesis should be removed from the realm of academic taboo and treated as a rational hypothesis when case-specific evidence warrants it (Lane, 2025). These interventions challenge a reflexive dismissal that is often sociological and cultural before it becomes genuinely epistemic.
Yet the permissibility of considering such hypotheses does not by itself determine when they become methodologically relevant in a particular case. Openness is a necessary condition of inquiry, but it is not, by itself, a rule of evaluation. At the same time, recent criticism of extraterrestrial-artifact interpretations has shown the opposite danger: anomalous behavior alone does not justify escalation. Christopher Cowie’s analysis of the first recognized interstellar object, 1I/‘Oumuamua, shows why weak natural explanations do not automatically warrant an extraterrestrial-artifact interpretation, since priors matter and unconceived natural alternatives remain possible (Cowie, 2023). His broader critique of optimism in the search for extraterrestrial life reinforces the same point. The abundance of planets alone does not justify confidence that life is common, technologically developed, or detectably present (Cowie, 2025).
The central philosophical problem is therefore one of threshold-setting under uncertainty. The issue is not whether extraterrestrial-technological hypotheses may enter scientific discourse, but when an anomaly becomes sufficiently structured, resilient, and consequential to justify a different mode of scientific treatment. Recent work in astronomy has substantially sharpened this problem through the development of the Loeb Scale. The scale introduces a ten-level classificatory framework for interstellar objects and identifies Level 4 as the point at which technosignature indicators enter formal consideration (Eldadi et al., 2025). A quantitative mapping places Level 4 at approximately 0.60–0.70 on a continuous scale (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b), while an evolving version extends the framework into a real-time classificatory scheme with memory, hysteresis, and predictive capacity as objects approach the inner Solar System (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025a). The proposed Comprehensive InterStellar Objects Network further links classification to a coordinated architecture of discovery, characterization, and selective interception, making the response to anomalous interstellar objects increasingly predictive rather than reactive (Trivedi & Loeb, 2026).
This paper clarifies the epistemic and methodological meaning of a threshold that astronomy has already begun to formalize. More specifically, the paper argues that candidate technosignature status should be understood as an intermediate epistemic status: stronger than mere openness, weaker than confirmation, yet sufficient to justify intensified observation, broader hypothesis management, and more deliberate allocation of attention and resources aimed at clarifying the nature of an object. The change authorized by such a threshold is methodological rather than doxastic. It licenses escalation in scientific attention without licensing belief in artificial origin. Ultimately, a wealth of scientific data could identify an extraterrestrial technological signature beyond any reasonable doubt, but its availability requires a commitment by the mainstream scientific community to collect the evidence in the midst of uncertainty.
Our discussion proceeds in three steps. We begin by reconstructing the recent philosophical debate through the work of Lomas, Lane, and Cowie. We then discuss historical cases considered by Kaplan (2026) to show that delayed recognition often reflects not only weak evidence, but also paradigms, institutional habits, prestige, and reputational risk. Finally, we offer an interpretation of candidate status as a structured form of scientific commitment under uncertainty and consider the role that AI may play in the large-scale detection, comparison, and prioritization of anomalous cases once such status has been formally recognized.
The philosophical problem after the Loeb Scale
Lomas and Lane are right to reject the reflexive disrepute historically attached to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Lomas argues that neighboring fields of legitimate inquiry, including astrobiology, technosignature research, and interstellar propulsion, make it unreasonable to treat the hypothesis as intrinsically unscientific or methodologically suspect (Lomas, 2024). Lane makes a related point: the extraterrestrial hypothesis does not conflict with established science, need not count as extraordinary in the stronger sense often assumed by its critics, and may legitimately enter inference to the best explanation when supported by the evidence (Lane, 2025). These arguments undermine a gatekeeping model in which ridicule is mistaken for rigor.
Yet removing illegitimate barriers does not by itself resolve the philosophical problem. To show that a hypothesis may be entertained is not to show when it should begin to shape inquiry. Scientific rationality requires not only admissibility, but criteria for when an anomaly warrants closer scrutiny, coordinated investigation, the allocation of resources, and a partial reordering of explanatory priorities. The central issue, then, is not whether extraterrestrial-artifact hypotheses may enter scientific discourse, but under what conditions they should acquire genuine methodological significance.
Cowie’s work clarifies the opposite danger. His analysis of the 1I/‘Oumuamua debate shows why the weakness of current natural explanations does not, by itself, justify an extraterrestrial-artifact interpretation. What matters is not only the inadequacy of known alternatives, but also the prior plausibility of extraterrestrial-artifact hypotheses and the standing possibility of unconceived natural explanations (Cowie, 2023). His broader discussion of optimism in the search for extraterrestrial life reinforces the same point. One cannot move directly from the abundance of planets to warranted confidence that life is common, technologically developed, or detectably present without further assumptions (Cowie, 2025). Explanatory difficulty alone is therefore insufficient. The absence of a satisfying natural account does not automatically confer positive epistemic weight on an artificial one.
The position defended in this paper lies between these two errors. Against dismissive skepticism, it rejects the view that extraterrestrial-artifact hypotheses are methodologically disreputable in principle. Against premature endorsement, it rejects the view that anomaly alone is enough to justify a shift in scientific treatment. After the formulation of the Loeb Scale in 2025, the philosophical problem is best understood as one of rational threshold-setting under uncertainty. Once a classificatory framework identifies a point at which technosignature indicators warrant formal consideration, the relevant question is no longer whether artificial origin has been established. It is whether the anomaly has become sufficiently structured and consequential to justify a change in how inquiry is organized.
On this view, a threshold such as Level 4 on the Loeb Scale should be understood not as confirmation, but as the point at which an anomaly warrants a different mode of scientific response. What follows is not assent to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, but a rational shift in inquiry: intensified monitoring, broader comparison of hypotheses, greater institutional coordination, and increased willingness to sustain costly investigation. Science does not need certainty in order to escalate attention, but it does require principled criteria for when such escalation becomes justified.
The Loeb Scale and the threshold problem
Recent work on the Loeb Scale in 2025 has changed the philosophical landscape by turning a vague dispute about anomalous interstellar objects into a formally specified threshold problem. The issue is no longer whether one may discuss extraterrestrial-artifact hypotheses without embarrassment. It is whether astronomy has now identified a point at which such hypotheses become methodologically relevant for justifying the gathering of new data without yet becoming evidentially confirmed.
The Loeb Scale provides the first explicit structure for that transition. Extending the logic of the Torino Scale to interstellar objects, it distinguishes ordinary natural cases, persistent anomalies, and upper levels reserved for confirmed artificial origin (Eldadi et al., 2025). The crucial level for the present argument is Level 4. At this rank, technosignature indicators enter formal scientific consideration, but artificial origin is not treated as established. Level 4 therefore marks neither mere openness nor confirmation, but a regulated intermediate status marked by uncertainty between them.
The quantitative mapping of the Loeb Scale makes that structure more exact by translating categorical levels into a continuous score based on observable anomaly metrics, including non-gravitational acceleration, spectral or compositional anomaly, geometry or lightcurve anomaly, albedo or surface-weathering anomaly, trajectory improbability, electromagnetic signals, and operational behavior (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b). Its significance is not that it settles the question of origin, but that it specifies when the extraterrestrial-artifact hypothesis becomes serious enough to alter the organization of inquiry (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b).
The evolving version of the scale sharpens the point further by showing that the threshold problem is temporal as well as classificatory. Because interstellar objects are typically first detected under substantial uncertainty, their significance cannot be captured adequately by a static score alone. Trivedi and Loeb therefore introduce an effective score that changes as new data accumulate, incorporating memory, hysteresis, and predictive capability (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025a). The philosophical problem is thus not simply how to classify an object at a given moment, but how inquiry should respond as an anomaly becomes progressively more structured over time.
The same logic is institutionalized in the proposed Comprehensive InterStellar Objects Network (CISON). That architecture combines dual-hemisphere wide-field discovery, rapid high-resolution characterization, and selective escalation to interceptor missions, with the explicit aim of making classification predictive rather than reactive (Trivedi & Loeb, 2026). What is being constructed, then, is an emerging regime of epistemic escalation: a framework in which classification increasingly governs attention, coordination, and possible intervention.
For that reason, the central philosophical question is no longer whether such a threshold can be defined. Astronomers have already begun to define it. The question is what epistemic and methodological significance should be assigned to a threshold designed to justify escalation before confirmation.
Historical lessons about serious anomalies
Semmelweis, Gordon, and Holmes
The history of puerperal fever remains one of the clearest examples of how science can fail to recognize the significance of an anomaly. In the book “I Told You So!”, Matt Kaplan presents Ignaz Semmelweis as a case in which a strong anomaly was recognized before the accepted theoretical framework fully caught up with it (Kaplan, 2026). Semmelweis did not begin with modern germ theory. What he had was a robust and recurring pattern in hospital data: women treated by doctors in one ward died of puerperal fever at much higher rates than women treated by midwives in another. He compared cases, ruled out standard environmental explanations, and eventually connected the mortality pattern to doctors carrying infectious matter from the dissecting room to patients. When handwashing was introduced, mortality fell sharply (Kaplan, 2026).
Two points are especially important here. First, the anomaly was scientifically serious before the accepted theory could fully explain it. The data outran the background theory. Second, the resistance was not merely intellectual. To accept the pattern meant accepting that physicians themselves were implicated in preventable deaths. In Kaplan’s reconstruction, the case shows how evidence can be resisted not because it is weak, but because its implications are institutionally and psychologically costly (Kaplan, 2026).
Alexander Gordon and Oliver Wendell Holmes deepen the point. Kaplan presents them as earlier or parallel recognizers of the same transmission pattern. Their importance lies in showing that scientific warrant can emerge from converging cases rather than from a single decisive experiment (Kaplan, 2026). That lesson matters for anomaly research. A serious case may emerge not from one striking event, but from a stable pattern across observations.
Pierre Louis and quantification
Pierre Louis brings a different issue into view. His importance lies in showing how quantitative comparison can challenge established practice. Kaplan presents Louis as a figure who used numerical analysis to criticize bloodletting and other treatments that many physicians regarded as obviously effective (Kaplan, 2026). By comparing patient outcomes, he showed that long-accepted procedures often lacked the evidential support people assumed they had.
The broader lesson is simple. Communities often continue to rely on what seems plausible long after more explicit methods begin to suggest otherwise. In anomaly assessment, the equivalent danger is deference to tacit expert comfort. An object may continue to be treated as ordinary not because the evidence strongly supports an ordinary explanation, but because the available procedures are too weak to discipline intuition.
Schweitzer, Moyer, Karikó, and Woese
Kaplan’s opening case about Mary Schweitzer and Alison Moyer provides perhaps the closest contemporary analogy to disputes over anomalous objects. Schweitzer’s work challenged the entrenched assumption that soft tissues could not survive over deep time. Moyer then challenged overly quick interpretations of fossil color evidence by asking whether structures identified as melanosomes might instead be bacterial (Kaplan, 2026). In both cases, the central issue was not only the evidence itself, but also the way professional communities react when familiar assumptions are threatened. Science can fail by dismissing anomalies too quickly, but it can also fail by stabilizing new interpretations too quickly.
Katalin Karikó’s story adds an institutional dimension. Kaplan presents the mRNA case as one in which a major breakthrough was delayed not simply by lack of evidence, but by funding structures, credibility judgments, and institutional pessimism (Kaplan, 2026). Work later recognized as transformative can remain marginal for a long time because institutions tend to reward what already appears plausible.
Carl Woese points to a related lesson. As Kaplan reconstructs the case, Woese’s molecular methods revealed a biological category, Archaea, that earlier classificatory frameworks had failed to identify clearly (Kaplan, 2026). This was not merely a better interpretation of familiar evidence. It depended on methods capable of making a previously unrecognized category visible.
These cases matter for anomalous interstellar objects in two ways. They suggest, first, that significant anomalies may require institutional protection before confirmation. They suggest, second, that some advances depend not only on new ideas, but also on new classificatory tools and new observational methods.
The epistemic meaning of candidate status
The historical cases discussed above do not show that scientific standards should be relaxed. They show, rather, that standards must be better calibrated to the treatment of serious anomalies. A candidate technosignature, as understood here, is not a conclusion about the nature of an object. It is an intermediate epistemic status. It marks the point at which the technological hypothesis becomes sufficiently serious to justify organized scientific treatment alongside natural hypotheses, even though artificial origin has not been established. Candidate status is therefore weaker than confirmation, stronger than permissive openness, and more disciplined than a merely general willingness to consider all possibilities.
Several features define this status. First, it is evidence-sensitive. It presupposes instrumentally robust data rather than anecdote, poor-quality imagery, or isolated reports. This requirement is central both to the Galileo Project overview and to the multimodal observational framework developed by Loeb & Laukien and Watters et al., where high-quality, traceable, multi-modal data are treated as essential for distinguishing natural, human-made, and potentially unfamiliar objects (Loeb & Laukien, 2023; Watters et al., 2023).
Second, candidate status is cumulative rather than binary. The Loeb Scale and its quantitative mapping assume that anomalies may accumulate across multiple observables, and that corroboration across trajectory, spectrum, geometry, and related metrics carries more epistemic weight than any single isolated irregularity (Eldadi et al., 2025; Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b). Philosophically, this means that candidate status is justified by a convergent evidential profile rather than by one dramatic fact.
Third, candidate status remains fully compatible with underdetermination. Cowie is right to insist that unconceived alternatives remain a live problem, and nothing in Level 4 on the Loeb Scale removes that difficulty (Cowie, 2023). Candidate status should therefore not be understood as closing inquiry. It is better understood as a rule for intensified investigation under persistent uncertainty.
Fourth, candidate status is action-guiding. The recent Loeb Scale papers connect Level 4 and above to enhanced observational campaigns, prioritized telescope time, and increasingly coordinated responses as anomaly levels rise (Eldadi et al., 2025; Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b; Trivedi & Loeb, 2026). Its significance is therefore not merely descriptive. It concerns what forms of scientific response become rationally appropriate once a threshold has been crossed.
Fifth, candidate status remains revisable. This is especially clear where the effective score changes as new data accumulate and where stable prediction depends on persistence rather than on transient spikes (Trivedi & Loeb, 2025a). Candidate status is thus best understood as a provisional but structured commitment.
On this view, Level 4 on the Loeb Scale does not imply that artificial origin is probable in any strong sense. It means, rather, that the anomaly has become sufficiently serious to justify a change in scientific practice.
1I/‘Oumuamua as a test case
No recent object illustrates the need for this interpretation more clearly than 1I/‘Oumuamua. The significance of the case lies precisely in the fact that it remains contested. Recent work connected a set of observed anomalies to a specific physical hypothesis — solar radiation pressure acting on an unusually thin object — and argued that a technological explanation should not be excluded in advance (Bialy & Loeb, 2018; Loeb, 2022). Critics have generally responded either by maintaining that natural explanations remain available or by arguing that the extraterrestrial-artifact hypothesis is too weakly supported, given uncertainty about priors and the standing possibility of unconceived alternatives (Cowie, 2023).
Both responses are philosophically instructive. The case shows why openness matters: a sufficiently anomalous object should not be dismissed at the outset. But it also shows why candidate status must not be confused with confirmation. A significant anomaly does not eliminate the role of priors, nor does it dissolve the problem of unconceived natural alternatives.
That is precisely why 1I/‘Oumuamua matters here because there are good reasons to classify it as a Level 4 object on the Loeb Scale rather than as a confirmed artifact (Eldadi et al., 2025; Trivedi & Loeb, 2025b). This is exactly the kind of judgment that requires philosophical clarification. Level 4 on the Loeb Scale does not mean that the case has been settled. It means that the anomaly is too structured and too consequential to be treated as just another unresolved natural irregularity. The familiar opposition between natural and artificial is too coarse for a case of this kind. What is needed is an intermediate category for cases that are too anomalous to dismiss, yet not sufficiently established to confirm as artificial.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and large-scale anomaly assessment
The importance of candidate status becomes even clearer once one considers the likely scale of future anomaly detection. If multimodal observatories and increasingly sensitive surveys generate very large streams of data, unaided human judgment will not be sufficient to identify, compare, and prioritize anomalous cases. A basic distinction is therefore necessary. AI should not be used to determine extraterrestrial origin. That would merely automate epistemic overreach. Its proper role is methodological: to support the detection, comparison, and prioritization of anomalies under conditions of scale and complexity.
That role is already implicit in the broader framework. The Galileo Project was designed around the collection of transparent, open, multi-modal data and the use of AI algorithms to distinguish familiar objects from more anomalous ones (Loeb & Laukien, 2023). Watters et al. likewise describe anomaly recognition as the identification of outlier events within a high-dimensional space constructed from multiple sensor modalities (Watters et al., 2023). In the interstellar-object context, the proposed CISON architecture extends the same logic by coupling discovery, rapid characterization, and selective escalation to the evolving Loeb Scale, so that classification becomes predictive rather than reactive (Trivedi & Loeb, 2026).
There is also a useful historical parallel to Pierre Louis. Louis did not replace judgment with numbers. He used quantitative comparison to correct judgments that were overly dependent on intuition, habit, and professional convention. AI should serve a similar function in anomaly research. Properly used, it can reduce the influence of selective attention, reputational bias, and weak human pattern recognition on decisions about which anomalies deserve sustained scientific attention.
This point is especially important in the case of candidate technosignatures. A common concern is that any formal candidate category might encourage sensationalism. Yet an AI-assisted anomaly pipeline could have the opposite effect. By making explicit why a case has been prioritized, which features render it anomalous, and how it compares with known classes of events, such a system could improve transparency, reproducibility, and calibration.
Conclusion
In the scientific assessment of anomalous interstellar objects, the key issue is not only whether extraterrestrial-technological hypotheses may be considered, nor only whether caution remains justified. It is when an anomaly becomes strong enough to warrant treatment as a candidate technosignature and motivate the collection of more data.
Recent philosophical discussions have clarified two points of lasting importance. The extraterrestrial hypotheses should not be excluded a priori, but weak natural explanations do not by themselves justify extraordinary conclusions. Recent astronomical work has added something equally important: a formal framework of the Loeb Scale for classifying anomalous interstellar objects and for identifying the point at which technosignature indicators warrant systematic attention (Eldadi et al., 2025; Trivedi & Loeb, 2025a, 2025b, 2026). The contribution of the present paper is to clarify the epistemic and methodological meaning of that threshold.
The historical cases considered here suggest that serious anomalies often require institutional and methodological protection before confirmation. The philosophical analysis, in turn, shows that candidate status differs both from mere openness and from final judgment. A discovery-capable science must therefore avoid two errors at once. It must not treat anomaly as proof, but neither should it suppress the significance of anomaly before that significance has been properly assessed. The aim is not to lower scientific standards, but to apply them in a way that makes serious anomalies easier to recognize, compare, and pursue.
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ABOUT THE MEDIUM POSTING AUTHOR
(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, former director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (2005–2026), and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.
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