Donald Trump has been asked about the death or disappearance of 10 prominent scientists since 2023 as he said it was 'pretty serious stuff'.
The White House has said it's going to look into the incidents, though there have been no links found between them beyond their scientific aptitude.
Asked about the 10 scientists either dying or disappearing, Trump said: "I hope it's random, but we're going to know in the next week and a half. I just left a meeting on that subject.
"Pretty serious stuff, but we're gonna be, no. Hopefully, coincidence or whatever you want to call it. Some of them were very important people, and we're going to look at it over the next short period."
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So the future will hold more information on what might have happened to these 10 people over whether they happen to be coincidences after all or are actually part of some manner of coordinated effort which there's currently no evidence for.
Five prominent scientists who died since 2023
The first of these 10 experts in their field to die was Michael Hicks, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who died in July 2023.
His obituary said he'd died at the age of 59 and did not disclose a cause of death, though such things are not necessarily a matter for the public to know.
He'd worked on NASA's DART project which demonstrated deflecting asteroids was possible.
Around a year later fellow NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory researcher Frank Maiwald 'passed away' at the age of 61, with the scientist having amassed a number of awards in an impressive career.
There's nothing to suggest foul play or anything suspicious in the deaths of either men.
The 47-year-old director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center Nuno Loureiro died of gunshot wounds in late 2025, with his family saying his life was 'tragically cut short' by violence.
The suspect in his shooting was identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was later found dead of what investigators said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In that same month of December 2025 cancer researcher Jason Thomas went missing and his body was recovered on 17 March this year.
Carl Grillmair, astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, was shot dead at home on 16 February with his death ruled as a homicide.
In his career he'd worked to detect water on planets outside our solar system.
Five prominent scientists missing in the past year
Five other scientists have gone missing in the past year, as on 8 May last year former employee at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Anthony Chavez went missing.
The following month on 22 June Monica Rez, the Director of Materials Processing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, went missing, and four days later (26 June) administrative worker at Los Alamos National Laboratory Melissa Casias was also declared missing.
Two months later in August 2025 a government contractor at the Kansas City National Security Campus named Steven Garcia also went missing, while on 27 February this year retired US Air Force Major General Neil McCasland also disappeared.
That this has happened does not indicate any connection or conspiracy, but the US government is looking at it.
Topics: US News, Donald Trump, Science
Joe Harker