10 US Scientists Dead or Missing

 

Maj Gen (ret.) William Neil McCasland has been missing for several weeks 

(Image: Susan McCasland Wilkerson)

Nuno Loureiro (age 47) was the Director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. On December 15, 2025, he was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts. His death and the deaths and disappearances of at least 9 other US nuclear or high-tech scientists raise national security concerns.

Missing are retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland (age 68), a former commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Anthony Chavez (age 79), a retired lab worker at the Air Force Research Lab, and Monica Reza, the Director of Materials Processing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Also missing are Steven Garcia (Kansas City National Security Campus) and Melissa Casias (Los Alamos National Laboratory).

At the Air Force Research Laboratory, McCasland led billions of dollars in advanced materials sciences and future weapons research across one of the largest scientific centers in the Department of Defense.

Authorities previously told Newsweek they were aware of the speculation surrounding McCasland's case but had no verified information establishing any connection between his disappearance and any other missing person investigation.

Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died on July 30, 2023.

Frank Maiwald, a principal researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory died on July 4, 2024. 

Carl Grillmair, a Caltech astrophysicist who worked on NASA’s NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor missions died February 16, 2026.

Read more here: White House Investigating Wave of Missing or Dead Scientists - Newsweek; Missing Air Force General Case Draws FBI and Online Conspiracy Theories | Military.com

Bryan Bedford's Conflict of Interest

 

Bryan Bedford, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, maintained a multimillion-dollar financial stake in an airline company his agency regulates for more than seven months after he took the top job, despite saying he’d fully divest within 90 days.

This week, Bedford disclosed the sale of $5 million to $26 million worth of airline stock in February, raising questions of whether he maintained a financial conflict of interest well into his tenure as FAA administrator and violated an ethics agreement he signed ahead of his confirmation.

Beford is the former longtime chief executive of Republic Airways Holdings, an aviation holding company that owns two airlines.

"This appears to be a serious matter,” Foundation for Aviation Safety Executive Director Ed Pierson said in a statement.

The foundation, he said, “expects FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, and all government officials, to fully comply with the law and to avoid any potential financial conflicts of interest. Unethical and/or illegal behavior has no place in the aviation industry.”

Read more here: FAA Chief Dumps Millions in Airline Stock Months After His Ethics Agreement Deadline

Crimes Among High Level Persons in 2025

 

Ethics violations involve breaching established codes of conduct, professional standards, or legal regulations, resulting in actions like fraud, discrimination, harassment, data breaches, and misuse of company assets. Key examples include conflicts of interest, embezzlement, bribery, unsafe working conditions, and unprofessional conduct.

In 2025, U.S. government officials faced convictions and charges for wire fraud, bribery, and corruption, with local officials accounting for over 45% of January 2025 cases. Notable 2025 cases included convictions of federal representatives and union officials for embezzlement and fraud, while international cases involved major money laundering.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced new parameters for what kinds of crime will qualify under the Whistleblower Pilot Program. Going forward, the Pilot Program will prioritize Trump policy priorities—namely, immigration violations and tariff cheats. Learn more on the Ethicast.

Colombian narcotics kingpin Diego Marín discovers that it’s a whole lot easier to run a $100M/year criminal empire when you simply bribe the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to help you do it.

Intel files to recover over $840,000 embezzled by a former employee and a third-party vendor Israel in a fraudulent invoices conspiracy that ran from 2023 to 2024 and relied on insider information.

Ethics & Compliance Issues 2025: Year-in-Review notes:

 
CEOs behaving badly, the regulatory and governance turmoil of the second Trump administration, and the inescapable effects of AI dominated the ethics and compliance news environment in 2025.

As E&C professionals look for real-world examples that illustrate the risks they manage and the value their efforts create, Ethisphere offers this list of major E&C stories as a helpful point of reference. Throughout this list, you will find each month’s top E&C news story, episodes of the Ethicast that provide a deeper dive into these topics, and a list of additional major stories.

Read more here: Ethics & Compliance Issues 2025: Year-in-Review

The Karen Ann Quinlan Case

 

Karen Ann Quinlin in 1972

Wikipedia

This video explores the profound, real-life story of Karen Ann Quinlan, a 21-year-old woman who fell into a coma after consuming alcohol and Valium while on a crash diet. Quinlan had suffered irreversible brain damage after experiencing respiratory failure. Sustained by a ventilator and feeding tube, she entered a persistent vegetative state (PVS)—a condition marked by basic bodily functions without meaningful consciousness. Her case sparked a landmark legal battle over the right to withdraw life support and became a cornerstone in the formation of modern bioethical standards.

Hospital staff initially refused her parents’ request to remove life support, leading to a lawsuit. Her parents, focusing on her right to a natural death, argued that the respirator constituted extraordinary, painful means to prolong life.

On March 31, 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled unanimously that her right to privacy allowed her parents to act on her behalf. This allowed removal of the ventilator without civil or criminal liability. archives.law.virginia.edu

Contrary to expectations, Karen continued breathing unaided. She lived for a decade in a vegetative state before passing away from pneumonia. Quinlan weighed 65 lb (29 kg) at the time of her death

Quinlan's case raised questions in moral theology, bioethics, euthanasia, legal guardianship and civil rights. Her case had an impact on medical practices and led to the development of ethics committees in hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices.

Jack Carson Compares Jewish and Cherokee Ethics

 

Photo: Aimee Yu

Jack Carson, an MIT second-year undergraduate and EECS major, is the recent winner of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest. His entry, “We Know Only Men: Reading Emmanuel Levinas On The Rez,” compares Jewish and Cherokee ethical thought. 

The essay links Carson’s hometown in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France. Both were places where the people went to extremes to help the "other". Carson attempts to answer the question: “What is to be done after catastrophe?” 

Carson explains in this interview that he wanted to explore how a culture that has been completely displaced can be preserved. Read the full interview here: Q&A: On the ethics of catastrophe | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Carson believes that the fast pace of technology highlights the importance of philosophy, literature, history, and the liberal arts. He plans to have a career at the intersection of machine learning, chemistry and biology. 

He said, "When I was younger, I just happened across a discussion of CP Snow’s famous essay on the “Two Cultures.” In it, he talks about his scientist friends who had never read Shakespeare, and his literary friends who couldn’t explain thermodynamics. In a modest way, I’ve always thought that I’d like my education to be one that allowed me to participate in the two cultures. The essay on Levinas is my attempt to pursue this type of education."

Perhaps he will wander down the path of cultural anthropology. Were he to do so, the discipline would be the better for it.

Questions about Sexual Harassment at Oxford

 

Copyright © University of Oxford Images / John Cairns Photography

John Tasioulas resigned from his position as director of the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI in September 2025. Five months earlier, the university had begun an investigation into allegations of harassment against him.

Those details are revealed in an investigative article at Bloomberg by Katherine Griffiths about how “Oxford University has failed women over harassment concerns”:

Multiple men have remained in senior roles at Oxford for months or years after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against them, Bloomberg found in a nine-month investigation based on interviews with almost 50 people as well as documents and other records.

The Bloomberg article does not state what the specific allegations against Tasioulas are, nor does it share the findings of the university’s internal investigation of those allegations.

Read more here:  Sexual Harassment Investigations at Oxford - Daily Nous

Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals

 

Friedrich Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals is one of the Project Gutenberg ebooks that is available to read online.

Excerpt from Part 9:

"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; that the people have triumphed—or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them—if this has happened through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)—I do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning through the whole body politic of mankind—but its tempo and pace may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more discreet—there is time enough."

Heady stuff, if not necessarily true or evident.