Astrobiology safety captures the professional-safety dimension of life-detection science: harassment, threats, and reputational attacks faced by researchers who work in a domain prone to “significant public attention and emotion.”
A dedicated online session at abscicon26 — “Safety for Scientists: Astrobiology, a Global Issue, and a Call to Action” — surfaces this issue and proposes international safety recommendations (src-abscicon26-media-tips-2-2026-05).
The phenomenon is the astrobiology sibling of the academic UAP-stigma pattern documented in src-academic-uap-stigma-2026-04 — both are forms of professional-reputation risk that gate which scientists feel safe entering the field.