I tend to believe the whistleblowers. I think disclosure is happening on a few fronts.
Podcasts for people who tend to use them as their primary news source and already have high interest in the subject.
Congress for people that (somehow) still automatically believe government claims.
Entertainment for everyone completely disengaged from the topic but this is used to at least get them used to the basic ideas.
And finally edutainment like the news following the comets and mummies and other things coming from people like Avi Loeb for the interested but skeptical who trust info from a traditional scientific perspective. In that way there is trust in the disclosing figure as from congress and similar to entertainment this is just to get people used to the idea of alien life. I don’t think it will lead to genuine discovery on a reasonable timescale (eg SETI filled this niche prior), but could be wrong on this.
I think the phenomenon is not going to allow itself to be easily revealed by scientific analysis. It is requesting a mental leap (on our part) that is different from our go to scientific approach of repeated, controlled observations.