Skeptic Project

What's your guy's take on Nick Pope? I personally have a strongly favorable view of him. I have a profound interest in UFOs and the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth. However the profoundness of my skepticism matches my interest. I've looked into this guy and he's no tin foil hat wearing nut. He served in the UK Defense Ministry for 21 years from 1985-2006. He's been a scathing critic of most conspiracy "mainstream" theories including 9/11, 2012, and most blatant UFO hoaxes and openly rejects them. He also does not associate himself with the likes of David Icke. I'm convinced this man has a level head on his shoulders and is sincere. Personally I would like to see more people like him taking the helm at of Ufology which has been plagued by batshitters for so long.

What is your take, good guy, or are you of the opinion he's another nut?

Why follow ufology when we have SETI?

Ufology is pseudoscience, it doesn't matter who is behind it.

I don't know much about Nick Pope, but my opinion is that it would be very difficult to have a truly scientific inquiry of UFOs without it becoming infested and bastardized by cranks, loonies and CT'ers. It is definitely crank magnetic. You'd have to have an extremely powerful set of gatekeepers controlling who gets a seat at the table, what their credentials should be and how they should proceed--but even if you did that, the cranks and loonies would denounce the whole project as a whitewash anyway and its conclusions would be pretty much ignored (unless they happened to validate the UFO nuts unequivocally, which seems extremely unlikely).

I think that if extraterrestrials were visiting Earth the evidence that they had done so would be pretty unmistakable. It's remotely possible that a piece of genuine evidence is buried under all the crank reports and honest misperceptions that litter UFO studies, but I think it's unlikely. It seems to be like the harder you have to search for the evidence, the less persuasive it becomes.

I fully support SETI. I think the best chance of proving extraterrestrial intelligence is to go out and find it (whether by radio waves or in person) rather than wait for it to contact us.

I'm somewhat unusual in that I've actually seen a UFO, but I specifically reserve judgment on trying to say what it was. I know what it wasn't, but I have no idea what it was, and I think assuming it's an alien spacecraft is jumping to an unwarranted conclusion. I do believe that intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations probably exist. Do I think they've visited Earth? Doubtful, but possible. Do I think they're abducting people and putting stuff up their butts? No way.

Costigan, you might be interested in some blog entries I did a few months ago analyzing the books of Whitley Strieber from a skeptical perspective. They've proven to be some of the most popular articles I've ever done...I heard anecdotally that Strieber himself became aware of them and didn't think too much of them, but that's to be expected.
http://muertos.blog.com/2010/12/27/communion-at-25-whitley-striebers-alien-claims-re-examined-part-i/
http://muertos.blog.com/2010/12/28/communion-and-sequels-25-years-on-whitley-striebers-alien-claims-re-examined-part-ii/
http://muertos.blog.com/2010/12/31/communion-and-sequels-at-25-whitley-striebers-alien-claims-re-examined-part-iii/

I like him. He's mainly working from data declassified by the British's MoD and sounds pretty down-to-earth in his claims and opinions on the UFO phenomenon.