Mick West
Mick West is a British-born American skeptic researcher and the founder of the Metabunk forum, who analyzes UFO/UAP videos and reports and looks for scientific explanations.
Mick West is a British-born skeptic researcher living in the United States who works on scientific explanations of pseudoscientific and seemingly mysterious phenomena, including UFO/UAP sightings. He previously worked as a video game developer before specializing in the analysis of controversial topics. He founded the online forum Metabunk, where users discuss possible mundane explanations for various mysterious phenomena, such as chemtrails, contrails and UFO videos.
What he claims
According to West, the well-known U.S. Navy UAP footage (for example, the Gimbal, Go Fast and FLIR1 videos) can largely be explained by camera and optical artifacts, the parallax effect, or known aerial or atmospheric phenomena. According to his analyses, the strange movements and light effects seen in the videos often result from the motion of the observing aircraft, the optical properties of the camera, or distorted images of distant objects (for example, commercial airliners). In other cases, he explains reports as sky lanterns, rocket launches or weather balloons.
Official and skeptical position
West's work represents a well-known strand of skeptical UAP research that opposes interpretations according to which these phenomena indicate unknown or non-human technology. His analyses are frequently cited both in official investigations and by the public interested in the subject, although official U.S. reports also continue to list some UAP phenomena as unidentified.
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