Wasn’t Hynek the “swamp gas” guy?
The way this galaxy is set up, I doubt there are other life forms that can abstract information from their environment. Too much further in, and it becomes denser with a lot of older reddened stars; substantially more hazardous. Further out are regions of newer blue stars which are not good candidates for sophisticated life. We, on the other hand, are in a relatively obstacle-free lane about 2/3 out from the center. This narrows down the regions on our side of the galaxy that we can monitor in the full range of the spectrum. And, even if they were there, they should be on a par roughly in their development to us given similar time constraints in their evolutionary patterns due to earlier heavy element creation in successive generations of stars. But again, no signals.
Personally I don’t think they’re there. But even if they were, they still couldn’t reach us, especially in vehicles that reflect light, as in so may UFO “photographs”. How limiting.