"Fame, fortune, increases in funding, Nobel Prize...what's all that matter so we could put one over on everybody..."
They had to have him on the last time to explain what some dingbat reporter said about SETI finding
some signals, which were nothing more than anomalies that SETI classified as "candidate signals" that deserved
a second, and more thorough look and analysis.
At that time, S@H had a page that you could look at all the candidates, along with the names of the
crunchers that "found" them.
I think I was credited with about a dozen myself, last time I checked, before SETI changed.
SETI suppressing the discovery of Alien signals is tantamount to Lindberg flying the Atlantic, then not telling anyone he did it, and getting all the people of Paris who were at le Borgie Field when he landed to join him in the conspiracy to suppress his own achievement.
If you are going to suppress the discovery, by try to discover it in the first place?