I'm unclear how this rates a "barf" alert. After playing with the Drake's Equation for estimating the numbers of advanced civilizations in the galaxy, I lean to the same conclusion as in the article. We're probably alone.
http://www.seti.org/site/pp.asp?c=ktJ2J9MMIsE&b=179074
And, even if not, the galaxy is so vast, and the distances between stars so great (particularly out here in galactic hinterlands) that I expect it would be possible both to have fairly large absolute numbers of life bearing planets, even civilization bearing planets, yet still so thinly dispersed that the chances of one discovering the presence of another are close to nill.
I mean I don't know what that number might be; I'm not doing any calculations here. Unless another civilization is intentionally beaming very high power interstellar signals in our direction -- that is if they're only transmitting the normal civilizational noise such as reruns of I Love Lucy -- how close would they have to me to be detectable to us? A few light years? A few dozen? A few hundred? How many such civilization would there have to be in the galaxy altogether such that there would be a good chance of one being close enough?
It's true that if you set all the factors making up the Drake equation to fairly negative values, you come up with a very small number of advanced civilizations but you don't come up with just one or zero. Given Sagan's "billions and billions" of stars as a starting point, getting just one is just as improbable as getting billions and billions (i.e., too negative or too positive in setting the factors).
The real question is contained in Fermi's Paradox: where are they? Given the universe's long history and physical dispersion, there may have already been hundreds or thousands of major spacefaring civilizations and there may be that many or more in the future. But it is also possible that there is just one at a time.