Mick West
Mick West is an American science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. His first book is Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect ''.
West has appeared in various media including The New York Times, CBS, the BBC, CNN, NewsNation, New York Magazine, Radio New Zealand, Popular Mechanics and Scientific American'' as an expert conspiracy analyst and science communicator. He has twice been a speaker at the conference of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, and in 2020 was elected a fellow of the organization.
Early life
West grew up in the small town of Bingley, West Yorkshire, on the outskirts of Bradford, England. As a child he was fascinated by the paranormal, UFOs and stories of alien abductions, also believing he had psychic abilities. As he grew older, he came to believe that these phenomena were not real, and instead, that there were rational explanations for them. "I used to believe in all this stuff and then I stopped believing in all this stuff, and I guess just figuring out why this stuff was wrong became interesting to me." In early adulthood, West found himself using a pre-internet, modem-based bulletin board called FidoNet to argue with people who were using it to spread conspiracy theories.Video game programming career
West co-founded the video game development company Neversoft Entertainment in July 1994 with Joel Jewett and Chris Ward. Neversoft is known for Spider-Man, as well as the Tony Hawk's and Guitar Hero video game franchises, and West was heavily involved in programming the first five games of the Tony Hawk's series. The company was acquired by Activision in October 1999.Skepticism career
In 2003, after resigning from Neversoft, West's interest in debunking took hold. "I retired, I had lots of spare time, I didn't have vast other interests that I was pursuing, and so I was able to focus on these things. I could focus on Morgellons, and I wrote like a hundred little articles on Morgellons. Because I have this background in video game programming and debugging and investigating things, I was able to do fairly deep technical investigations of things."West now attempts to interact with his interviewees and his audience on his various media with empathy to help them see reality. These people, he says, see a different version of reality: "They prefer the one where the government is evil. Now, it doesn't mean the government isn't evil, it doesn't mean that people in power aren't corrupt, it doesn't mean politicians aren't corrupt, but it also doesn't mean that they planted bombs in the World Trade Center. Just because politicians are corrupt, it doesn't necessarily follow the World Trade Center was a controlled demolition."
Contrail Science
West became interested in the chemtrail conspiracy theory while studying aviation weather for his pilot's license. He created the website "Contrail Science" with the aim of explaining contrails and debunking chemtrail theories. He believed initially that he could explain and debunk these theories quite quickly, but they were more resilient than he'd anticipated: he has now spent more than 10 years covering the topic.Academic work
In August 2016, West co-authored a paper with climate scientists Ken Caldeira, Christine Shearer, and Steven J. Davis published in the journal Environmental Research Letters titled Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program . The objective of the paper was to produce a peer-reviewed expert response to the chemtrail theory. The authors surveyed experts on atmospheric chemistry and deposition to scientifically evaluate the claims of chemtrail conspiracy theorists. Upon publication, it was recognized as the first study by a major science organization on the topic. Its conclusion reported that "76 out of 77 scientists that took part in this study said there was no evidence of a SLAP, and that the data cited as evidence could be explained through other factors, such as typical contrail formation and poor data sampling instructions presented on SLAP websites" Data science company Altmetric rated the paper in the top 5% of all research in terms of interest generated and it has been cited many times by scientific publications and news outlets. This included the New York Times, where West said the new study should help sway people who might otherwise be convinced by a chemtrails website. "You're trying to hold back the tide to a certain degree, and hopefully have less people fall into that way of thinking."Metabunk
The discussion on the "Contrail Science" website eventually expanded to include other conspiracy theories, including that of 9/11. So West decided to create another website, "Metabunk", to expand the discussion to other alternative beliefs. Metabunk covers such topics as pseudoscience, UFOs and the paranormal. The website also includes a forum, "Skydentify", where West invites people to send photos and videos of UFOs and supposed ghosts. He analyzes these using his background in video game programming and Photoshop, and then he and other forum members attempt to explain what the photos and videos are actually depicting. They also discuss the best way to communicate the results of their debunking investigations. Analysis from West and other experts on Metabunk has been cited in generalist publications.West describes the objective of his work as attempting to get people out of the "rabbit hole" of conspiratorial thinking. "Chemtrails is a surprisingly popular theory; it's right up there with things like the 9/11 conspiracy theories," he says. "It all stems from a fundamental distrust of science and authority. You are always going to get a percentage of people who are true believers. My goal is to minimize that as much as possible, stop people falling for it, and help them get out as easily as possible."
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
West has written several articles for the Skeptical Inquirer, the journal of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, including "Curated Crowdsourcing in UFO Investigations", "In Defense of Debunkers", and "UFOs Come Out of the Shadows. Again. Perhaps."In 2016, West delivered a Sunday Papers presentation at the annual conference of CSI, CSICon, titled "Expert Elicitation vs. Chemtrails" in which he discussed his 2016 scientific paper on climate engineering. In 2018, West again spoke at CSICon, this time as a featured speaker on the subject of debunking a 9/11 conspiracy theory involving microspheres.
In 2020, West became a fellow of CSI.
''Escaping the Rabbit Hole'' (2018-2023)
In 2018, West published Escaping the Rabbit Hole. How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect with the goal of helping people understand and explain conspiracy theories, and then pass those explanations onto others. In a review of the book, British actor Stephen Fry wrote "Mick West demonstrates with exquisite style, wit, and insight how those three rare and valuable species, Fact, Logic and Respect have in harness the power to shine light into darkness and dispel the miasma of bias, superstition and balefully proud ignorance that is threatening to poison our age." The book was featured in an analysis released by the University of McGill Office for Science and Society in 2018. Celestia Ward points out that "Debunking conspiracy theories is a lot of work. But it's worthwhile if you are helping a loved one out of a mindset that can cause them harm. Mick West has shouldered a tremendous amount of the work himself, summarizing some conspiracy beliefs and demonstrable facts to refute those beliefs..."He also created the online forum morgellonswatch.com to dispel the myths and misinformation surrounding the unconfirmed skin condition Morgellons.
In 2023, a revised and expanded edition was published that included new chapters addressing contemporary conspiracy theories about COVID-19, election fraud, QAnon, and UFOs.
''Tales from the Rabbit Hole''
West started a podcast in April 2019, Tales from the Rabbit Hole, in which he interviews "conspiracy culture" guests.Sitrec and recent UAP analysis (2023–present)
West continued open-source technical investigations of UAP videos and released Sitrec, an interactive 3D situation recreation tool used to model camera geometry, aircraft kinematics, and sensor artifacts. He open-sourced Sitrec in 2024 and iterated the tool with feature updates through 2025.Following AARO’s 8 March 2024 historical report and later public briefings on Navy videos, West emphasized where official findings matched earlier independent reconstructions. GOFAST was widely claimed to show a small object skimming ocean waves at extreme speed. AARO calculated the target near 13,000 ft above sea level with a ground speed near 45 mph, consistent with a drifting object at the wind level, and showed that apparent rapid motion came from parallax produced by the fast-moving jet and the geometry of the tracking. West’s prior Sitrec and Metabunk work had modeled the same parallax and range relationships using ATFLIR angles and aircraft kinematics.
On 9 September 2025, a House Oversight hearing displayed new Yemen coast MQ 9 footage that was presented as a Hellfire missile striking a shiny orb and the orb surviving. West’s frame by frame breakdown highlighted a proximity fuze detonation offset from the camera line of sight to the orb, a brief luminous flash and debris water splash consistent with an airburst over the sea, loss and reacquisition of the sensor track during the event, and no measurable change in the orb’s apparent size or motion that would indicate an impact. He published stabilized crops, timing measurements, and Sitrec camera motion tests, and noted that claims of a direct hit were not supported by the imagery record available to the public.
West maintained work on earlier Middle East clips that were often cited as metallic orbs demonstrating non-aerodynamic motion. For the Mosul sphere claim, he collated original reporting, extracted geometry from the single released frame, and showed how a small balloon or similar object closer to the camera can present a high-contrast circular signature with ambiguous range when platform motion dominates apparent movement. For the 2022 MQ 9 spherical object released via AARO, he demonstrated that the apparent path changes and speed are explained by the drone’s own turns and gimbal pointing changes, and that no propulsion or control surfaces are required by the data shown.
He also published microscopy based critiques of claims from the television series The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. In August 2025 he posted scanning electron microscope images and energy-dispersive spectroscopy notes of a promoted self-healing ceramic sample, finding typical fracture and contamination features and no mechanism for autonomous repair in the material studied.