Mick West

Mick West is a British-American science writer and retired video game programmer. He co-founded Neversoft Entertainment in 1994, which made the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, and left the games industry in 2003.

He then turned to examining conspiracy theories and unusual claims. He started Contrail Science, about contrails and chemtrail claims, and Metabunk, a forum for checking claims about UFOs and pseudoscience. In 2016 he co-authored a peer-reviewed survey of atmospheric scientists on chemtrail claims. His book Escaping the Rabbit Hole (2018) gives advice on talking with people who believe in conspiracy theories.

West has analysed the US Navy's GIMBAL, GOFAST and FLIR1 videos in detail. He argues that the apparent rotation in GIMBAL is an infrared glare artefact of the camera system, and that parallax makes the object in GOFAST look fast and low when it was likely slow and high. Some Navy aviators dispute these readings. His statements are his own analysis, not official findings.