"Don't care what they say, or what games they play, nothing is enough, til I have your love, LET'S DO IT TONIGHT, I want you tonight, I want you to stay, I want you tonight, GRAB SOMEBODY SEXY, TELL THEM HEY, GIVE ME EVERYTHING TONIGHT..."
Why do I have the feeling that the scientists in question have adopted the philosophy below?
It seems to me that they are making speculation based on poor research. First we have Brian Co*k saying "no aliens exist because I'm God and I know all there is to know, do not question me!!11" and now we have these scientists making similar statements.
I'll quote Einstein on this matter, "The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."
Yet we have some scientists making absolute statements when we're still children to the universe (and always will be). We haven't even ventured past our solar system and yet we have some scientists telling us where the universe ends and that there's no life elsewhere. No scientist even understands the origin of life yet to be making these claims either.
When it comes to scientific claims, empirical evidence is required and this lacks that. The reason no alien species have visited us could be because of the vast distance required just to reach the next solar system. According to estimates, it will take The Voyager spacecraft 80,000 years just to reach the next solar system and it's travelling at 37,000 miles per hour. We have no reason to believe light speed travel or FTL travel is possible (current knowledge says it's impossible) and if this is true then other civilizations will have spacecraft that will take tens of thousands of years just to reach the nearest star to their's.
Any intelligent space-faring species with below light speed travel wouldn't even attempt a journey to the nearest star to their own considering they should know the estimate journey time. By the time they reach the next star, entire family generations would have passed, the species would have evolved for God's sake and what reason would they have to make such a journey unless their star is dying? We're near the youngest part of the solar system, any homeless alien species searching for a new solar system is nowhere near us seeing as the stars surrounding us are relatively young still. No alien species in our surrounding solar systems have a reason to attempt a journey to another star, let alone ours.
If light speed is possible and the journey time between nearby stars is a few years then we still have no reason to believe aliens would visit us. Any civilizations that exist in nearby solar systems will surely be near our age and not advanced enough either to have developed light travel. Nearer to the galactic centre (where older civilizations could be) is 28,000 light years away so any space-faring species there with light travel would still take a long time reaching us and perhaps wouldn't even bother, there's plenty of planets to inhabit/harvest etc around themselves, again, they wouldn't have reason to travel to our part the galaxy if they can light speed travel to each star around them in a few years and there's apparently around 300 billion stars in this galaxy (so think billions around the centre). You'd have to be a really thick alien species who has access to light travel to think "let's stop exploring the stars near us and go right deep to this random part of the galaxy 10-20,000 light years away and check it out! Numerous generations would have passed by then and we won't be alive when our great descendants reach this part of the galaxy but **** it, let's do it anyway!"
Even with a hypothetical cryogenic freezing machine that can make a frozen person immortal until they wake, what person would do such a journey where when they reach their destination, thousands of years would have passed and their own civilization could have long fallen? Besides, with so many stars (billions) and a low statistics for habitable planets, it makes sense that we won't encounter aliens for a long time (and perhaps we never will either). There's apparently around 300 billion stars in this galaxy (and therefore just as many solar systems) and apparently only a small percentage harbour life and have planets with the right atmosphere for life to live on so considering this speculation, it makes sense that we haven't encountered other life yet. For all we know, this galaxy might only harbour a couple of thousand of space-faring species and with billions of stars, that's a very low percentage still and makes meeting any alien species a very low chance.
tl;dr
We are not omniscient and our current knowledge of this universe and our own galaxy is too small to be making absolute claims. My argument above (which I don't hold to be factual, I'm simply going on some speculation too along with statistics from actual reputable scientists) also explains why it makes sense that we haven't encountered any alien species. Many astrobiologists who are good mathematicians also have said pretty much the same in the past too. The universe is a giant place and ever expanding, if life exists on this planet then I'm certain it can exist elsewhere too.
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