I used to love this

Rating: 5/10 (26 September 2015)

When this movie came out I thought it was great. When I saw it again I was raging against the stupidity. The arguments are so lame and weak. It is mostly a political and religious drama with no real scientific thought.
As always nobody states the basic premise of science as their defense. Nothing can be proved only disproved. We must constantly challenge all assumptions.
Why should she not resign her testimony in the hearing? Because it would be unscientific. There are several realities possible based on observed fact. One should not conclude one as the truth and the others as false when there is no evidence to that fact as that would be unscientific.
Christian religion gets such a huge dominating position in this movie. As does Scientific dominance of the U.S.
In reality other nations would have ignored the U.S. and built their own program, so there would be competing government funded initiatives.
Moreover no sane venture funded S.E.T.I. program would hand over finding to the U.S. government. Why? It is freely available information, so why not just record everything and spend a couple of years analysing the data.
This movie script really reflects a cold war mindset.