Avi Loeb is an interesting scientist. I read a longer article about him that gave some more background about his work [1]. While he is famous for going on podcasts and making wild claims about objects being signs of alien intelligence, the actual hard science that he's doing is interesting. E.g, this expedition he managed to get funding to recover these extrasolar particles. The clickbaity pop media says that this is…
What is Loeb's reputation among astrophysicists? He's written "over 800 scientific papers". Is that... a good thing in his field?
No...it really isn't.
If you want a very accurate and in depth breakdown of why, i suggest you watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY985qzn7oI
If you don't want to do the whole thing, just jump to his lovely little interaction with Jill Tarter.
Then look at all the comments trying to somehow give this snake oil salesman credibility. He's a publicity chaser who's past his prime and cashing in on his reputation and abusing his position. The fact harvard is profiting from it frankly is a disgrace.