Do You Believe?

I was just watching a television show on UFOs with my significant other, mostly because she's fond of them and I'm fond of her. But one of the commentaries drove me off of the sofa and in here to the keyboard, because there is something about you humans I really don't understand. In nearly every program there are "experts" whose mission is to convince those who want to believe Earth is being visited by aliens that they are really suffering from some other, more "logical" physical or psychological malady -- like sleep paralysis, mass hysteria, or even a modern religious crisis that has believers turning from the traditional deities to ET.

I'm flattered by the latter, of course, but I think these scholars are missing the point. Why isn't someone asking why a human wouldn't want to believe in intelligent extraterrestrial life? Is it simply fear of the unknown? Just a few hundred years ago, explorers took to the sea in boats which now look incredibly fragile and they did it even though they suspected they risked being eaten by sea monsters or falling off the edge of the Earth. Today, more people know more about this planet, and each other, than ever before, and seem more risk-adverse than ever. Has humanity as a whole lost its willingness to go where there might be monsters? Or am I the one who's missing the point?