Skinner's work was pretty good, but in his analysis on why it was discarded he might be ignoring several factors outside of his area of expertise.
First of all - while in his " Pigeons in Pelican" article Skinner states that no other guidance system existed for the bomb, in fact, Pelican already had two of them - televised and semi-active radar homing; tests began in December of 1942. Those systems were not quite combat-ready, though, which might've be the reason for Skinner's statement: radar guidance system required a particular aircraft to be used (Lockheed PV-1 Ventura - a patrol version of B-34 Lexington, which swapped some of the forward armament for a nose-mounted ASD-1 search radar), which was both in (relatively) short supply and would've its range reduced by the weight of the bomb (which, according to admiral evaluating the program, made it unfit for Pacific theater); and television guidance wasn't very accurate. It was due to those two years of testing that the Pelican program was cancelled on September 18, 1944, and in turn, in October Project Pigeon was cancelled too.
Second - same article states the ORCON experiments have shown the accuracy of pigeon-based system at 55.3%. Impressive? Not necessarily. The tests were a series - first group was a test for being able to track an image of distant ship for a prolonged time (that's where the figure of 55,3% successes comes from - it was an aggregate of several "high-performer" birds with success rate of over 80%, which gave hope for improving results of the system by selecting "better" birds during training); second test was tracking the enlarged version of same picture (testing for pigeons being able to still recognise the target while approaching closer - 60% aggregate result, again with same birds performing better than the others; but with a caveat that behavior of the bird might be different with actual animated image and additional testing would be needed); but the third test was the most important for the military - in it the birds were presented with a variety of targets in different aspects and on different background. Interestingly, pigeons did not care much for changes in targets or backgrounds (i.e. there was no difference in results between same-aspect pictures of a destroyer and a freighter), but changes in aspect seemed to stump the birds. Results of the last series were much worse - average result of 31% successes, with top performers reaching 40%. We can compare that to SARH guidance - previous to Pelican's cancellation, its electronically guided variant was actually tested against a training target. 2 out of 4 dropped Pelicans hit the target - pretty much the same result; and by 1948 electronic systems were improved.
Third - ORCON experiments of 1948 data shows that the simulated speed the system was tested for is 400 mph. That's not a lot, even for 1944 - the Gorgon missile family, which was in development since 1943, was slated to have speeds upwards of 500 mph. Later (1947) versions of those missiles could reach 600 mph, and the missiles under development in 1948 would again be faster. I couldn't find why exactly 400 mph speed was chosen - but it wasn't a good choice. Moreover, the original WW2 program included acceleration tests using a centrifuge, but ORCON program makes no mention of such testing - and powered missiles available by that time (Pelican was an unpowered glide bomb) could've negatively affected the living guidance system.
To sum up - while Project Pigeon might have been unfairly (due to lack of full evaluation) deemed "crackpot" in 1944 by biased physicists, it isn't very clear that it was actually better than radar guidance in 1944. Its inability to be jammed was a plus - but pigeons having difficulties with recognising the target in different aspects would be a big problem for practical application; moreover, SARH system was already undergoing testing for quite some time while Project Pigeon was still under evaluation.
Sources:
B.F. Skinner, "Pigeons in Pelican" (retrieved here)
"Research Reviews", Office of Naval Research, Department of the Navy, September 1959, pg. 20 (retrieved here)
Norman Friedman, "US Naval Weapons", Conway Maritime Press, 1983
