2 essays about Moon Landing Denial compared to other denials

[MH69]

Found these 2 long essays about Moon Landing Denial compared to other denials.

http://roseandrock.blogspot.com/2005...nd-denial.html
http://roseandrock.blogspot.com/2005...moon-hoax.html

They have been written by a "Kevin Rosero - Location: Brooklyn, New York" and he has many fine points.

From http://roseandrock.blogspot.com/2005...nd-denial.html

"Creationists will find this insulting, but let me say that I do not see a single further parallel between creationism and the Moon Hoax, other than the superficial fact that both deal centrally with the subjects studied by the "hard" sciences, and that both, in my opinion, ultimately reject the good work done by those sciences – with the qualification that the Moon Hoaxers have also lost touch with modern history, and have rejected science in a way that finally defeats sympathy and respect. I for one do not hold the theory of intelligent design, which is now a popular successor to creationism (at least as I see it), but I do hold it to be respectable and worthy of discussion; I hold orthodox creationism to be worthy of discussion, too, though I do not regard it as a scientific theory. The Moon Hoax, by contrast, does not and should not ever command any kind of basic respect, as a theory. Even taking the time to discuss it publicly is rightfully questioned as a good use of time. Moon Hoaxers lie, and heap calumnies on people who are said to be behind the hoax; creationists don’t behave this way. Creationists have all their bearings on the ground and lead lives that I consider as a model of faith; Moon Hoaxers are a breed, frankly, who waste all our time and energy. But that is a subject for another post."

......... and from http://roseandrock.blogspot.com/2005...moon-hoax.html:

"Perhaps Ryan can correct my memory of this exchange about the Moon Hoax, but that's how I remember it. And I do recall clearly thinking that the refutation of the Moon Hoax used logical thinking that reminded me of Father Meier's work -- not in subject matter, of course, but in a style of argument that appreciated and respected human psychology (as I will describe below). I could be the only person in the world who has connected these two subjects this way, but then there may not be many people who read both Meier's work and that of Philip C. Plait, an astronomer known partly for refuting the idea that we never went to the moon (he may have written some of Ryan's articles). His site, Bad Astronomy, is one of my favorites; its larger purpose, quite apart from refuting the Moon Hoax, is to challenge all pseudo-scientific or unscientific thinking. So in a sense, even though its subject is always astronomy, it's about how to get good knowledge and to recognize bad thinking (including conspiracy theories), a subject of potential interest to anyone. He has a page tackling the bad science behind the Moon Hoax."

[The Bad Astronomer]

Moon Hoaxers lie, and heap calumnies on people who are said to be behind the hoax; creationists don’t behave this way. Creationists have all their bearings on the ground and lead lives that I consider as a model of faith; Moon Hoaxers are a breed, frankly, who waste all our time and energy. But that is a subject for another post.

That Moon Hoaxers lie I have no doubt. I have proof of that! But saying creationists don't is rather funny to me. Duane Gish is well-known for his semantic antics, and William Dembski recently had his head handed to him in the blogosphere for quote mining.

Mind you, do not confuse my words about people who go out and talk about these topics, versus people who passively believe in them. Bart Sibrel is a known liar, but someone who reads his bilge and believes it is not. They are just getting fooled.

[Gillianren]

that's just what I was thinking, actually. there are creationists who know that what they're saying isn't true--no, I can't remember names, but they do exist--at least as far as their discussion of archaeology. for example, they know that most hoaxes are exposed by paleontologists, yet they still use hoaxes as examples to prove that the whole science is flawed.

do most creationists do this? no, but they have been indoctrinated into believing the same thing. I would say that anyone who makes a living in either is either running a scam or a bad scientist. (I hope saying that is okay.)

[HypothesisTesting]

I prefer to focus on the evidence moon hoaxers have presented. I have studied this carefully, and conclude that there is as much evidence that USA went to moon as did not. For instance, Jack White's photo study seems convincing to me, despite the work I've seen answering his, arguing that he made errors in analysis. I can see the powerful political reasons for a hoax, and it wouldn't be hard to pull off, with all the video feed going through NASA.

On the other hand, the astronauts like Aldrin and Mitchell, seem totally sincere and it's hard to believe they would willingly do this.

So I'll leave this issue in the maybe? category until a lot more evidence comes out.

[Decayed Orbit]

So I'll leave this issue in the maybe? category until a lot more evidence comes out.

What more evidence would you like to see? For that matter, what more evidence do you expect to come out that hasn't come out in the past 35-40 years?

[Bob B.]

... and it wouldn't be hard to pull off ...

After taking the time to study the topic in depth, any rational person will conclude that a hoax would have been impossible to pull off. No hoax theory can explain the sum total of the evidence.

[Irishman]

HypothesisTesting, I suggest you do some more reading at this website, and even post some questions in new threads for specific things you find convincing about Jack White's photo study or other aspects of hoax.

For one example, you state that it would not be hard for NASA to pull a hoax given that all video feed went through NASA. This is factually incorrect. Some of the video was downlinked directly by foreign nationals (e.g. Australians). They had direct feed of the signals and relayed them to NASA. Consider also that while the video signals may have needed special equipment to receive, the audio signals were broadcast in the clear and picked up by amateur radio operators around the world.

Also consider those political reasons for a hoax. They include convincing the world that the U.S. was better than the Russians because we got to the Moon first. So given that, don't you think the Russians would have been scrutinizing things very closely to keep the U.S. honest? Do you think the Russians were unable to monitor the U.S. efforts? Even the Soviets admitted that the U.S. got to the moon.

I think you're giving Jack White a lot more credit than he deserves.

[JayUtah]

For instance, Jack White's photo study seems convincing to me...

What specifically about it convinces you? What do you think he got right?

...despite the work I've seen answering his, arguing that he made errors in analysis.

What specifically is wrong with the refutations? Do you agree that he made errors? Or do you just choose to dismiss the criticism of his findings?

I can see the powerful political reasons for a hoax...

I can see powerful reasons for a conspiracy theory: personal greed and attention. Not only that, I see behavioral evidence that those reasons, and not a search for truth, motivates the conspiracy theorists.

If motivation alone were a reasonable jumping-off point for a line of reasoning, then both of these arguments would make sense. But whether a hoax occurred or not is not a matter of whether someone had a motive to do it. Whether a hoax occurred or not is a matter of objective evidence. In other words, instead of trying to argue, "Someone had a motive to do X, therefore X was done," you should be trying to argue, "If X was done, then fact Y would be observed (and by no other cause); I observe Y, therefore X is likely."

First prove that a hoax occurred. Then, if you wish, examine reasons for why that hoax came about. To do it your way puts the cart before the horse.

...and it wouldn't be hard to pull off, with all the video feed going through NASA.

Identifying a point at which something might speculatively occur is not the same as showing that the occurrence itself is simple, or even possible.

On the other hand, the astronauts like Aldrin and Mitchell, seem totally sincere and it's hard to believe they would willingly do this.

No engineer would do it. Engineers are attracted by solving hard problems, not by lying about having solved hard problems.

So I'll leave this issue in the maybe? category until a lot more evidence comes out.

What specific additional evidence are you looking for?

[JayUtah]

I prefer to focus on the evidence moon hoaxers have presented.

By and large, it's not evidence. Most of it is argumentation of the form, "Normally you would expect X to be observed. We observe Y instead. Y can only be explained by some hoax theory. Therefore it was hoaxed."

The strength of that line of reasoning rests on the premises, "Normally you would expect X to be observed," and "Y can only be explained by some hoax theory."

Very few conspiracy theorists take the trouble to establish why "Normally you would expect X to be observed." That is, their claims of anomaly rest on their personal expectation. If you're going to define an anomaly by measurement against an expectation, then the objective strength of that expectation is essential to the argument. If the expectation is instead simplistic or based on a few isolated observations, then it cannot be used as a yardstick against which to define an anomaly.

And the premise, "Y can only be explained by some hoax theory," is usually established only by elimination. That is, the conspiracist identifies a few token potential causes that are shown not to produce Y, and therefore by some purported process of elimination he claims to have shown that the "only" remaining explanation is some sort of hoax. That fails for two reasons. First, if you plan to prove something indirectly then you bear the burden of proof to show that your examination was exhaustive and appropriately falsificatory. You can't stop at a few straw men. You can't skimp on the falsification. Second, proof by elimination is unsatisfying if no direct, positive evidence substantiates your claim and it would otherwise be expected. That is especially true when the claim is extraordinary. "Proving" some farfetched claim indirectly is a weak argument.

So here's a typical Jack White claim. http://www.clavius.org/bigmt.html

Fitting it to our syllogistic framework we have, "In real photography we expect the depicted distant objects to be the same size. Here they aren't. Photographer movement does not account for that change in size, so it has to be the result of some nearby backdrop or botched cut-and-paste."

The premise of equal size holds only if certain photogrammetric controls are applied. Not only did White fail to apply them, he specifically defeated the controls that were handed to him on a silver platter. The Apollo lunar surface photography includes a reseau grid which is specifically used to normalize photograph size and correct distortion.

Of course the movement of the photographer can't account for the apparent change in size. No one is arguing that it does in this case. That's just the straw man White throws out there so that he has something against which to contrast his own conclusion.

In rushing to his desired conclusion, he has omitted the actual explanation: the difference in size is due entirely to his mishandling of the images. He has cropped the pictures and resized one of them, making its mountain appear bigger. Historically, the crop-and-resize trick is one that White has used repeatedly. I have witnessed for 7 years people telling him how and why this cannot be done without violating the premises of his arguments, but he is impervious to it. That is, however, why the "anomaly" appears.

And White offers absolutely no confirmatory evidence of a backdrop or of photo doctoring. He merely dresses up a circular argument with the illusion of rigor. Evidence of a backdrop would include observations that can only come from a backdrop. (For example, the exploding-Krypton scene in Superman where the black velvet drape can be seen in the explosion element.) Evidence of photo composition would be evidence that can only be explained by composition -- e.g., vast differences in optical density across the composition boundary, or discontinuity from negative-trimming. Instead White merely reverses the implication.

His approach on this point is logically wrong. It's methodologically wrong. It arrives at the "hoax" conclusion only because White fixed the evidence so it would. How does this not justify rejecting the claim?

[sts60]

Hi, HypothesisTesting. Welcome.

I prefer to focus on the evidence moon hoaxers have presented. I have studied this carefully, and conclude that there is as much evidence that USA went to moon as did not.

I don't think you've really grasped the scope of the evidence. Are you saying the arguments of the hoax believers ("HBs") is about equal to:
- the personal testimony of 12 astronauts who walked on the Moon, and a number more who orbited it?
- the personal experience of literally hundreds of thousands of government and contractor personnel who worked on it? Tens of thousands of them could have told you whether a particular system would have worked as stated.
- the hundreds of kilograms of carefully documented, differentiated samples brought back from the Moon, and the experience of thousands of scientists worldwide who have studied them?
- thousands upon thousands of carefully-coordinated high-resolution photographs and hundreds of hours of film and video motion imager?
- the experience of the then-Soviet Union, which tried very hard to do the same thing, and acknowledged the Apollo program's success?
- tens of thousands of scientists and engineers who have used the space environmental data gathered by and in support of Apollo to study space physics and to successfully operate satellites and other space probes?
- the experience of astronomers who are still using the laser retroreflectors hand-placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts?
- years of data on the lunar environment collected by the ALSEP experiments, which had to be hand-fueled and manually set up on the Moon?
- the technical and managerial knowledge gained during Apollo which is standard practice today?
- the hundreds of tons of flight and test hardware still available for public inspection?

For instance, Jack White's photo study seems convincing to me, despite the work I've seen answering his, arguing that he made errors in analysis.

I'm no photo analyst, but when a guy literally can't tell which side of the LM he's looking at, it does not inspire confidence in his ability to analyze Apollo imagery.

I can see the powerful political reasons for a hoax,

And I can see the even more powerful reason not to do it, given its inevitable revelation. How do you expect a hoax not only to fool the best experts of the day across the world, but also be immune to all further scientific progress?

and it wouldn't be hard to pull off,

Please explain why it would be easy to pull off hoaxing the evidence discussed above.

with all the video feed going through NASA.

No. There were tracking stations in other nations as well that cooperated with NASA but were not NASA-owned. That applies even more so to the ALSEP telemetry. Furthermore, other nations and amateur groups tracked Apollo missions.

On the other hand, the astronauts like Aldrin and Mitchell, seem totally sincere and it's hard to believe they would willingly do this.

I've had the pleasure to meet some Apollo astronauts, and work with Apollo engineers and other Apollo-era astronauts. I find the notion they would be willing to go along with a hoax, or unable to perceive it, utterly laughable.

So I'll leave this issue in the maybe? category until a lot more evidence comes out.

It comes back to the question already posed by several people - given the evidence discussed above, what else do you want? If you're going to say "photographs of Apollo artifacts on the Moon", why would you reject the ones we already have, but accept images which will be all-electronic from the start, and pass through many hands prior to being seen by you?

[Gillianren]

Guys, this is a two-year-old thread.

[Serenitude]

Guys, this is a two-year-old thread.

Necromancy is alive and well in our enlightened era.






*Don't feel bad, folks - I didn't catch that either *

[BertL]

Gillianren is right at this thread being two years old. However, the poster everyone is responding to HypothesisTesting, who has very recently bumped* this thread, with a slightly relevant post. Therefore the current 'discussion' (as far as you can call it one) is not necromancy, but it's a new discussion in an earlier started thread.

* Where I hang out posting a new post in a very old thread is called bumping. Bumping it back to the first page of a forum, or something. I don't really know where the term came from.

[Grand_Lunar]

Does Jack White spout the complaint about star not being visible in photos taken on the lunar surface?
If so, that's another big reason to doubt him; he, like other hoax believers, holds a double standard.

[nomuse]

One star is far too visible for Jack. Every reflection it casts off the internals of the cameras becomes "A stage lighting fixture!"

(Which look like no stage or photography fixture that I am aware of, are in a place most LDs -- or DPs -- would be clumsy indeed to leave them, aka in full view of the camera, and finally appear to be casting no useful light into the scene.)

[JayUtah]

Yes, there's a huge difference between saying, "That must be some kind of lighting equipment, because I can't think of anything else it could possibly be," and "That's a Strand SL-125 on a 14-foot Manfrotto truss -- here's a photo of my similar setup taken from a similar angle." One is a positive identification. The other is a fervent wish.

[PhantomWolf]

Jack White's photo study seems convincing to me

ROFLMAO. Where is the JREF laughing Dog when I need it? With Jack's lack of ability at determing 3D, I'm surprised he can walk around a room without tripping over.

[Svector]

ROFLMAO. Where is the JREF laughing Dog when I need it? With Jack's lack of ability at determing 3D, I'm surprised he can walk around a room without tripping over.

Seeming convincing to throngs of laymen who have no desire or means to authenticate his methods, is the mode by which Jack White continues to hold an audience.

If he lacked the ability to warp (and therefore misrepresent) relatively complex events into easily digestible nuggets for the masses, no one would know his name. As with all ideological HBs, it's not loyalty to truth that compels them; it's figuring out how to remain relevant.

Keeping his audience is priority one. A devotion to truth through the scientific process isn't even in his top 20.

[Ronald Brak]

What it comes down to is this - Monkeys determine status by mounting each other, humans do it via words. IDers, moon hoaxers, the superstitious and so on often mistake scientific discussion forums as a place to perform status displays. Since a status display has little to do with reason or objectivity what they say often is unreasonable and unobjective. It is instead about identifying the enemy, gathering support and doing battle. Right and wrong doesn't come into it, just us and them. Often people who are not completely unreasonable (i.e. an average human) can be roped in or led astray by those obsessed with battleing for status. It is possible to set these normal people straight. But a true status hound almost never admits being mistaken, even though they can be driven off by being laughed at.

[tsig]

What it comes down to is this - Monkeys determine status by mounting each other, humans do it via words. IDers, moon hoaxers, the superstitious and so on often mistake scientific discussion forums as a place to perform status displays. Since a status display has little to do with reason or objectivity what they say often is unreasonable and unobjective. It is instead about identifying the enemy, gathering support and doing battle. Right and wrong doesn't come into it, just us and them. Often people who are not completely unreasonable (i.e. an average human) can be roped in or led astray by those obsessed with battleing for status. It is possible to set these normal people straight. But a true status hound almost never admits being mistaken, even though they can be driven off by being laughed at.

Then let us laugh.

[easytiger831]

Of course the truth is that hoax theorists only come up with their implausible explanations because they are attention seekers and crave the possibility that people will listen to, and believe them. The best way to silence them is to pay no attention at all and then, like a tiresome child, they will get bored and go away. It is, of course, entirely possible that we, in an attempt to debunk them are, by the very nature of this forum, perpetuating them.

[R.A.F.]

Of course the truth is that hoax theorists only come up with their implausible explanations because they are attention seekers and crave the possibility that people will listen to, and believe them.

That might be true for some, but not for all Hbs.

The best way to silence them is to pay no attention at all and then, like a tiresome child, they will get bored and go away.

This is not borne out by evidence. Moon hoax belief is the same as belief in alien piloted UFO's (or for that matter, any CT)...as long as there is a dime to be made out of it, then it's not going to "go away".

It is, of course, entirely possible that we, in an attempt to debunk them are, by the very nature of this forum, perpetuating them.

Even if this were so, what is the alternative?...to silently sit back and let HBs misinform others as to what the truth is? How can any self respecting scientist (or person) allow that?

[JayUtah]

The best way to silence them is to pay no attention at all and then, like a tiresome child, they will get bored and go away.

No, they don't. They get louder and louder, bolder and bolder, more persistent in attracting the attention they crave.

It is, of course, entirely possible that we, in an attempt to debunk them are, by the very nature of this forum, perpetuating them.

Possible, but not likely. Conspiracists generally don't crave our kind of attention, and they avoid it when they can. They crave gullibility, not skepticism. They know their ideas can't survive a fair fight, so they go to great lengths to make the fight unfair in their favor. Web sites like this one teach critical thinking and give examples of it. If more people thought critically out of habit, conspiracy theorists would soon realize that the only kind of attention they're likely to get is that which puts their ideas to rigorous tests. Ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away rarely has the desired outcome. It usually ends up prolonging and exacerbating a crisis.

Many conspiracy theorists are good at making their theories not seem like conspiracy theories. The reader may not have the time or expertise to see through the misstated facts and poor reasoning. We don't have to fear poorly-supported ideas. We don't have to dispel them at all costs. But not to provide an alternative for people to measure against the conspiracy theory leaves them a very difficult choice between the conspiracy theory and some explanation they have to come up with on their own.

[KaiYeves]

The words that matter most when discussing conspiracy theories are "inner desires". Conspiracy theories fufill inner desires. The desire to have secret knowledge. The desire to feel important, intelligent or rightous. The desire to have a reason for distrusting the governement or hating group X.