20 Questions for Apollo Hoax Proponents.

[JayUtah]

From a point of view of formal logic you are right.

Not only from formal logic, but also from historical method. You can't presume to characterize the entirety of the record if you have not seen the entirety of the record.

However if a person could say they have seen a thousand images and they are all or nearly all perfect then they could reasonably say there is something odd going on and requires further investigation.

No. It is not reasonable to let 20% of the data do all the talking unless you can discuss how those 1,000 frames were selected. As you pointed out, this is exactly the problem. The conspiracists do not do original research from the sources. Their exposure to Apollo materials comes from convenience sources and secondary materials -- tertiary in some cases. They look at books published with Apollo photos and presume that those selected photos represent the nature of the entire photographic record. They commit the "loaded dice" fallacy because their argument amounts to, "The few hundred photos commonly selected for publication represent a quality suspiciously high for photos taken in the field." They are suspiciously high quality because that was the criteria by which they were selected for publication from among those many thousands available, some of which are of atrocious quality.

The real question is, "What did you do to assure yourself that you have either seen all the photos, or a sample of them reasonably representative of their overall quality?"

If shown that the archive does contain the usual number of bad shots a died in the wool CT would probably say that they were planted to give the impression of reality.....

And that's fine, because then you have the subversion of support. The conspiracist wants you to explain why all the photographs are suspiciously good. High quality is the anomaly. If the photographs are not universally good, then there is no anomaly to explain. It doesn't matter how the record got to its state of normality. It only matters that it's normal.

Tom: "How did you make your car float six inches off the ground?"
Dick: "It's not."
Tom: "Oh, you probably just weighed it down so that it wouldn't float."

What about a non-levitating car needs explaining?

[Jason Thompson]

Just as a point of interest, it would probably be easy enough to take 1000 images from the various Apollo missions and use them, in conspiracist logic, to show that no pictures of any of the astronauts were taken on the Moon. Most of the pictures were taken for selenological study purposes, and therefore consist of landscapes, closeups of rocks, closeups of soil, more landscapes, more rocks etc. (as it happens, the famous picture of the footprint was taken for precisely that purpose, so geologists could see how the regolith behaved under compression). I doubt it would be hard to find 1000 pictures of nothing but lunar landscapes with no LM, no astronauts, no rover, no ALSEP equipment, no flag, etc.

This would be an ironic counter-argument since most conspiracists don't even know that most of the pictures were just landscapes and the like, their only exposure having been to the commonly published images of men on the Moon.

[Jason Thompson]

What about a non-levitating car needs explaining?

Why we don't have them yet when all those cartoons and sci-fi films assured us we would!

[PhantomWolf]

I doubt it would be hard to find 1000 pictures of nothing but lunar landscapes with no LM, no astronauts, no rover, no ALSEP equipment, no flag, etc.

Hmmm, I think you might be pushing it, especially from the later J-missions. While you could go with pans and attempt it, a lot of the J-Mission pans and shots were done while traveling on the rover and often you'll find that nearly the entire roll has the LRV camera smack bang in the middle of the image. Add to that, that many of the images of rocks of significant interest generally have the gnomon in them.

[JayUtah]

There was some question about whether the 16mm DAC or the 70mm Hasselblads would be best suited for recording the LRV traverses on the J-missions. The point was that the photographic record would be reviewed later and compared with terrain maps to show precisely where the LRV had traveled. Some of the black-and-white 70mm rolls taken on the J-missions were simply traverse records. They didn't have to be exquisitely framed, properly focused (although that wasn't hard -- set to inifinity) or finely exposed. Basically it was, "Point lens away from you for best results."

[JonClarke]

From a point of view of formal logic you are right.

Not only from formal logic, but also from historical method. You can't presume to characterize the entirety of the record if you have not seen the entirety of the record.

No. It is impossible to know everything about any historical subject. Not everything is recorded, data becomes lost, or is otherwise unavailable, or may be simply irrelevant.

Therefore it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a CT or anyone else to have seen the Apollo photo record in its entirety. However is is fair and reasonable to ask how many photos have they actually seen and how representative these are of the whole.

However if a person could say they have seen a thousand images and they are all or nearly all perfect then they could reasonably say there is something odd going on and requires further investigation.

No. It is not reasonable to let 20% of the data do all the talking unless you can discuss how those 1,000 frames were selected.

I agree, but if someone did look at the ~1000 photos (say all those from a specific mission, or randomly selected from thwe whole) and they were all or nearly all "perfect" (inself something that would need to be defined) then they would have grounds for further investigation as to why this would be the case.

As you pointed out, this is exactly the problem. The conspiracists do not do original research from the sources. Their exposure to Apollo materials comes from convenience sources and secondary materials -- tertiary in some cases. They look at books published with Apollo photos and presume that those selected photos represent the nature of the entire photographic record. They commit the "loaded dice" fallacy because their argument amounts to, "The few hundred photos commonly selected for publication represent a quality suspiciously high for photos taken in the field." They are suspiciously high quality because that was the criteria by which they were selected for publication from among those many thousands available, some of which are of atrocious quality.

The real question is, "What did you do to assure yourself that you have either seen all the photos, or a sample of them reasonably representative of their overall quality?"

Agree

Jon

[Dave J]

Concerning the photos, all one needs to do is visit ASLJ and peruse through the photos of any one mission. The number of "less than perfectly framed" shots are evident. Anyone who does the slightest bit of research would very quickly see the fallacy of that particular HB claim.

Excellent set of questions there. Unfortunately, they require some subject knowledge, or gathering thereof, which the HBs evidently abhor...

[PhantomWolf]

No. It is impossible to know everything about any historical subject. Not everything is recorded, data becomes lost, or is otherwise unavailable, or may be simply irrelevant.

This arguement is irrelevant. We know that the data is not lost, that it all has been scanned (asside from a few totally black images) and is easily available to those that can use a mouse and Internet Explorer. As such, it's not an unrealitic expectation to someone that makes the claim of having studied the subject intimately.

Therefore it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a CT or anyone else to have seen the Apollo photo record in its entirety. However is is fair and reasonable to ask how many photos have they actually seen and how representative these are of the whole.

You are still missing the point. If you haven't seen all the photos, How can you make a claim that includes all the photos? Even if you think you have a good representation of the group, you still can't make a generalisation about the group as an entirely unless you have seen it because the ones you haven't may prove your generalisation incorrect. Yet this is exactly what the HP do. They generalise about the entire set by a few, something they are not entitled to do. Let me return to my American Anaology above. Can I make such a claim even if I have met every American bar one? No, I can't, because that one American might be the very one that proves that not all Americans fit my generalisation based on the rest.

I agree, but if someone did look at the ~1000 photos (say all those from a specific mission, or randomly selected from thwe whole) and they were all or nearly all "perfect" (inself something that would need to be defined) then they would have grounds for further investigation as to why this would be the case.

Yes, this is true, but even so you still can't say ALL images are suspisous, you can only say that "Based on the images I have seen, something maybe suspisous with them." HP's don't do this. They make two claims. "I have looked at ALL the evidence for Apollo," If they haven't seen all the images then this is untrue, and "ALL the images are too perfect, too well frames, too profesional, etc." Again, even if one image from all of those taken isn't as claimed, then this claim is simply wrong as well and without actually looking at all of the images, how can you know if there is or isn't one that falisifies your claim?

[Donnie B.]

In response to question #3 .
I think there were five lander training vehicles three of which were destroyed in crashes.
I also think that Armstrong only managed to get about 40 minutes of flight time before going to the Moon.
I doubt any of the training was over a crater field drawn from orbital photo's in brownout conditions, 7 seconds of fuel and only the eight ball to look at.
No wonder a lot of Apollo Astronauts quit the job.

How many Apollo astronauts "quit the job"? What's that number as a percentage of the astronaut corps? How does this attrition rate compare to that of other dangerous jobs?

I'm not sure what you're implying, but I doubt very much that any astronaut left the space program because of fear for his personal safety. Indeed, quite a few of the astronauts were former test pilots, and probably were doing a somewhat safer job than their previous one.

[Tog]

On the subject of the number of pictures needed, I would make the analogy that "professional" pictures from the Moon are like Taxis in New York City. I've never been there, so the only evididence I have about the color of taxis in NYC comes from movies and TV. I don't recall ever seing one that wasn't yellow. My (flawed) conclusion therefore is that all taxis in NYC are yellow.

I may have seen taxis of other colors, but i don't recall them, or becasue I was assuming all were yellow, I didn't know the others I saw were taxis.

I think that the term every may sound overly inclusive, but it's needed because any term less than "every" is open to interpretation. I might add something like "Have you reviewed all of the appoximately 30,000 pictures form the missions?" Something to give some idea of the sheer number of pictures that were taken so that when they say, "Well the 80 I saw looked really good..." the question itself has already started to show the error in the claim.

[Jason Thompson]

Therefore it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a CT or anyone else to have seen the Apollo photo record in its entirety.

No it is not, for the reasons given. The entire set of Hasselblad pictures from each Apollo mission is freely available to all if you know where to find it. I have already outlined a straightforward process whereby I intend to have viewed all the pictures, all the television and all the film captured on the APollo missions. If I can do it it is not unreasonable to ask someone else if they have, especially if they make claims that require them to have done that.

Now I agree it would not be possible to have seen the entire Apollo record including technical specs, astronaut biographies, telementry, blueprints, memoirs, etc because there is just too much. However, the small section that is the 70mm Hasselblad images is viewable by one person in far less than one lifetime.

However is is fair and reasonable to ask how many photos have they actually seen and how representative these are of the whole.

But that's the point you seem to keep missing. How could they know how representative the images are of the whole if they haven't seen the whole?

[JonClarke]

No. It is impossible to know everything about any historical subject. Not everything is recorded, data becomes lost, or is otherwise unavailable, or may be simply irrelevant.

This arguement is irrelevant. We know that the data is not lost, that it all has been scanned (asside from a few totally black images) and is easily available to those that can use a mouse and Internet Explorer. As such, it's not an unrealitic expectation to someone that makes the claim of having studied the subject intimately.

I am speaking generally. Some data is always lost, it's the nature of the historic record. The memories of deceased astronauts for example, redundant technical documentation. Some may have been deliberately destroyed, not through some nefarious conspiracy, but because of routine housekeeping may not have apprciated its value. It this particular case of the image record the data is not lost, but that was not the point I was making.

Therefore it is unrealistic and unfair to expect a CT or anyone else to have seen the Apollo photo record in its entirety. However is is fair and reasonable to ask how many photos have they actually seen and how representative these are of the whole.

You are still missing the point. If you haven't seen all the photos, How can you make a claim that includes all the photos? Even if you think you have a good representation of the group, you still can't make a generalisation about the group as an entirely unless you have seen it because the ones you haven't may prove your generalisation incorrect. Yet this is exactly what the HP do. They generalise about the entire set by a few, something they are not entitled to do. Let me return to my American Anaology above. Can I make such a claim even if I have met every American bar one? No, I can't, because that one American might be the very one that proves that not all Americans fit my generalisation based on the rest.

I am not missing the point at all. How many CT's and, more importantly, people influenced by them actually claim to have seen all the photos? Rather than insisting they see all the photos I think it would be more productive to get them to acknowledge how many they have actually seen, how small a fraction this is of the total, and that all the images can be freely downloaded.

I agree, but if someone did look at the ~1000 photos (say all those from a specific mission, or randomly selected from thwe whole) and they were all or nearly all "perfect" (inself something that would need to be defined) then they would have grounds for further investigation as to why this would be the case.

Yes, this is true, but even so you still can't say ALL images are suspisous, you can only say that "Based on the images I have seen, something maybe suspisous with them." HP's don't do this. They make two claims. "I have looked at ALL the evidence for Apollo," If they haven't seen all the images then this is untrue, and "ALL the images are too perfect, too well frames, too profesional, etc." Again, even if one image from all of those taken isn't as claimed, then this claim is simply wrong as well and without actually looking at all of the images, how can you know if there is or isn't one that falisifies your claim?

This is correct, I merely suggest that my proposal, to getherm to quantify how much of the image data they have actually seen, is a better question to ask than the more confrontational one listed.

Jon

[Jason Thompson]

It this particular case of the image record the data is not lost, but that was not the point I was making.

But what relevance did your point have to the question? The question specifically referred to a section of the record that is known to exist in its entirety and be readily available for perusal.


How many CT's and, more importantly, people influenced by them actually claim to have seen all the photos?

As we have already stated, it is implicit in a number of their arguments. All the pictures are too well framed. All the pictures show odd shadow angles. There are no pictures with stars in the sky. There are no pictures of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface (OK, that one is restricted to the Apollo 11 set, but still requires the arguer to have seen every picture to ascertain that there are no pictures of Armstrong). There are no pictures of astronauts with the Earth in the sky. There are no pictures of the Earth taken from the lunar surface. All these are statements I have seen in print or on boards such as this, and all of them make explicit statements about the entirety of the photographic record. It is not unreasonable therefore to ask if the person making those statements has seen the entire record in order to draw those conclusions.

From personal experience, I have never heard a CT phrase those arguments as 'I have never seen any-' or 'all the pictures I have seen are-' Always they are stated as fact, and always in order to state such a fact authoritatively one must have seen the whole record.

to getherm to quantify how much of the image data they have actually seen, is a better question to ask

It is certainly a good question, but asking if they have seen all the pictures is still a valid question, especially if they make arguments such as those listed above.

[PhantomWolf]

As we have already stated, it is implicit in a number of their arguments.

Others include. "The pictures all look like they were shot in a studio," "The pictures all have obvious flaws in them," and "I have seen all the evidence for and against Apollo." (All actual HB quotes.)

Now sure, a lot of that is just parroting the HP's videos and books, but this is what I'm saying, if you are going to act as a Proponent for a claim, you have to be prepared to back it up, and when they make a claim, either directly or implied indirectly in their claim, they need to be prepared to be called on it, and I don't see the point in beating about the bush while doing so. The question as written cuts right to the heart of the claim without kid gloves or molly-codding. If that seems harsh, well didums. If viewing all the Images is unrealistic, then they make an unrealistic claim, so why can't I ask for an "unrealistic" (I don't actually believe it is) amount of research.

Besides, The quiestion isn't expecting them to go and DO the research, it's about asking them how they can make blanket claims about the entire catagory of Apollo photos and footages without having done that research.

Jon, do you really believe that it is fair and proper to make generalisations about groups of things or people without first making sure that you know it's actually true? And if you don't think it is fair to do so, how do you determine if your sample is truely representative of the entire group without your knowing the actual make up of the entire group?

Let's put this into a Geology example. Say I am out in the field collecting rocks at a site which is a volcanic slope. I pick up a number of carefully selected rocks from different locations about the slope and then looking at them all I note that they are all basalts. Can I therefore make the absolute claim that all the rock on this slope is indeed basalt and thus totally rule out the possiblity of any occurance of obsidians, breccias and rhyolites? Of course I can't. What I can say is that from the study I have made that it appears that the slope is predominantly made up of basalts and thus is low in silicates, but unless I have checked every single rock and made sure that it is indeed a basalt, I can't make the exculsive statement that ALL rocks on the slope are basalt.

If I was writting a paper on the rock types on that slope and I claimed in it that "All the rocks on the slope were Basalt" or "No other rock type is present on the slope" I'd darn well expect someone to ask me if I checked every rock, and in the same way the claim, directly or indirectly, that the HP has veiwed all Apollo images needs the same response. Especially when they are acting as an Expert on Apollo and feeding their claims to others.

[Jakenorrish]

I'm astounded by the lack of HB'rs willing to take on the challenge! Well, no I'm not actually as that would involve research, knowledge and the ability to tell the difference between fact and fiction.

[jimc5499]

...and with references to the Kennedy assassination. None of those 20 questions even remotely discusses the Kennedy assassination. How do you expect to talk about anything in Conspiracyland without referring to the Kennedy assassination?

OK. NASA had him shot so that they were guarenteed funding for the Apollo Program by dedicating it as a legacy in Kennedy's memory.

[Peter B]

Why not post the 20 questions on Co(s)mic Dave's bulletin board?

Then again, perhaps not. Don't want to encourage too much activity there...

[Obviousman]

Why not post the 20 questions on Co(s)mic Dave's bulletin board?

Then again, perhaps not. Don't want to encourage too much activity there...

maybe it could be posted on Zarky's Omega Forum....

(inside joke)

[JonClarke]

It this particular case of the image record the data is not lost, but that was not the point I was making.

But what relevance did your point have to the question? The question specifically referred to a section of the record that is known to exist in its entirety and be readily available for perusal.

I read a comment by Jay about the nature of the completeness of historical records as a general statement and responded in kind.

How many CT's and, more importantly, people influenced by them actually claim to have seen all the photos?

As we have already stated, it is implicit in a number of their arguments. All the pictures are too well framed. All the pictures show odd shadow angles. There are no pictures with stars in the sky. There are no pictures of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface (OK, that one is restricted to the Apollo 11 set, but still requires the arguer to have seen every picture to ascertain that there are no pictures of Armstrong). There are no pictures of astronauts with the Earth in the sky. There are no pictures of the Earth taken from the lunar surface. All these are statements I have seen in print or on boards such as this, and all of them make explicit statements about the entirety of the photographic record. It is not unreasonable therefore to ask if the person making those statements has seen the entire record in order to draw those conclusions.

From personal experience, I have never heard a CT phrase those arguments as 'I have never seen any-' or 'all the pictures I have seen are-' Always they are stated as fact, and always in order to state such a fact authoritatively one must have seen the whole record.

However since the 20 questions are, by there very nature, designed include a broad a range of HBs as possible I still regard the more general rather than the more specific approach to be better.

to getherm to quantify how much of the image data they have actually seen, is a better question to ask

It is certainly a good question, but asking if they have seen all the pictures is still a valid question, especially if they make arguments such as those listed above.

But as noted the questions are for the broad spectrum of HB statements, not a specific instance. My proposed rephrasing equally asks them to engage with the record but does so in a slightly less aggressive manner which, in my experience, is more helpful.

Jon

[JonClarke]

In part you said:

[B]Jon, do you really believe that it is fair and proper to make generalisations about groups of things or people without first making sure that you know it's actually true? And if you don't think it is fair to do so, how do you determine if your sample is truely representative of the entire group without your knowing the actual make up of the entire group?

But the issue for me is not the fairness or integrity of the HBs, but the fairness and intergity of the questions we ask them. I am mere suggesting a rewording that get the message over better, especially with those who are so far only half convinced by the HBs. Such people are often as much or more convinced by the tone of an argument as they are by the facts and the logic.

And, BTW in geology statements like "the slope is covered in basalt boulders" are commonplace and acceptable even if a person has not examined every single boulder. Nobody checks every single boulder, only a proportion of them that is appropriate for the level of study being carried out.

Jon

[Gillianren]

And, BTW in geology statements like "the slope is covered in basalt boulders" are commonplace and acceptable even if a person has not examined every single boulder. Nobody checks every single boulder, only a proportion of them that is appropriate for the level of study being carried out.

But "covered in basalt boulders" is different than "every boulder was basalt." It's still semantically possible for a slope "covered in basalt boulders" to have non-basalt boulders, too.

[JayUtah]

I read a comment by Jay about the nature of the completeness of historical records as a general statement and responded in kind.

You misunderstood my comment. I am not saying that you can't draw defensible conclusions until the record is complete. I'm saying that if you have not examined all that is available then you cannot reliably characterize all that is available.

There are currently about 20,000 still photographs from Apollo. If, due to some catastrophe, half of them were lost a hundred years hence, one would still have to examine the remaining 10,000 in order to draw a defensible conclusion about the nature of those 10,000 -- whatever than nature is. Choosing 100 of them that are commonly reproduced (i.e., by a biased method) does not allow you to speak with authority about the nature of the 10,000 from which they were drawn. Whether that 10,000 lets you draw meaningful conclusions about the 20,000 that originally existed is a separate question.

I'm reasonably sure David McCullough has read nearly everything surviving that was written by John Adams. And so I trust him to be an authority on the nature of John Adams' writings as we now have them preserved. However, that does not mean that McCullough necessarily knows all that Adams wrote, because Adams undoubtedly wrote things that have been lost. But someone who has read only one or two Adams letters and ignored the rest simply isn't an authority on the general nature of Adams' writings as we have them. There is more data available than what went into his conclusion.

The author of a book promises to the reader that he has undertaken sufficient research to support the conclusions the book draws. He is often responsible for summarizing or characterizing extensive background information so that the reader may understand its significance without undertaking the tedium of digesting it all himself. The reader is asked to believe that the author's summary is well-founded. If an author presumes to tell his reader that the Apollo photographs are generally too "good" to have been taken in the field, the author has the responsibility to have examined a reasonable sample of them prior to making that statement.

Commensurately if someone else reproduces that claim, we have to know whether the claim comes on the heels of his own research, or whether it is simply copied from someone else. If someone says he has only seen a few of the photographs himself in books and magazines, then he is guilty of the same inadequate research as the conspiracy authors. If someone says he hasn't done his own research and simply trusts Percy or someone else, then we will have revealed that his believe is simply faith in the conspiracy theorists, which is sufficient to expose it as not better-founded than any who choose to believe NASA without much thought.

[JonClarke]

I read a comment by Jay about the nature of the completeness of historical records as a general statement and responded in kind.

You misunderstood my comment. I am not saying that you can't draw defensible conclusions until the record is complete. I'm saying that if you have not examined all that is available then you cannot reliably characterize all that is available.

But even here, this is not practical. Nobody examines all the remaining evidence in historical research. In most topics there is too much and often a good deal of it is irrelevant to the question under scrutiny. There are aften logistic limits to what a researcher can realistically achieve. So historians examine as much of the evidence that is relevant to their purpose and can be realistically achieved under the constraints of their study.

Therefore I maintain my position that it is unfair to demand that a HB omust show they have looked at all the evidence. But it it fair to get them to explain much much of the available evidence they have seen and what proportion this represents of the whole. Then, having highlighted the gap between what they have seen and what there is we can get them to think about the validity of their conclusions.

Jon

[JayUtah]

There are aften logistic limits to what a researcher can realistically achieve. So historians examine as much of the evidence that is relevant to their purpose and can be realistically achieved under the constraints of their study.

Fine. But if that same historian then presumes to characterize the entire available record -- which is a different activity than examining a portion of the record particular to a specific question -- then he is doing so without proper support. So long as he confines his conclusions to the record actually examined, he is in safe territory. Characterization or summary of the entire record is not such a confined conclusion.

You're trying to generalize the question far beyond what we intended and then note that it doesn't hold in the general case. Be that as it may, it holds in the specific case. The specific case is that a claim that is valid only if one has examined the entire record cannot be made rationally without examining the record. The impracticality of examining an entire record does not give you a license to draw those global conclusions anyway.

Therefore I maintain my position that it is unfair to demand that a HB omust show they have looked at all the evidence.

It is entirely fair to expect a hoax believer to have conducted the research commensurate with the extent of his claims. If his claim is that a certain trait is ubiquitous in the record, and he has examined only a biased 5% of the record that is available, then we have every right to take him to task on it.

In the specific case of the Apollo 70mm photographic record, we have every right to expect someone professing knowledge of its global characteristics to have examined it entirely. That examination is required by the nature of the claim and is considered feasible as many here have done it.

In the general case of historical research, the extent of one's research must be congruent with the scope of one's claims. If exhaustive research is not possible, then global conclusions cannot be drawn reliably.

[Dave J]

A they need to do is look at a small, representative sampling of the photos from the achive to readily realize that, indeed, certainly not all the pictures are perfect...
Such a statement simply PROVES that no real research was done...or even an attempt at it. It takes little looking to find many "bad" shots.
Making broad and sweeping general statements without some significant research simply makes one look ignorant and foolish when they come up wrong.

[JonClarke]

There are aften logistic limits to what a researcher can realistically achieve. So historians examine as much of the evidence that is relevant to their purpose and can be realistically achieved under the constraints of their study.

Fine. But if that same historian then presumes to characterize the entire available record -- which is a different activity than examining a portion of the record particular to a specific question -- then he is doing so without proper support. So long as he confines his conclusions to the record actually examined, he is in safe territory. Characterization or summary of the entire record is not such a confined conclusion.

You're trying to generalize the question far beyond what we intended and then note that it doesn't hold in the general case. Be that as it may, it holds in the specific case. The specific case is that a claim that is valid only if one has examined the entire record cannot be made rationally without examining the record. The impracticality of examining an entire record does not give you a license to draw those global conclusions anyway.

If this were actually true then to profiession of history and all the historial sciences would grind to a halt. The nature of these disciplines requires people to make far reaching conclusions on limited data.

Therefore I maintain my position that it is unfair to demand that a HB omust show they have looked at all the evidence.

It is entirely fair to expect a hoax believer to have conducted the research commensurate with the extent of his claims. If his claim is that a certain trait is ubiquitous in the record, and he has examined only a biased 5% of the record that is available, then we have every right to take him to task on it.

In the specific case of the Apollo 70mm photographic record, we have every right to expect someone professing knowledge of its global characteristics to have examined it entirely. That examination is required by the nature of the claim and is considered feasible as many here have done it.

But this is the whole issue. Who are the audience of these 20 questions are addressed to? Are they addressed to a specific HB who has made a specific claim or are they addressed to a boarder internet audience including those who simply tend towards being a HB out of ignorance or because is is interesting or different. If the questions are directed at a specific individual, then fine, that individual should be named and the questions could be much more refined than they are at present.

However, my understanding of these questions is that they are generalised, aimed at a general audience. Therefore aimed at people who ususally don't use words precisely or have investigated their position closely. In my experience such people when they say "the photos are all to perfect" generally mean "they photos I have seen". Therefore it is a less aggressive and more educational approach to get them to admit how many photos they have actually seen (and then point them to the archive and show not only how many there actually are but also the number that are off centre, out of focus, over/under exposed, etc. IMHO are less aggressive approach works better in such cases. But that's my philosophy of life. Yorus may be different.

In the general case of historical research, the extent of one's research must be congruent with the scope of one's claims. If exhaustive research is not possible, then global conclusions cannot be drawn reliably.

That is why good historical research recognises its provisionality. one of the many faults of the HBs (and CTs in gerneral) is they don't acknowledge this.
Jon

[PhantomWolf]

But this is the whole issue. Who are the audience of these 20 questions are addressed to? Are they addressed to a specific HB who has made a specific claim or are they addressed to a boarder internet audience including those who simply tend towards being a HB out of ignorance or because is is interesting or different.

I already answered this several times, including in the tilte of the Thread. It is for Hoax Proponennts. Those that propse to make and/or defend the claims that Apollo was a Hoax in such a way as to convince others to belive the same thing.

However, my understanding of these questions is that they are generalised, aimed at a general audience.

You obviously haven't bothered reading my eariler replies.

[homo_cosmosicus]

#1 - The HB’s claim Kennedy’s speech to congress in May 1961 was the
beginning of the moon race and that it came as a surprise to NASA and
caught them ill prepared. This is not true and the question is intended to
clear up the misconception.

What misconception?

It took only 8 years (from 1961 to 1969) to "put a man on the Moon",
then how come those days, after more then 40 years, with supposedly
more advanced technology, it will take 16 years (from 2004 to 2020)
to "put a man on the Moon".
(in 2004 Bush jr. declared great plan to send man to the Moon in 2020).

How is that possible, maybe our ancestors were smarter, worked more,
finally maybe they had better technology then we do have today?

[jt-3d]

That's all you're bringing to the table? Oh my. You quoted the answer! NASA was working on space flight from 1957, I think it was. Kennedy just set the time limit while at the same time getting the public behind the project. Something the pres can't do these days.

Though I admit the older generation did indeed work harder and probably were smarter than we are. They're still around, just ask a few, they'll tell you so. And while they may not have had better technology, they did have a sense of things greater than their own personal comfort. Personal sacrifice is something missing these days. Today personal sacrifice means paying 5¢ for a gallon of gas for the family truckster. We have no heart.

[PhantomWolf]

What misconception?

It took only 8 years (from 1961 to 1969) to "put a man on the Moon"

No, NASA started working on a mission to the Moon in 1958, and was granted funding for the various parts in early late 1959 and 1960 by Eisenhower. The Apollo Missions was officially released to the public in July of 1960 as the follow up to Mercury. In all from the the planning to the first mission took 11 years, 1958-1969.