Wednesday, July 13, 2011

It had to be said

James Concannon in Facebook:

I'm frankly amazed that there are so many people with this mind-set that NASA/JPL/MSSS/Univ Ariz routinely withhold images and/or doctor them if they are "too interesting."

I blame Richard Hoagland. He has such a gift for persuasive speaking and he has tragically misapplied that gift in the service of his own personal anti-NASA paranoia. He could have been a wonderful teacher if only he had not decided that controversy sells books and videos.

This is my answer to those who say he's a harmless entertainer. The harm lies in the distortions of the truth that we now know he infects young minds with.

Don Davis added:

The sad thing is an unknown percentage of young people use the web for research instead of going to libraries like they should. The web's content is seriously diluted in quality by whackos with agendas, and can best be filtered by people who have already learned about the subjects using primarily off line sources like journals and books.

Many are misled by charlatans posturing as authorities and will either have to unlearn the conspiracy nonsense or remain marginalized with little prospects of contributing to our body of knowledge.

8 comments:

Chris Lopes said...

Agreed. As someone who was in the "he's just a harmless entertainer" camp, I admit his nonsense is being taken much too seriously by himself and his followers. They are really missing the glory of the real world.

Biological_Unit said...

The Real World was glorious when we could get to the Moon with humans in 3 days.
This will not, can not, and has never happened. Surely we will all be dead soon, and the humans who remain alive will go insane from eating human flesh.

Anonymous said...

The harm will come when some nut with a gun decides to take out some NASA employee because they are "hiding the truth" about life on Mars.

Really, the whole Hoagland thing sickens me. I wish the two of them were rotting in Guantanamo instead of rotting the minds of innocent young people who don't know any better.

Biological_Unit said...

We would not have Gitmo if people didn't trust what the millionaires on TV tell us.
Remember that Clear or Hazy day in '01 when we saw Airplanes dive bomb or fly straight into the Twins? I saw it on TV so it must have happened, anyways I'm afraid of getting the Iraqi citizen treatment so I'll shut up now.

Anonymous said...

agreed, he is a class one moron who just wants to sell books, what even worse is where george noory sits on all this.

anway great blog !

expat said...

Thanks, anon.

Chris Lopes said...

There is reason to believe that Noory knows exactly how much of a fraud Hoagland is, but he chooses to go along because Hoagland can keep an audience tuned in long enough to sell stuff. I suppose knowingly helping Hoagland maintain an air of legitimacy (as much legitimacy as Hoagland is ever likely to garner anyway) could be considered worse than the fraud that Hoagland is perpetrating. After all, Noory has a lot of options for filling air time, he really doesn't need Hoagland. Richard on the other hand, has no other real options. C2C is the only major outlet that will even pretend to take him seriously.

Biological_Unit said...

why a randomly moving cloud of particles should have a net spin rate is both illogical and unexplained