Hoagland-heist: Pseudo-scientist bamboozled, left twisting in the wind

        Maximum kudos this week to Irene Gardner, for a brilliant and high-risk maneuver that exposed Richard Hoagland for the unprincipled fraud he is, in front of all his craven disciples.

        As regular readers of this blog know well, ever since his birthday on April 25th Hoagland has been begging the Branch Hoaglandians for cash to fund an expedition to Egypt on the occasion of the Venus transit, due on 5th/6th June. There he intended to repeat what he calls an "experiment" involving an Accutron watch. This blog, among others, has been strident in its criticism of the so-called experiment, citing the lack of baselines, controls and full hypothesis.

The trap set

        Here's how Irene's scam-bait went down. On 26th May at 10:00 she posted this to Hoagland's FB page (re-posted by permission):

Dear Mr Hoagland,
As a long time coast insider, and follower of your research I was most disappointed to hear that the planned mission to Giza had to be cancelled due to lack of funding. I have been a long time lurker on your Facebook page, and, of course on Enterprise. But, have been too overwhelmed by the technical content and scientific research that you present, to ask the many questions I have.

Therein lies the problem. I wanted to make a substantial contribution to your planned expedition to Giza. I could not afford the $80k envisaged cost, but perhaps only half of that. Without causing a huge argument with my partner. Here we strike the root of the argument. I maintain that a man who had been a curator, scientist, and, for heavens sake, a scientific advisor to a broadcasting legend. All before hitting 30 years of age. A man who has had his very life threatened because of his work. Must be on to something. That something, we, as a species need. Immediately.

My partner however completes the dichotomy. We discuss long and even longer the vaildity and veracity of your reasearch. He is an electronics engineer of some standing within the world of what I have heard he and his colleagues refer to as "negentropy." I am merely an IT consultant with a passion for your work, and, perhaps more honestly. Your enthusiasm. He challenged me to provide evidence of hyperdimensional physics. The prize being me being allowed to help fund your research. With some gusto I compiled a list of links to Enterprise, citing various papers on the subject. With particular emphasis on of your magnificent Cydonia work. I "MADE" him watch your presentation at the United Nations. He squirmed in his chair as you read out a letter from Dr Ghali to the audience. Nice moment for me.

To my dismay he called your work "junk science." Citing the fact that during earlier work at Coral Castle, and other significant locations you failed to provide a baseline and control before conducting your experiments. Please, please Richard can you categorically refute these allegations, and provide me proof positive of baseline and control. In return I will happily make up the shortfall on the Giza research mission. I apologise unreservedly should I have insulted a man of your standing in requiring such assurances. But, I made an agreement with my partner and I will abide by it.

I also realise that many people may think I am insencere. Therefore, should you require it. I will give you my cellphone number, place of employment and any other information you may require to substantiate the veracity of my offer.

Kindest regards
Irene Gardner.

        Hoagland's immediate reply was "If this is a serious offer, we should do this via a PM and private e-mail."

        The pseudo-scientist then engaged in internal debate for two days. The dilemma: He wants the dosh, but at what price? The baselines and controls for the Venus transit of 2004, the farce at Teotihuacan, the joke at Stonehenge, the recent solar eclipse—these things don't exist, of course, because he has no clue how to design a proper scientific experiment. So could he fake them up convincingly enough? Hmmmm....

The trap sprung

        On May 29th he made his decision. Too risky. His message to Irene (re-posted by permission):

Irene,

You know that can't happen in a "timely fashion," certainly not before the Venus Transit; have you ever dealt with "university review committees?" :)

However, thanks for your kind offer.

But, if you REALLY have been following our work as closely as you stated on Facebook (all the way back to my "Cronkite Days," if not my UN presentation on Cydonia in 1992, with the warm endorsement of the Secretary General of the UN himself!), to say nothing of my recent New York Times bestseller, "Dark Mission" (with Mike Bara), then you already know what we are doing and both its importance ... and its veracity.

If all that can't convince your partner that we're at least "worth a shot," then, sadly, no amount of additional information at this point can convince such an individual "who had to be made" to even watch my UN speech .... :)

The fact that you are allowing your partner to dictate "who" and "what" YOU can support, in ANY amount ... raises all kinds of additional issues; others have already given large donations to further this research, based SOLELY on what's on the public record. The fact that you cannot (or, will not ...) do the same, again, in any AMOUNT -- without demanding totally unreasonable quantities of raw, propriority [sic] data to turned over to TOTAL styrangers, and far ahead of its planned formal publication -- tells me you're NOT serious.

Again, if I'm misjudging you, or your situation, I'm sorry.

        Yesterday, Irene cross-posted that entire text to Hoagland's FB. He deleted it in about ten minutes, but we can assume some of the cult members saw it.
        
        Many of us already commented. I acknowledge ideas from Chris Lopes, Trekker, FlightSuit, Jourget et al.

* He does have a point that time would have been tight for a proper investigation of whatever flim-flam he might have come up with. But that might have been negotiable, we'll never know. It's a safe bet that Hoagland himself has never dealt with a university review committee, so how would he know how much time would have been needed? Irene posted to this blog "The Hoagland data would have been examined at the Dept of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Glasgow."

* That "If you had been following our work..." is an absolutely standard Hoagland debating tactic. He uses it over and over again. It's simply a set-up for him to boast of achievements that are of almost Jurassic antiquity. Cronkite 40 years ago. The UN speech 20 years ago. Then comes the non sequitur. Irene is asked to believe that these achievements testify to the "importance and veracity" of the current effort to send him on a jaunt, with his girlfriend, to Egypt. What utter balderdash.

* Next he tries to undermine Irene's relationship with her partner. Classic cult tactics.

* Why does he consider the quantity of data requested "totally unreasonable"? It's simply what any real scientist would quite naturally supply without having to be asked.

* Turning over data to  "TOTAL styrangers" [sic] is what real scientists know as peer review. This part of the text is perhaps the most brilliant of all, exposing Hoagland's frequently-expressed wish to be taken seriously as a scientist as a gossamer-thin veil over the mentality of a fairground con-man.

* "far ahead of its planned formal publication"— WHAT????? In her original post, Irene cited "earlier work at Coral Castle, and other significant locations," not the recent solar eclipse. The Coral Castle farce was eight years ago, and of course totally ineligible for "formal publication" in any case, since it lacked any semblance of rigor and was broadcast to the millions of Coast-to-Coast AM listeners as it happened.

        Round-trip ticket for two, ABQ-CAI: $3,600. Six nights at the Hilton Pyramids, with special "Great Getaway" offer: $990. Exposing a pseudo-scientist in full sight of his fans: PRICELESS. Thank you so much, Irene.

Kiss your money goodbye, suckers!

Last night on Coast to Coast AM Richard Hoagland announced that the Egyptian jaunt is off. He's going back to Coral Castle instead.

Toldja.....

The minimum science Hoagland must do

James Concannon writes:
Today I sent the following message to Richard Hoagland:
=========================================
If you seek to show that huge pyramids amplify "torsion waves," you must have a minimum of three experimental sites as follows:

1. Unaffected by the Venus transit, as a control
2. In the path of the transit, but remote from the pyramid
3. At the pyramid

You should also provide a baseline recording captured a week before the transit, and you should make a specific prediction about what the three sites will sense.

If you do anything less than this, your results are junk science.
=========================================

        I would add that much the same applies to today's annular eclipse. If anyone is to take Hoagland's "experiment" seriously, we need at a minimum a) A specific prediction, b) A baseline, and c) A control.

        I very much doubt we'll get any of that. More likely it'll be the usual "Oh look, squiggles on a laptop screen. If I fake the timings a bit I can make those synchronize with the eclipse/transit/whatever."

Note to anyone new to this blog: We're talking about some childish "experiments" Richard Hoagland has done in the past involving 1960s wristwatch technology, and says he'll repeat today and at the Venus transit. For more info, refer first to this post.

Update:

        Meanwhile, Hoagland's former co-author, college drop-out Mike Bara, is at Mt. Shasta giving some kind of a speech to some New Age loonies who've been  suckered into paying to hear him. In Facebookistan, Mike writes:

"Today, both before, during and after the eclipse, your thoughts prayers, dreams and intent have a special power. The closer you are to Shasta itself, the more amplfied[sic] this effect. Use this power wisely. "

        I don't think it will do any good to ask Mike to cite a reference for that unusual information. We've basically heard all his insults already, some many times. And that's all I think an inquiry would elicit.

        Reminder: In his dreadful book The Choice, Mike wrote that an annular eclipse occurs when the Moon is unusually close to Earth. That's how much of an authority he is on the question.

Gaiam Inspirations TV

        My comment (attached to this post) about the deceptive use of the word "free" to describe Hoagland's appearance last Wednesday turns out to be inaccurate. It is in fact possible to see it without divulging any credit card info. So, OK, I apologize and here's my review.

        Technically, the Gaiam TV studio is pretty good—way better than most Internet TV setups (such as the rubbish put out by Kerry Cassidy.) It's a 3-camera studio complete with teleprompt and image overlay. I didn't notice any chroma-key being used but that doesn't mean it couldn't be. Hoagland was provided with a tiny hand-held Powerpoint sequencer so that he could offer insert images to the vision mixer. It all went well and I doubt that much, or even any, editing was needed. Jay Weidner was a decent enough host/interviewer, but no more challenging than George Noory. The producers were Andrea Mather and Jay Weidner, and the show was directed by Doug Moldawsky.

        As for the content—well, few surprises there. It was a 55-minute scamper through the Allais Effect, Hyperdimensional Physics (with the same near-incredible lack of rigor that we've come to expect from Hoagland & Bara,) Bruce DePalma, Nikolai Kozyrev, the Inaccutron "experiments," and the Flynn Effect.

Look out, Las Vegas!

        Around the 35-minute mark Hoagland did get into some new material. He noted that the path of next Sunday's annular eclipse passes over the Hoover dam. That happens to be untrue— the dam is right where the Nevada/Arizona border does a squiggle, just south of the eclipse track. But OK, maybe close is good enough—so what? Hoagland made a prediction. The torsion field generated by the eclipse will cause the 2000MW turbine generator sets to run fast, so the frequency of the power delivered to Las Vegas (and elsewhere in the SW) will increase. Quite possibly the whole grid will go down "and that will raise people's consciousness."

        Unlikely. An outfit called the  North American Energy Standards Board regulates the utility frequency all over the USA. The rules state that whenever the error exceeds 10 seconds for the east, 3 seconds for Texas, or 2 seconds for the west, a correction of ±0.02 Hz (0.033%) is applied. Time error corrections start and end either on the hour or on the half hour. Besides, centralized electrical power supply has been an ongoing concern since the 1920s. If eclipses affected turbo-generators, you'd think somebody would have figured that out by now.

        There was a tail-piece to that false story that was pure, quintessential HoagLA-LA-LANDian fantasy.

"Why are there 17 generators? Not 18, not 16—17 at the base of the Hoover dam. It turns out that's an incredibly important number, connected to Osiris and to Horus and the whole Egyptian mythology we've been tracking through NASA. Once you start pulling on one little thread of this matrix, all kinds of things come unraveled."

        All kinds of things including Hoagland's own sanity, it seems. Why didn't Jay Weidner say "IT HAS TO BE SOME FUCKING NUMBER, RICHARD"?

        There was one last piece of unintentional comedy. Hoagland speculated that Prince Charles's recent by-invitation Scottish weather forecast was a "secret code" meaning, to those in the know, that the weather was also subject to torsion. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll have to ask His Highness about that next time we're having a beer in the Balmoral pub.

Hoagland rejects the WISE catalog

        Congratulations to Esteban Navarro Galán, occasional commenter to this blog, for getting Richard Hoagland to actually answer a question on Fuckbook yesterday. He drew Hoagland's attention to the fact that the WISE catalog of IR sources is now published, and it's a notable FAIL for hyperdimensional physics since WISE did not find the very large object that Hoagland & Bara say is essential to the theory ("Dark Mission," ch.2.) Hoagland's only way out of this dilemma was to summarily reject the catalog, as the suspect product of a "government agency"—he uses that term as if it really meant "gang of ignorant thugs." Here's his reply:

How do we have ANY way of knowing if these newly-released WISE survey results are "complete?"

Since these findings are held in VERY limited hands (as usual ...), the abiltiy [sic] to just "forget" to post confirmation of such an object (or, objects) DEEP in the outer solar system -- especially, if it would TOTALLY UPSET the current Physics paradigm, as Mike Bara and I reported in "Dark Mission" -- would be all-too-easy! :(

Further, how does the WISE Team now "explain away" the far earlier IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Telescope) discovery of PRECISELY such a mysterious object, in 1983 ... and its PUBLIC acknowledgement in an interview that key NASA scientist granted to the Washington Post and my old friend, Tom O'Toole, who was then their science correspondent?

http://astralnewz.com/thereal2012/planetx.html#iras1983

Or, do you believe EVERYTHING a goverment [sic] agency says these days ... or ... that is now dutifully "reported as news" by the mainstream media? :)

        Galán has not so far posted a reply, but if I was not banned from the page this is what I would write (and in fact have already e-mailed to Hoagland, although the chance that he'll read it is very small):

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hoagland:
Yesterday on your Facebook page, Esteban Navarro Galán asked if the recently-released WISE catalog posed a problem for the theory of hyperdimensional physics. You replied suggesting that it would have been "all-too-easy" for the compilers of the catalog to have simply omitted the discovery of a large outer planet, and asking how the WISE team would explain this report from 1983.

The WISE catalog includes more than half a billion objects and its 18,000 images are now available for scrutiny by anyone with sufficient knowledge and equipment. The following scientific agencies were intimately involved in the data processing:

• Infrared and Processing Analysis Center at CalTech - Primary data analysis
• JPL - Mission management
• NASA Science Directorate, Washington
• NASA Goddard

I draw your attention to the certain fact that responsibility for the primary data analysis fell, not on a government agency as you stated, but on a scientific institution whose record of achievement is world renowned. I don't know the total number of individuals involved in the preparation of the WISE catalog, but it would surely be several hundred spread among the four institutions listed above. I suppose you're entitled to describe that group as "limited," but your bizarre suggestion that the group engaged in dishonesty is an outrageous insult to people who dedicated 14 years of their lives to this project. The idea that it would have been very easy for this catalog to have deliberately omitted one of the primary presumptive targets of the mission is simply laughable. You have no chance whatever of convincing anyone with knowledge of how space science is conducted that what you allege actually took place.

I can't speak for the WISE scientists, but I know how I would "explain away" the 20-year old Washington Post article. I would explain as follows:

The "key NASA scientist" of whom you write was Dr. Gerry Neugebauer of IRAS. James Houck was also mentioned in the piece as not being sure what this object was.

Please look at the list of authors of the following letter to J. Astrophys:

===============================================
Unidentified IRAS sources - Ultrahigh-luminosity galaxies
Houck, J.R., Schneider, D. P., Danielson, G.E., Neugebauer, G., Soifer, B.T., Beichman, C. A., Lonsdale, C. J.

Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters to the Editor (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 290, March 1, 1985, p. L5-L8

Abstract:
Optical imaging and spectroscopy measurements were obtained for six of the high galactic latitude infrared sources reported by Houck, et al. (1984) from the IRAS survey to have no obvious optical counterparts on the POSS prints. All are identified with visually faint galaxies that have total luminosities in the range 5 x 10 to the 11th power stellar luminosity to 5 x 10 to the 12th power stellar luminosity. This luminosity emerges virtually entirely in the infrared.
 ================================================

Since you are not  yourself a scientist (notwithstanding your claims) you may perhaps need this to be interpreted in layman's terms. It says WE HAD A CLOSER LOOK AND ALL THE ANOMALOUS OBJECTS TURNED OUT TO BE GALAXIES.

I would like to add that you are in a poor position to accuse Esteban Navarro Galán of credulousness, since you apparently believe:

- A 20-year-old story from the Washington Post that was thoroughly discredited two years later

- Maurice Allais' anomalous paraconical pendulum results, despite the fact that they have never been successfully repeated.

- Bruce DePalma's garage experiment with a spinning ball as evidence of anti-gravity, despite the fact that a conventional explanation (The Magnus Effect) is available and is far more conservative.

- Over-unity energy claims by Thomas Bearden and John Searl, despite that fact that neither has ever been able to demonstrate their "machines" in public.

You have once again done your reputation no service by your rejection of a valid and important piece of scientific research, and your accusation of fraud without a shred of supporting evidence. You need to accept that HD physics has been falsified.

Update:

Esteban Navarro Galán has now responded on FB, citing answer #3 in this astrobiology FAQ.

Inaccutron

        Remember this? Richard Hoagland's MicroSet trace during the Venus transit of June 2004. Let's call it Trace A.

Image credit: Enterprisemission.com

Well, Richard Hoagland has now published THIS. Trace B:

Image credit: Enterprisemission.com

        Compare the two. The horizontal scales are the same. Each trace covers a sample of 1.4 hours, or 84 minutes. The vertical scales are, however, different.

        In Trace A, each grid line represents 0.147 Hz or, as the software helpfully tells us, 35.6 sec/day. In Trace B, each grid line is very nearly 0.3 Hz or 1.2 min/day.

        Knowing that, we can derive some figures for the frequency spikes the traces show. In each case, there's a major spike to 364.474 Hz at 7:03:53 EDT (we have to take Hoagland's word for the 364.474 figure, since the spike went off-scale—an error that would cause a real scientist to reject this data.)

In Trace A, we see the following subsequent spikes:

• 360.53 Hz -- 2.15 min later
• 360.42 Hz -- 5.16 min later
• 360.3 Hz --  8.17 min later

In Trace B, we see:

• 360.7 Hz -- 1.4 min later
• 360.7 Hz -- 7.7 min later

....plus a lot of other noise.

        This is supposed to be the same event? They don't match at all. Now look at the information in the header. Same number of samples, 90,000. Same average rate, 361.611 Hz. But the current time is a give-away. Trace A was recorded at 5:53:25 pm, whereas Trace B wasn't captured until 2:26:03 am (presumably the following day.) What was Richard Hoagland doing by way of data-massage in the intervening hours?

        Bear in mind the following additional facts:

• The most pronounced spike of all, to 366.782 Hz, didn't occur until 7:21:30 EDT, when the transit was over (per another version of the trace, on Hoagland's FB page.)
• The times of third and fourth contact are in any case wrong. That and other background information is covered in this blogpost.

        Hoagland has also, finally, posted the MicroSet trace he recorded in April 2009 at Teotihuacan for the SyFy documentary on 2012. Here it is:

Image credit: Enterprisemission.com

        This one shows two enormous frequency spikes, to 454.79 Hz and 465.192 Hz. The comical part is that they didn't happen at dawn, as Hoagland claimed. In fact, he doesn't even show the trace at dawn, which occurred at 07:13 am—off scale to the left. As science, this is worthless.

Please send money

        This additional accutron—or INaccutron—data comes in the first self-published web page Hoagland has produced in more than two years. A Most Hyperdimensional Eclipse. He finally stirred his old bones to create this page because it served his true purpose, which is not science but the collection of money. With the text at a fixed width of nearly 1200 pixels, and the equivalent of 8pt at a typical screen resolution, it's almost as if he doesn't really want us to read it, he makes it so hard. But he clearly does, for the kicker is the announcement of a subscription webcast of further inaccutron nonsense from Albuquerque during the annular eclipse coming up on May 20th.

I won't be subscribing, so don't look for any details on this blog.

Update:

Hoagland posted this on Facebook yesterday:

So far, less than $2000 has come in. Not near enough by far to carry out an expedition to Egypt!

But-- What we're planning to post on Enterprise tonight, SHOULD change that .... 

        Why would he think an almost-illegible and poorly-reasoned web page would get the money rolling in, I wonder? On the contrary, my guess is that the cash flow will now taper off very quickly—anyone who felt the need to waste their money having already done so. Then we're back to speculating about whether he'll give the disciples their money back when he cancels the trip. Fat chance!