Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Embroidery by Ken Johnston

        NASA astronaut visits BM Birla Science Centre, announced the headline in the 12th February edition of the Hindu Times: dateline Hyderabad, by Our Special Correspondent.

        Well, the "NASA astronaut" turned out to be none other than Ken Johnston, described in the report as "A test astronaut, who is also chief trainer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States of America." Ken, as regular readers will know, is the ex-marine beloved by the NASA-hating folks because he accuses NASA of tampering with the photographic record of the Apollo program, obscuring important evidence.The problem is that Ken was never an astronaut, and never chief trainer of anything. His accusations are based on photo-prints stored in a ring binder for 25 years, then scanned on a consumer-grade scanner in non-clean conditions. The Rational wikipedia article on Ken tells what I believe to be the true story, and it's quite clear from that piece that Ken has misrepresented himself on at least two important occasions, in one instance leading him to be dropped from JPL's all-volunteer Solar System Ambassador program.note 1

        Ken was in India to be an honored guest at an INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR on SPACE ODYSSEY organized by the Chennai chapter of the Aeronautical Society of India. The Chennai City News of 7th February gives the deets, introducing Ken as "Dr. R. Ken Johnston" and providing pix and vids. Again as we know from the Ratwiki article, Ken's Ph.D. is a fabrication.


        This week, James Oberg commented "I think there are two levels of disgrace, first claiming status you never earned, and second, accusing those who DID earn such status of being falsifiers and planetary traitors."note 2

And then it got worse
        The inaccurate description of Ken as a "NASA Astronaut USA" then appeared, not just in an ephemeral  newspaper story, but on a permanent plaque beside the College of Technology's Link Flight Simulator.
 

        The above photo appeared on Ken's Faceboo page, with the caption "I have  a flight simulator named after me. I am very honored!"note 3 There were several comments, mostly congratulatory, but the following comment from Tom Harnish struck a discordant note:
"Ken, you've done so much good, don't ruin it! I warned you once before on the Mars One debacle. Happily you escaped disappointed but untarnished. But this really is stolen honor. Please be honest with yourself and with others."
Harnish is an author and science consultant in San Diego.

        My message to the NASA haters who consider Ken Johnston a hero is this: Look at that plaque and ask yourself whether a man who is content to be so falsely described is worthy of your respect.

Update 20 February 
        Today's edition of the New Indian Express has another story about Ken's tour. Describing him as "NASA's nemesis," it reports that he "released doctored images to prove that NASA had manipulated photographs to hide unexplained structures and anomalies on the lunar surface." We must assume that they think it was NASA that "doctored" the images, not Ken himself -- in all that James Oberg  and I have written about Ken, we have never alleged that he intentionally changed his photo-prints--there's no evidence of that.

        There are basically two explanations for the anomalies in Ken's pix. One is that he noticed strange things that he thought he had the only image of, but that are in fact present in NASA's official versions. A good example would be the notorious blue flares on several frames of Apollo 14 magazine #66. I blogged about this after Ken's Christmas 2011 appearance on Coast to Coast AM. The other explanation, also lavishly documented in this blog passim, is that the anomalies are not actually on Ken's prints at all, but on the scans done by Richard Hoagland on his office scanner. See, for example, the extensive discussion of Bret Sheppard's collection from June last year.

        During that discussion, it came out that one of Sheppard's favorite examples, AS15-88-11967, is not even a scan from a photo-print but actually from a reversal (a slide, if you like.)


        Slide scans are notorious for producing multiple reflections, which can appear as dot patterns. I've seen it many times in my own scans. So I would say that this example of a "discovery" is absolutely worthless.

And by the way...
        Ken's online photo archive is not focused on anomalies at all.  It's split into nine albums which group images having something in common, but the total lack of labeling makes browsing it somewhat unrewarding. There may be some gems in there but I'm not the man to find them.


Thanks to James Oberg for alerting me to this story

=================================
[1] Folklore in the pseudo-science community has it that Ken was "fired from NASA." However, since he was never an employee he obviously could not have been fired.
[2] Private communication, quoted by permission
[3] He managed to get that wrong, too. "Inaugurated by" is not the same as "Named after"

24 comments:

jim oberg said...

Apparently there are people in DC who look askance at somebody impersonating a federal employee overseas. Stay tuned.

Bill said...

https://www.themonastery.org/catalog/drofmetaphysicscertificate-p-116.html

Buy your own Dr of Metaphysics.

Well done Ken, what a numpty.

expat said...

Ken's is extra special because it's signed by William Conklin, the monumentally unsuccessful tax protester.

Bill said...

I've written to the Hindu Times And pointed out a few facts to them. Let's see if I get a reply!

jim oberg said...

Another website claimed that Conklin's diploma mill scam used to advertise in 'Mother Jones'. Johnston bought his certificate in 1985, it would be cool if anyone could search back files [online, library, or their parents' closet]to actually find such an ad from that time.

Bill said...

Ok no reply from both the Chenainews and the Hindu times. Unfortunately another paper has believed the hype, copied link

http://www.newindianexpress.com/education/edex/2017/feb/20/space-jammin-with-nasas-nemesis-ken-johnston-1571740.html

How dare he put himself with Neil Armstrong.......this needs stoping now!

Will he ever be stopped? News media these days do not want to check the facts and all to ready to accept trash

Bill

OneBigMonkey said...

To be fair, Ken's archive is worth looking through - there are a lot of mission support and training images that don't often see the light of day. Pity they aren't better organised though.

No aliens to be found.

expat said...

I fully agree. Add some captions and NASA refnos and it'd be golden.

Dee said...

Jim,

I noticed the Mother Jones archives are in Google Books, complete with classified section, where I'd expect it to pop up. I briefly checked end of 1986 and some are clearly selling similar things.

You say that Ken bought it in 1985 but the certificate in your report shows clearly January 1 1987? What's that about?

Searching in Google Books at collection level can also help but keep in mind Google scanners are not perfect and some ads are graphics or fonts the OCR cannot read. Plus it's unclear under which name it would haven been advertised.

Dee


Anonymous said...

Ken makes PEOPLE magazine.... http://people.com/human-interest/alleged-alien-abductee-details-childhood-encounters-international-ufo-congress/

expat said...

Wow, that Lynne Kitei is a scary person indeed. A physician, too. Imagine being in hospital and having her come to examine you!

Trekker said...

She's prominent in the Phoenix Lights sightings, Expat. A firm believer that the 'first' sighting of that night was a triangular craft, despite it being resolved through a telescope as a flight of aircraft in formation.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Lynne Kitei says that The Orbs she witnessed in Phoenix on March 13, 1997 are benevolent, but with facts not in evidence, and without elaboration.

Those lights hovered over the city for quite awhile. They were not conventional aircraft.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Thousands of witness to the Phoenix Lights, reported a conspicuous absence of sound, which ordinarily, ought to have been heard to be emanating from the lights, if they were conventional aircraft.

This gives rise to reasonable question. If this aerial phenomenon was terrestrial, was it produced by the US government, foreign government, or private enterprise? If it were of the US government, why was something so unconventional put on such a grand, public display? If it were foreign government, private enterprise, or even extraterrestrial, then why was it tolerated by the US government, without scrambling US military jets?

Were these lights material at all, or just light projections?

expat said...

This thread is not about the Phoenix lights, so please let's not get into a whole analysis of what has already been over-analyzed. But flares don't make noises. Neither are they unconventional.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Flares aren't nearly so big as were the Phoenix Lights, and don't hoover for such an extensive period of time. Then, of course, they tend to smoke. There was no report of smoke. Furthermore, the flares were in the opposite side of the sky, and weren't released until after the Phoenix Lights were gone.

Can anyone estimate how much power would be required to project such bright, enormous lights?

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

JACQUES F. VALLEE
1550 California St. #6L, San Francisco, CA 94109

Abstract -- An analysis of six cases of unexplained aerial phenomena observed by qualified observers over a twenty-year period in various parts of the Earth and in
known physical conditions yields estimates of optical power output ranging from a few kilowatts to thousands of megawatts. This paper surveys the methods by which this parameter can be derived from witnesses’ statements, it discusses the various hypotheses one could propose to account for the observations and it calls for a broad re-examination of sighting files in an effort to apply this methodology to a larger sample and to better understand the luminosity characteristics of the reported objects.

Keywords:
UFOs -- UFO sightings -- physical evidence

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/estimates-optical-power-output-unexplained-ariel-objects.pdf

Dee said...

There are certainly many, many unexplained aerial phenomena left to explore. But to just compile them all together to support a theory on alien or trans-dimensional beings is not going to help uncovering the mysteries. And that's why Vallee, despite some of his interesting documentation (and many documented errors) hasn't advanced one inch closer over the years. There's not a sound basis laid to start e.g. experimentation, defining the proper research questions, methodology and so on. And as such it became "pseudo-science" (the pretence to be scientific while it doesn't qualify at a basic level) which is not the same as saying there's no mystery left to the universe. Obviously many do crave the mysteries and more "behind the scenes" theory. That seems to be a property of the human mind but in some that craving is stronger than others, and in some way more disciplined and focussed than others. It's also a money business, to add to the confusion.

J. Dee

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

Dr Vallee's hypothesis of The UFO Control System, posits that human culture is gradually being shaped over hundreds of years, by similar, ludicrous phenomenon, for some hidden agenda.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

It makes no difference what is witnessed, what is said, or what is believed. What matters is that mankind is thinking about ridiculous shenanigans. That is shaping human culture, but to what end?

Don't think of a pink elephant; oops, too late. It's like elevator music you hate, that gets stuck in your head. Next thing you know, you're humming it all day.

Being exposed to UFOs and reports, thereof, and even their debunking, induces a state of anxiety. An individual in a state of anxiety, craves normality. They are at that point, suffering from exhaustion and are not entirely rational. Assurance from an authoritative source, can provide for them a release of tension, which they might tend to accept without having the mental endurance left, with which to engage in critical thinking.

Purpleivan said...

Am I the only one who is getting a little tired of the strings of posts, either tenuously, or completely unrelated to the subject being posted by The Orbs Whisperer.

Not an attack on them personally, everyone is free to believe what they want, no matter how far fetched, but there is a pattern of this person diverting the conversation away from the title topics.

Dee said...

Orbs: "Being exposed to UFOs and reports, thereof, and even their debunking, induces a state of anxiety. An individual in a state of anxiety, craves normality. "

Ever tried to turn that around? A bulk of UFO experiences induced by prolonged individual or group states of heightened anxiety, mixed in cases with certain expectations or cravings. A bit like Carl C. Jung's work on UFOs explored.

Dee

expat said...

Ivan: "Orbs Whiperer" [sic] is just another alias for Theadora, Ripley.... I have declined to publish her comments many times in the past because they were way off topic. Look 8 comments up and you'll see me issuing a warning that I won't tolerate much more PHX lights in this thread.

THE Orbs Whiperer said...

I appreciate your forbearance, Patrick. I wouldn't be continuing along such lines, if others would let the subject lay. For instance, your posting by Dee, seeds a biased assumption, that UFO experiences are somehow entirely the product of inferred suggestion, which perpetuates the discussion of this side issue.