Farewell to the wacky-accy

        At the half-hour mark during yesterday's rather turgid Other Side Of Midnight, Richard Hoagland drew the attention of his listeners (all four of them, perhaps) to a new feature of the show's website.

        Not very original, I hear you say. Right, and I seriously doubt that he's going to see the floods of $$$ that are in his dreams. OSOM "members" are already paying $9.95 a month for a show that often fails to get on the air (although to be fair, he's had a run of good luck lately—nine more-or-less glitch-free shows on the trot.) But you had to laugh when he came up with one very good reason for the new Donate button:

32:45 "My Accutron broke. I've used it for years—I made a mistake the other day and dropped  the damn thing on a hardwood floor. It obviously has incredible fine wires. It broke. To send it out to specialists who do Accutron reconstruction—surgery, whatever—is going to require several hundred dollars. To get a new one is going to require something like a thousand bucks. So we need funds...."

        Now, it's possible that I've been April-fooled, but I'm assuming that was genuine, and he's been deprived of what he once called "a technology that can save the world." Last night he blathered on about wanting to put the wacky-accy in an orgone accumulator, to see what that does to the so-called "torsion field." Two bits of ridiculous pseudoscience, one inside the other—perhaps they'd cancel each other's nuttiness out and provide something of actual value (but I doubt it.) However, we'll never know now.

        There's a lovely irony in this. In the highly unlikely event that Hoagland does raise lots of lolly—and if he spends it on the wacky-accy rather than Las Vegas crap tables—you can bet your bottom dollar he'd never be able to repeat the bizarre results he's already "published." The plain fact is that he didn't just break it, it's been broken all along. That's why it shows such wild frequency swings even in the absence of any eclipse or transit. It's in the data.

        In case anybody reading this has no clue what "The Accutron" is, here's a briefing from the Rational Wikipedia, and here's Stuart Robbins of Exposing Pseudoastronomy critiquing Hoagland's protocol. Also, thanks to blogspot's labelling system, you can click on the label hoagland Accutron nonsense at the foot of this post, and bring up everything I've ever written about that damn wristwatch. WARNING: It's a lot. 23 posts.

Update:
        Chris L found this long discussion from October 2012. Plenty of good points made, and some good fun Hoagland-bashing.


Thanks to Stuart Robbins for the audio

Hoagland shamed, Bara mocked

        As my internet-friend binaryspellbook rightly says (or rightly writes, to be right), the former museum curator Richard Hoagland has some back-pedaling to do in respect of Comet 67P Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It is now screamingly obvious that the ten-trillion kg rubber ducky IS NOT an abandoned space station and DOES NOT feature "ruins and eroded jagged metallic structures ... skyscrapers ...buildings," as Hoagland claimed earlier this year.

        Time for some public recantation, you'd think -- unless you already knew Hoagland's standard behavior of hiding when his pronouncements and predictions are shown to be false. As a matter of fact, right now he's doing an unprecedented job of hiding.

* Last update of his primitive web site: April 2014
* Last update of his Fartbook fan page: May 2012
* Last update of his Fuckbook "personal" page: Too far off to find
* Last appearance on Coast to Coast AM: 22nd April 2014 (there are rumors that George Noory is pissed off with him)
* Last known public appearance: 31st August 2014, Caravan  to Midnight (when he made the claim about 67P)
* Update: He was on something called the Tom Anderson Show much more recently (7th Nov) peddling the same story. Again, unchallenged.

Update 22nd Nov: Noory announced last night that RCH is not on the naughty chair and will be back soon. Apparently he moved house "and it did not go well," whatever that means.

Well done, ESA
        This blog adds its congratulations to the tidal wave sweeping over Arianespace, Astrium, ESA and its many, many collaborators. As of this writing, Philae may be on its side and rapidly running out of battery power, but to have got it that far is a gigantic achievement. Update: Turned out that it wasn't lying on its side after all, but the batteries failed on 14 Nov.

NOT well done, Mike Bara
        Mike Bara, the world-renowned theoretical physicist, came up with a blogpost this week that clanged somewhat like Big Ben would if it fell onto Westminster Bridge (yes, folks, the term Big Ben technically refers to the bell, not the tower it sits in). He gave us his analysis of the physics implied in the recently-released movie Interstellar, and in the process reiterated his well-known opinion that modern astrophysics is mostly rubbish, and physicists are idiots -- especially Neil deGrasse Tyson, who Bara calls a "science choad" no less than eight times (a choad being a short fat penis).

        He's not 100% wrong about physics -- I share his skepticism about dark matter/dark energy, for instance. But in writing that wormholes are nonsense because nobody has ever seen one, he's missing the point so spectacularly that the point is rumored to have committed suicide in despair. Quite likely wormholes don't exist, or if they do it's extremely hard to see how human space travelers could put one to effective use. But a wormhole, or an Einstein-Rosen bridge to give it its posh name, is a legitimate solution to the equations of General Relativity, and thus is of interest to theoretical physics. That arcane discipline, almost by definition, does not require the things it studies to be actually observable. Mike dear, think of a wormhole as a way of teaching relativity, not something that will necessarily ever be confirmed to exist.

        Time dilation is another matter. Well understood and accurately measured, this phenom is responsible, for instance, for the fact that GPS satellites have their time-keeping  adjusted to account for the reduced gravity field at 20,000 km altitude. Mike Bara the world-famous engineer wrote this:

"[T]here is some evidence to support time dilation, but it is pretty sketchy. As an example, identical nuclear clocks have been used to measure the passage of time on Earth relative to the passage of time in orbit, in near weightless conditions. The clocks farther away from the 1G gravitational field of Earth were found to operate faster than the ones on Earth. But this is categorically NOT proof that time passes more slowly under the influence of gravity. It is only proof that clocks operate more slowly under the influence of gravity. Since no one has a clue what time really is, the idea that we can measure it is a fairy tale. None of these experiments have actually measured the speed of time. They have only measured the effects of gravity on mechanical instruments, i.e. clocks."

       I can assure Mike Bara that a GPS satellite does not function by mechanical clockwork. In fact, there are no moving parts at all.

        Bara then quoted himself, in a passage from his book The Choice which demonstrated his utter ignorance of the nature of gravitation, and ended with this dictum:

" Science is observation, experimentation, measurement and insight."

        I posted the following comment, with no expectation that Bara would allow it to be seen:

"Quite right. You'd do well to remember that precept before expounding on the false pseudo-science you call hyperdimensional physics^{note 1}. A few notes:

- None of the examples you cite of energy upwelling at 19.5° latitude are valid.
- Hoagland thinks nothing of lying in order to promote this idea -- as he did in respect of the Port-au-Prince earthquake.
- None of the top ten earthquakes or volcanic eruptions in history have been at 19.5°.
- Hoagland's Accutron "experiments"^{note 2} are a joke. No controls, no baselines, no data on the orientation of the device. The maximum recorded frequency excursions he ever reported were recorded at a time when there was no eclipse and no transit.

- In summary, neither you nor Hoagland has either observed or measured HD physics. Neither you nor Hoagland has conducted any meaningful or acceptable experiments.  It's a fraud."

====================================
[1] See this summary
[2] See this

Hoagland on SiriusXM with Art Bell, last night

        As I noted in a comment yesterday, I'm not willing to subscribe to SiriusXM so I didn't hear the show. I combed through the 25-page discussion thread on BellGab, and gleaned a pretty good idea of what went on.

        The BellGab thread consists of comments and reactions from Art Bell fans as they listened to the show. What stands out a mile is that 100% of them think Art Bell is God, and 90% of them think Hoagland has no credibility whatsoever.One opinion was "Art's fine; I just object to Hoagland as a guest, ever. The man's a fraud" (Sardondi.)

The images that never got discussed

        A page of images was provided for listeners to follow along with.  I loved the captions to the Inaccutron images -- presumably written by RCH himself.

image credit: Richard C. Hoagland

CAPTION: Enterprise Mission Torsion Field measurements of the Annular Solar Eclipse, May 20, 2012. Contrary to ALL “current physics” expectations, just before “first contact” the modified Accutron tuning fork detector “went nuts” — exhibiting ranges of frequency deviation from the standard ~360 hertz vibration rate exceeding 1000%!
The theoretical explanation behind these “extraordinary frequency changes” — when the Accutron readings should have maintained a simple “flat line” throughout the entire Eclipse, according to all current Physics models — is currently under intense investigation.

MY COMMENT: There's a little note in red letters at the bottom: "Frequency decreases vertically in this display." Well, it clearly does not, since a down-spike is labeled as 361.61 Hz and an up-spike is labeled 326.25 Hz.  So Hoagland presents a data trace that is obviously mis-labeled, and in which all the potentially interesting parts go off-scale, and he calls this science??? As for " currently under intense investigation" -- yeah right. Intense since May 2012?

image credit: Richard C. Hoagland

CAPTION: Enterprise Mission Torsion Field measurements of the striking “Hyperdimensional Effect” on Earth from Venus “transiting the Sun” — June 8, 2004.
Note the striking asymmetry in the detector response — with ALL the sudden frequency deviations taking place as Venus “moved off the Sun” — in striking contrast to the “zero changes” that occurred when Venus began its Solar Transit, several hours before

MY COMMENT: Note the fact that the most pronounced frequency excursions happened when the transit was all over. Also that, once again, his data is off-scale and would be rejected at peer review. He has no right to comment on "zero changes" at the start of transit, since the sun had not risen at Coral Castle then. It did not rise until about an hour before third contact. This is junk.

        There was a third image -- the data from Teotihuacan 2009 -- but this was so badly botched that the caption was the same as the 2012 solar eclipse one.

        Reading the BellGab thread, it seems that Art Bell never got around to asking about these pathetic examples of Hoagland's incompetence. Perhaps it's just as well -- it's obvious that Art didn't give Hoagland the free ride that he's been used to from that rhetorical lightweight George Noory.

Update
        Commenter Dee has helpfully pointed me to a Youtube version of last night, which I've now (mostly) reviewed. I fell off my chair at this one:

00:58:01  "I am sick to death of my stupid critics saying I'm nuts because they won't look at the data."

        I might say I'm sick to death of stupid Hoagland saying his critics won't look at the data because he won't look at the criticism.

        Regarding the Surveyor 6 images, which occupied most  of hour 1, I invite everyone to look at this image, which shows the original orientation of the "dome" picture. Hoagland, of course, didn't show it that way because it explains what we all see. Bear in mind that the image was transmitted as a vertical scan at very low bandwidth. THE DOME DOES NOT EXIST.

        And by the way, Image #1 in Hoagland's set absolutely does show contamination on his scanner glass. It's as plain as day.

Richard Hoagland's homework in the dog bowl again

        This week I thought it was time to tweak Hoagland again about his evasive replies or non-replies to scientific questions about his Accutron "experiments."^{note 1} Derek "binaryspellbook" Eunson has made an offer of professional peer review of Hoagland's data set, and been met with... nothing. I sent this:

=================^^^^==================

From: expat
To: RCH
Date: 9/9/13
Subj: Your published Accutron data

Greetings...

I've been reviewing your Accutron data and this is a summary:

Venus Transit 2004, Coral Castle. Trace 1. Max. 364.474 Hz, but some off-scale when the event was over. Min. 360 Hz.

Venus Transit 2004, Coral Castle. Trace 2. Max. 364.474 Hz. Min. 360 Hz.

Venus Transit 2004, Coral Castle. Trace 3. Max. 366.782 Hz. (after the transit) Min. 360 Hz.

Dawn 4-22-09, Teotihuacan. Max. 465.192 Hz. Min. 360 Hz.

4-26-09, Tikal. Max. 949.586 Hz. Min. 14.531 Hz.

Solar eclipse 5-20-12, High Finance restaurant. Max. off-scale. Min. off-scale.

The following questions occur:

- For the Venus transit data, why would greater frequency excursions occur after the transit than during it? Does this not violate Bruce DePalma's theory?

- Why are the published traces incompatible?

- Why would the greatest frequency excursions of all happen at Tikal, when no eclipse or transit was in progress?

- Why do you show negative excursions for Tikal and Sandia, but none at Coral Castle and Teotihuacan?

- Do you consider the Sandia trace to have any scientific value in spite of the fact that all frequency excursions are off-scale?

- When do you plan to publish data from Stonehenge, Avebury, Silbury Hill, the 2012 Venus transit, and Mauna Kea?

- What was the orientation of the tuning fork in relation to the spin axis, in all cases?

Thanks and regards,
[expat]

===============^^^^===================

 
From:RCH
To: expat
Date: 9/9/13
Subj: Your published Accutron data

This is why it is best to WAIT for the formally published paper on all this.

All these "mysteries" ultimately do have a scientific (and really neat!) explanation ....

As I told your friend Derek, it would be very useful for you to read the history of "Gravity Probe B."

Stay tuned.


RCH

=================^^^^==================

        As far as I'm concerned, that's just an updated version of "The dog ate my homework."  The chance of getting this sorry excuse for science data published in a proper journal is absolute zero. So the evasion continues...

Update June 2016
Two and a half years later, we're still waiting....

[1] New readers who have NFI what this is about can get a backgrounder here.

Hoagland: Two travesties

Text size: 4
Text color: #ffffff
Font: Times Roman
Background: #000000, plus starfield pattern
Line width: 1540px

        Know what that's called? AN UNREADABLE WEB PAGE, that's what. And that's what Richard Hoagland gave us, as his first website update in nearly nine months, under the title It Only Takes One White Crow. At one time I wrote a couple of books about HTML, so I know a piece-of-shit web page when I see it. Any other HTML hackers reading this might like to know that the W3C validator throws 81 errors and 14 warnings when asked to rate the page markup.

        OK, getting on Hoagland's case about his markup is a bit irrelevant, I hear you say. Never mind the technicalities, what about the content? Well, actually, I was giving you the good news first. The content is WORSE.

        The page was composed as a companion to last night's three-hour Hoagathon on Coast to Coast AM. By way of a preamble, he takes us through his brilliant (and totally false) analysis of the original 'Face' on Mars, his absolutely brilliant (and absolutely false) exposition of the Brookings Report, before getting to the meat of the thing -- namely, what Curiosity has found on Mars. I can do this like a picture book for you. (Actually these images are not from the web page but from the C2C-AM archive).

This is a child's sneaker. Surrounded by toys such as a model glider. ON MARS.

This is a cylinder.

This is an engine. ON MARS.

        I'm bored already, I won't continue with the collapsed motels and apartment blocks. We did those already. But you get the idea. This is bad science. VERY, VERY BAD SCIENCE.

        Then, for heaven's sake, he goes off into a wild and utterly ridiculous fantasy about a Reuleaux tetrahedron in West Candor Chasma -- nowhere near Gale crater, nothing to do with the Curiosity rover, and just about as painful as the HTML it's written in. I could tell you what a Reuleaux tetrahedron is but then I'd have to kill myself for even taking this preposterous idea that seriously. Look it up if you must -- everything's on the net these days. The main thing to understand here is that Richard Hoagland is wrong.

Reuleaux woo-woo
        On the woo-woo radio last night, he didn't venture into Reuleaux territory (imagine having to spell that out for George Noory), settling instead for the above-mentioned fantasy of a Martian child's bedroom complete with toys, and a scamper through the Wacky-Accy^{note 1}. At times there were awkward silences, as if neither Hoagland nor Noory could imagine what kind of bullshit to come up with next.

Here's one quote I particularly loved:

"The Accutron is a really robust portable field sensor that allows me to monitor the changes in the field strength in and around these sacred sites."

STRENGTH. Remember that word.

On 8th June, just a month ago, I wrote this in e-mail to Hoagland:

"You say you measure the torsion field, right?

So here's the simplest possible question:

What was the maximum intensity of the torsion field at Coral Castle during the Venus transit of 2004?"

I was favored with a reply, the very same day:

"I have NEVER stated that we're measuring the "amplitude" ... of ANYTHING.             :)

Frequency ... frequency ... frequency ....

Why don't you try actually READING what we've published (so far ...), before you ask (more) inane questions ..."

"Someone's living on the Moon"
        Good line. I bet the Branch Hoaglandians love it. Sad to say, it isn't true. Hoagland repeated that bit of nonsense last night, which is based on his utter misunderstanding of lunar atmospheric pressure measurements from Apollo vs. Chandrayaan. The story is here. Basically, Apollo was doing its measurement at night-time, Chandrayaan daytime. That's why the atmospheric pressure was different -- not because there are seekrit miltary bases.

Two false claims
        Around the middle of the second hour, Hoagland again claimed to have been the first to publish the hypothesis that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, might have an ocean under its icy crust. This claim has been ridiculed by Phil Plait, Ralph Greenberg and Gary Posner. In response to Posner's rebuttal, Mike Bara wrote a vitriolic web page (also white size 4 Times Roman on starfield, but mercifully not 1540px line width) saying "Hoagland has never claimed any such thing".

This is not just bad science, it's disgraceful.

        Toward the end of that hour, Hoagland referred to the Apollo 15 Hammer & feather drop, in which Dave Scott proved that in the vacuum of the Moon, a hammer and feather dropped from the same height reach the ground together. A truly excellent demo. Almost as a casual throwaway, the pseudoscientist told us that the whole thing was his idea.

That is a falsehood. The demo was conceived by Dave Scott, Jim Irwin and Joe Allen^{note 2}.

Bad science. Disgraceful claims. Unforgivable arrogance and mendacity.

===================================

1. As ever, a backgrounder on this is here.

2. Thanks to  Jourget for pointing me to this note in the Lunar Surface Journal:

[Scott - "The basic idea was Joe Allen's. It was another thing from sitting in the crew quarters at night, trying to figure out interesting things to do - that were useful, too. And I guess we had a lot of ideas. But Joe came up with the hammer and feather idea, and we decided where to get a feather. I had a friend who was a professor at the Air Force Academy. Their mascot's the Falcon. And we had the (LM) Falcon. So that was indeed, a falcon feather from an Air Force Academy bird. In fact, I had two of them. I was going to try it, first, to see if it worked - because of static charge and all that stuff it might have stuck to my glove. Didn't have time (for the trial run), so we just winged it. And it worked!"]

More on the Wacky-Acky

        I'm going to be accused of doing this Accutron nonsense way too much, but bear with me. This is kind-of interesting.

(Readers new to the whole topic can get a briefing here.)

        Hoagland has actually offered three separate versions of the Accutron trace he recorded at Coral Castle during the Venus transit on 8th June 2004. First, this one, in his original article Von Braun's Secret Part 2:

        Then there was this one, published much later in a document entitled A Most Hyperdimensional Eclipse... and final Venus Transit.

        Then finally there was this one, with a  much extended horizontal scale, showing 5.8 hours from before 3rd contact all the way to 12:15. That was also in the Von Braun article, down at the bitter end.

        Richard Hoagland was queried, some time back, about the fact that those first two didn't seem to be compatible. Astronomer Stuart Robbins also drew attention to this, in his recent podcast. "Maybe he mislabeled something. I’d prefer not to say that he faked his data," said Robbins, generously. Hoagland's response, at the time, was "Same data, different scale." Well IS IT? The horizontal scales -- representing the passage of time left to right -- on both traces are the same, so they're easy enough to compare as long as the image widths are made the same. Both cover a period of 1.4 hours, although not the same 1.4 hours. The vertical scales -- the tuning fork frequency -- are different, so some stretching is required to provide a fair comparison.

        Here are the two traces, with the moment of 3rd contact aligned and the vertical scale forced to be the same.

        ...and here are the two vertical scales side by side, to prove that I did an accurate job of stretching.

        Looking at the results, just one word comes to mind. That word is Busted!

Robin Falkov Radio takes on the Inaccutron

"If you want something pre-digested and bearing no relation to the truth, you've got mainstream media"

        Thus Dr Robin Falkov^{note 1}, introducing the very first of what she intends to be a regular series of three-hour internet radio shows on the Sceptre Radio Network, under the racy (if a little obvious) title WHAT THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW.

        Well, what THEY apparently didn't want us to know about in this pilot edition was the plight of the Greek population in a crippled economy (hour 1, with Marie Christine Polymenacou) and the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 (hour 2, with John Edmonds). I must say I've heard plenty about both those topics on NPR, and Falkov's exposition seemed to me no less "pre-digested" than any presentation of a complex topic on mass media has to be of necessity. But I admit I was in sampling mode only for those first two hours, and may have missed something non-pre-digested.

Introducing the famous pseudoscientist

        So finally, Falkov introduced Richard C. Hoagland to amaze us all, and although she didn't exactly admit that Hoagland was her POSSLQ (look it up), the way she gushed about what a great time the two of them had prancing around Mauna Kea with the Accutron gear^{note 2} let that particular cat at least half way out of the bag. She declaimed "You're hearing this story here for the first time, before anyone else," which is not really true since the pseudoscientist had reported the Hawaiian jaunt live on Coast to Coast AM as it was happening. But then, Falkov never promised that her show would stick to the facts, did she?

        Hoagland said this was the chance of a lifetime, to take the Wacky-Accy to a latitude of 19.5° to do its stuff. If so, he was scampering up the wrong volcano. It's Mauna Loa^{note 3} which is at 19.5°. Mauna Kea is at 19° 49'.

        Well, you know Hoagland. Mister Blabbermouth. He couldn't bear to tell the story straight—first he had to give us a 25-minute lecture on the Allais Effect, which is the presumptive explanation for the phenomenon he claims to be sensing. I caught some weird extrasensory phenomenon myself as this dragged on, and I swear it was the power of Dr Falkov's "Get the fuck on with it, Richard" thoughts coming through to me.

I thought YOU had the spare batteries

        Finally we got the story, and it was a real screamer. They settled into the visitor center at 3:20 am, for an eclipse that was due 11 hours later, at 2:26pm. The pseudocientist immediately got such amazing "mind-blowing" readings—the frequency swinging all the way from 70 Hz to 540 Hz and back again— that he lost track of time and his battery ran out long before the actual eclipse began.

        Any real scientist, of course, would have declared the expedition a total failure and repaired to the nearest pub to drown his or her sorrows. Not this pseudoscientist, oh no. This, he said, was brilliant re-confirmation of all his theories. The fact that it happened eleven hours early simply meant that the torsion field was coming from the planet Mars^{note 4} as it emerged from behind the Sun.

Then it got REALLY silly

        Then it got not just silly but, frankly, insane. The trace formed by the Wacky-Accy reminded them of a picture of the two Hawaiian volcanoes themselves, Loa and Kea. Clearly, to Hoagland and Falkov, "someone was sending messages," probably the secret space program. "It was a definite message," said Robin, as if she would know anything at all about physics. Hoagland explained that torsion waves propagate at billions of times the speed of light, and came up with this exquisite gem of Hoagland-style insanity:

"There has been a rumor that Curiosity and Opportunity have torsion transmitters that send secret faster-than-light messages to NASA."

Richard, go to your room.

A note on the  production values: There were plenty of technical glitches, and patches of dead air, as we've come to expect from what is, let's face it, a strictly amateur enterprise, internet radio. As hostess, Dr Falkov is not very good, but she's not hopeless and I can imagine she might be ok with experience. She has a tendency to giggle—but then, so does Terry Gross, one of the doyennes of NPR.

=================================

1] Dr Falkov is trained in oriental medicine and is a believer in the memory of water. Her idea of helping people afflicted by the Gulf Oil spill is to offer, on her website, bottles of diluted Gulf seawater that have been slammed onto a hard surface several times. From her website:

The price for the 2 ounce bottle of Gulf Oil Remedy is $22.99, plus shipping.
Shipping for one or two bottles is $5.00. The PayPal address is: DrFalkov@yahoo.com 

2] Once again, any readers who have no idea what "the Accutron" means can read a decent enough summary here.

3] Funnily enough,he made the same mistake in Dark Mission (page 91, 2nd edn).

4] When he reported live into C2C, he ascribed the wild excursions of the Wacky-Accy to interference from HAARP. He must have changed his mind about that.

A baseline at last -- but it's self-defeating

James Concannon writes:

        We here at Emoluments HQ have been ragging on Hoagland for years now, about the pathetically inadequate protocols he reports from his Accutron measurements. One of our criticisms has been that he never presents baseline readings. In other words, when he shows us traces like the one below and calls them "stunning", we only have his word for it that the 40-year-old watch doesn't behave like that all the time.

image credit: Richard Hoagland

        If it did, of course, that would render his "measurement" instantly meaningless, since it would just be the normal behavior of a malfunctioning wristwatch.

        Well, it's beginning to seem that his baseline really is as wonky as his "stunning" experimental results. How about this, from the panel discussion at the Glendale Awake & Aware pseudo-conference:

[01:11:04]
Since I am measuring actual documented changes in the physics, particularly since the 2012 date... Where we live is miles away from the Sandias—which is this huge 12,000 ft mountain range that I conducted the solar eclipse measurements from, that you saw, that were so stunning... I now understand why native peoples think of mountains as sacred and spiritual, because the physics is higher there. It's simply a huge amplifier, solid state amplifier, of "The Force".

It used to be that I could do measurements in my office and I would get nothing but noise—straight line. You have to go to a pyramid, or to that mountain, to get really interesting stuff. Over the last several months, particularly the last several weeks, I have seen readings [...] that are as boggling as any at any pyramid anywhere in the world, just sitting there in the office. And it's replicable—it's happened more than once, in fact one set of readings was so bizarre it looked like it was some kind of artificial modulation of the torsion field, with square waves. You don't get square waves in nature—you don't get, y'know, when a supernova goes off, a pulsar rotates ... curves and all that. This was beautiful square waves. In one part the curve tracked from higher to lower frequency over a particular window of time like redundant messaging.

Several comments come to mind:

:: He reports this as though it's a new phenomenon. And yet, discussing the Inaccutron on Coast to Coast AM last June, he reported "The Accutron went nuts for 12 hours non-stop" in his office on the occasion of the summer solstice.

:: His expression "the physics is higher there" has no conceivable meaning.

:: He uses the word replicable. I point out that the behavior of a broken wristwatch is replicable, too, in that sense. But when real scientists use that word, they mean "When Procedure A is applied to a system, B is the reliable result." They do not mean "B happens quite often."

:: And then, we still have all our other objections to his protocol: No controls, no specific predictions, no actual stated measurements or even  a statement of what units the torsion field is measured in.

        Truly junk science. In case any reader is totally new to this topic, there's a good summary here.

Hoagland: Ghastly in Glendale

        I really hate to subsidize Kerry Cassidy's nutty ventures in any way, but yesterday as the sun failed to appear I thought "wtf, it's only $5" and paid up for the privilege of getting 156 ghastly minutes of Hoagland in a tiny sub-window with atrocious audio.

        This was the Awake & Aware lecture from Glendale last weekend, by all accounts not well attended, so possibly Kerry made a loss on the event, which she had originally planned for the Joshua Tree conference center.

        Hoagland sure does love his SciFi, doesn't he? He spent a full 50 minutes just showing us images of famous works of the genre, from H.G. Wells to the latest Dr Who on BBC tv. In honor of the latter, the lectern was dressed up to look like a Tardis -- I kid you not.

        Just to be sure we all understood we were not here witnessing anything resembling science, he threw in a little numerology. I can give you a flavor of that very easily:

sin 19.47° = 0.3333
0.3333² = 0.1111
0.1111 transforms to 11.11
therefore 11.11 is code for 19.5^{note 1}
Isn't it interesting that 11 different actors have portrayed Dr Who?
The BBC must be hyperdimensional.

        The audio wasn't good enough for me to hear whether anyone in the audience shouted "NO RICHARD, IT'S NOT INTERESTING -- IT'S USELESS TRASH!"

Meaningless spikes
         Well, finally we got to the Accutron traces^{note 2}, which he characterized as "a totally new tool for astrophysics". In a stunning confirmation of my theory that Richard Hoagland is incompetent at mathematics, he told his audience that the frequency of the tuning fork decreases as its inertia increases, in accordance with the Newtonian equation F=ma^{note 3}.

        He went through his "experiments", starting with the 2004 Venus transit during which he actually had the wrong time for 3rd contact (it was really 07:07:33 EDT, not 07:03:53). He showed Teotihuacan, April 2009, again pretending that the first frequency spike coincided with the moment of dawn although it most assuredly did not (it was 6min 25sec later). He showed the "astounding" frequency excursions he recorded at Tikal, also in April 2009 -- the biggest of all his meaningless spikes even though they were recorded at a time when nothing special was happening astronomically.

        I know you're dying to see what he recorded at Chichen Itza last December 19th, before being tossed out by security guards. Hey presto!

        The resolution is way too low to comment  much, except to say that this trace is obviously quite unlike anything he's shown us before. He didn't think that was important enough to explain.

        There's an objection to his reasoning on this which I haven't noted as much as I perhaps should have, in past bloggery on the subject. In addition to the fact that he has published no baselines or controls, and that many of his spikes are off-scale, I mean. It is this: He has written that the torsion field increases (and hence frequency decreases) when the tuning fork is parallel to the spin axis of the planet or star creating the field, but the field decreases (and frequency increases) when the fork is orthogonal to the spin axis. And yet he has never, even once, told us what the orientation of the tuning fork was during any of his "experiments."

        Last week, in e-mail to me, he told me that I had missed the point of Neil Armstrong's speech at the White House and admonished me to "stick to engineering". Well, I think he should stick to science fiction. Come to think of it, I guess that's what he's doing anyway.

=====================================

1. He claims hyperdimensional significance for the number 19.47 because it's the latitude at which three vertices of a tetrahedron appear when the tetrahedron is inscribed in a sphere with the other vertex at a pole.

2. For readers new to the Accutron -- I've written about this many times. There's also a good concise explanation here.

3. Quite likely E=mc² and F=ma are the only two equations Hoagland has ever heard of. Sadly, neither of them is remotely relevant to the frequency of a tuning fork as a function of the properties of its material. The real equation may be found here.

Red ice over Chichen Itza

        Richard Hoagland's storytelling technique is really hopeless. He adds way too much detail, gets side-tracked, then repeats himself, loses track of time and sometimes doesn't even get to the point before he's cut off by the commercial breaks. On Red Ice Radio three days ago, he took an entire hour to retell the story of his unfortunate experience at Chichen Itza last December 19th (see a previous post for the deets.) He spent about ten minutes digressing into a discussion of what legally constitutes an arrest. *Eyeroll*

        Of course, if there's one thing worse than Hoagland's storytelling, it's Hoagland's science. And nowhere is his science more plainly exposed as pseudo than in his so-called "measurement" of the torsion field with his Accutron/MicroSet™ rig.

===================================

Sidebar for any readers that may be new to this topic: Hoagland says that rotating masses, including celestial objects, generate inertial fields that cause an increase of the inertia of any other mass they intersect. More recently he has extended this belief to the proposition that large pyramids amplify this effect in their immediate vicinity, but he has offered no explanation. He has never said what units a torsion field would be measured in.

He owns a 35-year-old (at least) Bulova Accutron wristwatch. He uses precision timing equipment from Mumford Micro Systems to sense departures of the watch's tuning fork frequency from its nominal 360 Hz, and records a trace of the frequency over time.

===================================

        Hoagland's frequency traces, of course, are not direct measurements of the torsion field, but (hypothetically) indications of a side effect of that field's fluctuations. And it gets worse. Since  his theory is that the torsion field increases inertia, the only reading that would offer any support for his crazy theory would be a definite, repeatable, decrease in tuning fork frequency (which is inversely proportional to the square root of the density of its material.) As this blog has pointed out more than once, to be science as opposed to a meaningless techno-game, his protocol would have to include baseline recordings and controls. We don't know whether Hoagland even records these—if he does, he keeps them to himself.

        So do his Accutron games show repeatable frequency decrease? Far from it. Here's what we know:

Venus transit 2004: 9 upspikes, 0 downspikes
Teotihuacan 2009: 2 upspikes, 0 downspikes
Tikal 2009: 7 upspikes, 9 downspikes
Stonehenge  2011:  no data
Avebury 2011:  no data
Silbury Hill 2011:  no data
Annular eclipse May 2012: 7 upspikes, 1 downspike
Venus transit June 2012: no data
Chichen Itza Dec 2012: no data

AGGREGATE:  25 UP, 10 DOWN

        Hoagland has said over and over again that he has successfully measured the torsion field, when in fact he has done no such thing. For him to say, as he did on Red Ice a few days ago, "The predictions of the model are overwhelmingly confirmed," is a lie.

A barefaced lie, Richard.

Sorry folks, no refunds. --R.C. Hoagland

        Another hilarious evening on Coast to Coast AM, featuring RCH and JBW (see prior bloggery). It was a tale of woe, really.

        Hoagland's proposal to use his Accutron toy on the Temple of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza, just a day before the apocalypse-that-never-was, was a bust. Fifty people had paid to accompany the pseudoscientist on this jaunt, but apparently nobody had thought to check whether a permit would be required. As a result, the chagrined pseudoscientist was briskly escorted away from the pyramid and kicked out. I guess he didn't realize that in Mexico, "permits" bear a remarkable resemblance to 500-peso banknotes.

        The fifty paying customers aren't going to see their money refunded, any more than the FooBoo "friends" who contributed to the Egypt-expedition-that-never-was will.

        There was more. In typical failure-to-deliver mode, the pseudoscientist missed a deadline with the February Conscious Life Expo and got cancelled. On the radio last night, he called this a "cockamamie" way of banning him, mocked the show's organizer  Robert Quicksilver, and begged the fans to e-mail asking for re-instatement.

        Personally, I e-mailed Quicksilver supporting his decision. Hoagland's last appearance at that joke of a New Age conference/fuckfest was enough already. The address is office@consciouslifeexpo.com.

This is what we're waiting for... and waiting, and waiting...

        Richard Hoagland's Accutron/MicroSet™ toys are extremely erratic, as this blog has noted more than once. First we were offered the Venus transit of June 8th 2004, observed from the Coral Castle in Florida. Two incompatible versions of this observation have been shown, and neither is in any way convincing. Esteban Navarro Galán asked Hoagland about this on FooBoo and was told to be patient, answers WERE COMING SOON.
 
        Next up was the trace captured on top of the pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan April 22nd 2009, for ScyFy. Hoagland said the trace proved that the torsion field increased at the moment of dawn—07:13 local time. Which was true for all we know. Pity the trace he showed didn't start until 07:19, wasn't it?

        Hoagland built up expectations for the two interesting astronomical events of this year: the annular eclipse of May 20th and the Venus transit of June 5th. He wrote about the eclipse on his horrible web site—a treatise that was 99.5% expectations and 0.5% results. He appeared on Coast to Coast AM June 25th and posted to their web site the only firm information we have so far been vouchsafed. This trace was captured from the terrace of a restaurant at Sandia Peak:

image credit: Richard C. Hoagland, 2012

        As if this presentation wasn't annoying enough, the axes are the reverse of the previous presentations. Time increases with -x, and vibration frequency increases with +y. Nevertheless, it's fairly plain that the major disturbance occurs a few minutes before first contact, and the major off-scale spikes are completely unexplained. HOW OLD is this Accutron watch, again?

        How does this compare with the preliminary version he posted to FB on May 22nd? Not well. Since the axes are reversed, I give it to you flipped in the horizontal and vertical axes:

 image credit: Richard C. Hoagland, 2012

        Hoagland has slipped up Big-Time here. One of them is upside down. The preliminary shows the steady part of the trace decreasing by about 0.3Hz. The "final" shows it increasing by the same amount. Look at the notations 'FAST' and 'SLOW' at the top and bottom edges. Ooops.

        His text accompanying the prelim capture was sooooooooo typical Hoagland-perbole it makes me giggle:

 "Here is a composite "quickie graphic" from our phenomenal Eclipse observations, made Sunday; it shows a preliminary representation of the ASTONISHINGLY CONFIRMATORY torsion field data Enterprise acquired before and at the beginning of the May 20th Annular Solar Eclipse ....

As you can see, even these "quick-look" results are MIND BENDING!"

         Appearing with Jay Weidner on Gaiam Inspirations TV, May 16th, Hoagland was confident about his experimental setup, remarking that he had controls in Chicago and Florida. We have heard nothing at all about those controls, unless I missed it. We have heard nothing at all about the results of a similar "experiment," also from the restaurant, during the Venus transit of June 5th. All we have heard is that the Accutron "went nuts for 12 hours straight" during the solstice, June 20th. Since he was in his own garden in  Placitas NM at that time, I'd say that very probably falsifies one of his main claims, namely that Sandia Peak—standing in for a pyramid in Hoagland's tiny mind—has an amplifying effect on the torsion wave.

image credit: wikipedia commons

So here's a checklist of what we're still waiting for:

1. Reconciliation of the two versions of the 2004 Venus transit
2. Extension of the Teotihuacan trace to the moment of dawn
3. Anything at all from Stonehenge/Silbury Hill last summer
4. Explanation of the off-scale spikes during the annular eclipse
5. Revision of the labeling on that trace
6. Explanation of the fact that the frequency returns to "normal" before the eclipse is even complete
7. Information about the Chicago/Florida controls
8. Anything at all from the 2012 Venus transit
9. Any baselines

Summertime, and the blogging is easy....

        ...at least so it seems this summer, as Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara supply ready-made entertainment in their replies to scientific inquiry. Bara's specialty is, of course, ridiculous insults that make him look more like a bigoted lunatic than any kind of bona fide researcher. Hoagland's attempts to seem like a scientist are almost as good as a Saturday Night Live sketch. Here's his reply to Derek Eunson's recent message, and Derek's follow-up:

==================================================

From: RCH [mailto:enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com]
Sent: 15 July 2012 01:11
To: Derek Eunson
Subject: Re: Torsion in the Baltic [Scanned]
Derek,

For someone who claims a PhD., you appear to know precious little about "shielding"; as even high school physics students are taught, what you detect from any given radiation source is a function of the energy of the emitted radiation ... and the efficiency of the shielding blocking it.

I never said that "torsion shielding" was 100%;  in every specific case, there are obviously "thresholds" in a) detectability, and b) in the effectiveness of what torsion field changes accomplish ... below a certain minimum.

Obviously, if the Baltic object does contain an active "torsion source," to be interfering with even "standard electronics" through that much seawater as we discovered serendipitously in England in measuring some of the ancient monuments), it must (still?) be VERY powerful ....

That is why it would be in interesting to be able to actually measure such a possibility directly, instead of simply inferring "possibilities."

Or, are you also against empirical measurements?    :)

Look forward to your specific responses re the fascinating results of our recent eclipse and Venus Transit torsion measurements -- to be published on Enterprise shortly.

RCH

==================================================
From: Derek Eunson
Sent: 17 July 2012
To: RCH [mailto:enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com]
Subject: Re: Torsion in the Baltic [Scanned]

Mr Hoagland,

I do indeed have knowledge of shielding. Certainly more than your co author Mike Bara, (who thinks that Faraday cages are made of lead) does. You may also want to have a little chat with Mike and explain what centrifugal force is. He clearly doesn't understand and thinks it makes us heavier.

Regarding shielding. You stated on Coast to Coast; "The torsion field effect influences not only the Sun ... but it also interacts with living systems on this planet and imprints a unique torsion field pattern in each living organism when they are born. Why when they're born? Because  water turns out to be a very good screen of torsion fields. So you only are exposed to the field after you leave the womb."

Seems pretty clear to me, "So you are only exposed to the field after you leave the womb."  Not "exposure increases after you leave the womb." No mention of shielding from you here Richard. In fact, implicit in the above is that water is a perfect shield against torsion. So water in the womb blocks torsion, but 80m depth of Baltic sea water may not.

I'm not against empirical measurement at all, but if you declare that you're measuring something, you need to do more than merely sense it, or claim to sense it. That being said, would you be so kind as to indicate what units you measure torsion in ?

Regards,
DJE

        No sign yet of those Venus transit measurements on enterprisemishmash (the stuff that Hoagland was working on "literally around the clock for weeks"). Or any answer to Derek's legitimate questions. Or any response to Neville Parchemin's attempt to enlighten Mike Bara on the question of shielding electromagnetic vs. ionizing radiation. But then, Mike is trying to finish his new collection of utter bollocks book, and his excited announcements on FooBoo indicate that he's found not only a flying saucer in a hangar on the Moon, but a crane, too. Look...

photo credit: public domain, discovered by M. Bara (aged 33-3/4)

Open letter to Richard Hoagland, from a design engineer

This letter is from Derek Eunson, who comments here using the pseudonym binaryspellbook. Reproduced by permission.

Mr Hoagland,
You indicated that you would like someone to pay for you and your partner to go to the Baltic to make Torsion Field measurements emanating from the vicinity of the anomalous object being investigated by the Oceanx group.

Since you have stated on many occasions that water blocks torsion, and, in fact stated that very same thing on the same show later on with regard to a baby being shielded in the womb. Aren't you asking for money to do the impossible. Since you yourself state that water blocks torsion, how could you measure a torsion field emanating from something 80m under the surface.

You appear to be slipping up Richard. You are haemorrhaging disciples from facebook and anti-Hoagland pages are appearing everywhere. This is NOT because you are doing something right. Quite the opposite in fact. The big guns are lining up. And it really is big guns. Dr Farrell doesn't want anything more to do with you, Richard Dolan either. In fact you can be assured that more distance will be introduced in the coming months.

How can you call yourself a scientist when you have no scientific degrees of any kind, have not released a paper of any kind that could be called science, and make uncorroborated and often conflicting statements about your own theories.

Regards.
Dr Derek Eunson
Senior Electronics Design Engineer
Scotland, UK

[ full postal address, telephone numbers and e-mail provided]

Expat eats his words as Hoagland begs on C2C

Chris Lopes offers this review of last night's three-hour flim-flam on Coast-to-Coast AM:

         Not only was Hoagland begging for money for his trip to Egypt, he was also trying to get himself (and his redheaded sidekick) attached to the expedition investigating the "mysterious object" in the Baltic Sea. He even used (yet again) a quote from 2001: A Space Odyssey (another "what did Stanley know and when did he know it?" moment) to prove that the something is HD related. BTW, he got the quote wrong. In the movie the lady Russian scientist says her husband is doing "underwater research" in the Baltic not "underwater archaeology". In any case, it was a throw-away line used to show (by inference) the kind of social circles Heywood Floyd travels in.

        He did indeed spend a lot of the show going over his Accutron research, with the expected (by me anyway) result. I have suggested elsewhere on this site that such a topic would not exactly make for great radio. Hoagland was kind enough to prove me quite correct in that idea. It especially dragged when Hoagie decided to give a lecture on the history of HD physics, which couldn't have been more boring if he'd tried.

        I too thought the 12 hours thing was amusing (Expat adds: He said that "The Accutron went nuts for 12 hours non-stop" on the occasion of the summer solstice). Apparently "Mr. Science" didn't realize that the Earth was moving during that time and putting large bodies of water (that magic stuff that blocks HD waves remember?) between his watch and whatever celestial phenom was supposedly affecting it. Someday he'll learn to keep his BS straight, but last night was not that day.

        Mars was also covered for a bit, with Noory offering and Hoagland accepting praise for his "foresight" that Mars had recently (in the geological sense, a fact even Hoagland was sure to mention) had water. Hoagland then made a prediction about Obama (which he apparently no longer sees as destiny's child) saving his reelection by announcing evidence of microscopic life on Mars. I think it's interesting he has stepped back from his earlier prediction of an announcement of past intelligent life on Mars.

        The listener calls were lame as usual. The effort to protect Hoagland from questions that might expose him has left that part of the show as lifeless as it gets. There was one listener who offered a more conventional explanation for the Baltic thing, but Captain Not-So-Obvious was having nothing of that.

        All in all, it was a typical Hoagland/Noory show. Boring and pointless, with no chance for the listener to get those 3 hours of their life back.

Jamie Ecosse wants his money back

        Today's bloggery comes courtesy of the enterprising Jamie Ecosse—a nom de e-plume with a hidden clue as to the writer's real identity. As a further clue, I may add that Ecosse comes "from the same stable" as the estimable Irene Gardner, our heroine because of her very successful Hoagland bamboozle last month.

        Here's how this game was played:

==============================================
From: Jamie Ecosse
To: enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:02 AM
Subject: Venus transit
Dear Mr Hoagland,

I donated what I could ill afford towards the planned trip to Egypt for the Venus transit HD measurements.
Since the trip never took place and no data was forthcoming I would like my money back.
Would you be so kind as to indicate how this will happen. Do you need me to set up a paypal account or something similar ?

Regards
Jamie

===============================================
From: enterprisemission2001@yahoo.com
To: Jamie Ecosse

Jamie,
Science does not happen overnight.

I have been working (literally) around the clock, for weeks, preparing a substantive Report on our first Eclipse results for a new post on Enterprise; the Venus Transit data -- which WAS acquired successfully two weeks after the Eclipse, just not in Egypt -- will follow after that.

The Egypt trip is still being planned, to measure the torsion physics of the Pyramids; merely the date has been moved back (now, to closer to the December, 2012, Winter Solstice Galactic Alignment) -- as I continue gathering the financial support to make that happen ....

After you have SEEN the spectacular results of what we recorded from both the Eclipse and the Transit, if you still want your donation returned, that will be arranged.

I just want you to realize that ANYTHING worthwhile in science, certainly something this "paradigm busting," takes time -- time to properly analyze and even begin to understand, let alone time to prepare the first results for publication.

I look forward to your reaction to what you helped us find ....

RCH
===============================================

        Holy shit! He intends to keep begging for the next FIVE MONTHS!

        Thanks for this, Jamie, and if Hoagland's "report" ever appears I sincerely hope you'll give him the reaction he's so looking forward to.

        Meanwhile, the Science Adviser himself is posted to appear on Coast-to-Coast AM tomorrow night, telling us about anti-gravity spaceships and free energy generators (also known as "bullshit science".) Since I recently wrote that C2C had apparently banned him from begging on the air, I fear I may be about to eat my words. Since it's barbecue season, I'll have some guacamole to help them down. Actually, in a few minutes I intend to have some guac with or without words. Cheers.

At least Mike Bara's honest about his vanity

A few days ago, Mike Bara tweeted this:

I LOVE watching myself on TV. Seriously, it never gets old

        I guess he was watching re-runs of Ancient Aliens. Was it Season 4 Ep 5 "The NASA Connection", in which Mike made at least four major errors? Season 3 Ep 12 "Aliens and Deadly Cults", which he also screwed up? Or Ep 13, "Aliens and the Secret Code", featuring Mike pontificating about a subject that he not only had no expertise in, but that he knew nothing whatsoever about?

        It's endearing that he comes so clean about his narcissism (I suspect it's really directed at the Las Vegas strippers who frequent his Fuckbook page,) but it's a shame that what Mike is so proud of shows him up as so hopelessly wrong to those of us who actually understand science.

Meanwhile, Richard Hoagland's vanity has taken a hit....

        It's beginning to seem certain that Coast-to-Coast AM has totally stiffed Hoagland, their "science adviser." It's a safe bet that he pleaded to be allowed, first, to beg for funds for that proposed jaunt to the pyramids with his girlfriend Robin Falkov, then when that didn't work, at least come on the air to report his Accutron "experiment" during this week's Venus transit.

        He was not invited to talk about the Venus transit, however. Instead, the night before the event, Eric Francis was given the topic for most of an hour. The general rejoicing in the lack of Hoagland was spoiled by the unfortunate fact that Francis deals in astrology and told us a bunch of poppycock about how the transit would help our "relationships." Oh dear.

        To add insult, Hoagland's nemesis (and we sincerely hope, one day, replacement as science adviser) Bob Zimmerman turned up a night later to talk about the USAF's X-37B, a topic Hoagland considers his (despite the fact that he gets the name wrong and totally mis-reports its mission.)

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.