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Should NASA Try To Refute Crackpots?
angkor writes "CNN has an interesting article on the dilemma faced by NASA: what is the proper way to deal with far-out theories given exposure (and legitimacy) by the media--ignore the crackpots or refute them?"
After all, NASA are controlled by the illuminati lizards who want to keep the truth about life on other planets hidden from the rest of us.
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
You're probably not going to change the mind of someone who is CONVINCED the moon landing was a hoax. I don't see a need to spend money that could go toward research on trying to change people's minds.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
Outsource it!
NASA's core business is delivering science and engineering, not education.
There are plenty of educated, credible and vocal people who don't work for NASA who can and will provide necessary refutations (word??) for pseudoscientific nonsense.
NASA could probably achieve the same goal (convincing swinging skeptics) to the same level of efficiency through a PR department staffed with a couple of researchers and the occasional "read this or ask them" press release.
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"The issue of trying to do a targeted response to this is just lending credibility to something that is, on its face, asinine," NASA chief Sean O'Keefe said in late November after the dust settled."
Why bother trying to convince the "crackpots"? What percentage of the population are they, and does it really concern NASA? Maybe the most telling thing about the whole story is that NASA does seem concerned.
If they really want to prove them wrong, then take me (and everyone else) to the moon, and we'll check out that flag and footprints to see if they're there.
Nasa will not be able to convince all the "crackpots" until there is a viable station on the moon that people can go to for vacation.
Because these anti-science crackpots are trying to make it look as if NASA spent billions with nothing to show for it. They're trying to undermine the faith that society has in science.
I could draw parallels with creationism.
dave
It never ends with them, you can't please them.
You show them documents, they say they are fake.
Show them footage, they say it was done in a studio.
Show them the moon lander through a telescope, they say the telescope has been tampered with.
Take them to the moon and show them the lander in person, and they say it was planted.
Last time i posted this reply i got some replies suggesting that the crackpots be left on the moon.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
One of Nasa's three stated mission objectives is "to inspire the next generation of explorers". Exactly how could the next generation be inspired if they think NASA was lying up-front about its most inspiring accomplishment?
Bad astronomy
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
yeah, but then you have to come back 2 weeks later after the bruises have healed and say that you didn't punch them in the face. The photographs were faked in photoshop. You didn't make him see stars, he was looking up at night. There is no bruise.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
NASA got itself into this problem by presenting itself as a frontier organization, a group of heroic explorers. And to maintain that image, they are wasting lots of money on useless projects like the space shuttle and the space station.
What should NASA do? They should present themselves as a scientific organization and forego the wild-west mentality. They should stop presenting astronauts as "heroes", reduce manned space travel to next-to-nothing, and instead go mostly with comparatively low-cost, unmanned probes. As you may have noticed, people don't generally ask whether unmanned probes are fake or not, and even if they did, nobody would really care very much.
And, of course, the other problem is that the US population isn't exactly up to speed on science, on average. Refuting a single crackpot is too little too late, but NASA should take its educational role in the sciences more seriously and they should get the funding to do it--they are trying, but they aren't making a dent.
If we had a scientifically literate population, and NASA stuck to doing science and didn't create a heroic mysticism around manned exploration, crackpots wouldn't stand a chance. The way it is, NASA is merely reaping what they sowed.
If Dr. Sagan was around I'm sure he would point out that debunking crackpottery encourages critical thinking. That was pretty much the whole point of his book The Demon Haunted World, the idea that we are constantly bombarded by claims, arguments, and pitches. By taking on arguments logically rather than emotionally you can separate the legitmate claims from the pseudoscience. These sort of skills have wide relevance in our modern world. Every person that has ever been subjected to an infomercial, a verbal sales pitch, a car sales pitch, a print ad (or about a thousand other forms of persuasive speech) would benefit from logical, critical thinking. Additionally, you are much better at constructing valid arguments if you understand logic and reason, and aren't forced to make emotional appeals, ad hominem attacks, etc. to convince someone of your viewpoint.
Show them the moon lander through a telescope, they say the telescope has been tampered with.
Thats the whole point of these debunking missions you can't see the lander on the moons surface or the rovers, even with modern telescopes the size relationship between the lander and any earth based telescope is just too small its like looking for a grain of sand from 100,000 miles away.
I believe Japan is launching a mission in 2003 to photograph the moon (called LUNAR-A) from a hi resolution camera on a low orbit satellite , also a californian company is doing the same with a mission called Trailblazer which also should prove/disprove that mankind was indeed on the moon.
In order to see if someone is lying you cannot ask the said lier to show evidence especially if fabrication of evidence was an issue in the first place , that is why its probably a better idea for a independant non connected 3rd party to verify the accused lier's claims.
Of course this still probably wont be enough for the hoax/conspiracy believers as they will say NASA skewed the results or "tainted" the 3rd party.
You must remember, we live in an age of liers and fraudsters and no one is untouchable even a established science agency such as NASA or members of the American goverment, after all no one thought Enron or AC would be one of the biggest frauds in history so it is somewhat understandable that people don't believe everything they see
But for the "ignorant" masses an independant investigation will go a long way to dispell any doubts, especially from one by a country independant from that of the said "fraudsters", plus with any luck they might be able to complete some worthy science along the way.
Good point - I think that maybe there's a faction which says you can believe in Religion or in Science, but not both. It preys on devout people: says "thou shalt not believe in Science", as if Science was some mystical thing.
I wonder if there's a faction who'd like a populace which doesn't understand the word it lives in and reverts to superstition and prayer when a little thought would do. Then they can blame events on lack of faith, rather than a rational analysis.
dave
In arguments with people, I have a goal that I shoot for. I try to make sure that I've reached the point where: a) I am sure that my opponent has heard me and understood me; b) I am sure that I have heard and understood my opponent; c) I can state my opponent's views, and his or her reasons for holding them, in a manner that my opponent agrees is accurate; d) my opponent can state my views and their rationale in a manner that I agree is accurate.
Even with very intense religious or political discussions, it is usually possible to reach this goal.
And, for the most part, this goal is usually about as far as it is possible to go, at least in a single argument. After you get that far, you need to give it a rest for six months or so and not keep harping on it.
It is very unusual for anyone to say "By gosh! you're right! I just changed my mind." But if you can get a mutual understanding of each others' point of view, the chances of productive progress sometime in the future are much increased.
At work, say, with discussions with colleagues or supervisors, what typically happens (when I'm right and have presented it well) is that nobody agrees at the time, and nobody says that they've changed their mind, yet three or six months down the line I will see some partial or incremental progress in the directions I've advocated.
I believe that the same goal should be applied to the "moon-landing-hoax" debate. NASA should try to present clearly and publicly, the reasons why people believe the moon landing occurred, AND should try to address the opponents' arguments intelligently and respectfully.
NASA should not expect to convince the "it's-a-hoax" crowd nor to settle the debate, but NASA needs to acknowledge that the government has lied to us on occasion, and that saying, in effect, "it's true because we say so, and your opinions don't count because you're crackpots" is arrogant and inappropriate.
The Amazing Randi has not "settled" any debates about psychic phenomena, but he's done a lot of good.
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It is not about the crackpots. It is not even about moon landings. It is about teaching reasonable folks about critical thinking and evaluating evidence.
There are many people who believe what they see on Fox, because there are no easily accessible sources that give them the other side. These people also vote at elections, and one of their votes count as much as your vote (at least theoretically... :-) ). They shape policy as much as you do, and really, democracy can't work unless you have a well-educated public who can tell when they are being lied to.
That's why NASA, and every well-educated person has to spend time teaching everyone about evaluating evidence, not because of the moon landings, but because you can't have a working democracy without.
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The crackpots will always believe that they are correct, regardless of what the scientific community does. For example, the Air Force was constantly berated for not "explaining" the Roswell incident more completely. But when they did, all the crackpots said they were just covering it up with their explanations.
The "Moon Landing is a Hoax" crackpots are the same: if NASA doesn't refute them, then they can continue with their silliness. If NASA does refute them, then the crackpots either say "See, if NASA is refuting us, we are important" feeding into their delusions, regardless of the information NASA releases. It's a Catch-22.
Plus, any information that NASA does release would be used against them in some way: any little deviation, correction, etc, automatically triggers the "conspiracy sense" these idiots have.
It is a lot like the John Edwards stuff: you can explain exactly how he does his tricks, exactly how he gathers his information, but none of that will actually convince a person who believes.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I think NASA should refute them, but not spend too much time on it. It should be easy quick and inexpensive to put together a dossier of information which non-paranoids would accept as reasonable evidence that it happened. Sell it for $19.95.
It's important to address the concerns because unresponsive government is not good government. Even if they're crackpots, address them long enough to say "You're crackpots, here's why you're crackpots, good night" If they don't do anything, then it is fuel on the fire.
On the other hand, if they provide proof in the form of some dossier, the conspiracy theorists are in a position of having to refute more and more documents, and saying that the conspiracy goes even deeper than they thought in NASA. The kookier they get, the fewer people will buy their crap.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
There is one way to refute the folks who think we faked the missions to the Moon: show samples of Moon soil from the Apollo missions and compare them against the Moon soil sample brought back by the Soviet Luna 16 probe in 1970.
:-p
Given that these two samples are pretty much the same element-wise, that should end the arguements once and for all, so there you hoax-believers.
How can the flag flutter when there's no wind on the moon?
The flag flutters because of the "sun wind", i.e. light pressure. If americans would have better physic lessons, they would learn about it..
Why can't we see stars in the moon-landing pictures?
Do you see stars when you make pictures on a clear night, but need to have a short exposure time
because of the extreme foreground brightness??
The human eye has much much more gain than a camera.
Why did'nt we hear the noise of the rocket motor when the Moon lander was returning to earth?
Hmmm, in space no one can hear you...
OK.. Why not ask AMSAT to send a cheap satellite to the moon and take some images from the landing sites. Sent these picture to earth using ham radio, so that everyone can see them and no one can fake you again!!!!!
Better ignore the ignorants...
I prefer Buzz Aldrin's response... The Daily Show featured a video by a hoax advocate as he harrassed the astronaut on a city street. Aldrin simply ignored the guy until he got in his face calling him a liar and demanding that he tell the world the truth, at which point he punched the guy in the face and continued on his way.
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What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Reluctantly, I think NASA should debate the crackpots - but with hard data AND personal testimonies. Line up every guy that's been to the moon and INVITE the people to call them liars to their faces, along with presenting the crackpots with their evidence. Doing it on both levels works wonders - the crackpots have to look both impolite and ignorant.
I do think this is important because with the prevalent media, though it can give us much information, it's also highly biased towards spectacle and word-games. It's a virtual reality of talking heads, word-juggling, and popularity contests with far to little connection to anything actually relevant. Anyone can come up with a bunch of pretty words, push a few buttons, and ridicule a few people to polite to be jackasses, and bam - instant "credibility" despite the fact said person has any relevant arguments, evidence, or credentials.
Debating the crackpots isn't just good for science or society, it'd be good for our culture.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
Channel surf around on cable or satellite these days and you are likely to find pseudo-scientific programs all over the place. "Scientists study the Bermuda Triangle" was one headline I remember. Even The Learning Channel dips into these low spots from time to time. And given the lack of scientific knowledge on the part of most Americans (or even a large segment of Slashdotters for that matter) there will always be a certain number of credulous people.
One of my co-workers was talking to his brother who mentioned that he had watched one of these no-moon-landings programs and now believes that there never was a moon landing. My co-worker responded, "The only people who believe that there was no moon-landing are the morons who believe the CIA killed Kennedy." A long silence ensued.
The mass media panders to people like this and most rebuttals would only reach those who were clueful anyway. My advice is to laugh at anyone who says that a moon landing never occured. And roll on the floor when you meet a flat-earther.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
They're trying to undermine the faith that society has in science.
That is a bizarre point of view for someone who appears to embrace science for its own sake. That comment, along with your creationism cut, appears to betray a regard for science that borders on religion.
My understanding of science is that faith is irrelevant. You ask a question, test the question, and analyze the results. I fail to understand how its purpose or value can be affected by public belief in it. Indeed, given DDT, PCBs, thalidomide, agent orange, phlogiston, the Hanford site, etc., etc., etc., I should rather hope that public policy toward science be critical enough to question it effectively. In fact, I am horrified by the thought of the public having "faith" in science.
The Soviets have come close (I couldn't find a link, but I've read a couple books and seen a few documentaries on their secret scrapped program). They did land unmanned probes, and they scrapped their largely unsuccessful manned program for the same reason we canceled the Apollo program before we launched all the planned missions: Once someone won the race (the U.S.) there wasn't much point in going back again and again for little day trips.
As for proof, that's easy. The Apollo program has left laser reflectors on the moon. These reflectors have been 'pinged' by many organizations independent from NASA and the U.S. government, including schools and government programs in the U.K., France, Japan, and even the former Soviet Union (what reason would they possibly have to back up false U.S. claims?), Canada and others.
Anyone with the money to rent a properly equipped telescope and the necessary laser equipment can verify this. Including the skeptics.
As for the point about the abductees, I've never heard anyone assert (even Whitley Striber) that they're talking about numbers in the millions. You and I both know that it's technologically possible. That's (I think) not what's in dispute here. But there is, in my opinion, as much reason to believe that man went to the moon as there is to believe that we've gone to Antarctica. I've never been there. And unlike the moon, I've never met anyone who's claimed to have been there! That doesn't mean I don't believe we've gone. It's not an absurd claim. Alien abduction... well, I think of it like an afterlife or lots of religious concepts. I'd *love* to believe in it. I've love to believe that not only are there aliens (which I believe do exist. We probably aren't the only intelligent life in the universe), but they are here visiting us. But I don't. I see no evidence, nor do I see any reason to believe it's more likely than not. Just like I'd love to think that after I did, that's not it. But I see no reason to believe that that is anything more than wishful thinking.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
A local hero of mine, Dr. Lawrence Krauss Chair of the Physics Department of Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, has taken up the call-to-arms to protect Ohioans and the rest of the world against crackpots. In our recent "Intelligent design" debacle, creationists attempted to hijack the science education curriculum, and, thanks in no small part to his efforts, were stopped. He has also made a bigger name for himself analyzing science fiction, and is best known for his book "The Physics of Star Trek." If you find a scientific cause that needs a real scientist to refute morons, he is your man.
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If we had continued to explore the moon and established a base there and maybe moved on to the planets and the stars we wouldn't be having these debates would we? Going to the moon was (IMHO) man's greatest scientific and engineering achievement. We got there and just stopped. We had no vision for anything beyond meeting Kennedy's goal of sticking it to Soviet Russia before they stuck it to us. Literaly thousands of highly trained and dedicated engineers, scientists and techicians were given pink slips. The whole program was dismantled! We couldn't build a Saturn IV today if we tried! So is it any suprise that our collective memory of the achievement starts to fade into the realm of myth and legend?
I must say, with all due respect to your position, that the ROI has been enormous. A major chunk of the technology we take for granted today, from GPS to miniaturization to weather forcasts that are more than a guess based on barometric pressure and wind direction, and a dozen other technologies, are largely a result of the space program, or, to be more specific, our investement in it.
Yes, at times NASA has lost vision and suffered from featherbedding and beaurcratic gamesmanship, but IMHO the payback from what we put into the space program has been the BEST use of taxpayer dollars, EVER.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Paul
You're assuming that the people arguing for the hoax are making logical, rational arguments. They aren't. That's why it's called "pseudoscience". They make outlandish claims and back it up with "prinicples" that sound good, but have no basis in scientific fact. It's the same thing that makes astrology popular.
Remember, most of these people won't be convinced until you bring each and every one of them to the moon, and even then some will insist it was a drug induced hallucination.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
What the "no, they didn't go" idiots are doing is spreading libellous remarks, defaming the character of the many good, honest folks who made the moon missions possible. People died to make the missions possible.
If criminals in prison can sue the state for "not giving them access to sports facilities", or for "interfering with their freedom of religion by not allowing them to have live chickens to sacrifice" (both Readers Digest stories from several years ago), then surely NASA can shake enough dollars out of the money tree to nail those idiots to the floor... Wasn't it recently said that that NASA were going to shell out $15M to get a book written and published refuting the nay-sayers? That would be a good war-chest...
I don't know quite how it stands in the US, but in England the defamers have to provide, in court, sufficient evidence to prove that what was said or written was factual, or face the consequences. If you flat out say someone is lying about something, and can't prove it, you're in deep shit.
At the very least you're made to publicly retract the statements, and often pay damages on top.
Come to think of it, that might be a good strategy - make 'em prove NASA didn't go to the Moon. The definitive way to prove it would be to go to the locations NASA visited and photograph the lack of footprints, the empty space where the landers are sitting, etc. Not only would NASA be vindicated, they'd get a moonshot funded by the idiots who claim they didn't go...
Even if you're lax and give the intern a week, that still doesn't cost $15k unless you're paying the intern three quarters of a million dollars per year.
Wacko thought of the day: this was all just a left-wing conspiracy to discredit Fox. ;-)
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- The U.S. government enlisted the help of many private defense and aerospace contractors in order to reach the moon. For example, the lunar module was built by hundreds (if not thousands) of engineers at Grumman Aerospace. Are you suggesting that all of these people were "in on" your conspiracy, or that they were simply duped?
- The national (and in many cases, international) media was very close to NASA during the years of the moon landings. Reporters were routinely given access to the Apollo crews in the months and weeks before their launch, whereby they could follow the crew around and record their day-to-day activities. There was also a large amount of technical cooperation between NASA and the media for things such as the live feeds from the moon. Certainly the media would have had some complicity in your conspiracy; have all of these people remained silent, as well?
- The Soviet military establishment would have jumped at the chance to demonstrate that the American capitalist pig-dog "moon landings" were, in fact, fake. Is it your contention that the Soviets, even with their considerable (at the time) intelligence infrastructure within the borders of the United States, would not have known about such a far-reaching conspiracy? Or are they part of it, as well?
Finally, let us not forget the names of three men: Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. These were the astronauts that perished in the Apollo 1 fire, an incident that almost got the entire program shut down. If we never actually went to the moon, then why would NASA have to have launches in the first place? How do the deaths of these brave men fit into your conspiracy theory? I suspect that you find them rather inconvenient.Lots of things bother me about moon-landing conspiracy theorists, but they way that they callously disregard the sacrifice of the Apollo 1 astronauts is by far the most disgraceful thing about them.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Those who refuse to provide proof are the "anti-science crackpots". Society's faith will in science will be undermined if science as treated as something that must be believed based merely on a statement from a self-proclaimed authority.
You're painting with a pretty wide brush there, I must say. Some (many, I'd wager) people who doubt things like the moon landing are merely skeptical; it doesn't mean they're somehow opposed to science as a whole. Problem is, generally the only ones who get substantial airtime are the extremists. {sigh}
The world is a much bigger, more diverse place than Fox portrays. ;)
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Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Because people who get "abducted" are all fruits. They have stupid stories about anal probing. The aliens always confirm these people's opinions (that conveniently are always ignored because of a conspiracy) about whatever ridiculous thing they're going on about. These people don't understand the difference between causality and correlation, they say things like "It didn't look like a plane [to me], I couldn't find out that it was a weather balloon, so it *must* have been a UFO" and they don't even understand why they're ridiculous.
That's why they don't get believed. They're not mentally all there and they make assumptions from too-few facts.
What does this mean? Because no other country tried (why, most of them were allies with one of the two countries that were trying), it must be false? No other country has made a plane like the SR-71, or nuclear submarines as capable as the US, but most people believe in those.
The space-race was a massive attempt by both sides to demoralize the other side by proving them to be less capable. Don't you think the Russians would have pointed out the US's lies if they could have? They've sent probes around the moon before. It'd be a simple matter to have sent out close enough to the landing site to photograph the empty site for proof that there never was anything there.
If you were in a contest with someone and suspected they won a big prize by cheating, and all you had to do to check was send someone to review tapes of part of the contest, wouldn't you do so? Wouldn't you blow the whistle? How about if the other person was your sworn enemy and you could humiliate them completely by this?
What is really so suspicious about the moon landings? The rocketry technology is there, I prove it every time I use a signal broadcast by a geo-synchronous satellite. The life-support equipment is there, this is actually easier than building a suit that'll work at great depths.
On one side of the UFO vs Moon Landing you have a bunch of trained scientists willing to show you the inbetween steps and the documentation, as well as explaining why certain things don't match your explanations and show how you can test these assumptions in an unbiased experiemnt. On the other hand, you'd got a bunch of crystal-power using, accupuncture practising, new-age weenies who make claims like UFO abduction or perpetual motion and yet get violent and abusive when you ask for a demonstration, let alone proof.
Who do you really think is more believable?
- The Americans had to show a success in getting to the moon, because they were locked in competition with the Russians.
- It is impossible to send men to the moon, because they would be killed by the radiation.
From this, two conclusions are inescapable:- The competition with the Russians was pointless, because the Russians could not have sent men to the moon either.
- The Russians were too stupid to know this, because they kept building the N-1 booster despite the knowledge that they could not put men on the moon. Yet they did.
Making such a conspiracy theorist look like a complete idiot in front of their friends and family is a good way to get them to shut up, and if they are afraid to talk about such nonsense for fear of a severe beating about the concepts with logic, the meme will stop spreading. The real problem is that most people are so ignorant that they have nothing to use as a template for calibration of their bullshit filter.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist