I'll see you on the dark side of the moon

When I first started writing here at Skeptophilia, back in October of 2010, one of the first people to show up in a post was one Richard C. Hoagland.

Hoagland is well known in woo-woo circles, especially anything having to do with aliens and conspiracies.  He apparently thinks that The X Files was a series of historical documentaries, and his idea of "evidence" is apparently "whatever stuff NASA comes up with that I don't understand."  Back in 2010 what brought him to my attention was his commentary on a mysterious hexagonal pattern that showed up on Saturn (it turned out to be patterns of turbulence that were replicable in the laboratory), and that Hoagland said was the result of "the same phenomenon that causes crop circles."

So it amused me no end to run across his name again, this time in an article in Inquisitr that claims that we finally have a smoking gun with regards to (what else?) aliens.  Not on Saturn, but closer to home, right up there on the Moon.  We have all of the features of an evil NASA coverup (and/or an episode of The X Files); a fired NASA database manager, allegations that Neil Armstrong himself had seen alien bases on the Moon, and a film clip of something moving in one of the craters on the far side.

[image courtesy of photographer Luc Viatour and the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I'm as excited about the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life as the next science nerd, but watching this film clip (which you should also do -- it's only a minute long) left me singularly unimpressed.  The narrator, however, waxes rhapsodic; he says "it may go down in the history books as one of the clearest indications that there is current -- mind you, current -- activity [on the Moon]."

Myself, I thought it looked like a video processing glitch.  All you see is a highly magnified, and thus blurry/pixillated, blob in the middle of the darkly-shadowed crater.   But the aliens and UFOs crowd don't seem to mind this; in fact, the worse the evidence, the grainier the data, the more they can write upon it whatever explanation they want.  Too much detail, and people will see that it's not what they're claiming it is.

So, grayish smudge = highly advanced alien base, apparently.  Over at Inquisitr, they certainly sound like that was enough for them:

Since then, more conspiracy theorists have investigated activity on the moon and many have found what looks to be alien cities.  The most recent coverage showing “something” emerging from a crater on the moon is surely making headlines...  Do you think this is proof that aliens exist and are living on the moon?  It certainly looks like something “living” is making itself known to the world.

I especially like the use of quotation marks around the word "living," given the fact that quotation marks are often used to indicate doubt.  It brings to mind a local restaurant that had the following dubious recommendation in an advertisement:

You'll "never forget" the meals you have here at Upstate New York's "Favorite" Family Restaurant!  

Which would be enough to discourage me.  I've had a few meals before that I've *air quotes* never forgotten, and it certainly hasn't made me want to repeat the experience.

But I digress.

So yes, Hoagland et al. are at it again, this time claiming that NASA has discovered alien life, and instead of doing what space science research agencies do (i.e. research interesting stuff), they've chosen to cover it all up.  Because that's how you get funding -- make sure that if you make cool discoveries, nobody ever finds out about it.

It's kind of discouraging, honestly, that I'm still fighting the same lunatics that I started out fighting six years ago.  You'd think that at least they could come up with a few new tropes.  I mean, the crop circles on Saturn thing at least was one I hadn't seen before.  The fact that we've returned to alien bases on the Moon just seems to indicate that the woo-woos aren't trying all that hard any more.

Flying saucer data dump

The alien conspiracy theorists and cover-up-o-philes must have experienced a serious "WTF?" moment after the release a week ago of official reports of UFOs...

... by the CIA.

Thanks to a loyal reader of Skeptophilia, I was able to peruse the CIA.gov link entitled "Take a Peek into our 'X-Files'," which begins thusly:

The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978 detailing the Agency’s investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). The documents date primarily from the late 1940s and 1950s. 

To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting. 

Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings. 

The truth is out there; click on the links to find it.

We are then not just invited, but positively encouraged to peruse the files on such cases as the sighting of flying saucers in East Germany in 1952 and the report from the same year describing UFOs over a uranium mine in the Belgian Congo, not to mention the report of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects filed with the CIA in 1953.

Then, if that wasn't wonderful enough for you, we are directed to a page called "How to Investigate a Flying Saucer" wherein we are told all about Project Blue Book.  It's as if the CIA had a sudden attack of conscience and decided to come clean on everything that the UFO world holds dear:

Before December 1947, there was no specific organization tasked with the responsibility for investigating and evaluating UFO sightings. There were no standards on how to evaluate reports coming in, nor were there any measurable data points or results from controlled experiment for comparison against reported sightings. 

To end the confusion, head of the Air Force Technical Service Command, General Nathan Twining, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) in 1948 to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might be real (although not necessarily extraterrestrial) and of national security concern. Project SIGN eventually gave way to Project GRUDGE, which finally turned into Project BLUE BOOK in 1952.

We then are led through a systematic way to study such sightings, including methodologies for eliminating "false positives," how to identify (terrestrial) aircraft and other natural phenomena, how to gather data (and what data is critical), and how to file an eyewitness report.

I cannot begin to imagine how a diehard UFO conspiracy theorist would react to reading this.  My guess is that the reaction would largely be a scoffing dismissal of the entire site -- the stance being that of course the CIA is still covering up its knowledge of aliens (Roswell!  Groom Lake!  Dulce Base!  Area 51!).  This release of a few reports is only meant to persuade the weak-minded that the CIA has nothing to hide.  The real stuff on alien autopsies and grotesque alien/human hybridization experiments is still being covered up.

It's especially amusing that the release of these documents has coincided with the reboot of The X Files.  I do not think this is an accident, and it indicates something that I had not known before, namely that there are government intelligence agents who have a sense of humor.  If you've seen either of the two new episodes that have been aired so far, you will know that Chris Carter et al. have basically pulled out all the stops, and threw every conspiracy trope in the world into two fifty-minute shows.  And, no spoilers intended, the CIA and Department of Defense do not come out looking like heroes.

So anyway.  Anything that can induce some cognitive dissonance into the minds of conspiracy theorists is okay by me.  I don't think that the CIA is telling us everything they know -- being that "top secret" designation happens for a reason -- but it's nice to have access to at least some of the original documents.  Now, you'll have to excuse me, because I have some UFO reports to read.

There were giants in the Earth

So our conspiracy theory of the day is: the US government is hiding living giant humanoids to create a race of hybrid super-soldiers.

This, at least, is the contention of one Steven Quayle, who in a video that (should you have fifteen minutes and are not otherwise occupied) you definitely should watch.  The opening shows Quayle, interspersed with science fiction movie clips and backed up by atmospheric music, delivering the following scary lines:

I believe that the big lie that is going to be placed, hoist [sic] upon the world, is that the aliens created mankind... Most people do not understand the evil.  Most people can't even embrace the fact that this isn't about old bones.  When I say mind-blowing, it will also be heart-freeing.  If I start talking about fallen angels having sex with Earth women, they snicker.  Well, that snicker tells me they've already made up their minds.  The super-soldier program is one of the most, well, almost unbelievable, yet so believable, programs that the US military is involved in.

Further along in the video, Quayle assures us that he doesn't believe in alien overlords.  Nope.  That would be ridiculous.  The Annunaki, he says, aren't aliens, they're fallen angels.

Which is ever so much more believable.

Worse yet, they're still around.  "They [the scientists] are starting from the premise that all of the giants are gone.  We're starting from the premise that there are modern-day giants now, and they're not suffering from acromegaly or some pituitary disorder, but they're literally going to fulfill the biblical statement of Matthew 24 where Jesus says, 'Just as in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man.'"

The whole thing, Quayle says, is a "multi-thousand-year cover up."

Then, of course, the Smithsonian comes up, because no discussion of archaeological conspiracies would be complete without the Smithsonian being involved.

"It's interesting, Tim," Quayle said to the interviewer.  "There's evidence of the bias of the Smithsonian, and their contempt for out-of-place artifacts -- every time giant bones were found, it didn't matter if it was on the West Coast, the Arctic, the Antarctic believe it or not, the East Coast, the Ohio River Mounds, they always have a fabulous cutoff point, being once the Smithsonian is notified, and those bones are sent to the Smithsonian, they're never heard from again."

A giant skeleton in Brazil, or a clever example of Photoshop, depending on which version you go for

"The point has been to keep this biblically-relevant topic out of the minds of the people," Quayle adds.

Why, you might be asking, would the Smithsonian -- and other scientific research agencies -- go to all of this trouble?  After all, careers are made from spectacular discoveries like these.  If the bones were real, not to mention the Annunaki, you'd think that archeologists would be elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to publish these findings in a reputable journal.

The reason, of course, is that the government is intimidating the scientists into silence so that they can keep secret the fact that these giant dudes are still around, and are being used in sinister genetics experiments to create a race of human/giant super-soldiers.

Shoulda known.

Quayle also tells us that he won't appear on camera unless he gets the final say on video and audio edits, and that "No one has been willing to agree to that."  Which makes it kind of odd that he's on camera telling us that.  And that he now has his own video production company and has videos on YouTube.

Of course, he might have been right to avoid the spotlight.  He says he's afraid for his life, that he's being followed by the Men in Black.

"I'll be lucky not to be killed one day.  People have disappeared, Tim.  People who know about this, who have evidence."

And once again, we could convince ourselves that all we have is a lone wacko with access to recording equipment -- until you start reading the comments, of which I will give you a mercifully short sampling:

• People say that it takes place in the future. But I think it takes place in the past. The year is 800 after all. And it seems to have the message that you can't beat the titans without mixing with them. Rendering man almost extinct. No wonder Noah and his sons were the only real men left.
• Do you guys feel the Neanderthals are a creation of fallen angels?
• They are from the Nephilim thats why Neanderthal DNA has only entered the human gene pool through men and why Neanderthal DNA is the source of being white. Enoch 105 says the children born to fallen angels were white. Anakim were white blonde giants, Amorites were white Red heads and some were giants, then the Horites were normal sized white hairy cave men with brow ridges. Thats why Hitler thought if he just got enough blondes to have children, sooner or later they would get a superman. 
• there's stones thousands of years old talking about the ANANANAKI

So there you have it.  Giant Anananaki (if I've counted the "Na's" correctly) being hidden by the government so they can have lots of sex with Earth women, who will give birth to a race of immortal super-soldiers, as hath been prophesied in the scripture.

You'd think, though, that if the US has had this super-soldier program for decades (as Quayle alleges), they'd have brought 'em out by now.  Just think what a race of super-soldiers could do about, for example, ISIS.   So my scoffing doesn't mean that I don't think that ferocious giant half-human, half-fallen-angel dudes wouldn't be useful.

It's more that I think Quayle and his followers have a screw loose.

But that's just me.  And if I end up being taken prisoner by a troop of white hairy cave men with brow ridges and used in sinister scientific experiments, I suppose it'll serve me right.

Pondering Project Serpo

In today's episode of You've Got Mail, I recently got an email that poses an interesting question.  Here's the relevant bit:

Dear Mr. Skepticism: 

You talk a lot about how the only way to know something is evidence.  What if the only evidence you have is someone else's word?  Yes I know you can't believe everything people say, but your position is more that we have to start out thinking everyone's a liar.  Guilty until proved innocent... 

I've been interested for a long time in Project Serpo.  I don't know if you've heard of it.  It's probably something that a person like you would dismiss immediately.  But that's not skepticism, because you can't prove it's not real, even if I can't prove it is.  You should look at the link I'm sending with an open mind. 

Some people's stories are going to be true.  Not everyone's a liar...  We should be taking claims like Project Serpo seriously unless they get proved to be hoaxes. 

sincerely, 

Greg T.

First, I'm kind of honored that Greg T. calls me "Mr. Skepticism."  It's a title I wouldn't mind adopting, and certainly is better than some of the other salutations I've seen in my fan mail, which have included "Dear Asshole" and "You Worthless Wanker."  So we're off to a good start.

But he does ask an interesting question.  Are we really stuck with either dismissing all anecdote out of hand, or else accepting it all with equal abandon?  Is there a way to winnow out fact from fiction when all we have is someone's word -- or are we left with Neil deGrasse Tyson's pronouncement, "If you tell me, 'You gotta believe it, I saw it,' I'm gonna tell you to go home.  In science, we need more than 'I saw it.'"

So I looked at the Project Serpo link that was kindly provided, and it does turn out to be an interesting case in the sense that we have zero hard evidence for a pretty wild, and quite detailed, claim.  The site turns out to have the Wall O' Words format, so it's a lot to sift through; the gist, if you don't feel like spending an hour scrolling through text, is that in the Roswell UFO incident, one of the aliens survived.  The government sent in specialists who eventually were able to communicate with him, and it turns out that he and his less-fortunate shipmates came from a planet they call "Serpo" that orbits the star that terrestrial astronomers know as Zeta Reticuli.

UFO enthusiasts undoubtedly will recognize this name.  It's the star that figures prominently in the wild tales of Zecharia Sitchin, who said that it was home to the Grays, the bald, big-eyed aliens of the type made famous in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  But since Greg's question was about determining the truth value of a single claim, and not all of the other stuff that gets appended to it, let's stick to only what was in the Project Serpo site itself.

Because the Project Serpo goes beyond the usual Roswell crash stuff; this claims that the surviving alien told scientists on Earth how to go to Serpo... and we sent a successful manned mission to the planet to study it, staying there for ten Earth years and afterwards bringing home a load of information on another planet's civilization.

A denizen of Serpo

What I look for, in evaluating such material, is anything I can hook onto that seems either (1) well-supported by evidence outside the claim itself, or (2) contradicted by known science.  And in this case, we have a lot of material to test by those standards.  The more we find that fails this test -- the more bits we run into that are contradicted by what is known to be true -- the less plausible the entire claim is.

And right away, we have a few pieces that raised my eyebrows.  Let's start with a bit about "pentagen," supposedly used as a fuel on Serpo:

Pentagen is the fifth isotope of Hydrogen. It is radioactive with a half life of .34222 seconds.  However, with a complex containment and storage system, Pentagen can be collected for an extended period of time...  This storage vessel is where the Pentagen is finally collected and stored.  The interior of the Vessel is lined with an alloy of Beryllium.  The Vessel contains several complex "collection" tubes that collects, cools and stores the Pentagen during the final production process.  The final product is collected in liquid helium, which is charged with gamma radiation.

There are two problems here.  First is that there is not even a fourth isotope of hydrogen, much less a fifth one.  Ordinary hydrogen (hydrogen-1), deuterium (hydrogen-2), and tritium (hydrogen-3) -- and that's it.  But maybe, you might be saying, the Serpons (or whatever they call themselves) have found something outside the realm of our own discoveries?  That's possible, yes?

Yes, but take a look at two other statements -- that cooling the "pentagen" increases its stability and thus its half-life, and that it's collected in liquid helium that has been "charged with gamma radiation."  Both are obvious falsehoods.  Temperature has no effect on radioactive decay rate; this claim has been tested extensively.  In fact, there is no known physical process that has any effect at all on half-life.  And there is no way to "charge something with gamma radiation."  Gamma radiation is high-frequency electromagnetic radiation -- i.e., light.  You can't charge something with light, because photons move.

At the speed of light, in fact.

Then, we have statements like this:

It was determined that Kepler's Laws did not apply to that solar system [Zeta Reticuli]. So, one of the things our Earth-based scientists learned was not to apply Earth's laws of physics in a universal way.

Whenever we're told that the laws of physics are different somewhere else, it always brings up lots of red flags.  From Earth-based observation of the motions of stars and galaxies, we are driven to the conclusion that the mathematical rules governing forces and motion are universal across the cosmos -- so the idea of Zeta Reticuli being some kind of Kepler's-Laws-free zone sounds pretty sketchy.  In the immortal words of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, "Ye canna change the laws o' physics."

Also suspicious is the fact that although we're told that the Away Team eventually was able to understand and speak 30% of the Serpon language, we're not told anything about it except that it's "tonal."  Why would the returning researchers not share what they developed in the way of a Serpon-English dictionary?  Surely that would be easy enough to do.  The fact that we're not given any information about this rather easy-to-relate bit of information is curious, isn't it?

But why is this suspicious?  Because it's really hard to fake an authentic language -- if we were given even 10% of the Serpon language to study, linguists could tell if it was real or made up.  This looks, unfortunately, like they're withholding information for the very good reason that it would give away the game.

And on and on.  These are only a couple of points, selected for the sake of brevity from dozens of sub-claims that were implausible enough to call the entire thing into question.  And even the study of the site that I've done is only skimming the surface.  There's lots more there, and I invite anyone who's interested to delve into the site and find other bits and pieces that shoot holes in the claim.  But my point is, to return to the original question; we're not obliged either to accept anecdotes without question, or reject them without question.  There's a third way, which is to engage our logic centers and knowledge of science, and see if what's being claimed makes sense.

And in the case of "Project Serpo" -- I'm afraid the answer is no.

Revisiting Roswell

A couple of years ago, I went to visit my cousin's family in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and while in the state I insisted on making the drive out to see the International UFO Museum in Roswell.

Yes, it was campy, but it was fun.  My wife spent most of the visit rolling her eyes, but I did get a poster for my classroom, and an opportunity to have my photograph taken having a nice drink in an alien bar that would have only been improved by having a band like the one in Mos Eisley spaceport.

The "Roswell Incident" is one of the most talked about and thoroughly studied UFO stories in history.  In 1947, the museum's website says, "something happened" in the desert plains near Roswell.  The government says it was the crash of a high-altitude weather balloon, but there are alleged whistleblowers (most notably Lieutenant Walter Haut) who claim that it was the wreck of an alien spacecraft.  There are famous photographs of an "alien autopsy," traces of material from the wreckage, and dozens of eyewitness accounts.

What does it all add up to?  Not much, is my opinion.  Could the Roswell debris be the wreckage of an interstellar alien spaceship?  I suppose.  Could it be a hoax, a conglomeration of stories that grew by accretion after a completely natural, terrestrial event?  Yes.  What we have thus far does not meet the minimum standard of evidence that science demands, so for me the jury is still out.

Then of course, there's Neil deGrasse Tyson's comment about the whole thing:  "You're telling me that these aliens flew halfway across the galaxy, and then they couldn't land the damn ship?  If those are the kind of alien visiting the Earth, then they can go home.  I don't want to talk to 'em."

But even given the fact that we have all of the evidence that we're likely to get -- meaning that skeptics like myself will remain unconvinced either way, the believers will continue to believe, and the disbelievers will continue to disbelieve -- the whole thing is still debated endlessly.  People look for new angles, however unlikely those are to lead to anything productive.  And some of those new angles are so odd that they make the original arguments of the UFO crowd seem like peer-reviewed research.

Take, for example the article over at The UFO Iconoclast that says we have only one option for continuing our research into Roswell:

Remote viewing.

Because we all know how much more reliable a study becomes when you compound it with pseudoscience.  Not that that's the way they frame it:

The remote view protocol that we use at Spirit Rescue International is defined as ‘scientific’ and/or ‘coordinate’ remote viewing.  In order to apply it to the Roswell Incident there would need to be more monitor control, protocol modification, use of the correct data type and extended sessions.  The sessions would be conducted by remote viewers who have minimal knowledge of the Roswell Incident. We believe these objectives can be achieved.

Which brings up two rather thorny problems:

1. How do you guarantee "minimal knowledge?"  Anyone who can successfully navigate a Wikipedia page can find out all sorts of facts and speculation about the Roswell Incident.   Given the amount of play this claim has had on television and in movies, and the ubiquity of such information online, "contamination" of the "remote viewers" isn't just likely, it's a near certainty.
2. Since the US government is still denying anything paranormal happened in Roswell in 1947, how would you check the information the remote viewers obtained to determine if it was accurate?

This last issue is the hardest one.  Suppose a remote viewing team determined that the pieces of the Roswell crash -- incontrovertible evidence of a downed spaceship -- were being kept in a warehouse in Topeka.  Can't you just imagine the telephone conversation that might ensue?

UFO investigator:  We know the wreckage of the Roswell spaceship is in Topeka.  Can you let us have a look at it? 

Government official:  It doesn't exist, so no. 

UFO investigator:  Topeka does so exist.  My grandmother lives there.  Ha!  We've caught you in a bald-faced lie. 

Government official:  Not Topeka, the spaceship.  There's no spaceship parts, in Topeka or elsewhere. 

UFO investigator:  Your denial just proves that we're hot on your trail! 

Government official:  *click*

So the whole thing is kind of a non-starter, from a variety of angles.

Understand, though, that no one would be happier than me to have undeniable evidence of alien intelligence.  Even if the aliens in question couldn't successfully land their ship.  Hell, I'm 53 and I still have trouble parallel parking, so I'm not going to judge.  But I'm with Tyson on one thing: the evidence thus far is unconvincing.  And that includes any evidence -- if I can dignify it with that term -- that comes from psychics.

You can't use one unproven thing to prove another unproven thing.  Sorry, but logic just doesn't work that way.

Accretion, eruption, and paranoia

Astrophysicists talk about the process of accretion, where microscopic particles of dust and ice stick together (largely through electrostatic attraction), leading to the formation of disks of matter around the parent star than can eventually form planets.  As the clumps of dust get larger, so does their gravitational attraction to nearby clumps -- so they grow, and grow, and grow.

Conspiracy theories also grow by accretion.

One person notices one thing -- very likely something natural, accidental, minor, insignificant -- and points it out.  Others begin to notice other, similar phenomena, and stick those to the original observation, whether or not there is any real connection.  And as the number of accreted ideas grows, so does the likelihood of attracting other ideas, and soon you have a full-blown gas giant of craziness.

It seems to be, for example, how the whole nonsense about "chemtrails" started.  A reporter for KSLA News (Shreveport, Louisiana) in 2007 was investigating a report of "an unusually persistent jet contrail," and found that a man in the area had "collected dew in bowls" after he saw the contrail.  The station had the water in the bowls analyzed, and reported that it contained 6.8 parts per million of the heavy metal barium -- dangerously high concentrations.  The problem is, the reporter got the concentration wrong by a factor of a hundred -- it was 68 parts per billion, which is right in the normal range for water from natural sources (especially water collected in a glazed ceramic bowl, because ceramic glazes often contain barium as a flux).  But the error was overlooked, or (worse) explained away post hoc as a government coverup.  The barium was at dangerous concentrations, people said.  And it came from the contrail.  Which might contain all sorts of other things that they're not telling you about.

And thus were "chemtrails" born.

It seems like in the last couple of months, we're seeing the birth of a new conspiracy theory, as if we needed another one.  Back in 2011, I started seeing stories about the Yellowstone Supervolcano, and how we were "overdue for an eruption" (implying that volcanoes operate on some kind of timetable).  At first, it was just in dubiously reliable places like LiveScience, but eventually other, better sources got involved, probably as a reaction to people demanding information on what seemed like a dire threat.  No, the geologists said, there's no cause for worry.  There's no indication that the caldera is going to erupt any time soon.  Yes, the place is geologically active, venting steam and gases, but there is no particular reason to be alarmed, because volcanoes do that.

Then, last month, we had people who panicked when they saw a video clip of bison running about, and became convinced that the bison had sensed an eruption coming and were "fleeing the park in terror."  And once again, we had to speak soothingly to the panicked individuals, reassuring them that bison are prone to roaming about even when not prompted to do so by a volcano (cf. the lyrics to "Home on the Range," wherein the singer wishes for "a home where the buffalo roam," despite the fact that such a home would probably face animal dander issues on a scale even we dog owners can't begin to imagine).

[image courtesy of photographer Daniel Mayer and the Wikimedia Commons]

But the accretion wasn't done yet.  The bison were too running from the volcano, people said.  So were the elk.  And then the real crazies got involved, and said that the government was already beginning to evacuate people from a wide region around Yellowstone, and relocating them to FEMA camps where they are cut off from communicating with anyone.  And when there was an explosion and fire at a gas processing plant in Opal, Wyoming two weeks ago, 150 miles from Yellowstone, and the whole town was evacuated, the conspiracy theorists went nuts.  This is it, they said.  It's starting.  The government is getting people out, because they know the whole freakin' place is going to explode.

Never mind the fact that the residents of Opal were all allowed back two days later, once the fire was under control.  Facts never seem to matter much, with this crowd.

So once again, the scientists are trying to pour oil on the waters.  An article in Wired yesterday describes recent research by an actual geologist (i.e. not just some crank with a videocamera) that has shown that the magma beneath the Yellowstone Caldera is mostly a semisolid, and is far below the threshold of 40% liquefaction that most volcanologists think is necessary for an eruption.  And we're not talking about some hand-waving layperson's "the volcano is overdue for an eruption" foolishness; this is a peer-reviewed technical study that merited publication in the prestigious journal Geophysical Research Letters.  And about the conspiracy theorists, the article in Wired minces no words at all:

As usual, people are trying to rabble rouse when it comes to the Yellowstone Caldera. All these rumors that the government is trying to hide evidence of an impending eruption are pure fantasy, but that doesn’t stop some people from acting out their delusions to the detriment of others who fall prey to this misinformation. Yes, the Yellowstone Caldera is a massive volcano that has the potential to produce huge eruptions, but no, there are no indications right now that any sort of eruption will happen any time soon — and I’d be surprised if we see an eruption in our lifetime (just like any volcano that hasn’t had a confirmed eruption in the last ~70,000 years).

Of course, this will probably turn out to be shouting into a vacuum, as arguing with conspiracy theorists usually turns out to be.  Witness the fact that despite all of the research and debunking of chemtrails, the whole thing still has a considerable cadre of true believers, who claim that anyone who argues to the contrary is a blind fool at best and an evil shill at worst.

So look for more Yellowstone paranoia to be zinging about the interwebz over the next few weeks.  As for me, I'm grabbing the fleeing bison by the horns and going to Yellowstone in July.  We'll see if there's anything to all the hype.  I'm hoping to do some sightseeing and birdwatching and hiking, and simultaneously hoping not to be killed in a massive volcanic eruption or shot by a FEMA operative or hustled away into some godforsaken refugee camp.

Always the optimist, that's me.

NASA, lawsuits, and jelly doughnuts

One of the questions you seldom hear asked, either of skeptics or of their counterparts, is, "What would it take to convince you that you were wrong?"

It was asked at the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate, and it may have been the most telling moment of the whole thing; when Ken Ham said, "Nothing could ever convince me I was wrong," and Bill Nye said, "All it would take is one piece of hard evidence," it pointed out both the fruitlessness of debating people like Ham, and also the fundamental difference between a scientific viewpoint and a non-scientific one.  If you are a scientist, one piece of reliable evidence that your previously-held understanding is wrong would be sufficient to force a review of what you thought you knew.

I say "review" rather than "revision" because the one thing this leaves out is the quality of the evidence.  There are still the possibilities of measurement error, uncontrolled variables, and researcher bias to consider.  And factoring in these is no mean feat.  However, this is why peer review exists -- and why anecdotal reports, of the sort that are usually trotted out to support various woo-woo claims, don't sway me much.  If you want me to sit up and take notice, then go the traditional route of peer review.  Once you've done that, we can talk.

Of course, the problem is that a lot of woo-woos don't like peer review because they perceive the cards as stacked against them.  And this is when the whole issue takes on the added dimension of a systematic coverup.  In the first chapter of his wonderful book Voodoo Science, Robert Park tells the story of Joseph W. Newman, who claimed that he had circumvented both the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics by inventing an "energy machine" that could solve the world's problems by outputting more energy than was put into it -- in effect, a Perpetual Motion Machine With Benefits.  Scientists rolled their eyes and walked away, prompting Newman to blame his failure to get a patent on a conspiracy against him.  And while no one who understood any physics did much more than scoff, he gained considerable traction amongst people who love to see the Underdog take on The Man.

It's probably much the same sentiment that led to a guy named Rhawn Joseph to announce last week that he's suing NASA, claiming that the recent "jelly doughnut rock" situation was evidence of life on Mars -- but that NASA, in the way of Evil Government Agencies, was covering the whole thing up.

You might have heard about the "jelly doughnut," which made the news a couple of weeks ago.  It's a light-colored rock that appeared suddenly in the field of view of the Mars rover Opportunity where no such rock had been in earlier photographs.  The whole thing was certainly a shock -- any time you're doing remote sensing of another planet, and something plays now-you-don't-see-it, now-you-do, it makes scientists sit up and take notice.

[image courtesy of NASA]

To me, the rock doesn't look that much like a jelly doughnut; and NASA scientists called it, with marginally better justification, "Pinnacle Island."  But whatever you call it, it was sort of a mystery.  "Much of the rock is bright-toned, nearly white," a NASA spokesperson said, in a press release.  "A portion is deep red in color.  Pinnacle Island may have been flipped upside-down when a wheel dislodged it, providing an unusual circumstance for examining the underside of a Martian rock."

Well, as soon as I saw this, I knew that the woo-woos were not going to be able to resist wooing all over this story.  And it wasn't long before claims that this was alien life started to appear on fringe sites like Above Top Secret.  But now, we have someone going a step further, with a lawsuit against NASA that demands that they come clean about the nature of the rock.  Rhawn Joseph, a self-styled cosmologist, is demanding that the agency "perform a public, scientific, and statutory duty which is to closely photograph and thoroughly scientifically examine and investigate a putative biological organism."

The problem, of course, is that it remains to be seen what NASA could do that would convince Joseph that this was just a rock.  Joseph himself seems to have somewhat dubious allegiances; he has written for the Journal of Cosmology, a journal that biologist and skeptic P. Z. Myers says "... isn't a real science journal at all, but is the... website of a small group... obsessed with the idea of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth."  As for Joseph himself, it's fairly significant that he was involved in a rather ugly shouting match with astronomer David Brin and JoC editor-in-chief Rudolf Schild over a paper Joseph had submitted for review to Brin which Brin said contained "glaring faults."

So Joseph is not, perhaps, someone with the highest credibility in the scientific world to begin with; but leaving that aside (as we must, because it's always important to separate the claim from the claimant), does he have a basis for suing NASA to force them to reveal what they're hiding?

In a word: no.  I mean, think about it.  What earthly (or Martian, to be more precise) reason would NASA scientists have to cover up evidence of life on Mars?  The first scientists to demonstrate the existence of extraterrestrial life will be instantaneously famous.  Especially, as in this case, if the living thing in question is large, multicellular, and capable of slithering quickly into the view of a remote camera.  Considering that NASA has been trying to figure out if there was life on Mars since the Viking probes of the 1970s, it's highly unlikely that they'd cover it up if some living creature just happened to photobomb Opportunity's surface photographs.

But that sort of logic is apparently not convincing to Joseph.  "The refusal to take close up photos from various angles, the refusal to take microscopic images of the specimen, the refusal to release high resolution photos, is inexplicable, recklessly negligent, and bizarre," Joseph said, in the text of the lawsuit.

You have to wonder how the folks at NASA are responding to all of this.  Considering the bullshit they have to deal with on a daily basis -- whether or not Nibiru is heading toward Earth, what the current position of the Comet Elenin is, what our likelihood is of being struck by a huge asteroid -- I can only imagine that they just rolled their eyes and said, "Oh, hell, not another freakin' lawsuit."

And of course, even if the lawsuit is settled in NASA's favor -- which I can only hope it will be -- it's doubtful that it will silence Joseph and his supporters.  As I've commented before, once you've decided that everyone is lying to you, there is no piece of evidence that will be sufficient to convince you.

It is the salient point, really, and the acid test for whether you've left the realm of science.  If ever you are asked, "what would convince you that you are wrong?" and your answer is "nothing ever could," you are no longer doing science.  You are off in the rarefied air of woo-wooism -- and it might just be time for a u-turn.