I confess to being a little amused re this Moon landing thing. At first I
thought that a little teaching about the scientific method could be done
with the program for HS students. Now I see that it is the instructors who
ought to learn from the program.
In another life I was involved with the hiring of a staff member at the IBM
Research Center - a process much like that of hiring a professor -- some
individual interviews mixed with a lecture. The poor fellow presented the
material of his doctoral dissertation -- which included some thoughts on
cases where the Second Law is violated. After the lecture, all of the
individual interviews were cancelled -- alas, except mine. I wanted to see
if he really had anything meaningful to say. The others had closed minds
and rejected him out of hand and dismissed him completely. I found him to
be brilliant. I found his advisor to be lacking however, <g> He was not
hired.
Now my feelings about a "hoax" are mixed. I watched the FOX program with
interest, wondered about the accuracy of some of the conclusions, noted
that the project was directed by the federal government (which is not
always trustworthy) and wondered if there was in fact some tinkering with
the standard story.
I don't know whether the program's conclusions are valid; I just don't
care. If I did care, I would look into it further. I would not stick my
head in the sand and like a Luddite and say that the program had no
merit. After all no one is trying to topple the _First_ Law here -- There
are limits to which I wont go.
However, in the face of all the vituperative comments here about the
program's conclusions, I did go to the recommended site:
Now while I found the program a little lacking in supportive data, I found
this site outrageous. By comparison there is minimal supportive evidence of
the claims there. The author spends his efforts waving his arms wildly and
denouncing all of the points if the FOX program with considerably more
speculation than that used in the program. I saw much less scientific
method there than in the program. There is very little experimental
evidence there -- if any -- to support his conclusions.
The site is disappointing. This doesn't mean that the site is totally
wrong. But one is not persuaded that the program is either. However, I
won't take the word of the government!