Richard C. Hoagland

Hoagland is quite an interesting character. If the average person were to hear his name and recognize it, it would probably be in connection with Art Bell, the Face on Mars, and, in general, kooky pseudoscience. What a shame.

This guy has put so much of his life behind Mars research and space exploration, it's truly saddening to see his work reduced to sarcastic jokes between establishment academics. Yet he persists. He endures. He continues to put his neck out, despite the executioner’s wildly swinging axe whirring inches above the block.

What I would call the core of Hoagland's research is centered on the artificiality of observed features throughout the solar system. His arguments are often very insightful and are backed up by numerous sources both inside and outside the established "scientific community".

Many of his arguments just plain make sense. I just hate it when educated people think they aren't "smart enough" to rationally consider a scientific argument and come to their own conclusions, and so defer to whoever seems to be more of an "expert". If there's one thing I've learned working as an engineer, it's that a good engineer isn't smarter or more educated; he's just more thorough, more careful, more patient, more creative, and more of a risk taker. There are no true "experts". There are just people who do their due diligence to come to their own conclusions, and those who buy someone else's conclusions from the lowest bidder. Man that pisses me off!

Anyway, I'll freely admit that some of what Hoagland has to say is pretty off the wall. His "geometric" relationships often have no meaning. The signal-to-noise ratio in some of the relationships he finds between numbers, angles, etc. is just too low. He tends to have the same problem when finding "geometric patterns" in some imagery. Sometimes it's just so darn subjective; one person might see an octagon where another person might see a seahorse.

His "hyper-dimensional physics" has some merit as an idea but I don't see any scientific rigor applied. There are certainly lots of anomalous (when compared to traditional models) things happening in the solar system. I'm dead certain that our current model of physics is severely lacking in many areas. However, Hoagland leaps to such specific conclusions from such general data.

I just want to hit on a few things that with which Hoagland has been right on. He has been following NASA affairs for so long, and with such detail and enthusiasm, he has begun to compile substantial evidence that NASA, as a scientific organization, is rotten to the core. There are so many times when NASA's official explanation for something extraordinary is just so juvenile. Often their explanations for phenomenon could be refuted by a 6th grader with the most basic understanding of the physical sciences.

I'm not saying that there is some horrible conspiracy at NASA designed to hide earth-shaking truths from us. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But at the very least, it shows a serious breach of contract between the American people and NASA. We own all the data collected by every NASA mission. We paid for it. We want it, untouched, in its entirety, now. We also want a little respect. As I said before, NASA scientists aren't any more expert that you or I. They just have a little more experience, and a lot more pride.

Some of Hoagland's arguments for artificiality are also very good. The infamous "face on Mars" is a great example. There are many features of the Face (*groan*, sorry) that present a very compelling case for artificiality. In fact, much of the Cydonia region contains anomalous data that does support artificiality. There are numerous lunar anomalies also, that demand more attention.

I have never said "The face is artificial. The moon was inhabited. Iapetus is a spaceship." All I'm saying is let's consider all the possibilities and apply scientific rigor to the unanswered questions!

Carl Sagan was a jerk. Okay, that's not quite fair since I'm basing this conclusion on a single data point. However, his ridiculous statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" has done more to damage true science than anything else in the last hundred years, at least. What makes a claim extraordinary? Who makes that assessment? What sort of scale do you use to measure "extraordinary-ness"? What makes a piece of evidence extraordinary?

Anybody? Any takers?