Author Topic: Aulis and Orion  (Read 4645 times)

Offline nickrulercreator

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Aulis and Orion
« on: May 05, 2019, 06:50:13 PM »
Came across this aulis post as a result of a debate with a HB (still ongoing actually). The HB is saying several incorrect things (Apollo flights did not go over/under the VABs and instead went right through them; apologists only made up the non-equatorial orbital path after the deadliness of the VABs was revealed; apologists claim the Apollo flights took a polar-orbital path). He then provides this link to back up his claims but, I don't see how it relates to his claims at all. I can spot a few errors in the link almost immediately but, of course since it's Aulis, there is always something wrong with the core thesis. I'm unable to figure out what it is, anything you can see wrong?

I'm happy to post screenshots of our debate for more context if you want.
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Offline JayUtah

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #1 on: May 05, 2019, 06:56:57 PM »
Authored by Mary Bennett, who has zero qualification in any science.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline nickrulercreator

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2019, 06:57:53 PM »
I’ve used this in the debate and the HB just says it’s an ad hominem, which isn’t entirely incorrect. It is attacking the author not the content. For the HB, though, that argument is worthless.


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This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.

Offline JayUtah

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #3 on: May 05, 2019, 07:14:28 PM »
It is attacking the author not the content.

If an author takes it upon herself to interpret scientific findings, the basis of her understanding is not only relevant to the evidentiary value of the interpretation, it is the only thing that's relevant.  The fact that qualified scientists read the same findings and arrive at completely different interpretations than she on these matters requires an explanation.

Further, I have caught Mary Bennett in lie after lie.  She has been almost entirely unrepentant each time.  She is especially adept at lies of omission.  Far from being an ad hominem argument, it speaks clearly to her willingness to represent a subject accurately and fairly.  It takes many hours of scholarship to uncover her dishonesty, and even longer to get her to acknowledge it.  The reliability of the author is not irrelevant to these debates.  It's especially relevant when some third party is advocating the source.  It's fundamentally dishonest argumentation.  "Here's an article written by someone else on her private web site which challenges a well-established principle.  You have the obligation to take it at face value and argue only its precise content, while I get to implicitly trust the reliability of an author I haven't vetted."
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline nickrulercreator

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #4 on: May 05, 2019, 07:37:50 PM »
Fair point. Thanks for the input.
This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today.

Offline JayUtah

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #5 on: May 05, 2019, 08:09:34 PM »
Let me hasten to add that you're not entirely wrong.  When you look at the reliability of a source, it's important to be clear in your own mind on the difference between an ad hominem argument and the legitimate challenge to the foundation of an argument based on an often unstated premise to expertise, and subsequent opinionating.  And if it's clear in your mind, you have to find a way to make it clear in your writing.  And even then, the audience or opponent may not follow you.  If there's a sound argument that doesn't require so much stage-setting and invite so much misinterpretation, you're often better off making that one instead.  I looked at the link, skimmed the article, skipped to the footnotes, and realize it would probably take me 3-4 days of full-time effort to find all of Bennett's material omissions, misinterpretations, and bad guesses.  She bets on people not being willing to do that.  She bets on people just buying the gallop.  Dark Moon is 350+ pages long, mostly so that you can't read it all in one sitting and thereby catch all her contradictions and missteps.  This is who she is.  This is what she does.  It's difficult to shame her into honesty because she knows what she's doing and doesn't care what you think.  You're not the intended audience, so she has no use for you.

Maybe some more helpful advice would be not to be baited into accepting a burden of proof that's not yours.  If the claim is that all the Apollo records have been rewritten to describe a different trajectory, make your opponent prove that.  He has to show the numbers were once different than they are now.  His is the affirmative claim.  His is the claim that's trying to rewrite accepted history.  When it comes to the source, make him defend its reliability.  Don't fall for the gambit that the only way you're allowed to refute it is to take it at face value, to argue a counterclaim affirmatively, or anything else that puts all the work on your shoulders.  The question I typically ask is, "What process did you undertake to ensure this is a scientifically reliable, factually accurate source?"  It's self-published on a crank website by someone who's made her living for years screaming at Apollo from the shadows, allowing herself to be subject to practically zero effective criticism.  Objectively, that's not a good start.  If he hasn't done anything to verify its claims, then he's the one who needs to do homework, given the circumstances surrounding the claim.

This is often the sort of argument you have to deal with.  They get to play silly rhetorical tricks while you, for some reason, are the only one mandated to play it straight.  Mary Bennett is not a reliable source of information on the history of space exploration.  That means something.  It's up to you to make sure it means something that obligates them to defend their use of her material.
« Last Edit: May 05, 2019, 08:17:01 PM by JayUtah »
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline onebigmonkey

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #6 on: May 06, 2019, 01:34:55 AM »
Seems like a hefty dose of deliberate misrepresentation, sprinkled with argument from incredulity and seasoned with a hefty pinch of poisoning the well.

SOP for Aulis.

Offline gillianren

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #7 on: May 06, 2019, 10:13:23 AM »
If the flight path was changed, it should be trivially easy to find period documentation of the actual flight path, after all.  It's not as though NASA was stingy with their information.
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Offline JayUtah

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2019, 11:48:56 AM »
Seems like a hefty dose of deliberate misrepresentation, sprinkled with argument from incredulity and seasoned with a hefty pinch of poisoning the well.

SOP for Aulis.

Yes, Mary Bennett knows full well she's full of crap.  I'll eat my hat if she ever ventures into any venue whose content she cannot completely control.  Just in my sixty-second skim I can see her playing her same old tricks.  "We had to file a FOIA request to get this information from NASA. Clearly they're trying to hide it."  No, that's the standard way one requests information from a U.S. government agency that they haven't already published.  She makes a big deal about how allegedly hard it is for her to do research and find information.  It's all bluster, or outright lies, as I've discovered.

She makes the standard error of comparing the Orion flight plan to the Apollos -- no, that's not a valid comparison.  She reiterates the X-class event that occurred between Apollos 16 and 17 -- all previously dealt with.  It's just the same lather-rinse-repeat stuff she's been selling to a gullible audience since the mid-1990s.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline JayUtah

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #9 on: May 06, 2019, 11:55:13 AM »
If the flight path was changed, it should be trivially easy to find period documentation of the actual flight path, after all.  It's not as though NASA was stingy with their information.

Indeed, there are printed press kits dating from the actual time the missions were flown.  Kids today don't know that library research is still a thing.  They seem to think historical reality can be changed just by updating a web site.
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams

Offline bknight

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Re: Aulis and Orion
« Reply #10 on: May 06, 2019, 12:42:00 PM »
Seems like a hefty dose of deliberate misrepresentation, sprinkled with argument from incredulity and seasoned with a hefty pinch of poisoning the well.

SOP for Aulis.

Yes, Mary Bennett knows full well she's full of crap.  I'll eat my hat if she ever ventures into any venue whose content she cannot completely control.  Just in my sixty-second skim I can see her playing her same old tricks.  "We had to file a FOIA request to get this information from NASA. Clearly they're trying to hide it."  No, that's the standard way one requests information from a U.S. government agency that they haven't already published.  She makes a big deal about how allegedly hard it is for her to do research and find information.  It's all bluster, or outright lies, as I've discovered.

She makes the standard error of comparing the Orion flight plan to the Apollos -- no, that's not a valid comparison.  She reiterates the X-class event that occurred between Apollos 16 and 17 -- all previously dealt with.  It's just the same lather-rinse-repeat stuff she's been selling to a gullible audience since the mid-1990s.

Some time ago I posted that she had "calculated" the radiation that the Orion mission encountered.   I don't remember the values, but her take was that the numbers were higher than Apollo.  Your comment back to me was something like "how did she calculate the values from the data she downloaded from the report."  At least that's what I remember, and I suspect it is the same report, but I'm not going back t that den of lies.
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