Well Jay, most 'evidence' are either misconceptions, or lack of research.

Of course. In the latter case we must be prepared to allow for the difficulty of some of the research. Even the most conscientious researcher misses things.

However, "There is no X" should be reworded, "I have found no X". The former implies an exhaustive search that fails to produce X. The latter allows for someone else to find X by doing more meticulous research. But of course when X turns up after cursory research, you have to wonder just how conscientious the original research was.

"There is no X" is a staple of hoax believers because the only way it can be disproven is by the exhaustive search the hoax believer didn't do. The h.b. knows that 95% of his audience either wouldn't want to do that survey because they wouldn't question an argument they agreed with, wouldn't want to expend so much effort doing it, or wouldn't know how to carry out such a survey.

And we've seen what some of the hoax believers do when they're found out: they either change the subject (David Percy) or they launch into a lengthy invective harangue on how we "disinformationists" are so devious and so eager to push the government's line off on people (Lisa Guliani), or any number of other diversions.

But with the rover stowage and deployment argument there can be very little margin given for innocently deficient research. The rover's ability to fold and unfold is one of its best known features. There is ample documentation, easily and cheaply available, for how it was done. You cannot, in fact, do much research at all on the J-missions and their preparations without encountering lots of photos and descriptions of the rover's stowage.

This cannot be a case of simply having missed an obscure but important point. This has to be a case of deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, or else of having done practically no research whatsoever.

To draw a parallel, this would be like me claiming that no pictures were taken of Abraham Zapruder shooting his infamous footage of Kennedy's death, either not knowing or not caring to mention that Mary Moorman's photo captures Zapruder poised with his camera, and that this photo is one of the most important documents in the investigation of the Kennedy assassination.

Unfortunately the "no significant research" hypothesis suits Mr. Collier's modus operandi to a tee. Collier makes a big show of having measured this or that piece of hardware (or more likely, the wrong piece of hardware). But then the failure of his argument has more to do with his not having the faintest idea how that equipment was intended to be used, and of apparently having failed high school physics.

And subsequent hoax believers are happy just to parrot Collier's conclusions without doing any investigation whatsoever. This is the hallmark of the hoax believer mindset. The basis of moon hoax "evidence" is the notion that the appearance of expertise can be maintained without acquiring any real expertise.

Thus your example of Znurk on Apollohoax is salient once again: he tried to hand-wave his way through the analysis of shadow directions on the pretense that he had some amount of education or expertise in the relevant science. And then when he was asked to employ some rudimentary concepts of that discipline, he suddenly decided the hoax debate was too "time-consuming" for him and he left.

At least David Percy has the presence of mind to change the subject when he's caught with his pants down.

There can be no leeway on the rover stowage point. The documentation is far too obvious.