No amount of editing can disguise the fact that NASA made some really dumb statements.

But people make dumb statements all the time. What if Brian Welch made 15 brilliant statements and one dumb one, and all the producers decide to keep was the dumb one?

You can't get around the fact that you're seeing only as much as the producers wanted you to see. And they want you to draw the conclusion that that's all there was. You seem to have uncritically fallen for it. However, I know in some cases what these producers left out, and it was material and it did constitute a different picture of that person's testimony than what was left in. I'm not just handwaving here. I know for a fact that these very producers left out material that they collected, which contradicts their findings and representations. Therefore when I say I believe they may have left out material information that Welch gave them, I'm not just wishfully thinking.

Besides, "dumb" is subjective. What if the assertions you dismiss as dumb are supportable?

Saying that a conspiracy would require 3/4 million people is one.

Why? Every time I mention a problem with the prevailing conspiracy theory, the theory is simply expanded to incorporate additional conjectural elements and additional conspirators. I'm really not the one piling hordes of alleged conspirators on the heap.

500,000 or so people worked on the Apollo project, including NASA employees, contractors, subcontractors, and other support personnel. According to conspiracy theorists, these people were just working on an elaborate cover story. That doesn't even count the number of people working entirely behind the scenes on the hoax elements. Is it so farfetched to claim that for every two people working on the cover story, there was one person working on the actual hoax?

Put your money where your mouth is. How many people had knowledge of the alleged conspiracy? Show your work.

And calling your opponents crazy (namecalling)is a pretty good sign of not having a good argument.

No. That someone chooses to employ a poor argument is not proof that it's the only argument that exists, or that it's the only argument he could employ.

Further, I don't recall Welch specifically calling conspiracy theorists crazy. But he did point out that their statements are illogical and seem to be based on a kind of paranoia. I happen to agree. I can point to all manner of logical flaws in the conspiracy theorist reasoning. Their books read like an encyclopedia of fallacy. Further, I have plenty of evidence to support an opinion that they are paranoid against government.

Your objection is based on the notion that a blatantly illogical argument needs a formal refutation. A blatantly illogical argument needs only to be identified as blatantly illogical. That can be done with surprising brevity.

You seem to want to give a lot of benefit of the doubt to the conspiracy theorists. To most of us there just isn't much doubt. It's pretty obvious what they're trying to do. If they tried to bring this kind of evidence to a court, or to any other kind of formal forum, they'd be laughed soundly out of it. They really have nothing. Just a lot of misrepresentation, bogus science, and heaps and heaps of conjecture. It's quite proper in that case to throw it back in their faces and say, "Sorry, you need more."

And you can't hide the generalised answers that would not go into specifics about photos etc.

Why do you assume Welch was asked about specific photos? He may have been, but see below.

When you are interviewed for a television program you don't know if your statements will be used in their entirety. You don't know where the editor will place your remarks. You don't know what shots will precede and follow your statements. You can't foresee all the possible ways your statements may be used or misused.

This kind of juxtaposition happens all the time in polemic presentations. You show a scene, then you show a clip from an interview. The viewer assumes the interviewee knows he's responding specifically to the content of the prior scene, which is almost never true.

That may or may not have happened in this case. Welch specifically says it would be fruitless to respond to individual photographs, so he may have been shown individual photographs and declined to comment on them individually. The point is not whether he was given that opportunity or not, but whether you assume he was given that opportunity. When you watch polemical documentaries you cannot make those kinds of assumptions.

After having spent more than a year responding to individual photographs, I agree fully: it's essentially fruitless to respond to each and every photograph. Most of the dozens upon dozens of photographs cited as evidence of anomaly are simply the same few mistakes made over and over again: perspective, reflectance, parallax, etc. How many different ways can you say, "The conspiracy theorist doesn't understand perspective"?

If one doesn't understand the basic principles that apply to the photographs, one is likely to believe that every photograph is anomalous -- and in fact that's what David Percy says. There are 20,000 Apollo photographs. Conspiracy theorists could conceivably show me every single one of them and say it's "anomalous". And my response would be, again, "You don't understand perspective or lighting or parallax or whatever." And I would be right every time.

Now when you realize that the conspiracy theorists profit by perpetuating the argument, then you realize why they insist on discussing every single photo, even if they're just making the same old mistakes. The point you're missing is that the "generalized" answers are, in fact, the only correct answers.

The spokesman for NASA on the FOX show, incidentally, is dead. I heard that he had been disatisfied with the generalised answers he had given and decided to do his own internal investigation to get some more specific facts and suddenly had a fatal heart attack.

Well, that's the embellishment that has arisen among conspiracy theorists. This story gets better every time I hear it. Unfortunately this is a lot like the conspiracy theories -- a lot of rumor and speculation. And it's quite proper to refute it by identifying at as rumor and speculation and leave it at that.

Has the CIA struck yet again?

Oh, please.