It's been about a month now since the Hoagland debunking pages went up. After the space.com article was syndicated to other venues, I got a flood of email, as expected. I want to give everyone here a synopsis of things.

When Hoagland was on C2C, George Noory commented that a lot of the mail he received was supportive of Hoagland. I expected that. Think about it. The audience for C2C is probably divided into two broad categories: those who believe what they hear, and those who listen for the sheer silliness of the guests. So if they have a guest whose claims are debunked as I did Hoagland's, the people who really believe will write letters, while those who would tend to agree with me wouldn't bother. So the email received by C2C is skewed in favor of Hoagland.

Interestingly, the opposite is what you'd expect for email sent to me. I've pointed this out before; if you present something to the public, you tend to get more negative than positive responses. People who like something won't usually write you and say they like it, but those who hate it are more inspired to write hate mail. So I would think that the email I get would be mostly negative.

It wasn't. I received roughly 150 emails about all this. That's not as many as I expected, but that's what I got. I divided them into three files: good, bad, and neutral. I was pretty harsh in my judgment, so that anything that was negative at all went to the "bad" pile. Neutrals are ones who didn't say whether or not they agree with me, but just had comments to make. It can be argued that anyone who disagrees with me would have said so, and so the neutrals should go in the "good" pile, but I want to be as fair as possible.

The tally is:

Good: 118
Neutral: 24
Bad: 22

So I received 5 times as many good as bad, the opposite of what you'd expect. This leads me to think that most people agreed with me. I'll note again that most people who agreed with me wouldn't bother writing, while those who didn't would. So the chances are the vast majority of those who read my pages, or the space.com article, agreed with me.

This also reinforces my decision not to debate Hoagland: why bother? Most people know he is full of it, and giving him a venue to increase his audience is not a goal of mine.

Unfortunately, I don't know for sure how many hits I got to the site because of this. When my site access log topped 2 Gb in size (!!) Apache freaked, and the log files got corrupted. I think that at the height, I got about 4 million hits in as many days (I was checking the log shortly before it crashed), so probably something like 8 million hits is a good guess over the whole period. Not bad.

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Phil Plait
The Bad Astronomer
http://www.badastronomy.com
badastro@badastronomy.com

Don't you really need to to count the posts here on the BABB to get a better handle on feedback?

There where quite a few tha t Ihave read since I got back, some are uhhhhhhhhh......strange.

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

Good call. Went to see him at a lecture 4 years ago at the Hilton across the street from the Del Mar Racetrack because it was free and nearby---and was it ever a lecture. It happened to be his birthday and he promised to reveal something of great significance. Started talking at 7 PM with a slideshow. I left at 11 after zilch was revealed as he kept on talking and talking and talking. The man is incapable of getting to the point...and quite proud of it. Intriguing audience, tho.

I think counting responces here would be problematic. There are often multiple posts by any individual in a given thread and the majority of users here are more inclined to give a positive responce - there are fewer supporter's of RH here. Hence , the results would be slightly biased

I'd like to see someone put up invites to both sides and do as controled a survey as possible.

Is RH right? a simple y/n poll would do, but it would have to be somewhere that the results could be carefully counted and leave as little room as possible for cheating.

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What would Scoobie do?

And here is where the other stuff is.

I have now heard numerous stories from people saying that Hoagland gives marathon talks. Normally, a lecture on a given topic from an expert might run 1.5 hours (my talks run about an hour), but by then the plug is usually pulled. I find it really weird that he would give these hugely long lectures. Are they all that way? It makes me glad once again that I won't debate him; clearly, he can provide an avalanche of nonsense.

Phil,

A good decision on your part. Life's too short to waste time on pretentious ninnies...



c

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Starry, starry night...

My site TheSpacewriter.com
and my blog: TheSpaceWriter's Ramblings

sarangsong, when you made the comment, 'intriguing audience, what did you mean? Just curious.

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JayUtah wrote:
The marketplace of ideas ensures that each item is put on display, but does not compel its purchase.

Hee-hee, well it's a pretty ritzy neighborhood, for one thing, and a special tent had been set up for the event, and vendor tables for various purveyors of "high strangeness". About 200 were in attendance, garbed in whatever was in style before they "yuppied-up" and who'd paid, I think $25, to be there. Having been to Maui, I knew the free backdoor route. RH, of course, was sartorially resplendent in his timeless 1958 Robert Hall mile-wide-tie collegiate attire. Had an interesting conversation with the guy who does the
"play-it-backwards-to-hear-what-the-real message-is" thing.
When I brought up RH still---it's about 10:30PM now---hadn't revealed anything yet, he just grinned and smiled, "Yah...". It was a crowd who seemed to adore him, he was the "star", and a good time (there WAS liquor, it WAS his birthday, there WAS a cake) was seemingly had by all. Sort of Mad Hatter-ish fun with no startling revelations to muck up the works, and a chance to actually see the voices in person who one had only heard over the radio up til then, interviewees and callers-in alike. Just my opinion, if anyone else here was there, it would be good to hear their take.

I don't find it that odd. People who have nothing to say either don't talk or try to show they actually do know something by never being quiet. They also think they "win" if you leave them out of boredom which is an incentive to keep talking.
Plus if the Q&A session is at the end and the people with critical questions leave before then due to lack of interest it makes his job easier!

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Yes, I have a life. It's quite different from yours.

On another thread someone has criticized RCH for wearing a bolo tie. Have I entered a wormhole and come out in the Bad Fashion Bulletin Board by mistake?

BA,
You should count the number of people in the forums who posted congratulations rather than sending email.
Maybe a poll could be started as well?

I say again, well-done and thankyou for handling the Hoagland nonsense.

Donn

Perhaps not; it's just something you can't help notice---a kind of time-warp that overtakes those who work their minds a lot---where one's physical appearance becomes secondary, even tertiary. College professors/researchers seem especially vulnerable. The Queer-Eye-for-the-Straight-Guy team would have a field-day. The bolo sounds out of character somehow, but wouldn't put it past him.