Finally, it's been bugging me for months.

Quick! Altogether now,"Klaatu barrada nikto"!

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

"Klaatu barrada n-*mfphm*"

"I said your words..." :wink:

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Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Greetings!

This is a quote from one to the more prolific posters in the Xenotech forums.

"All in all, given that we are not, nor likely never have been, privy to all the relevant data that has been collected by NASA over the years, and given that we have in actual fact been deliberately disinformed by this very same organisation again and again, how can one say for sure that these aren't fossils? I, for one, cannot. I do not know what to believe anymore. My jaw has hit the ground more in this last year than it has in all my life. I am, simply, befuddled."

This guy apparently can't believe anything that NASA has to say, but has no problem in seeing DINOSAUR and other FOSSILS in every third rock in the Mars photos. Apparently befuddledness is a mild description of that mind set.

Regards, tb,m

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

Under the new format, this thread would be more at home in the Conspiracy Theories section. Moved.

I came to this party late. But to answer this question late rather than never, I outed Sir Charles Shults, and his bogus "knighthood," in June 2004 in another thread. Here's a copy of that.

=========

So who is this "Chip Shults" anyway?

Background isn't supposed to have anything to do with the merit of scientific work, but there’s no doubt it can serve as a useful yardstick. In science or any other technical field, what you’ve done, where you’ve studied, what you’ve published or patented is a strong indicator of the validity of your current claims. Just today, I saw an article in a German online news service that the University of Konstanz in Switzerland has stripped one Jan Hendrik Schön, one of their Wunderkind physics Ph.D. grads and until recently a researcher at Bell Labs, of his doctorate because an independent outside panel investigation empowered by Bell revealed that he fudged his results, not once but in a whole string of allegedly groundbreaking discoveries and achievements. Nobody else was ever able to duplicate his claims. Now he's lost his Ph.D., his co-authors in the journals Science and Nature have withdrawn the published articles, and Bell has withdrawn several patent applications. So as far as background goes, yes, it matters. It matters a lot. This guy Schön was touted as a front runner for a Nobel prize someday; now, he is never ever going to get recognition, funding, position, title, a shred of credibility, respect, or anybody’s ear. I suspect he will wind up teaching high school physics somewhere. More for those who want to dig, at http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/11/2

In science or technology, great ideas are seldom born in a vacuum, or spring up, fully grown, on the halfshell. True Believers will say the following is an ad hominem attack. I say it tells us where these people are coming from, and as such gives us a pretty good idea where they’re going. I don’t think most of us want to be, or even be seen, on that ride.

First of all, the one site, http://www.xenotechresearch.com/ has some "credits" at the end:

"All my research is funded by a generous grant from Dr. Nelson Ying, Baron of Balquhain."

Who? Where? Hang on now... let's sidetrack and see who this is first.
http://members.aol.com/balquhain/Magic.html
No need to wade through that; skip to the end, as they say in “Holy Grail,” and find
“The Barony of Balquahin, erected in 1340, is the oldest of the Leslie baronies. It is an ancient and venerable barony with almost 700 years of history under 30 Leslie Barons of Balquhain. The Baron of Leslie felt that Dr. Ying would be a suitable person to be entrusted with 700 years of Leslie history. In 1993, the Barony of Balquhain was disponed to Dr. Ying. In 1995 Dr. Ying matriculate [sic] arms with the Lord Lyon King of Arms under the nomen juris of Nelson Lee Len Ying of Balquhain, Baron of Balquhain.”

Uh... OK. It’s crackerjack-prize barony. Some rich Chinese-American guy in Orlando had just about everything else, so he wanted to be a Scottish laird. What will they think of next?

Who is this Nelson Ying?
http://www.burkes-scotland.com/sites...ING-AZ-841.asp

YING OF BALQUHAIN, Nelson Lee Len
Nelson Lee Len YING,
feudal Baron of Balquhain, recognised by Ld Lyon King of Arms and matric arms at LO 1 Jun 1995; Address: 7123 Caloosa Court, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Record Type(s): Scottish Feudal Barons

He apparently sponsors local science fairs. (That’s scary. I did the science fair thing as a kid, did pretty well and it steered my future; to me, having this guy involved is like having religious fundametalist whackos sponsoring the local university biology department...)
http://www.yingprize.com/
There’s a picture of him. Shouldn’t he be wearing a kilt?
More.
http://members.aol.com/balquhain/Friends.html

OK, so that’s the big cheese of this make-believe Fenwickian organization. Now let’s look at our pal, “Chip” Shults. The guy goes by the name of "Sir Charles Shults III". ("Chip" to his fellow knights of the infinitely polygonal table). (So, what happened to Sirs CS I and II?)
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2004/06/06.html
He's been involved in some lovely flame wars.
http://usenet.best-buy-online.com/Dir6/File738.html
and
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache...ts& hl=en

Here's his claimed bio. http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guests/773.html
No geo, bio or paleontological credentials that I can see. A hobbyist. Tinkerer. Bodger.
“was knighted and received a long term grant for his present research in robotics and artificial intelligence.” Great. I didn’t know crackerjack barons could elevate others to crackerjack knighthoods.

He has another web site:
http://home.cfl.rr.com/aichip/
Click “enter here” and it takes you right to another “Fossils on Mars – What I have found” site. Which, it should be noted, is different from (but somehow the same as) http://www.xenotechresearch.com/

So where is this operation? According to the Xenotech home page,
Xenotech Research
3416 Shader Road Suite 108
Orlando, Florida 32808
321-206-1840

For an "organization" that claims all these big-deal ongoing projects, nobody, but absolutely nobody, outside the late-night-radio circus references it. That's not very confidence inspiring, and more typical of crank behavior -- some guy in a basement with too much time. (OK, so Florida doesn’t have basements...) There is a genuine, legitimate company by that name in Australia, which spawns most of the Google hits.

Doing some digging on Mapquest and Terraserver, the address is apparently for a small-rental-office industrial complex. Searching the web for that address, the same complex houses American Maintenance, a pressure cleaning/maintenance service (Suite 100), an outfit called “Mid-Florida Sweeping Service,” (possibly the same suite), and Awnclean USA, awning cleaning service (Suite 116). Not exactly Technology Park, I guess. The claimed phone number is unlisted so it's not possible to confirm it. Strange behavior for a business doing all this big-league science and robotics and whatnot to have an unlisted number.

I did a patent search for “Charles Shults.” He doesn’t claim any so there’s probalby no point, but FWIW a search from 1976 to present for inventor name Shultz, Charles turns up zero hits.

I think maybe the good Baron's operation is modeled on Bell Labs, only smaller. Ding Dong Labs may be an appropriate title... But why have a knight running your R&D? Shouldn’t that be the job of the court wizard? Or is it jester? Medieval ranks and titles are so confusing... Don’t they have ISO 8000 norms for feudal titles and corresponding uniforms, so we can tell the staff apart?

===============

So, is anybody ELSE reporting these things? (Answer to own rhetorical question: Uh... no). If I remember correctly, science requires that theories be verifiable. If nobody else sees these things, alarm bells should be going off. Also remember the deal with Lowell's Martian canals. He wasn't the only one "seeing" them. The brain often sees what it wants to see, and this guy sees fossils everywhere. If nobody else (with qualifications, not the denizens of the crank forums and late-night conspiracy theory radio shows) sees them, it doesn't count. He's just stringing pixels together to see what he already "knows" must be there.

If verifiable, if the evidence is as obvious as this guy claims, there should be a long line of paleontologists waiting to get on board, struggling for primacy of "their" discoveries, for fame and funding. If not, there won't be. Where are they? If the evidence were as overwhelming as this guy claims, no amount of peer pressure could keep it quiet.

There’s a whole ‘nother issue of how he “processes” these images. If I feel ambitious and don’t have anything more productive to do later, I may get into that on my modest level of knowledge. But others have pointed out some of his errors of technique already. I can think of a few more.

Pete
(Fossils? Heck, no; I see a horsey, a ducky, a castle, and a 1947 Tucker Torpedo. Whatsa matter, do I have to draw in the lines for you?)

Last week I was mentioning the whole "Face on Mars" nonsense to a fellow theater person. She quoted the classic Shultz in reply; "I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsie...but I changed my mind."

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"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Greetings.

This is from a thread in which I post my opinions about some of the "fossil" images:

"So are you saying that you really cannot see the pentagram pattern and ten pointed pattern, or the handprint patterns? Or that you cannot see the five fold symmetry in the petal pattern?

You see, those things individually are strong evidence due to the pentagonal symmetry, and if you know about pentagons and their place in biology versus geology, then you would agree that something is very odd here.

But if you truly cannot see what is there, I cannot help you to see it. Nor will I argue, since it is fruitless for us both. Sorry.
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Cheers!
Sir Charles W. Shults III
Xenotech Research"

So apparently he has to "draw pictures" to get (skeptical) others to see what he sees. Perhaps the "long line of paleontologists" need a refresher course from Sir Charles (complete with basics is penciling details) in image study.

This is the thread that the above quote is from:
http://xenotechresearch.com/cgi/phpB...?t=28&start=30

Regards, tbm

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Paddle faster!! I hear banjo music!!

**edited - Oops! I just noticed you posted a link to the page that I linked to in the post that I linked to here, when this fraudulent Knight was discussed a week or so ago. Original text therefore removed **

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.