His PHD seems to be valid, You can see published worked here.
Which I did, prior to writing my second post dismissing any relevant effect of his credentials. His degree is in a field unrelated to the papers he has written. He might as well write "D.D.S." or "C.S.A." for his postnominals. By tying his Apollo claims to his prodigious academic accomplishments, your author has misled his readers into thinking those claims are just as academically sound. As you noted, they're nothing more than long-debunked tripe given under color of academic rigor.
My primary interest is in discussing the paper. I mentioned his PHD because it is somewhat unusual in my experience. Not in an attempt to make you accept it.
Granted, but our experience with Aulis is that the vast majority of their doctoral authors have turned out to be fictitious. A few are real people with real degrees, but earned in fields unrelated to the work for which Aulis has sought them. That is where we find ourselves now. I agree that the focus should be the paper, but both you and he have made a point of his credentials. His gives his postnominals in the author statement, and you repeat them here in the subject of your thread -- both as if they impart some weight to the quality of the work, albeit your intent in doing so was obviously different than his. If he follows the Aulis pattern, his intent was to mislead people. Honest application of a PhD means to withhold it when it is irrelevant.
The takeaway I and others implore you to recognize is that if you see something at Aulis claiming to be written by an appropriately qualified expert, you should immediately doubt that claim as you did. If your author cannot demonstrate separate expertise in optics and photogrammetry, you should treat his work not as that of a PhD, but as that of a layman. What this means is that he doesn't get to invoke merely the specter of expertise in order to overcome a valid rebuttal. Once his misshapen claims to expertise are out of the way, we can focus on his work on its merits.
By the way, I should point out that I minted quite a few PhDs in my academic career. Not all who came to me for one got one. Conversely I should point out that I have somewhere between two and three physics PhDs on the payroll at any given time, and all are quite capable of demonstrating additional skills they have learned when the need arises. I'm not saying your author
cannot be qualified, but his demonstration of qualifications has so far missed the mark.
He said he had only examined Apollo photos. I pointed out the fallacy of using a method that had never revealed positive results and could not be measured for accuracy.
Photogrammetric rectification
can be measured for accuracy, but he just didn't do it. The ability to determine, based on the data, how close one's rectification can approach a theoretical ideal is the basis of the later statistical determination of success. He simply claims out of the blue that a certain fixed percentage of error forms an acceptable window.
I also pointed out many of the lines drawn did not seem to correspond to any defined point on the astronaut or shadow.
This is where the investigator's skill comes into play. Experienced photogrammetrists develop the skill to be able to determine which points in a photographed object will produce acceptable correlates in the photographed shadow. Your author appears not to have that skill. Further, the effects of terrain on the shadow would make it difficult for even an experienced investigator to achieve a reliable rectification. Your author does not discuss how to distinguish inflections in the shadow caused by terrain from inflections in the object.
This all forms part of what, in an real scientific investigation, would be cast as the error analysis. This applies to all science, so this is where I expect someone well qualified in one form of science to at least ask how it should apply to a new science with which he is unfamiliar. That the error analysis step was skipped altogether is highly suspicious of the author's sincerity.
I also pointed out he had not taken into account the use of a wide angle lens and the inherent distortion produced. By attempting to locate the sun in the film plane he was essentially extending that distortion into areas the lens could not even resolve.
Yes, correct. I said his method is generally correct. He gets points for realizing that a projection has occurred and that a lens model applies. But he loses points for assuming that the lens is uniform and spherical. The Zeiss Biogon explicitly is neither uniform nor spherical. Professional rectifications use lens models provided by the manufacturer or derived empirically with the sample lens in hand. He has simply made one up. And rectifying the projection occurs only over the domain for which the projection is defined -- not, as you note, far outside the frame. That's elementary mathematics, again something a PhD should have considered second-nature.
I thought this paper was much more strange than the first.
I didn't read it beyond noting that he was using the layman's toy projection model -- geometrically pure surfaces and angles. It is wholly unrelated to the effects we expect from uneven natural terrain. His sample Apollo photo was, amusingly enough, the same one we presented on
Mythbusters and showed conclusively how variations in the terrain would produce different angles for shadows according to his (wrong) method of reckoning. It's as if he's gone fifteen years into the past, dredged up one of the stupidest and most easily debunked claims, slapped his PhD on it, and presented it as science.
You are taking me a little too literally here.
Fair enough, but it would have been better had you written that the paper
seems technical and well thought out. You wrote instead that it was, and I think we both take issue with that claim on its merits. It seems to me the author very much wanted his work to be taken as technically proficient and scientifically well thought out. Neither paper achieves a degree of consideration and rigor that I would expect from a professional scientist, regardless of his field of study.
I could do the same with your "standard" but it seems petty.
Please do take my standard seriously -- not to say you aren't. I didn't say anything I didn't mean and am not willing to defend. Error analysis is basic science. Validation of method and, if necessary, the skill of the investigator is basic science. They are what I would consider essential elements in anything that I would accept as well thought out.
I did point out to him the venue did not allow for comments and provided no contact information. That it did not encourage healthy discussion in general. He agreed but also pointed out he was discussing the topic with me via email.
It is indeed suspicious that he published his findings where they are unlikely to be seen by his colleagues or by professionals qualified to challenge his claims, and further suspicious that he makes it difficult to contact him. That alone makes it likely the author knew his findings could rise no higher than pseudoscience. That makes it difficult to focus entirely on the merits of the paper, because the ensuing debate generally cannot leave behind the sincerity of the author. The reasons these authors write these papers never include ordinary scientific integrity. They aren't trying to set the record straight from a scientific point of view. They're trying to rewrite the record the way they think it should read because of some other belief, and deliberately misusing science to do so. The biggest hurdle we have to overcome in these debates is the dishonesty of the authors. We would like to do that as quickly as possible in each case.
It goes without saying that a private debate in email lacks the same exposure as his public claims. Unless he is willing to revise or withdraw his papers based on the outcome of such a debate, it can be as if he was never challenged. The degree to which he is willing to challenge publicly the accomplishments of others should, in an equitable world, be the degree to which he is willing to allow himself to be challenged publicly. To drop challenges to authenticity and then retreat into the shadows is neither scientifically honest nor ordinarily honest. In short, if he wants his PhD to mean something to these papers, he had better start acting like someone who earned it.
I am in no way offended. The venue here invites discussion and my efforts in that regard are at least somewhat successful. "forbid" seems a little strong vs. my "please" but I understand your point. Your comments above are helpful thank you.
I'm glad you're not offended, because it's clear you intend to put his claims to the test in much the same way we would. Debates by proxy are not as good as debates between the parties directly. By asking us to help you, but asking us also to stand back and let you "take point," you are asking for a posture that simply may not be interesting to many here. That's as far as I could say it would be improper.
