Fetzer/Burton Moon Landing Debate Finale

[Peter Dawson]

You ask when I first became interested in the moon landing hoax. Well, I have had a half-dozen or more links about it on my pubic issues site at http://assassinationscience.com for quite a few years. You insinuate that I waited to pursue it until after I retired in June 2006. In the meanwhile, however, I was dealing with JFK, publishing Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003), which I regarded as more pressing at the time.

I produced a 4.5 hour lecture series, "JFK: The Assassination, the Cover-Up, and Beyond" (1994) and chaired or co-chaired four national conferences (Minneapolis 1999, Dallas 2000, Dallas 2001, and Duluth 2003). In addition, I conducted research on the plane crash that took the life of U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, publishing ten columns about it beginning in 2002, culminating with the book, American Assassination (2004), co-authored with Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs.

I continued my research with John P. Costella, which resulted on our study, "The NTSB Failed Wellstone" (2005), which Michael Ruppert published in his "From the Wilderness" newsletter. Along with statements I presented at the National Press Club when we released the book two years to the day of his death, it is archived, along with those original ten columns and a large number of other articles on a wide range of issues, which you can access at the link I have already provided.

You can also google "Reasoning about Assassinations", which I gave at Cambridge and published in a peer-reviewed international journal (2005-06). I was also publishing books and articles in my areas of philosophical research in the philosophy of science and related areas, which you can access at my academic web site, http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/ Since I only had three books when I came to Duluth and have just published my 29th, I produced 26 more between 1987 and 2010.

That I have only begun to address the moon hoax, therefore, has nothing to do with any concerns of mine about confronting criticism from my colleagues, where the issues I have been addressing are also complex and controversial, including founding Scholars for 9/11 Truth in 2005. I was encouraged to take it up at this point in time because Evan Burton invited me to engage him in a debate about it--and I was naive enough to take him up on it in the false belief that it would be fairly moderated by him.

While I was insistent about creating rules for the debate that he assured me he would follow, that did not happen. He deleted posts, violated agreements and perpetrated various abuses during the course of the exchange. While I have less background than he with respect to the available resources, I have done what I can to explain why the moon landing appears to have been an elaborate hoax, which was perpetrated for military and political reasons.

I wasn't insinuating anything - I was stating plainly and clearly that you would be laughed out of your place of employment had you become known as a moon hoax advocate while working there.

In raising questions like this about me, you are engaging in an ad hominem attack. And in pursuing one argument to the exclusion of the totality of the evidence, you are committing the special pleading fallacy. I spent 35 years teaching logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning so my students would know better. Frankly, you are continuing to demonstrate that, when it come to reasoning, you are out of the loop, where the score you earned on the quiz seems to be an accurate indication of your level of knowledge and ability.

By making mention of the many books you've written on topics quite unrelated to the moon landings, it appears that you are the one doing the special pleading. If you think your opinions deserve special consideration because of your background, and mine don't because I lack an equivalent backround, then in actual fact you are the one making an ad hominum attack against me. What does the number of books you've written, or the number of years you've spent teaching, have to do with the matter at hand? Shouldn't arguments stand or fall on their merits?

This is an extremely revealing response to my "kind and gentle" critique of your position. In a nutshell, while you claim that "with just a small amount of pertinent information, the majority of hoax claims can easily be dismissed", your performance here demonstrates that this is not the case. I have invited you to present your "best case", but instead you claim that I make appeals to authority while making them yourself instead of presenting evidence. I am sorry, but that is not about to impress anyone. I hope you can do better.

I didn't read much of your kind and gentle critique, due to the condescending literary device you housed it in. You need to realise that your status as a former lecturer cannot count for much in this situation, and also, that I am not your student.

I have provided you with an outline of my "best case," as you asked, and you predictably disagree with it. No surprises there. I also asked you to provide us with an estimate of how high an astronaut should be able to jump on the moon. Why I asked is that the 'jump height' issue is as good a place as any to start for me to demonstrate in detail the general thrust of my "best case." I can use a different example if you wish.