A Brief History of Moon Hoaxes - Why do people still believe in them?

Go to google and type in site : moon hoax and you'll get back over 670,000 websites that reference in some way or another that the moon landings were faked or we have never been to the moon at all. How did we get from one of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th century to believing that it was a massive cover-up by NASA the CIA the government or a combination of all three and why almost 50 years after the first Apollo missions with all the scientific proof available do an increasing number of people believe in a radically different version of reality. One of the first reported instances of people not believing but the moon landings were true came on December 18th 1969 when the New York Times science reporter John Noble Wilford in an article called "A moon landing? what moon landing?" remarked that a few stool warmers in the Chicago bars are on record as suggesting that the Apollo 11 moonwalk last July was actually staged by hollywood on a nevada desert. Six months later on 15th June 1970 The Atlanta Constitution led with the story "Many skeptics feel moon explorer Neil armstrong took his 'first giant step for mankind' somewhere in Arizona". The article was based on a pole of 1721 U.S. citizens that were asked "Do you really completely believe the United States has actually landed men on the moon and return them to the earth again" the poll results showed that less than 5% of responders in Detroit Miami and Akron believe they were fake but this increased to 54% of african-americans in places like Washington DC. An early conspiracy theme is that because of the cold war between the US and the Soviets the U.S. could not be seen to lose the race to the moon but when they realized that it couldn't be done NASA faked the missions and used the funds to buy the silence of potential whistleblowers. Another one says that we could never get to the moon because the astronauts would have been killed by the radiation in a Van Allen belts which surround the earth. This is down to a poor understanding of the science of radiation and that thinking all radiation is the same, as we will see it's this bad science that is the underpinning of most of the moon hoax theories. One theory by William Brian said that we did go to the moon but only with the help of alien technology and NASA couldn't risk for public finding out about this as they wouldn't have to disclose how they got it. Another by Richard Hoagland says that NASA had discovered large artificial glass structures on the lunar surface and that the astronauts had had their memory of any alien encounters erased by hypnosis. He also said that the moon landing hoax he's had been created by NASA themselves to act as disinformation to put people off the bigger picture of the aliens they had found. You may well recognized a similarity to the plot of the 1968 stanley kubrick film "2001, A Space Odyssey" which in turn was based in 1964 short story by Arthur C Clarke called "The Sentinel". This was well before the moon landings and any of the subsequent moon conspiracy theories so you can see where these ideas can come from. Over time the same early themes have been recycled again in again with changes added here and there. One thing that does remain the same though is that they are all different, if NASA had concocted a hoax they could only be one version of it. It wasn't until 1975 when the first of the so-called evidence-based denials appeared by "Bill Kaysing", a journalist who had worked Rocketdyne incorporated, the makers of the f-1 engines that powered Saturn V moon Rockets. His 1975 self-published booklet titled "We never went to the moon : America's 30 billion dollar swindle" which was republished in 1981 and 2002 is acknowledged as the first to lay out many of the arguments which have been taken up by the subsequent conspiracy theorists. It's here that we see the bad science at work as he puts forward the missing stars in the photos of the astronauts, the flag-waving when there is no air, the lack of a blast crater from under the lunar lander from its descent and optical anomalies in photos taken on the moon. He also puts forward the assumption that NASA did not have the technical expertise to operate moon landings and that the F-1 rockets were so unreliable the ones on the Apollo 11 rocket were faked with smaller B-1 type engines inside of them. This later point has been proven to be incorrect by the recovery of the actual F-1 engines used on Apollo 11 from the atlantic ocean by Jeff Bezos, the owner of amazon. Kaysing who was never a scientist nor engineer worked as the head of the technical publications and as a publications analyst at Rocketdyne until May 31st 1963, some six years before the moon landings. He said he came to these and later conclusions because he had seen documents relating to Mercury, Gemini Atlas and Apollo and that you didn't need to be a trained professional to know a hoax has been perpetrated. Kaysings theories subsequently became even more extreme when he alleged that NASA haded staged the Apollo 1 fire and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster because the astronauts were about to reveal the hoax and they had to silence them in a convincing manner. Hollywood has also helped to popularize the moon hoaxes with films like The 1978 "Capricorn one" which deals with NASA faking a Mars mission due to technical problems discovered just before the launch that would have killed the astronauts they had continued and the ensuing cover up. In 2001 the conspiracy theorist received a huge boost with the fox TV documentary called "Conspiracy theory: Did we land on the moon" the program aired on mainstream TV and bill Kaysing was one of the main contributors. Because this came out over 30 years after the moon landings it reintroduced for conspiracy theories to a new audience many of which without a technical understanding would have found it compelling in its arguments. But the program didn't offer a reply to be allegations which included that astronauts and others had died in mysterious circumstances to hide the so-called truth. This is where the US government and NASA have been their own worst enemy in creating an atmosphere of distrust and enabling the conspiracies to develop. Things like the Watergate debacle, the iran-contra affair and the refusal of NASA to talk about the allegations because they thought they were just too absurd to warrant a reply just helped the conspiracy theorist arguments. An opinion poll conducted in 1964 marked a high point for the public belief in the government with 76% of people saying that they believe that the U.S. government would do what is right most or all of time. By the early 1990's that figure had fallen to less than 25%. It's one thing to create conspiracy theories but you still need people to believe in them this is where the emphasis moves from a hoax creators to the believers and evangelizers that embrace and repeat the conspiracy theories often with little regard for poor and incorrect understanding of the science that these theories are based on. Belief is the major component here. There is a basic tenant in psychology in that once someone firmly believes in something over that be conspiracy theories, politics, religious beliefs, aliens, ghosts or whatever, no matter what proof is forwarded to the country it can be almost impossible for them to change their minds because they want to believe in them and for some it's to the point of fanatical hostility when repeatedly challenged. In fact there is a phenomenon known as the backfire effect where the more aggressively someone asserts a particular viewpoint with scientific proof like NASA, the more it pushes the conspiracy believers in the opposite direction and reinforces their convictions. So why are some people drawn to the alternative viewpoints and others not. This tendency cuts across age, race, gender, occupation and political standing. One area does show a difference though is education. Research carried out by the university of Miami using long-term empirical data found that people with a high school education were almost twice as likely at 42% to believe in conspiracy theories of all types compared to ones with post-graduate degrees at 23%. A recent poll carried out by the Fairleigh Dickinson University showed that 63% of registered U.S. voters believe in at least one political conspiracy theory. According to professor of psychology Viren Swami of Westminster University England "once you believe in one conspiracy theory you are much more likely to believe in others" Psychological testing has revealed that people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories if they feel anxiou,s under stress or feel that they don't have control over their lives, This is believed to trigger some people to see non-existent patterns and attribute conspiratorial explanations. Compared to the 60's, 70's and even 80's the world is now a very different place. The so-called surveillance society with its privacy issues leaks about eavesdropping on web browsing and emails, job uncertainty, poverty, terror attacks and a highly unequal society and living in a rapidly changing an unpredictable world all contribute to the feeling of lack of control for great deal more people than it did in the past. The Internet has made things worse in a way with a world of information both good and bad just a google search away. The problem here is of "Confirmation Bias" this is the tendency to only believe the evidence that supports your point of view and the tribalism of people that occurs on chat rooms, blogs, forums and YouTube channels also helps reinforce the false information and the "us and them" view of the world. Whilst believing that you know that NASA faked the moon landings might make you feeling control it doesn't actually give you any control. The problem with this lack of faith in scientific endeavor is where will it take you in the future. To some it seems no matter what NASA or others might do there will always be some form of hidden agenda and this negates from the achievements that NASA did 50 years ago and for those which are still yet to come. Thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video and if you did then please thumbs up, subscribe, share and comment and don't forget we have other videos available which you may also find interesting on the link was showing now so until the next time it's goodbye from me,

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 1,031,405

Rating: 4.4914041 out of 5

Keywords: moon hoax, moon conspiracy theories, nasa conspiracy, 2001 a space odyssey, Bill Kaysing, We Never Went to the Moon, curious-droid.com, nasa, conspiracy theories, conspiracy, conspiracies, backfire effect, psychology, confirmation bias, faked, moon, fake, hoax, apollo, moon landing hoax, moon landing hoax proof, aliens, space, documentary, moon landing, secret, saturn v, f1 engine, The Sentinel, Arthur C. Clarke, Van Allen Belts, radiation, skeptic, Conspiracy theories, paul shillito

Id: PT3ferYrmgU

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 19 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/2345wertsdf]

I believe the moon landing was real but this video is counterproductive. 10 minutes of summarising basic well known facts and 3 minutes of personal attacks aimed at discrediting those that believe these ideas rather than the ideas on their own merits.

"People that believe in one conspiracy theory are much more likely to believe in others"

If that is true then wouldn't the opposite be true.

People that don't believe the moon landing was fake are more likely to disbelieve that Watergate happened.

The term conspiracy theorists is such a dog-whistle term.

[u/[deleted]]

Wait im being serious.. so we the Hubble telescope literally cant see the moon but it can capture all those photos of nebulas light years away? Im being 100% serious.

[u/Black_Hitler_Pepe]

Bush did it.

[u/IslandicFreedom]

Highschooler here: It's not a conspiracy it's fact.

Few years later: Yeah fuck that shit, I'm now educated enough to keep that shit to myself.

[u/piotrmil]

It's astonishing how many people still believe in this silly conspiracy theory despite the mountain of evidence present. Although Neil deGrasse Tyson said once that we should be proud that we have achieved something so astounding that people have trouble believing in it.

[u/[deleted]]

Nice video.. except for the whole not one piece of evidence proving the moon landing. Lol. Just because he has a british accent and claims something doesnt prove all conspiracies are fake. I believe we went to the moon but 10-15 years after we first claimed to.