From: David Rudiak <DRudiak@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 14:16:20 -0800
Fwd Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2004 21:15:43 -0500
Subject: Re: Q&A On Moore's Mogul trajectory Hoax - Rudiak


It is abundantly clear that most, if not all skeptics, don't
begin to understand the fundamental math issues concerning the
Charles Moore trajectory calculation hoax. So in the spirit of
Jim Lippard's FAQ Q&A treatment of the original CSICOP sTARBABY
scandal, here is my own Q&A on Moore's hoax.

Unlike Lippard, I hesitate to label it an FAQ on the matter.
Skeptics not only don't frequently ask these questions, they
deliberately avoiding asking them.

Q: What is Moore's so-called Mogul trajectory hoax?

A: It is a model calculation by former Mogul Project balloon
scientist Charles Moore, based on historical wind data, that
supposedly demonstrated how Moore's lost Flight #4 Mogul balloon
launched June 4, 1947, supposedly explained a crash reported in
early July on the Foster Ranch, that triggered the so-called
Roswell crashed flying saucer incident. In 1997, Moore bragged
that the winds were "exactly right" and that his calculation
"exactly landed" the balloon on the Foster Ranch, and, by
implication in many minds, virtually proved his balloon
explained the Roswell events. But when Brad Sparks and I went
over Moore's tables and calculations in 2002, we discovered
Moore's trajectory was fraudulent and that Moore had resorted to
numerous cheats to get his balloon to his desired location.

Q: So what exactly were these so-called "cheats?"

A: It's complicated, because Moore cheated in so many different
ways. The sheer complexity of the deception confuses people and
also tends to turn them off because if of the length of time it
takes to carefully go into the details. But basically Moore
cheated by claiming to use certain assumptions and methods, but
secretly substituting other bogus assumptions and methods when
he did the actual set-up of his trajectory calculation table and
his final calculation. The major deceptions are in three
categories: 1) Moore's actual table balloon rise/fall rates
seriously conflict with half of his given ones (thus crazy
numbers like 100/12.1 = 350 or 852/2.8 = 100) 2) Moore claimed
he was assuming the balloon had perfectly functioning equipment,
but instead he secretly treated it as faulty. In setting up his
calculation table, he gave it drastically shortened rise and
fall times to drastically shorten the trajectory and prevent
serious overshoot of the crash site. 3) Moore claimed to be
calculating his final trajectory using one method (that was
correct), but used another instead that was mathematically
incorrect, again to shorten the trajectory.

Q: Well surely Prof. Moore has refuted your charges as baseless,
right?

A: Wrong. The only word from Moore, via debunker Dave Thomas, is
that Moore "didn't want to get into the math." If our charges
had no merit, math would be the first thing Moore would argue.
The fact that he won't argue the math is a really an admission
that he CAN'T argue the math because it is fraudulent, as we
charged. (How can one argue that 100/12.1 really equals 350?)
But other than this, Moore has remained silent and has issued no
retractions. He has let Thomas, and other debunkers like Tim
Printy, act in his stead.  Since they can't argue
scientifically, they have resorted to propaganda techniques
instead to deflect the criticism and confuse the real issues in
the public's mind. Among the propaganda ploys, e.g., is to avoid
addressing the real math issues and/or accuse us of in engaging
in nothing more than "character assassination," to give the
impression that criticism of Moore is only personal and not
based on anything of substance.

Q: Let's get into the details. Did Moore claim that he was
assuming Flight #4 used their best equipment, was similarly
configured to and flew and well or better than the successful
Flight #5 the next day?

A: Yes he did. This clearly implied he was also assuming Flight
#4's altitude control equipment functioned properly, like Flight
#5, and #4 should have had similar rise and fall profiles as #5.

Q: So did Moore use a similar rise profile as Flight #5?

A: No, he did not. In his calculation table, he secretly
eliminated a lifter balloon cutoff, present on Flight #5 (and
other flights), whose purpose was to drastically slow the ascent
above 35,000'. Instead of treating #4 like #5, he treated it
more like the faulty and failed Flight #6, whose altitude
control equipment was noted as being damaged on launch. Lifter
balloon cutoff never happened for #6; it rose straight up to
high altitude and came straight down.

Q: So what?

A: First, Moore was cheating by saying he was assuming one thing
but doing something else entirely. Second, and more importantly,
this cheating had the effect of cutting about 20 minutes and
over 20 miles from the ascent trajectory by having #4 race
through the high wind area between about 35,000' and 52,000',
instead of having a much slower ascent in this region like #5.
This is one way Moore surreptitiously prevented serious
overshoot of the Foster Ranch crash site and a critical balloon
turn point.

Q: This is a serious charge. Surely skeptics like Tim Printy and
Dave Thomas have addressed it, right?

A: Wrong. No skeptic will go near it. They either pretend it
doesn't exist (e.g. Thomas) or argue all around it, taking the
discussing off on irrelevant tangents (e.g. Printy). Again, the
reason they won't deal directly with the issue is because they
can't. There is no rational or honest defense.

Q: Did Moore use a similar fall profile as Flight #5?

A: No, he did not. In his table, he eliminated the noted #5
descent ballast dumps, which drastically slowed its fall, and
had #4 fall almost twice as fast. Again, he was treating #4 as a
balloon with faulty equipment, contrary to his stated
assumption. His model #4 fell an equivalent distance from
stratosphere to ground in only 59 min. compared to 96 min. for
#5.  This was even much faster than the faulty #6 which fell the
same distance in about 72 min.

Q: So what?

A: Again Moore was cheating by saying one thing but doing
another. The purpose was again to drastically shorten the
trajectory and prevent serious overshoot of his intended crash
site. Had Moore adhered to a #5 fall profile, over 30 more miles
of overshoot would have been added.

Q: And haven't the skeptics discussed this issue?

A: Thomas again pretended it didn't exist and Printy used a
frantic, illogical, hand-waving argument to try to justify why
the Flight #4 would have fallen much faster than the known
neoprene balloon Moguls.

Q: After setting it up his #4 trajectory table (rightly or
wrongly) did Moore calculate the final trajectory properly?

A: No, he did not. He said he was doing it one way (which was
one correct way of calculating it), but in reality, he did it
differently. So again he was cheating by saying one thing and
doing another. But worse, the way he really did it was
mathematically bogus. Moore built various wind symmetries and
correspondences into his table that were destroyed by his
improper method of calculation. E.g., his table indicated
identical wind values for the same altitude intervals on the up
and down sides. But Moore carried all his wind values back
through the previous altitude. This had the effect of applying
the same winds to totally different altitude intervals on the up
and down sides instead of applying them to the same intervals.

Q: Again, so what?

A: This again caused a drastic alternation from a properly
calculated trajectory because pushing back his wind values also
pushed them back in time. By improperly pushing back his wind
values on the ascent side, he cut 30 minutes from a critical
upper atmosphere turn point. This had the effect of shaving
about a dozen more miles from the ascent trajectory, yet another
way Moore cheated to prevented overshoot and force an early turn
of his balloon.

Q: And how did the skeptics deal with this?

A: Printy and Thomas simply reproduced Moore's mathematically
bogus calculation to get his bogus trajectory and proclaimed
victory, under the bizarre notion that reproducing a faulty math
technique magically makes it correct. It's like figuring out how
a crooked accountant cooked the books and then proclaiming that
makes them clean. Thomas never addressed my many points proving
this calculation mathematically wrong and instead accused me of
"incompetence," just more use of propaganda techniques on his
part. Later on UFO Updates he finally admitted under his breath
that my arguments "might even have some merit," but then went
back into his propaganda spin mode, claiming that it amounted to
nothing more than "disagreements" over how to model. He never
responded to my detailed rebuttal arguments. Printy similarly
accused me of incompetence. He did dare to argue the issues on
UFO Updates last year and was mathematically beaten to death. He
finally retreated from debate, but never corrected the many lies
and misrepresentations on his website despite being proven
wrong.

Q: So what would the trajectory have been had Moore adhered to
his stated assumptions and calculated properly?

A: Had Moore treated Flight #4 as a properly functioning
balloon, i.e., used something like Flight #5 rise & fall
profiles, and calculated his table properly the way he said he
was doing it (but didn't), his model #4 balloon would have
overshot the Foster Ranch crash by over 70 miles to the NE.
Instead of ending up at the Foster Ranch site, only 85 miles NNE
of the Alamogordo launch site and about 62 miles NW of Roswell,
it would have ended up nearly 160 miles NE of Alamogordo and
about 75 miles NNE of Roswell. That's a very big difference!

Q: But Dave Thomas in the Sketical said your arguments were
nothing but "quibbles" and "shrill accusations."

A: Thomas' language was again him resorting to propaganda to
avoid addressing the real math issues and to make the charges
sound to the reader as if they were unfounded or trivial.
Honestly, is a nearly 90% or 70+ mile miss between a properly
calculated crash site and Moore's claimed one a "quibble?"

Q: But Dave Thomas in the Skeptical Inquirer argued Moore was
still "qualitatively" right. What did he mean by that?

This was more propaganda. Thomas knew he couldn't argue the case
quantitatively so he resorted to a pseudoscientific, handwaving
"qualitative" argument. When you read through his Orwellian
doubletalk, it amounted to another tacit admission that Moore's
math was wrong. His argument was basically that the historical
winds Moore used would have blown a balloon to the NW of
Alamogordo, very roughly in the direction of the Foster Ranch to
the NNE, and not towards El Paso to the south. But the proper
scientific argument is the quantitative one, i.e., _where_ the
balloon would _likely_ have ended up with the given winds had
Moore calculated properly. As it turned out, this was almost
double the distance from Alamogordo as Moore claimed. If one
followed Thomas' "qualitatively correct" logic to it's absurd
conclusion, a plane from Los Angeles to Chicago that ended up in
New York City because of crew navigation errors would still be
deemed on target because it ended up in roughly the same north-
eastward direction and not southward in Mexico City. This is a
nonsense argument, no? Certainly the passengers and FAA would
think so.

Q: What about Moore's statements that this was never intended to
portray the actual trajectory, only a "possible" one, or Dave
Thomas' Skeptical Inquirer version, "His point... was to show
that the winds that day did not preclude the balloon's arrival
at the Roswell ranch."

A: This was just more of the "qualitatively right" spin. But
think about it--how can a trajectory that can only be gotten by
cheating be a "possible" one? The fact that Moore had to resort
to cheating actually DOES preclude the balloon landing at the
ranch with the given historical wind data.

Q: Moore said in his book that he had a clear memory of Flight
#4 passing near the town of Arabela and Capitan Peak, about 70
miles NE of Alamogordo and used that as his major "constraint"
on his trajectory. In a 1997 Sci-Fi special on Roswell, he
further claimed the winds were "exactly right" to take his
balloon to the Arabela area. Right or wrong?

A: Wrong! When the numbers are properly run, it turns out the
historical winds were _not_ "exactly right" as Moore claimed.
What Moore really did was cheat in 2 big ways to drastically
shorten his ascent trajectory so that the balloon would be
forced to make an early stratospheric turn west and pass near
Arabela and Capitan Peak. Had he used a more normal rise rate
like #5 (i.e., had lifter balloon cutoff) and calculated his
table correctly, his balloon would have overflown this turn
point "constraint" by nearly 40 miles. The turn would have
actually occurred about 20 miles north of Roswell and 40 miles
east of Arabela. According to a correctly calculated Moore
model, the closest the balloon would have passed near Arabela
was about a dozen miles to the east as it flew past Arabela on
its ascent, and about 18-19 miles north of it as it flew
westward after the turn.

Q: But Moore claims his memory is very clear on this and this
was the _only_ possible Mogul flight in which the "exotic" name
of Arabela would have been mentioned.

A: False. A well-documented Mogul flight (#17) only 2 months
later flew directly over Arabela. He may simply be confusing
flights after 50 years. Moore's memory is probably no better
than any other witness and there is no reason to accept
everything he says at face value, especially now after it is
apparent he is capable of hoaxing. Incidentally, Flight #17 is
the only documented Mogul flight known to have passed anywhere
near the Foster Ranch. Prevailing winds almost always took the
Mogul flights well away from this location. This historical fact
alone argues that a Mogul explanation for the Foster Ranch crash
was unlikely from the gitgo.

Q: You claim Moore cheated with his math. Why would he do this?

Only Moore knows the real answer. But possibly because he wanted
desperately for his little lost Flight #4 Mogul to explain the
Roswell crash. Moore went well beyond arguing this was merely a
"possible" trajectory. One of his other brags in the Sci Fi
special was that he calculated a trajectory that "exactly
landed" his balloon at the Foster Ranch. But the math shows he
could only do this by cheating. If you play it straight, you
can't get his Flight #4 to the Foster Ranch in any plausible way
using the historical wind data. The winds were much too strong
and would have pushed the balloons much too far to the east and
north of the Foster Ranch crash site.

Q: Did Moore do anything else wrong with the math?

A: Yes, many, many things. Most egregiously (first noticed by
Brad Sparks), fully half of his 40 table rise/fall rates are
seriously wrong compared to what you get if you calculate them
from his stated altitude and time intervals. E.g. his first
stated rise rate is 100 ft/min. But his table has his balloon
rising 852 ft. in 2.8 min. for an actual rise rate of 852/2.8 =
304 ft/min, 304% of what he states it is. At the end of his
table he has the balloon falling at a constant 900 ft/min, but
his actual last two calculated values are 1491 and 1655 ft/min,
or 166% and 184% of what he indicated. His wackiest value was at
the top of his ascent where he "slams on the brakes" and has the
rise coming to a sudden halt. His table claims he has the
balloons still rising at 350 ft/min, but the altitude and time
intervals show it rising only 100 ft. in 12.1 min, or only 8.3
ft/min. That's over a factor of 40 error! The worst region of
his table is above 45,000 feet where 13 out of 14 of his
rise/fall rates are very seriously in error.

Q: So what?

A: Well, for one thing, Moore is an experienced scientist, not
some high school dropout who flunked math. There is no excuse
it. These are grade school math errors, little more than
subtracting two sets of numbers and then dividing the results.
Every one of his stated rise/fall rates should have corresponded
exactly with the calculated ones. As to why he did it, I can
only speculate. But if one recalculates the time intervals to
bring the stated and calculated rise/fall rates back into
correspondence, you get yet another trajectory where the balloon
ends up about 5 miles south of his already bogus "exact" Foster
Ranch crash site. In other words, even with all his other
cheats, his balloon still missed by a little bit. If Moore
wanted to boast that his calculation "exactly landed" his
balloon on the crash site, he had to finagle even more numbers.

Q: Well, this seems pretty clear-cut. Numbers like 100/12 = 350
and 852/2.8 = 100 are obviously dead wrong. How could skeptics
argue with that?

A: Generally by ignoring the issue entirely. That has been Dave
Thomas' tactic. By pretending there are no such issues and
dismissing them as "shrill accusations," he can then claim
disingenuously that he "can find NO justification whatsoever for
Rudiak's persistent accusations of fraud and hoaxing against Dr.
Moore." This is a "See no evil, speak no evil" dodge. Tim Printy
foolishly tried to argue that Sparks and I didn't understand how
Moore really did the calculation and was again mathematically
beaten to death. There is no possible way to "fix" these
outrageously phony numbers.

Q: Did he do anything else that you deem questionable?

A: Oh God yes! In 1995 Moore's interpreted a surviving diary and
cloud cover records to mean that Flight #4 was probably launched
post-dawn, just like Flight #5 and the other early N.M. Moguls.
But 2 years later he had more complete historical wind data,
which were much less favorable to Moore's theory of events.
These winds turned out to be blowing much harder to the north
and east than Moore originally assumed, i.e., away from the
Foster Ranch. That's why he devised various ruses to drastically
shorten the rise and fall trajectories. But he also had to come
up with some rationale to push his balloon much further to the
west towards the Foster Ranch, meaning he had to keep it up much
longer than Flight #5 or any other early neoprene Mogul. That's
where he suddenly came up with his late night 3:00 a.m. launch,
then flip-flopped on his original logic in interpreting the
diary and weather records in order to rationalize his new
position.

Q: So what?

The "so what" here is Moore again suddenly changing positions
when it suited him and using contorted logic to try to justify
it. It's not so much a matter of actual cheating as adopting a
highly questionable assumption to again force an end. In terms
of trajectory, had he stuck to his original position of a post-
dawn launch, calculated correctly, and followed a successful
Flight #5 profile, the balloon would have ended up about 100
miles ENE of the Foster Ranch crash site and about 80 miles NE
of Roswell, an absolutely huge miss.

Q: Anything else?

A: Yes, there are many other problems with Moore's model and
math, but they are of lesser importance. E.g., Moore's improper
backward table calculation would have thrown out his first wind
value at ground level, which in itself is bad scientific
technique. But Moore didn't even do that. Instead he created a
mutant hybrid number by splicing together the wind speed from
his first data point with the wind direction value from his
second data point, and throwing out the other halves from the
first two wind data values. Run that past any math teacher to
see what they think of it. It has very little effect on
trajectory, but it is just plain crappy, wrong math. As to why
Moore got so creative with his math technique here, one again
can only speculate, but it may have another way Moore hoped to
cover his tracks. Something was obviously wrong here, but it
took a long time before anybody figured out exactly what it was.
(Ironically it was debunker Tim Printy who figured it out, but
he acted as if it had no bearing on Moore's math integrity.)

Q: Isn't this just one of your "quibbles" and "shrill
accusations," as Dave Thomas wrote in his Skeptical Inquirer
article?

A: It's a "quibble" in that it has little effect on trajectory.
It is not a "quibble" or a "shrill accusation" to point out that
this is mathematical nonsense, piled on top of far more serious
math nonsense. That many of Moore's numbers and calculations are
fraudulent are not "quibbles" or "shrill accusations," but
statements of absolute mathematical fact. 100/12 does not equal
350; 852/2.8 does not equal 100. And the huge misses Moore would
have gotten had he run the numbers properly and stuck to his
stated assumptions are not "quibbles" or "shrill accusations"
either. Thomas was just trying to trivialize and avoid the
serious math issues I raised on my website by spinning them as
"quibbles" and "shrill accusations," Thomas again acting as a
propagandist, not a scientist.

Q: Are you quite done now?

A: Well, I could go on and on. E.g., Brad Sparks also noticed
that Moore deliberately altered the original Flight #5 Mogul
trajectory plot after claiming he was reproducing it exactly as-
is. The original plot showed Flight #5 lingering near Roswell
base for an extended period of time, finally passing only 4
miles south of the base on descent and crashing about 16 miles
east of the base. But Moore removed Roswell base from the
original plot and substituted Roswell town 6 miles to the north.
Then he invented a new crash site out of thin air about 31 miles
east of the base. Furthermore, when Sparks raised these issues
in an email debate with Moore mediated by Karl Pflock, Moore
lied and claimed that Flight #5 came no closer than 15-20 miles
from the base and would have been too small to notice. He also
profferred that Roswell base's view was hidden by clouds, even
though he knew full well that the balloon had been tracked by
telescope the entire time from Alamogordo, nearly 100 miles
away. Again, one can only speculate why Moore would do all this,
but he had previously claimed Roswell base would have known
nothing about any of the Mogul flights before the Roswell
incident. The Flight #5 plot seemed to contradict this. Moore's
alterations to the original plot, probably to distance the
balloon from the base, and then lying to Sparks may have been
his attempts to bolster and defend his original claim. This has
nothing to do with Moore's Flight #4 trajectory calculation, but
it does illustrate another instance where Moore chose to falsify
data when pushing a particular point of view.

Q: Isn't this just "character assassination" of Prof. Moore on
your part, exactly as skeptics like Dave Thomas and Tim Printy
charge?

A: Moore's statement (via Thomas) that he "didn't want to get
into the math." amounted to his admission that his math was
indefensible. It would only be "character assassination" if Brad
Sparks and I were _falsely_ characterizing what Moore had done
or said. We are not responsible for Moore's hoaxing, only
pointing out that he has clearly done so. Debunkers like Thomas
and Printy can't defend Moore's actions, so they attack the
messengers instead (the real "character assassination") awhile
ducking the actual issues.

Q: Well again, so what? Even if Moore cheated, this still
doesn't prove a flying saucer crashed, does it?

A: No, and neither Sparks nor myself ever argued otherwise, only
that Moore's trajectory calculation was mathematically
fraudulent. However, one can't avoid the obvious implications of
Moore's hoax on the Roswell debate. First, it impeaches his
testimony on other matters. Second, his hoaxed trajectory had
been one of the cornerstones of the Mogul theory. Mogul
proponents took it on faith that Moore had practically proven
Flight #4 triggered the Roswell events. That no longer stands. I
have argued that the historical wind data Moore used actually
show that it was highly unlikely for the winds to have taken the
hypothetical Flight #4 to the Foster Ranch and explained the
Roswell crash. To avoid gross cheating, one has to literally
invent a completely different set of wind directions and speeds
to get the balloon there in a plausible way. But such an
assumption is in itself highly questionable and improbable. What
this amounts to is Mogul being practically eliminated as a
contender, which currently leaves no other conventional
explanations that I am aware of.


David Rudiak