Tom Napier

Any network which airs The Simpsons can't be all bad but one must view Fox's documentary programming in the same light, as entertainment having little relationship to real life.  On Thursday, February 15 2001, Fox showed Conspiracy Theory: Did we Land on the Moon?  This program showcased the old idea that the Apollo Moon landings were a giant hoax staged by NASA.
My comments on the program as a whole should appear in the April/May edition of Phactum; here I want only to address an area in which I have special knowledge, the credentials of one of Fox's purported experts, "author/scientist" Ralph René.
Please do not read this as an ad hominem attack, it is just that at one time I knew René, as he used to call himself, quite well and became rather familiar with his regrettable lack of education in and belief in the sciences. I bear him no ill-will, he is an intelligent man and if he had been born later than 1933 and in different circumstances he might indeed have become a capable scientist rather than a construction worker full of strange ideas.
Unfortunately, René's self-education in science included such pearls of scientific wisdom as the works of Immanuel Velikovsky.  When I first met René in the early 1980s he was evincing a serious mistrust of government, science and scientists.  He had a remarkable ability to suppose that he alone, a self-described basement inventor, had discovered flaws in the laws of nature which had been missed by all the professionals.  Even back then he tried to convince me that there had never been a manned Moon landing, at least he is consistent.
On the Fox program René was referred to as a "physicist" and "author/scientist."  Since I gather he has had a book about his theories published by a vanity press I won't dispute author but I feel that for Fox to describe someone with no academic qualifications as a "physicist" is stretching the term a bit far.
His contribution to the Fox program were, that his "years of research" showed that space suits can't keep out radiation, that they couldn't handle the difference between -250 degrees in the shade and +250 degrees in the sunshine and that the biggest solar flare of the 20th century ocurred during the Apollo 16 mission.  Space suits, of course, are not intended to shield against radiation.  Indeed a little shielding can actually increase the dosage since high energy particles can interact with the shield, producing a burst of more dangerous low energy particles.  The figures René quoted for the Moon's temperature are misleading.  During the lunar night the surface temperature falls, during the day it rises.  The landings were all made early in the lunar day when the surface is at a comfortable temperature.  David Baker's massive The History of Manned Space Flight makes no reference to a solar flare during the Apollo 16 mission.

For some four years René wrote a column, "One Man's Opinion," which appeared in the pages of Imprint, the newsletter of the Northern New Jersey Mensa group.  These articles covered a wide range of topics, from the evil of monarchy to the potential of Filipina mail-order brides.  Even after I moved out of the area I continued to read Imprint.  When René discoursed on science I responded with articles correcting his misunderstandings.

Here are some of the ideas he floated in Imprint:

NASA research has vindicated Velikovsky. (Aug 85)
Droughts are government frauds. (Oct 85)
He is 99% sure that Joe Newman's energy machine works. (May 86)
He assisted in the development of a perpetual motion machine. (May 86)
Men and dinosaurs coexisted and dragons were real. (Sep 86)
Scientists claim huge tidal waves are impossible. (Oct 86)
Distant galaxies don't recede, their light gets tired. (Nov 86)
Stars cannot pulsate without exceeding the speed of light. (Jan 87)
The Earth rotates on bearings. (Feb 87)
The equatorial bulge is impossible. (May 87)
If Newton was right about gravity the Moon would fall into the Sun. (Jun 87)
Ice ages couldn't happen. (Aug 87)
Coulomb's Law is wrong. (Nov 87)

Perhaps Fox should have done a little research before billing René as an expert on science.

As René put it (Oct 86) "Anomalies are the source of my heretical beliefs as they cause unanswered questions to fester in my mind.  Perhaps . . . if I ask questions instead of writing opinions that trample on Emotional Belief Systems, the hostility will decrease."  Alas, there was never any hostility, at least on my part, just a wish that once in a while René would listen to the answers.

Copyright (c) 2001, Tom Napier

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