Hoagland ~ Is it Fraud, or Human Error?
Richard Hoagland
Richard Hoagland began to seem rather odd to me, as well. Since the 15th of April, his website, The Enterprise Mission, was posting what seemed to me to be total garbage (natural appearing geologic features labeled as artificial structures) and ignoring the only soft piece of evidence (yet hard to dismiss) indicating a possible “man-made” structure on Mars.
Art Bell’s program strikes me as odd/weird (more so than it’s supposed to be) to me in anycase—but entertaining. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and notified him about the “Trailer Park,” but apparently he had no interest. I thought that of all the people in the world, these two, Bell and Hoagland, would jump on this discovery and proclaim it to the world.
Instead, I percieved disinformation and became suspicious of their motives. I felt that they were doing more harm than good and making it difficult for anyone interested in Cydonia to be taken seriously. Then I heard my name mentioned in Art Bell’s program with David Oates’ backward speech expose of the “disinformation” agent “Kent.” Bad move, Mr. Bell.
Hoagland then posted a claim of evidence of “Arcology” in the “Pyramid,” so I decided to take a critical look. I didn’t recall any of the “structures” being in the NASA image. If these were indeed structures, Mars must be covered with them! How could I have missed them?
Well folks, here is what I did . . .
I took the original full size NASA/JPL gif blew it up 300 per cent (to match the size) and compared it to Hoagland’s and there IT was. He had severely cooked the data (baked it?). Not only darkened and contrast enhanced (which is acceptable) but checkerboard patterns of digital noise evidently had been added to the image. Is this noise is his evidence of “artificial structure?” The image had also been softened to make the digital noise pattern look “photographic.” Where the NASA image had regular blocky pixels, the Hoagland image was smooth and contained much more detail.
Just to be sure, I also checked the tiff in case this was a compression artifact—it isn’t. No, NASA didn’t switch the tiff, I used the one I had downloaded when it was first posted on the web.
If this isn’t outright fraud and disinformation, I don’t know what is.
What is this all about? I wonder if someone is behind Bell, “Kent” and Hoagland pulling the strings, or is this their idea of a joke? I thought that Hoagland could continue to make his points and rake in the bucks by exploiting what’s really on the images, which are far more interesting to me than his “fictions.” And why ignore the row of oblong dots? Pretty mysterious, eh?
Perhaps I’m wrong, maybe “Kent” gave Richard Hoagland some of those better pictures that he said were being kept from the public.
Checkers, anyone?
Don't take my word for it. Get the image and see for yourself. http://www.enterprisemission.com/images/mars/arcology.jpg 136K jpg image. http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/CYD3/cydonia3_mipl_bot.gif 4.5 MEG gif
I have refered folks to the GIF because they can view it in their web browser, but if you want the full range of choices:
http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/target/CYD3/
The Cydonia Sideshow Bell and Hoagland - hoaxes within hoaxes.
The Hoagland Response—
Technical note: The images were cut from the originals in PhotoShop and exported as gifs with a pallete of 23 shades of grey. The Hoagland close up was saved with a palette of 37 shades of grey. If anyone thinks that isn’t enough, get the originals and do a page yourself. There are even more pictures that YOU can debunk. I’ve done my part. The white lines which are on the Hoagland images were drawn for illustrative purposes only and there is no problem with that. I claim fair use of the excerpted Enterprise Mission images for educational purposes.
There is a digital enhancement process which involves the the raising or lowering of greyscale values based on certain threshhold—that is to make all the pixels above or below an abitrary value either be lightened or darkened. In theory this could account for some of what is in his image, but, such a process would be uniform for all pixels of the same threshhold. It appears that darker dots have taken the place of some of the light pixels in the NASA image but other light pixels of the same apparent value have remained light. Lighter dots have also taken the place of darker pixels. This indicates to me that more was done to the image than could be accounted for by using this technique. Since this question has been raised, this is my response.
SHOW ME! Hoagland image vs. NASA/JPL image GIF animation.
If Mr. Hoagland can document, explain and demonstrate a legitimate means by which his image has been generated, I will gladly post his explanation and retract this article. It could be that the distortion of the data is an unintentional artifact of his processing and filtering technique. Imaging artifacts are not structures. Human error is a distinct possibility.
Mr. Hoagland has posted a response. This page will stay. Mea culpa, Mr. Hoagland?
Special thanks to the good people at:
And now for some humor:
Dick Hoaxland Exposes the Truth
Somehow it seems that the name just fits the available data. At least, that’s my theory.
Montgomery College Planetarium
Hoagland’s close up of
“Arcology” in the “Pyramid”
copyright The Enterprise Mission
Hoagland’s close up of
“Arcology” in the “Pyramid”
copyright The Enterprise Mission
Hoagland’s extreme close up of
“Arcology” in the “Pyramid”
copyright The Enterprise Mission
the real thing from NASA/JPL (mipl)
900 per cent
the real thing from NASA/JPL (tjp)
with stretched histogram—more shades
900 per cent
where we are.
Hoagland image vs. NASA/JPL image GIF animation.
irupert.com/mars/hoaxland.html