So I found this on youtube today and it raises a number of questions. No, not the ones you are thinking.
[yt]cyUuJ9-vzX8[/yt]
So let's be clear right up front, this image is not real, and anyone that claims it is needs help. The idea that NASA would build a base with buildings that are identical to Google's Data Process Centre and others nearby is, well loony tune. The shadows are wrong, and unlike the claim in the video that it would have taken a skilled photoshop technician many hours of work to create, I could do it in about an hour or two and I'm on the shallow end of the photoshop users pool.
So then what questions?
Ethical ones. It's clear reading the comments below the video that there are many dumbasses that really believe that the photo is, if not real, created to cover up something else that was real. It's clear that all that this joke did was to stir up the true believers into a frenzy, and I do wonder about the ethics of this.
As scientists and debunkers, should we really do this sort of thing? The reason I ask is that no matter the intentions behind doing this sort of joke, it seems to backfire with the believers believing all the more. Even when it is revealed to be fake, that just makes them more certain that the Fakery is to hide the "real deal".
It's not the first time that this sort of this has been done. I recall a few years back a visual effects group faked a number of UFO and aliening footage pieces to see if the believers could really determine the difference between faked footage and "real" footage, and then released them as "evidence" to the UFO community, before finally revealing the hoax a week or so after the final clip. Yet the damage was done, and many still seem to believe that the footage was real and that the hoax claims were a cover up.
So this is my question. Should we really do this sort of thing? I know it fun to laugh at the idiots that believe in the hoaxes, but is it right, or is it better to keep our hands clean and just debunk the nonsense they manage to come up with on their own?
[yt]cyUuJ9-vzX8[/yt]
So let's be clear right up front, this image is not real, and anyone that claims it is needs help. The idea that NASA would build a base with buildings that are identical to Google's Data Process Centre and others nearby is, well loony tune. The shadows are wrong, and unlike the claim in the video that it would have taken a skilled photoshop technician many hours of work to create, I could do it in about an hour or two and I'm on the shallow end of the photoshop users pool.
So then what questions?
Ethical ones. It's clear reading the comments below the video that there are many dumbasses that really believe that the photo is, if not real, created to cover up something else that was real. It's clear that all that this joke did was to stir up the true believers into a frenzy, and I do wonder about the ethics of this.
As scientists and debunkers, should we really do this sort of thing? The reason I ask is that no matter the intentions behind doing this sort of joke, it seems to backfire with the believers believing all the more. Even when it is revealed to be fake, that just makes them more certain that the Fakery is to hide the "real deal".
It's not the first time that this sort of this has been done. I recall a few years back a visual effects group faked a number of UFO and aliening footage pieces to see if the believers could really determine the difference between faked footage and "real" footage, and then released them as "evidence" to the UFO community, before finally revealing the hoax a week or so after the final clip. Yet the damage was done, and many still seem to believe that the footage was real and that the hoax claims were a cover up.
So this is my question. Should we really do this sort of thing? I know it fun to laugh at the idiots that believe in the hoaxes, but is it right, or is it better to keep our hands clean and just debunk the nonsense they manage to come up with on their own?
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