6% remain convinced moon landings were fake

They walk among us, seemingly little different from you or me. Most of the time, you never would know of their true nature — except that occasionally, they feel compelled to speak up.

Take an example from Lens, The New York Times' photography blog. A recent feature, "Dateline: Space," displayed stunning NASA photographs, including the iconic photo of Neil Armstrong standing on the lunar surface.

The second comment on the feature stated flatly, "Man never got to the moon."

The author of that post, Nicolas Marino, went on to say, "I think media should stop publicizing something that was a complete sham once and for all and start documenting how they lied blatantly to the whole world."

Forty years after men first touched the lifeless dirt of the moon — and they did. Really. Honest. — polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the Apollo 11 landing and five subsequent missions were faked and could not have happened. The landings, one of the greatest gambles of the human race, were an elaborate hoax developed to raise national pride, many among them insist.

They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery and claim to be able to tell that the U.S. flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the U.S. space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.

And while there is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it secret for four decades staggers the imagination, the deniers continue to amass accusations to this day. They are bolstered by such films as a documentary shown on Fox television in 2001 and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" by Bart Sibrel, a filmmaker in Nashville, Tenn.

"There are smart, normal people who buy into these conspiracy theories," said Philip Plait, an astronomer and author who counters the conspiracy theorists point by point and at excruciating length at his "Bad Astronomy" Web site. He is one of many people who have joined the fight to affirm that It Happened. A group effort, at www.clavius.org, debunks with gusto; its main author, Jay Windley, named the site for the moon base in Arthur C. Clarke's classic science fiction novel, "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Even though the so-called evidence from the conspiracists clearly can be proved wrong, Plait said, understanding the proof can require a working knowledge of history and photography and of science and its methodology. "You've got to do the work; you've got to put the elbow grease to it," he said, "and most people don't do the work. So these things get traction."

Marino, author of the post on the Lens blog, is a 31-year-old architect born in Argentina. In an e-mail, he said the political corruption during the years of dictatorship in his country shaped his thinking: "I started to realize how political corruption operates and how it is the interests of a few in power that really governs our world."

As he traveled the world — he now lives and works in China — he picked up books contending the landings were faked and saw documentaries including Sibrel's, he said, which paints a dark portrait of political manipulation during the Nixon administration and somehow ties in the Vietnam War, the Titanic and the Tower of Babel before even getting to the supposed photographic evidence of lunar deception.

Sibrel, who sells his films online, has hounded Apollo astronauts with a Bible, insisting they swear on camera they had walked on the moon. He so annoyed Buzz Aldrin in 2002 — ambushing him with his Bible and calling him "a coward, and a liar, and a thief" — that Aldrin punched Sibrel in the face. Law-enforcement officials refused to file charges against Aldrin, the second man on the moon.

In an interview, Sibrel said his efforts to prove that men never walked on the moon has cost him dearly. "I have suffered only persecution and financial loss," he said. "I've lost visitation with my son. I've been expelled from churches. All because I believe the moon landings are fraudulent."

Ted Goertzel, a Rutgers University professor of sociology who has studied conspiracy theorists, said "there's a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups, I think." For the most part, he said, "They don't undertake to prove that their view is true" so much as to "find flaws in what the other side is saying." And so, he said, argument is a matter of accumulation instead of persuasion. "They feel if they've got more facts than the other side, that proves they're right."

Mark Fenster, a University of Florida Levin College of Law professor who has written extensively on conspiracy theories, said he sees similarities between people who argue that the moon landings never happened and those who insist that the Sept. 11 attacks were planned by the government and that President Obama's birth certificate is fake: At the core, he said, is a polarization so profound that people end up with an unshakable belief that those in power "simply can't be trusted."

The emergence of the Internet as a communications medium, he noted, makes it possible for once-scattered believers to find one another. "It allows the theory to continue to exist, to continue to be available — it's not just some old dusty books on the half-price shelf."

Adam Savage, co-star of the television show "MythBusters," spent an episode last year taking apart moon-hoax theories bit by bit, entertainingly and convincingly. The theorists, he noted, never give up. "They'll say you have to keep an open mind," he said, "but they reject every single piece of evidence that doesn't adhere to their thesis."

For those who actually went, the conspiracy theories simply are galling.

Harrison Schmitt, pilot of the lunar lander during the last Apollo mission and later a U.S. senator, said the poor state of the nation's schools has had predictable results. "If people decide they're going to deny the facts of history and the facts of science and technology, there's not much you can do with them," he said.

"For most of them, I just feel sorry that we failed in their education."