The Man Who Sold Dark Moon

David Percy, we are told on the back page of Dark Moon, is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, an "award winning film and television producer," a "well-established professional communicator in the world of commerce" and works "regularly with leading multinational corporations." I suppose these credentials are supposed to impress, but they are vague enough to mean nothing. (I was once a "professional communicator for a leading multinational corporation"--I sold subscriptions for Time magazine.)

However, I am not concerned with who Percy is, but what he says. He says the Apollo lunar missions were faked, and he bases this claim by saying that the Apollo photographs do not look the way he thinks they should look. Yet this "award winning" photographer rarely tests his assumptions. He assumes that the Apollo photos should always show stars amid the lunar glare, but he apparently never tried to photograph stars at night in the city (as I have). He claims that astronauts in shadow should appear totally dark, but he doesn't test this theory by taking any pictures (as I did over here). He assumes that opposite sides of a flag should show different shadow patterns, but it seems he never studied any real-world flags (as I had to do for these pages).

But the "anomaly" that really blows the whistle on David Percy's investigative skills is the one in which the Apollo astronauts' shadows sometimes point in different directions. On page 22 of Dark Moon he claims,

[C]learly it is simply not possible to have variations in shadow direction on flat terrain... within any one picture, if that photograph is genuine. [Emphasis in original]

One wonders how anyone could earn a living as a photographer without encountering perspective distortion. (This effect is described in more detail over here.) One also wonders how anyone could continue to disregard such a basic photographic fact after it had been pointed out to him after the appearance of his Fortean Times article in January 1997, again after the publication of Dark Moon in 1999, and for all I know, he disregards it still. Through two printings of Dark Moon he not only ignores the effect of perspective on shadows, but he tries to maintain his ignorance with this pair of pictures:

Are we to believe that David Percy sauntered up to a row of trees, whipped out his camera and fired off a picture of near-perfectly parallel shadows? And then did it again? Such an amazing double run of luck from anyone else would have earned Percy's sarcastic comments and an Oscar Wilde quote. Yet he got unusually parallel shadows a third time as well for Fortean Times. More luck? Or did he have to work hard to get those shadows to line up? As one professional photographer stated, "Photographs do not just happen" (Dark Moon, p. 45).

Did he, perhaps, take a number of shadow pictures and then quietly hide those which destroyed his claim by showing an undesirable amount of divergence? The word deception springs to mind. "Mr. Bond," said Auric Goldfinger, "they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.'"

But I suppose it doesn't matter if David Percy is thick-headed or a genius who's putting us on. He is wrong, and proving him wrong is fun and easy which is why I'm doing it.

I admit I hammer David pretty hard with my Percy Sledge. I'm sorry, but there's something about his book's heavy sarcasm, sweeping arrogance, and lousy puns that brings out the bile in me. I even wind up parodying his style. But I don't hate the guy. Or rather, I find myself swinging between extremes: from withering contempt at his more egregious stupidities; to sorrow for his obvious sincerity; to a weary acceptance that I might someday have to defend to the death his right to spread even that disagreeable rubbish.

Yet though nearly every sentence in his book sets my teeth on edge, the anger is eventually compensated by the joy of discovery. As I figure out each fallacy I am at first outraged at the idiot trick he foisted on his readers, after which I settle into a smug superiority. I outsmarted him once again. I feel great. And then I read the next sentence.

David Percy has provided me with a valuable learning experience, though probably not the one he intended. The job of refuting him has taught me a lot about photography, perspective, optics, and performing in-depth research. Analyzing the arguments in his book has allowed me to develop and refine my critical mental tools for seeing through the lies of the really dangerous hustlers. Best of all, he has re-awakened my long-dormant fascination with the Apollo missions and, by encouraging me to study them at length, allowed me once again to re-live that grand adventure on another world.

Thanks, Dave.