Talk:Richard Hoagland

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Changed "conspiracy theorist" to "former NASA consultant and expert on Mars" . Conspiracy theorist is a loaded term and don't express what his main interest is in. Lennon 21:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted "former NASA consultant and expert on Mars" to "conspiracy theorist". "Conspiracy theorist" can't possibly be considered a "loaded term" in this case, as it best describes someone who single-handedly authored a wide range of conspiracy theories without providing any evidence in support of such claims. Besides, he never was a consultant for NASA, as he falsely claims. QuintusMessius 00:23, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Conspiracy theorist" is a loaded term because there are all sorts of conspiracies; after all, the Boston Tea Party was a conspiracy (and if it's unclear as to why that is so, then please look up the word 'conspiracy'). Furthermore, the term "conspiracy theorist" has become a catch-all phrase used to refer to people whose views do not coincide with those of the mainstream culture. This is not consistent with the aspirations of neutrality that so often make Wikipedia a wonderful source of information. That said, I cannot verify that he was actually a consultant in the employ of NASA; thus, I am changing 'conspiracy theorist' to 'fringe researcher' in order to give him credit for the work he does while clarifying that his research and conclusions are not accepted by the scientific community at large. Balarick (talk) 10:03, 14 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]