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Space & Planetary Science

Rumor Mongering at Unmannedspaceflight.com

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 11, 2006

Editor’s note: Have a look at these postings on the unmannedspaceflight.com chat page. The postings start with a snotty item suggesting that this item posted on NASA Watch – that Aviation Week had learned about an upcoming news item about water on the surface of Mars “might be just smoke.” That was followed by Alex Blackwell’s utterly baseless (and false) claim that “Actually, AW&ST got an advance look at the embargoed press release.”.

Then guess what: the future event posted on NASA Watch and Aviation Week actually came to pass. Funny how things like this happen, isn’t it?

Note to Alex Blackell (and webmaster Doug Ellison): Aviation Week staff did not have access to embargoed material. Ask them yourselves. Why not check with them before posting such false rumors, eh? Keep that in mind the next time you two get up on your soapbox and slap people for posting rumors.

Editor’s update: The site’s webmaster, Doug Ellison has replied “We wont be responding to that ‘story’, and hope that people here will see it for what it is and ignore it.” (Note: This last response by Ellison vanished a few hours later). Aviation Week has denied breaking any embargo. But I guess Doug Ellison does not care about being accurate – even as he chides others for the same trangression. Indeed, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, he prefers to print (post) lies on his website.

Editor’s 12 Dec update: It took several days but Alex Blackwell finally removed his false accusation about Aviation Week.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.