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from the Why-couldn't-they-say-that-before? dept.
On September 6th, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) made the decision to temporarily vacate the Sunspot Solar Observatory at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico as a precautionary measure while addressing a security issue. The facility closed down in an orderly fashion and is now re-opening. The residents that vacated their homes will be returning to the site, and all employees will return to work this week.
AURA has been cooperating with an on-going law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents. For this reason, AURA temporarily vacated the facility and ceased science activities at this location.
The decision to vacate was based on the logistical challenges associated with protecting personnel at such a remote location, and the need for expeditious response to the potential threat. AURA determined that moving the small number of on-site staff and residents off the mountain was the most prudent and effective action to ensure their safety.
http://www.aura-astronomy.org/news/news.asp?newsID=389
(Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:25PM
The problem is that this is literally a conspiracy regardless of the facts. Because there must be some group of people who know what actually happened, and they must be working together to keep that information out of the media. That, by definition, is a conspiracy. The only alternative to "conspiracy theories" is that every single person involved is completely incompetent and literally doesn't have any idea what they're doing up there. Doesn't seem very plausible.
So by definition, any attempt to battle a conspiracy theory generally means proposing an alternative conspiracy theory.
That's all a bit obvious of course, but consider where that gets us in a situation like in TFA. The people who officially know what happened won't say, they won't provide any evidence to support THEIR conspiracy theory, but they expect us all to blindly accept it. Meanwhile, the "conspiracy theory" folks are out there presenting their own "evidence", which doesn't have to be all that convincing to be more compelling that the absolutely nothing that the official theory has put forward. Why should we criticize people for gravitating towards the theories that are actually supported by some amount of evidence?