Great Comet Hale-Bopp,
Part 3: The cult members’ death
And continued bull.
Second in the three-part series: The saga of the great and powerful Comet Hale-Bopp and the conspiracy, mystery, intrigue, lies, schemes, hoaxes, and suicides that accompanied it. The idea came when I started listening to a new Art Bell set of interviews that I had obtained, and I realized early in the episode (November 14, 1996) that I was listening to THE interview that started the whole thing. I found another dozen or so interviews and decided to make an episode out of it that has blossomed into three episodes.
The three episodes are meant to be stand-alone in that they don’t need the others to be understandable. But, put them together and they tell the story in a lot more depth. This third part is all about the “meat” of the issue: The tragic suicide of the cult members of Heaven’s Gate. I devote the first half to them and the second half to a discussion of the continued pseudoscience related to Comet Hale-Bopp that persisted after their deaths.
The logical fallacy of the episode is the Straw Man.
Looking ahead, the next episode is an interview with Dave Draper on potentially pseudoscientific conference submissions and what the program committee of a conference does when they get work that appears to be pseudoscience.
Looking back, I was a guest panelist on episode 342 of The Reality Check podcast. It was fun, and I recommend checking them out.
And, finally, I plan to do a small tribute to Leonard Nimoy on the episode 131, due out on May 1. The tribute will be from you: If he or any of his characters affected you (especially as perhaps related to an interest in science or astronomy or critical thinking), please send in a few sentences. Or, record no more than 30—60 seconds and send the file to me.
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 
Great episode, glad to see that at least some of what I sent was useful. I can remember someone posting on the Bautforum that Nancy Leider actually denied that Hale-Bopp existed. From memory they set up a telescope on the pavement outside her house and watched the comet from there.
She was invited to come out and view the comet, but either refused or looked through the eyepiece and said she saw nothing…
Comment by Graham — April 6, 2015 @ 5:16 am |
I remember that, too. Phil was part of that entourage, if memory serves.
Comment by Stuart Robbins — April 6, 2015 @ 9:10 am |