At 09:29 AM 10/29/2010, Nick Palmer wrote:
I think the bit about his brother being a secret service agent and
saving a bus load of kids raised the biggest red flag to me.
Nick Palmer
There is a host of details like this. Each one is possible, if only
remotely possible. I started to realize that the story seemed to be
dense with these over-the-top details. There are a number of possible
explanations besides "it happened that way."
Mark wrote:
His nephew, Phillip Lebid, was a Secret Service agent and sacrificed
himself at age 30 to save a bus load of kids. Phillip was very
behind what we are doing and we miss him greatly.
In this case, this was literally true.
http://www.policespecial.com/inthelineofduty/2004/04-143-Lebid.htm
Notice an aspect of this: there is no sign that they were working on
anything other than nanomachining with re-entrant water jets, in
2004. Notice the conflation between what they were doing, which
PIllip supported, and "what they are doing," which would be the very
unusual work.
I do assume that, however, Phillip would support any real research,
as would -- and do -- I. I'm simply maintaining an awareness of the
possibility that the whole thing could be seriously in error in some way.
It's very clear that to some degree and in some ways, Mark's story is
true. The question is how far it's true. And when I look for
independent confirmation of the wild stuff, I've found none. None.
And a pile of oddities, each one iffy, like the secret service agent story.
If someone presents you with ten iffy facts, and you verify some of
them, and they turn out to be true, that does not mean that the
others are true and, in fact, a skillful hoaxer will find as many of
these iffy facts as possible to present, precisely looking for the
"if he was right about that, he's probably right about the rest"
response. It's a well known deceptive technique.
That doesn't mean that Mark is lying. It does mean that there is a
lot of work to be done, by him as well as by others.
