The guys who reckon that the Moon hasn't been visited do not have convincing arguments for everything. Rocks were brought back, for instance. These do not match Earth rocks. They do, however, match rocks brought back by a Russian unmanned craft. NASA and the Soviet Union would not have been collaborating at that time. It would have been in the Russian interest to disprove any false claims by the USA, and they could have done so. For instance, by monitoring of the radio transmissions made during the flights.

NASA has never been a monolithic organisation - various labs and departments compete for funding, and a number of external companies provide the hardware. The scientists tend to include a lot of idealist people with a devotion to the extension of knowledge, and the truth. These people move around between departments and various academic establishments. They work with people basing their own studies on the results of the Moon program. This huge number of people live in a country not run by the equivalent of the KGB and fear, but with liberty at its core, and a grounding in rebellion. They lived through the Sixties. This would be a leaky setup. No way could any covert operation cover itself up successfully and produce the results it did.

Think of the things which have happened and not been kept quiet - injecting people with plutonium, for instance. Failing to treat black sufferers from VD. Testing nerve gas on uninformed soldiers (that was here in the UK, just to show that I'm not biased). Much smaller things, and much more serious in their ethical implications.

What this issue does show is how easy it is to convince people that something is different from the generally accepted perception. Take one person. Give him a job title and the sense of importance and being in on something that goes with it. Let him "discover" evidence of a conspiracy, and let him leak it..... Not that I'm saying that is what happened. At least it has the virtue of making witnesses not liars, but dupes.

In the right environment, others will join in and find more. Like the photographs with shadows that go in different directions, which don't do any such thing when you look closely. Like the moving flag, which has just been moved by a clearly visible astronaut, in an environment where there is no force to counter its energy.

Who benefits from this sort of hypothesis? Who gains from teaching people that the achievements of science and governments of the past never happened? I don't know, apart from the makers of TV programs, and the publishers of magazines. But I find it very hard to cope when dealing with apparently intelligent acquaintances who believe the stuff because it was on TV, and cannot deal with reasoned argument.

Penny