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The Hoax Museum Blog
Examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.
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Wired has an article in its current issue about the amateur time-theorist Peter Lynds. Lynds and I had quite an argument going about two years ago. This argument gets mentioned in the Wired article:

For a while, the question of whether instants exist was superseded by the question of whether Lynds exists. His claims were so outlandish, the scandal they provoked so fervent, and his home country (apparently) so exotic that the Internet Museum of Hoaxes briefly decided Lynds wasn't real. He spent months corresponding with the webmaster to clear that up. This part of the Lynds controversy turns out to be the only mystery I could resolve without knowing advanced physics.

The problem is that this is incorrect (plus, it makes me sound like some kind of idiot who thinks no one in New Zealand can be real). I didn't doubt that Peter Lynds was real. What I suspected was that Lynds was creating all kinds of phony aliases to promote his work. This is what we were arguing about.

For instance, I suspected that Lynds was using false names to post flattering comments about himself on message boards. I also became suspicious that a press release written about him (the press release which brought him to the attention of most people) was actually written by Lynds himself. The author of the press release was a woman named Brooke Jones. But when I did some research I discovered that Ms. Jones's work address was the same as Peter's home address. So I think that I had some grounds to be suspicious. Plus, even though I tried to get Ms. Jones on the phone many times, she would never speak to me. I did find out, however, that Peter had a girlfriend named Brooke.

So anyway, that was the real disagreement between Peter and myself. I just thought it was unethical for him to be creating all kinds of phony 'sock puppets' to hype his work. I've already written to the author of the article, Josh McHugh, to complain that he mischaracterized my disagreement with Lynds.