The Mobile Observatory Project and this website are products of individuals who consider themselves to be skeptical of media, and of portions of mainstream science, especially where politics and economics have overshadowed honest academics. I have first-hand knowledge of such dishonesty and corruption, and so do thousands of others. A common email to me:
Re: Suspicious0bservers. “What a TERRIBLE name! Nobody will ever take you seriously.”
I have heard 1000 variations of this; some are very polite and others are… not.
Questioning the status-quo has been deemed to be crazy and even dangerous, but let’s analyze the opposite of suspicion: blind faith & following. When it comes to your religion, do as you please, but we happen to live on earth with a bunch of other people, and in general they are less-honorable than the heroes of our books. I’m a human, therefore I cite my sources every day without fail… what good is swapping out one voice for another if you do not apply your own judgement? When did “not thinking for yourself” become a good thing?
When we began, it was unthinkable that the sun could effect climate change, short-term weather, earthquakes, volcanos, and other natural disasters. The idea that the planets could modulate solar activity was considered rogue and the outer fringe. There are now dozens of papers to the contrary, published just since 2013, and in the realm of the climate, there were actually 100s that were being ignored before that.
Israel’s Devil’s Advocate Office is not only a smart idea for them, but for the rest of us as well, for most things in this world worth worrying about. Long-standing paradigms must be questioned, and this cannot be done without being suspicious of the status quo.
-Ben Davidson