This is an interesting book, a good read, but if you read Hoagland's book with a critical mind, which is better than reading it with a biased, gullible, or overly suggestible mind, when you come to the section on his lunar dome hypothesis, which is roughly thirty percent into the book, you should begin to shake your head.
Hoagland is convinced there are literally billions of "watch crystal" pieces of glass suspended over the moon on an ancient rebar structure, the remains of artificial domes that were inhabited by ancient intelligent beings. He has "validated and confirmed" for himself this hypothesis from tiny shards of visual evidence he finds scattered here and there in lunar images, such as AS17-134-20426 (Google "Project Apollo Image Gallery" and go the the Hasselbad magazine for Apollo 17). That image, for instance, shows a streak of light in the sky above the astronaut. For Hoagland, it's proof positive of his hypothesis, complete with exclamation points!
As you read Hoagland's chronological account of how he came up with this lunar dome hypothesis and how he gradually confirmed it for himself, you will get a good picture of how a confirmation bias operates in a person. You have a belief - it doesn't matter where you got the belief - it's a belief that you want so badly to be confirmed that you begin to "see" selectively. Therefore everything you "see," confirms your belief. Evidence that doesn't confirm your belief, you just don't "see." You buffer it out before it even come's into consideration. Hoagland's lunar dome hypothesis and his subjective validation of that belief is such a clear example of confirmation bias, that, for me, it puts everything he has written under a towering dome of doubt and suspicion. It's a pity, really. One can't logically conclude that he is in error, factually, about every conclusion he reaches just because he is hopelessly biased, but the problem is that his conclusions cannot be trusted. The way he "proves" his lunar dome hypothesis combined with his total, inflexible certainty in its existence, puts his credibility starkly in issue. Anyone with a critical mind who is interested in the possibility of ancient, intelligent activity elsewhere in our solar system, can't reasonably rely on what Hoagland offers.
The tendency to affirm what one believes is a tendency that most of us have. You have to be really vigilant to avoid it, particularly when there is an emotional stake in the conclusion you want to reach - passion. It means challenging yourself at every turn, looking with just as much passion at all the evidence that contradicts your hypothesis. That isn't easy to do, particularly if you have a passionate belief that you want desperately to confirm. If you don't exercise real care and vigilance, you will only end up crystallizing a belief structure in yourself. We do it all the time.
I don't feel Hoagland has enough of the "scientist" in himself. He has more than enough of the "crusader" and more than enough of the "whistle-blower" and he has more than enough passion and energy. Those are all fine qualities but they need to be mediated by the "scientist."
I don't get the feeling that Hoagland is a fraud in the sense that he is deliberately capitalizing on gullible people's interest in extraterrestrial life. I think it's that he's operating under the influence of a confirmation bias and isn't aware of it. That's the way the confirmation bias always works. It governs your thinking only to the extent you are unaware of it's influence. A bias ceases to have power over you when you become sufficiently aware of it.
