Phil Plait
Dr. Philip Plait (a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer) is an astronomer who runs the website Badastronomy.com. He works at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University.
Biography
Dr. Plait grew up in the Washington, D.C. region and lived there for many years. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Virginia in 1994 with a thesis on SN 1987A, which he studied with the Supernova Intensive Study (SINS). He first worked with the COBE satellite and then with the STIS on the Hubble Space Telescope for five years.
Work
Dr. Plait currently performs web-based public outreach for GLAST, which will launch in 2007. He has appeared on the radio show Coast to Coast AM many times where he is infamous for having refused to debate Richard Hoagland (chief proponent of the "Face on Mars" theory), citing among his reasons as, "A radio debate is not a debate in the real sense, it's more of an argument, and whoever is more emotionally persuasive tends to 'win'." [1] Phil Plait has been featured on TV and on such websites as Space.com.
He is also a frequent guest on the SETI Institute's weekly science radio show Are We Alone? hosted by Seth Shostak. He can be heard on many of Are We Alone?'s shows debunking junk science and waxing poetic on the sublime nature of the universe [2].
He has written a book, Bad Astronomy, which deals with much the same subject matter as his website.
Badastronomy.com
Badastronomy.com is a website dedicated to clearing up public misconceptions about astronomy and space science in movies, the news, print, and on the Internet. Plait also debunks several fringe theories related to space and astronomy, such as Planet X, Richard Hoagland's theories, and most famously, the moon hoax.