http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001252/

So the story that I wrote about the Chang'e image not being fake but also
containing a small processing error has been propagating across the Internet
-- it showed up in Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log on MSNBC, on John Borland's
Wired Science blog, and on New Scientist's blog, among many other places.
These other blogs have all treated the story pretty evenhandedly, but I've
been dismayed by the color of the commentary in the replies by readers of
these blogs; so many people are unwilling to drop the idea that the images
were somehow faked, with the obvious subtext being that those Chinese can't
be trusted. I agree with John Borland, who commented:

It's odd that moon images are so often questioned. We can do so many other
things that stagger the imagination; why are people reluctant to believe
that we can't go to the Moon? I find it also particularly interesting that
many people are apparently willing to believe something so improbable (
faking a moon mission? That's serious business, way harder than faking a
memoir or a resume).

Skepticism is certainly useful, but there's an ugly scent in the air when so
much extraordinarily bitter criticism gets leveled at China in particular.
Let me state clearly that I congratulate the Chinese for their achievement
of departing Earth for the first time, and placing a spacecraft into lunar
orbit, a spacecraft that has already proven capable of delivering beautiful
images that will improve on the global Clementine image map. Let me further
state that the minor mistake made by the chief scientist in pointing to one
crater as a new crater was just that, a minor mistake, caused by an
inadvertent error in routine image processing. I extend my congratulations
to the Chang'e science team, headed by Ouyang Ziyuan, and would also like to
express chagrin that what should be a celebratory time for them is being
overshadowed by this silly conspiracy theory.

Some may call me too much of an optimist, but I'll tell you a story. When I
was in graduate school at Brown University, I was privileged to have daily
interactions with several Russian planetary scientists, including Sasha
Basilevsky, Misha Ivanov, and Misha Kreslavsky. This was well after the
Soviet Union fell so it wasn't that unusual for Russian and American
scientists to be working together. But the working relationships between
these scientists and my advisor, Jim Head, had been formed years earlier
when the level of distrust between the Soviet Union and the United States
was higher than the level of distrust is between the United States and China
is now. Somehow, Jim and Sasha and many other participants managed to forge
close working relationships including the exchange of data, even convening
meetings taking place in Providence and Moscow every year from 1985 on, to
facilitate cooperation and exchange among scientists from both sides of the
Iron Curtain.

It is possible, even in extremely tense diplomatic circumstances, for
science to unite us. I won't deny that there is nationalism behind space
missions -- if there weren't any nationalistic goals, governments probably
wouldn't pay the bills -- but even if the program itself is intensely
nationalistic, the science that happens as a result of the space program is
usually much less so. There is so much international exchange among
scientists, beginning when graduate students acquire their educations in
countries other than their native ones, that space science tends to break
down barriers among countries. At its heart, science is a quest for truth
and clarity; to be accused of falsifying data is probably the worst thing
that can happen to a scientist (professionally speaking), and I don't
believe that Chinese scientists are any different from any other scientists
in this regard. How distressing it must be for the Chang'e team to be so
accused! I am happy to say that the comments I've received directly from you
, dear readers, have not shown this kind of prejudice.