Interesting article, but why the accusatory title? ‘To lie’ implies to wilfully misrepresent a situation for one’s own benefit, but a more charitative way, assuming that your thesis is correct, would be that Hawking preferred to stick with the particle-antiparticle model to remain consistent in his explanation to the non-experts (like me). The alternative would have been having to explain the reason for an imagined calculation model that does not represent reality but is used nonetheless. Or maybe there’s another explanation for Hawking’s explanation in his BHOT. The accusation of ‘lying’ appears too strong to me, especially because the article does not explain his supposedly malicious motivations. Aside from this, I did find your article interesting, informative and well-written.