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Bentham Science Publishers will publish anything (13 posts)

1. mark
   Member

   This is of course the publisher that Mr. Steven Jones used for his "thermite" claim. It's not the reason I'm convinced it is a false claim, but it's amusing to read.

   ---

   http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17288-spoof-...

   CRAP paper accepted by journal

   Updated 14:28 28 September 2009 by Peter Aldhous

   At New Scientist we love a good hoax, especially one that both amuses and makes a serious point about the communication of science. So kudos to Philip Davis, a graduate student at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who revealed yesterday on The Scholarly Kitchen blog that he got a nonsensical computer-generated paper accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

   Earlier this year, Davis started receiving unsolicited emails from Bentham Science Publishers, which publishes more than 200 "open-access" journals – which turn the conventional business model of academic publishing on its head by charging publication fees to the authors of research papers, and then making the content available for free.

   As the emails stacked up, Davis was not only encouraged to submit papers, but was also invited to serve on the editorial board of some of Bentham's journals – for which he was told he would be allowed to publish one free article each year. "I received solicitations for journals for which I had no subject expertise at all," says Davis. "It really painted a picture of vanity publishing."

   Sheer nonsense

   So Davis teamed up with Kent Anderson, a member of the publishing team at The New England Journal of Medicine, to put Bentham's editorial standards to the test. The pair turned to SCIgen, a program that generates nonsensical computer science papers, and submitted the resulting paper to The Open Information Science Journal, published by Bentham.

   The paper, entitled "Deconstructing Access Points" (pdf) made no sense whatsoever, as this sample reveals:

   In this section, we discuss existing research into red-black trees, vacuum tubes, and courseware [10]. On a similar note, recent work by Takahashi suggests a methodology for providing robust modalities, but does not offer an implementation [9].

   Acronym clue

   Davis and Anderson, writing under the noms de plume David Phillips and Andrew Kent, also dropped a hefty hint of the hoax by giving their institutional affiliation as the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology, or CRAP.

   Yet four months after the article was submitted, "David Phillips" received an email from Sana Mokarram, Bentham's assistant manager of publication:

   This is to inform you that your submitted article has been accepted for publication after peer-reviewing process in TOISCIJ. I would be highly grateful to you if you please fill and sign the attached fee form and covering letter and send them back via email as soon as possible to avoid further delay in publication.

   The publication fee was $800, to be sent to a PO Box in the United Arab Emirates. Having made his point, Davis withdrew the paper.

   Posted 14 years ago #
2. Arcterus
   Member

   I saw something about that in this dprjones video.

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXvUt2NE7ro

   Posted 14 years ago #
3. nornnxx65
   Member

   Mark, what's the reason you only quoted part of the article? You omitted inclusion and commentary of the part where it says the CRAP paper was submitted to another Bentham journal and rejected.

   And it doesn't excuse the journal that accepted the CRAP paper, but the article notes that Reed-Elsevier was busted accepting a hoax paper as well.

   You also omitted this choice quote, which makes Bentham look like utter fools:

   Mahmood Alam, Bentham's director of publications, responded to queries from New Scientist by email: "In this particular case we were aware that the article submitted was a hoax, and we tried to find out the identity of the individual by pretending the article had been accepted for publication when in fact it was not."

   "Why hasn't he attempted to contact me directly in order to determine my true identity?" Davis responds.

   Pay to speak

   This is just the latest use of SCIgen to probe the vetting of scientific papers. The program was devised by Jeremy Stribling, Daniel Aguayo and Maxwell Krohn, graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who first used it to generate a spoof paper that was accepted for presentation at the 2005 World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (WMSCI), which charged speakers $390 to attend.

   Like conferences that rely on recruiting speakers to make money, Davis argues that little-known open-access journals may be under pressure to drop their standards for accepting papers to boost their revenue. To be fair to Bentham, however, an earlier bogus paper submitted by Davis to another of its publications, The Open Software Engineering Journal, was rejected after peer review.

   History of hoaxes

   What's more, it seems that even some journals that charge readers for their content may be prone to accepting utter nonsense. The SCIgen website reports another incident from 2007, in which graduate students at Sharif University in Iran got a SCIgen-concocted paper accepted by Applied Mathematics and Computation, a journal published by Elsevier (part of Reed-Elsevier, the publishing giant that owns New Scientist).

   After the spoof was revealed, the pre-publication version of the paper was removed from Elsevier's ScienceDirect website. Still, the succinct proof-correcting queries sent to the hoaxers by Elsevier, made available here by the SCIgen team (pdf), make for interesting reading.

   I read the active thermitic paper and understood some but not all of it- what is easy to understand is that this material isn't paint and couldn't have been created by some reaction in naturally collapsing buildings, which some have claimed. NIST and USGS won't comment or do tests, though they have dust samples- and were aware of the sulfidation and "swiss cheese" holes burned thru some of the steel. RJ Lee, the private lab which documented extremely high temperatures prior to collapse, won't comment either.

   NIST didn't explain how approx. 15-30 stories of building mass were able to pulverize the lower 80-95 stories of redundantly-reinforced steel-framed structure and hundreds of tons of concrete into enormous dust clouds in 9 and 11 seconds, according to the NIST FAQ- they simply asserted that "global collapse" happened- though they did acknowledge it occurred "essentially in free fall." (p. 146) Bazant et al haven't explained it either, though their crap pretenses have been published in JOEM- along with commentary exposing flaws.

   I was disappointed to see that the Active Thermitic paper was published in a Bentham journal, after all the smears by association when the Fourteen Points paper was published. Yet no one has pointed out any flaws in that or the Active Thermitic paper in any peer-reviewed publication. The WTC destructions are one area that needs to be investigated, and it's what I'd expect architects, engineers, physicists and chemists to be interested in, but I agree with the point some have made that there's an inordinate amount of focus on CD by the truth movement- and the media hit jobs- and attention has been deflected from many other bodies of evidence proving the OCT is false or only partially true on certain levels, and that there's a defacto cover up.

   Posted 14 years ago #
4. JohnA
   Member

   well...

   it is not an illegitimate question to ask: Why hasn't the active thermite paper been published anywhere else? Where are the peer reviews that independently verify it's findings. There are some partial verifications - but they fall far short of proving Jones' central thesis.

   given the gravity of what Jones' paper portends to imply - and all that rides on it - why is the sole publisher of this paper a science journal with such an extremely dubious repuation?

   and when you factor in the fact that so many activists are now making claims that thermite has been 'proven' to be in the WTC dust - the stakes are rather high in getting this thing vetted!

   wouldn't you agree?

   additionally - i find Mahmood Alam's claim that they sent an acceptance letter for the phony paper - to catch the perpetrators - to be highly improbable. Given the serious nature of fraud - i find it HIGHLY unlikely that a science journal would send out a written acceptance letter that could later be used against them. If they had indeed noticed that the paper was a hoax - and suspected a trap - the LAST thing the would/should have done was send an acceptance letter in their own letterhead to the perpetrators of the hoax.

   Gee - that looks like a beartrap - lets put our heads in it!

   and lastly - isn't the fact that this is a pay to play science journal pretty much all you need to know about their legitimacy anyway?

   Posted 14 years ago #
5. nornnxx65
   Member

   The more people that vet the paper the better, and if there are flaws in it, let them be exposed- I've said so since it was published.

   As for why it hasn't been published in other journals- why would it; do non-copyrighted open access papers normally get republished in other journals? I haven't looked into it, but it doesn't seem likely, since they were already published and made available free to the entire world online.

   If the Active Thermitic paper gets cited in other papers, that would be something- but who's doing research related to this? Even if someone was researching something related to nano-thermite or energetic materials, the lack of a strict chain of custody might give some pause (besides the controversy and socio-political implications), but still- where the hell did this material come from? If it's what Harrit et al claim, they couldn't have made it, and anyone who looks at any sample of WTC dust should find it.

   I don't think it's fair to characterize Bentham or the open access model 'pay to play'; open access is an increasingly popular model as it facilitates research and the sharing of info. And in the case of the Harrit et al paper, those involved have said BYU and Copenhagen U paid the fees- and that the paper was reviewed by those responsible at the Universities. 154 Bentham journals, including the OCPJ, are listed in Lund U's DOAJ.org. Links and addtl info in my article here: http://wp.me/piSn2-co

   The case of the editor Paul-Pileni resigning is strange; she has a background w/ military connections and research in high-tech explosives. She said she didn't know the paper was being published; what editor-in-chief doesn't know what's going on at their own journal? Was she just collecting a pay check in exchange for her name and doing nothing, while some central Bentham office rubber-stamped everything submitted with a check? If so, that reflects poorly on her and Bentham- but Jones said their paper did get peer-reviewed, and one reviewer required them to do additional research before he would pass it.

   As I said, that explanation given by Alam, "Bentham's director of publications", makes Bentham look like utter fools- the CRAP paper, if it was reviewed by peers, wasn't given a proper review, and he should've admitted that rather than give that absurd explanation- but the same paper was submitted to another Bentham journal and rejected. Imho, it was a mistake for Harrit et al to use a Bentham journal, just cuz they're new and don't have an established rep, and critics harped on it w/ Fourteen Points; doing so undercut the impact this paper could've had. Perhaps they couldn't get it published anywhere else? If it was rejected cuz it couldn't pass peer review, it would be good to know. However, it may be no journal would accept it due to the socio-political implications- it's not like science and scientists don't get corrupted- the impact of the Bush Administration on the EPA, HHS, FDA, etc. made that clear- let alone all the scientists that have sold their souls to the MIC.

   It hasn't been shown the Harrit paper didn't get a proper peer review, or that it's flawed, or that the material isn't nano-thermite- afaik. Jones has pointed out that if it's so easy to get stuff published by Bentham, why don't the 'debunkers' publish something in a Bentham journal, rather than only at JREF and a few blogs? From what the critics are saying, Bentham should be happy to take their 'nonsense for dollars'.

   The WTC destructions aren't my main focus in my outreach to people, and when I do talk/post about it, I generally reference the quick clean up and destruction of evidence, simple observations, and the omissions, distortions and suspicious findings in the NIST/USGS/FEMA reports. I don't rely on the work of Jones et al to make my points, though I might mention it, and I have covered what they've done. There's also the Ryan et al paper published by The Environmentalist, which is based on the EPA's data, and which doesn't get much attention.

   Posted 14 years ago #
6. Arcterus
   Member

   Perhaps they couldn't get it published anywhere else?

   That's sort of the concern.

   Posted 14 years ago #
7. nornnxx65
   Member

   Arcterus and JohnA- re the concern- it's a legit question, sure- and that's what the process of review and discussion in the scientific community is about- getting to the facts and the right conclusions. I've checked the JREF threads re the Active Thermitic paper on occasion, and while it might be easy to miss in the sewer of juvenile insults, jokes and smears, and the desperate and disingenuous attempts to find something, anything wrong with the paper, I didn't see anything that discredits or debunks it. But I also don't subscribe to the view that the Active Thermitic paper is the gospel and the holy grail.

   Other people should be doing their own experiments with the dust. But 7 people connected their names and reps to the research, it was reportedly peer-reviewed including by superiors at the 2 universities, and scientists and scholars all over the world have been made aware of it- it just hasn't been commented on or responded to in any formal way in the scientific community- it's been ignored. Is it cuz it's obviously bunk to qualified people, and not worthy of comment? If so, JREF should be able to at least produce some evidence of that on their forum- if the shills that dominate JREF really can't get Bentham's $800 fee together in order to publish a paper that legitimately discredits or debunks it. John Farmer suggested to Ryan Mackey that they do so, and Mackey said he didn't want it on his CV.

   I just took another look at Bentham;

   Bentham Open is a subsidiary of Bentham Science publishers, which is based in Dubai http://www.bentham.org/index.htm

   A search of scholar.google shows gets over 70K hits and shows that many papers published in Bentham Science journals are cited by others, some have a few hundred cites. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22b...

   Bentham Open says it publishes over 250 open access journals http://www.bentham.org/open/index.htm

   Scholar.google search gets a little over 4K hits for "bentham open" and a flip thru the first few pages shows that some papers have a few cites by others, many none. Being new probably has something to do with this, but the controversy- and possibly low quality of papers- may have something to do with it as well. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22b...

   DOAJ.org now lists 207 Bentham Open journals, and OCPJ is still listed: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals&hyb...

   OCPJ says it has over 90 people on it's editorial advisory board and a new editor-in-chief. http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/EBM.htm

   OCPJ published no papers in 2010, several papers in 2009 (along w/ Active Thermitic) and a dozen or so in 2008 http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm

   There's been controversy prior to the Active Thermitic paper and the hoax paper, over Bentham Open's aggressive email solicitation of people to start journals, join advisory boards and submit material- in some cases people have been solicited to participate in stuff for which they didn't have qualifications- sounds like a shotgun approach taken by an org that is aiming to grow really big really fast, perhaps dominate the open access field- their About indicates as much.

   One explanation for their accepting such a potentially controversial paper which established and more conservative journals might have turned down- again, not cuz of flaws, but cuz of the socio-political implications- is that they'll publish anything they can get their hands on, which passes peer-review, in order to raise funds and build their rep/base. Though, as noted already, in one documented case at a DIFFERENT Bentham Open journal, a hoax paper was accepted- though yet ANOTHER Bentham Open journal rejected the same hoax paper.

   Considering that the income and longevity of Bentham Open and their parent Bentham Science depends on their reputation, this approach demonstrated a lack of care and poor judgment- this is extra shocking considering they're a science-based venture. And as I said a couple times already, i think it was a mistake to publish the Active Thermitic paper in a Bentham journal, considering the controversy, and how it was used to tar and undermine Jones et al by association last time.

   Anyway, the title of the OP - "Bentham Science Publishers will publish anything" - isn't true, and that's why I decided to step in on this. Even so, I have a lot of respect for Mark; OilEmpire.us is one of the original credible 9/11 inquiry sites and still is, I've found the info/analysis there very useful and have used links to it on many occasions to support points and alert people to stuff. And I have no issue with someone reserving judgment on CD or the Active Thermitic paper- but the facts matter.

   Posted 14 years ago #
8. JohnA
   Member

   Fact: Jones' work has not been independently reproduced - or his conclusions independently verified.

   for me - the lack of independent verification of Jones' conclusions really bothers me. forget the chain of custody of the evidence. forget the fact that it was published in what SOME people may interpret as a publication with a checkered history and questionable business practices - of Saudi origin no-less. all these things are debatable 'facts' open to interpretation.

   but what is not debatable is that Jones' conclusions - that thermite is present in the WTC samples - has not really been reproduced or independently verified. and a lot of time is passing.

   i don't know. i don't want to seem arrogant here - but isn't the bottom line to this whole discussion whether or not explosive materials are present in the WTC dust?

   we can tap dance forever around the facts regarding what constitutes peer review and pay-to-play journals, etc etc

   but - unfortunately - the bottom line here is that Dr. Jones' work has failed to trigger any real interest in the scientific community - even in parts of the world where they might have a VESTED INTEREST in proving it!!! explosive materials were found in the WTC dust? Holly Cow!

   sorry - but this is just TOO big a claim to simply endorse - while it continues to remain in this limbo of scientific uncertainty.

   and - your claim that 7 people connected their names and reps to the research, and it was reportedly peer-reviewed by superiors at the 2 universities, falls far short of proving the authenticity of his work.

   Even the most non-scientific theories - such as "Intelligent Design" have SUPPOSED peer reviewed papers and books they can point to:

   *Axe, D. D., 2000. Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors. Journal of Molecular Biology 301: 585-595. Behe, M. J. and D. W. Snoke. 2004. Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues. Protein Science 13: 2651-2664. Chiu, D. K. Y. and T. H. Lui. 2002. Integrated use of multiple interdependent patterns for biomolecular sequence analysis. International Journal of Fuzzy Systems 4(3): 766-775. Denton, M. J. and J. C. Marshall. 2001. The laws of form revisited. Nature 410: 417. Denton, M. J., J. C. Marshall and M. Legge. 2002. The protein folds as Platonic forms: New support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law. Journal of Theoretical Biology 219: 325-342. Lönnig, W.-E. 2004. Dynamic genomes, morphological stasis and the origin of irreducible complexity. In: V. Parisi, V. de Fonzo and F. Aluffi-Pentini, eds. Dynamical Genetics, 101-119. Research Signpost. Lönnig, W.-E. and H. Saedler. 2002. Chromosome rearrangements and transposable elements. Annual Review of Genetics 36: 389-410. Meyer, Stephen. 2004. The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117: 213-239. Wells, Jonathan. 2005. Do centrioles generate a polar ejection force? Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 98: 37-62.

   and books (Discovery Institute 2005):

   Behe, Michael. 1996. Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. New York: The Free Press. Campbell, John Angus and Stephen C. Meyer. 2003. Darwinism, Design, and Public Education. Michigan State University Press. Denton, Michael. 1985. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Adler and Adler. Dembski, W. A. 1998. The Design Inference: Eliminating chance through small probabilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dembski, William. 2002. No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot be Purchased without Intelligence. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Gonzalez, Guillermo and Jay W. Richards. 2004. The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery. Regnery Publishing. Minnich, Scott and Stephen C. Meyer. 2004. Genetic analysis of coordinate flagellar and type III regulatory circuits. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Design and Nature, Rhodes, Greece, ed. M. W. Collins and C. A. Brebbia, WIT Press. Thaxton, Charles B., Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen. 1984. The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories. Philosophical Library. (4th ed., Lewis and Stanley, 1992).

   The journal Progress in Information, Complexity and Design (PCID) is also peer-reviewed.*

   so?

   i hate to sound sarcastic here... but Dr. Jones' work has not even achieved the same level of peer review as intelligent design. and intelligent design is PURE BULLSHIT. I',m sorry - but the fact of the matter is that Dr. Jones' work is not even CLOSE to having been proven or independently verified. It is a SINGLE paper written by a known 9/11 Truth activist who has made many OTHER claims that proved to be false - in a single pay-to-play journal - that has virtually been ignored by the scientific community.

   I AM AWARE OF THE IRONY HERE. DR JONES' WORK COULD STILL BE CORRECT. I DO GET THAT.

   but - as someone who speaks publicly on the subject of 9/11- and hopes to be as careful as humanly possible in what research i pass on to the public - i simply can not YET endorse Dr. Jones' paper. I can tell people that it exists - and what it claims - and that it is an interesting subject that MUST be examined and verified -but, i do have to withhold my endorsement of his findings.

   Posted 14 years ago #
9. mark
   Member

   THAT is why S. Jones gets attention in the media and the "Complete 9/11 Timeline" does not.

   Cold fusion, Jesus in the Yucatan and Thermite Dust in the WTC rubble - all three seem equally unlikely to me.

   Sorry that I cannot trust anyone who works with Chris Bollyn (American Free Press), which S. Jones states he trusts as a source. I think Jones is probably sincere, but sincerity isn't the same thing as being verified as correct.

   It was not really a surprise that the thermite theory spread rapidly through the internet as gospel truth, not an idea that needed considerable verification (at best).

   The demolition theory that I believe in is that the perpetrators and enablers were trying to knock down the WTC -- with the planes. It is fortunate the towers stood up as long as they did since that allowed most of the occupants to escape. The perpetrators of the 1993 attack allegedly were trying to get one tower to fall into the other. If you look at the flight paths on 9/11 it is likely this was the goal - they succeeded in knocking both towers down but not on immediate impact.

   If you look at the 1992 crash of a 747 cargo plane in Amsterdam into an apartment building, which had a large part of the building fall down on impact, then it is fortunate (for the survivors who escaped) that the WTC stood as long as it did after impact. It is also interesting that the Pentagon section that was hit crumbled about as long after impact as did the WTC after its impacts -- and the Pentagon section was of course greatly reinforced before 9/11 so it was probably even stronger than the towers.

   Posted 14 years ago #
10. JohnA
    Member

    Cold fusion, Jesus in the Yucatan and Thermite Dust in the WTC rubble - all three seem equally unlikely to me.

    i hate to pile on here - but the man made earthquake in Haiti was another speculative faux pas that served to undermine his credibility as well.

    Posted 14 years ago #
11. nornnxx65
    Member

    Just to be clear; I stepped in here cuz the title of the thread is inaccurate. I'm not vouching for Bentham or Jones, and I haven't suggested anyone should endorse the Harrit et al findings- I would like to see it verified or debunked, and, so far, neither has happened. Demands for verification would be wiser than assertions nanothermite is the gospel truth.

    JohnA, you referenced something I said, which is sandwiched between two sentences which make it clear I'm not arguing against your points:

    Other people should be doing their own experiments with the dust. But 7 people connected their names and reps to the research, it was reportedly peer-reviewed including by superiors at the 2 universities, and scientists and scholars all over the world have been made aware of it- it just hasn't been commented on or responded to in any formal way in the scientific community- it's been ignored. Is it cuz it's obviously bunk to qualified people, and not worthy of comment?

    JohnA "isn't the bottom line to this whole discussion whether or not explosive materials are present in the WTC dust?"

    I agree- and the Bentham controversy is a distraction, but that was the OP.

    I AM AWARE OF THE IRONY HERE. DR JONES' WORK COULD STILL BE CORRECT. I DO GET THAT.

    Right.

    the bottom line here is that Dr. Jones' work has failed to trigger any real interest in the scientific community - even in parts of the world where they might have a VESTED INTEREST in proving it!!! explosive materials were found in the WTC dust? Holly Cow!

    Sure- and why haven't they? This is a really good question.

    If the stuff isn't in the dust or isn't what they claim, seems it would be really simple for the govt/establishment shills to demonstrate in front of independent witnesses as well as Jones et al, and suck all the wind out of the truth movement.

    And even if there are nanothermite chips in the dust, considering everything else that has been covered up, how hard could it be to use magnets to clean the USGS and NIST dust samples and put forged seals on them? Maybe it's too difficult, or maybe this has been done- but given that they're successfully ignoring the paper and the truth movement, along w/ the MSM and Congress, they're not under any real pressure to do anything.

    I haven't heard that Ahmadinejad and Chavez are asking for WTC dust samples- is it possible they got ahold of some, tested, discovered Harrit et al are wrong and kept quiet?

    And in the US or the rest of the world- who is "independent"? Anyone who does conduct experiments, if they find this stuff and call for accountability, they'll also be ignored, ridiculed and marginalized the way Jones el al have. Kind of a disincentive to do so- perhaps some are, and they're doing it carefully.

    There's too many questions- this stuff is not really my area- I'm aware of it, I'd like to know the answers, but I spend more time requesting, scanning and reviewing records, trying to understand the plot and the various contexts in which it occurred, and looking into what specific people can be linked to: http://www.scribd.com/911DocumentArchive

    The Jesus in the Yucatan stuff has always bugged me, and what he said about the Haiti earthquake was a really bad move, considering he's already been smeared and dismissed as a kook.

    Again- I'm not vouching for Jones- but I'll point out when the smears against him are unjustified: The cold fusion research hasn't gone anywhere- but the 1989 paper, "Observation of cold nuclear fusion in condensed matter", which had 8 authors, of which Jones was the lead, was published in Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v338/n6218/pd... and has been cited 491 times, according to Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge database (subscription required). According to google, which is more limited and less accurate, it's been cited 380 times: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22O...

    Posted 14 years ago #
12. mark
    Member

    If the stuff isn't in the dust or isn't what they claim, seems it would be really simple for the govt/establishment shills to demonstrate in front of independent witnesses as well as Jones et al, and suck all the wind out of the truth movement.

    Why should they waste their time doing that? The "truth" movement lost years ago due to similar missteps when the media pointed to the bogus "no plane" crap and used it to sink the movement's credibility. And the refutations are pointless, since most of the promoters are religious in their belief in it, conflating their intuitive understanding about 9/11 complicity with the false claims used to misdirect advocates.

    It is similar to the demands for more videos of the plane hitting the Pentagon -- the brass is delighted to have the truth movement still stuck on that nonsense (the hoax that the plane supposedly didn't hit), they're using reverse psychology to keep this hoax alive in some peoples' minds and probably laughing their asses off while doing so. The establishment is glad the 9/11 skeptics got diverted from talking about foreknowledge and means-motive-opportunity into an effort to claim that 9/11 was the first time that thermite was supposedly used to knock down a skyscraper.

    The "man made Haitian earthquake" claim is even more ridiculous than the other claims. Ouch.

    Ahmadinejad and Chavez are the last people who give this topic credibility in the US. I don't conflate the two of them together, the first is theocratic fascist and the second is not, but they don't help the cause at all. And the idea that there's pure samples of WTC dust almost a decade later is unrealistic. Ahmadinejad invited neo-Nazi fascists from the US and Western Europe to his Holocaust Denial conference in Tehran so I doubt he cares about accuracy in his claims, it's just "politics."

    Remember, every engineering institution in the world looked at the WTC collapse issues. One reason the recent supertall skyscrapers have a lot of structural concrete (when the WTC had none) is the lessons learned from the WTC collapses. There are many ways to debunk the "thermite" claim, it's not a controversy for most of the scientific community around the world, their attitude toward it resembles astronomers contempt toward those who think the Moon landings didn't happen.

    Posted 14 years ago #
13. JohnA
    Member

    it is threads like this that make me still have some hope that 9/11 Truth is not yet dead

    everyone here makes great points

    Posted 14 years ago #

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