Questions about nano-thermite

I have not a question but an answer!

Tillotson and al. (Nanostructured energetic materials.. 2001) have not done their DSC tests under air atmosphere but :"ultra pure nitrogen"

;)

Why? Because their samples contained organic material. In the paper they give 10 % for the mass for these impurities (epoxyde, solvent). That's why they used logically "ultra pure nitrogen"...
 
now banned

D'rok said:
That's it, except most of the posts have been removed. They were extremely profane insults directed at Cuddles personally and the mods generally. He posted one after another after another, upping the offensiveness each time until a critical mass of jackassery was reached.
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http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194230

I suspected from the beginning that he never intended his stay here to be long just based on his random "cev08241971" user name alone. My suspicions were correct.
 
Well it's not like we lost anything important, entertaining, or educational.
 
Led Zeppelin live in Dallas at the old Memorial Auditorium?
Cubs beat the Reds, 5-4 in a 9th inning rally after Ernie Banks' last home run?
Border clashes between Tanzania and Uganda?

I figured that it was initials and a birth date.
 
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carlitos said:
Led Zeppelin live in Dallas at the old Memorial Auditorium?
Cubs beat the Reds, 5-4 in a 9th inning rally after Ernie Banks' last home run?
Border clashes between Tanzania and Uganda?

I figured that it was initials and a birth date.
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Definitely the third one. It all makes sense now.
 
Furthermore....without presenting a false dichotomy...

Is Harrit et al.:

A) Interpreting the data incorrectly but earnestly? (They are generally honest)
B) Falsifying anything necessary to promote a hoax? (They are generally dishonest)
C) Other....

The reason I ask, is because there is some confusion on these boards when discussing the Harrit et al. paper. In discussing this paper, skeptics debate the Bentham reputation, the chain of custody/sample quality and the data analysis/techniques.

If the Journal is garbage, which many of you state....then why give any credence to the paper whatsoever? Why discuss the results any further? The same holds true if you do not accept the chain of custody for his samples...

As soon as you debate the specifics within the paper, do you not(by default) accept the publication, as well as the sample collections?

Regards,

Niceguy
 
ImANiceGuy said:
Furthermore....without presenting a false dichotomy...

Is Harrit et al.:

A) Interpreting the data incorrectly but earnestly? (They are generally honest)
B) Falsifying anything necessary to promote a hoax? (They are generally dishonest)
C) Other....
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I'd go for (c), so convinced of their conclusions for irrational reasons that they're unable to perceive that their results disagree with, rather than agreeing with, their conclusions.

ImANiceGuy said:
The reason I ask, is because there is some confusion on these boards when discussing the Harrit et al. paper. In discussing this paper, skeptics debate the Bentham reputation, the chain of custody/sample quality and the data analysis/techniques.

If the Journal is garbage, which many of you state....then why give any credence to the paper whatsoever? Why discuss the results any further?
Click to expand...

Because it is possible for a worthless journal to publish a paper with merit. We can see that "This paper should be ignored because it's published in a poor-quality journal" is just as fallacious as "This paper must be correct because it's published in a high-quality journal".

There are two very different lines of argument going on here, and it's very difficult to discern which is being debated at any point. The first is the claim that, by having a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal, the truth movement has achieved some level of intellectual respectability, and its views should therefore be taken seriously. This is nothing more than a fallacious appeal to authority; even if the truth movement had somehow managed to get this paper published in, say, the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, its content would nevertheless still be self-contradictory, in that it asserts a conclusion which its content specifically refutes. In discussing the glaringly obvious flaws, not just in the Bentham peer review process, but in its entire organisational structure, we're really, rather, asking the question how such a poor piece of work came to be published at all.

Another way to look at it is that the poor reputation of Bentham doesn't invalidate the Harrit et al paper; rather, the Harrit et al paper is a good example of why Bentham has such a poor reputation.

The second, of course, is the discussion of the content of the paper, which is where the truther argument really falls apart, because the paper is so very obviously wrong.

ImANiceGuy said:
As soon as you debate the specifics within the paper, do you not(by default) accept the publication, as well as the sample collections?
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No. Suppose I were to present plaster casts of reindeer and human footprints that I claimed were from the North Pole, and hence proof of the existence of Santa Claus. If you were to point out that the casts actually showed dog pawprints, would that constitute an admission by you that the casts were genuinely taken from the North Pole?

The chain of custody of Harrit et al's samples is not established. This alone is enough to render the conclusions highly suspect. However, the fatal flaw is that, even if the chain of custody were established, the content of the paper refutes its conclusions.

So, in the end, we have two distinct reasons why Harrit et al's paper is not worth taking seriously. Neither one of these is in any way dependent on the other. We can discuss the results without accepting the chain of custody, because it's reasonable to suppose that the work was done on something, even if that something may not have been WTC dust. And we can discuss the chain of custody without accepting the conclusions, because the derivation of the samples is independent of what was done with them after Harrit et al received them.

Dave
 
ImANiceGuy said:
Furthermore....without presenting a false dichotomy...

Is Harrit et al.:

A) Interpreting the data incorrectly but earnestly? <snip>
B) Falsifying anything necessary to promote a hoax? <snip>
C) Other..../QUOTE]

C. Batcrap crazy. (Paranoia with delusions of grandeur.)

If the Journal is garbage, which many of you state....then why give any credence to the paper whatsoever? Why discuss the results any further? The same holds true if you do not accept the chain of custody for his samples...
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We take the tropuble to slap down both Jones and his allies and Bentham because so many twoofer have the mistaken idea that what Jones and his crew do is sicence and that Bentham does journalism. Allowing people to too long entertain such notions is not good for their mental health or public safety.

As soon as you debate the specifics within the paper, do you not(by default) accept the publication, as well as the sample collections?
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No. We put ther authors down as charlatans and put Bentham down for enabling lunatics.
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ImANiceGuy said:
Furthermore....without presenting a false dichotomy...

Is Harrit et al.:

A) Interpreting the data incorrectly but earnestly? (They are generally honest)
B) Falsifying anything necessary to promote a hoax? (They are generally dishonest)
C) Other....

The reason I ask, is because there is some confusion on these boards when discussing the Harrit et al. paper. In discussing this paper, skeptics debate the Bentham reputation, the chain of custody/sample quality and the data analysis/techniques.

If the Journal is garbage, which many of you state....then why give any credence to the paper whatsoever? Why discuss the results any further? The same holds true if you do not accept the chain of custody for his samples...

As soon as you debate the specifics within the paper, do you not(by default) accept the publication, as well as the sample collections?

Regards,

Niceguy
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I agree with Dave Rogers mainly. Some points I'd like to stress in my own words:

1. I don't think they have falsified any data, and I think the samples, as best as can be established, are genuine. While they aren't beyond any doubt (they were collected and handled by non-scientists, using little to no protocol, and thus contamination and mix-ups can't be ruled out completely), my working assumption is that the red-grey chips, since they were found in all samples, did in fact originate from the 9/11 event.

2. Your options A and B basically ask, if the authors were honest. Difficult question, since they were several. Previously, we had assumed that Harrit and Jones were mainly responsible, with the others just signing on. We have learned in the meantime that at least Farrer was actively involved. I find it entirely possible that, for example, Jones is 100% dishonest, Farrer is 100% honest but gullible and incompetent rather than deluded, and Harrit thinks he's honest but is deluded. Speculating on motives and mental states isn't very helpful when discussing the merits of this particular paper (it will, however, become relevant when we will discuss the public profile of these people, as they show up on youtube and other mass media to proselytize a non-scientific populace). Overall, I'd say their data is honest, but the disconnect between data and conclusions is partly honestly mistaken, partly dishonestly fabricated, where it is unknown to what extent which of the authors were already aware of the disconnects when the paper was written. Today, all of them must have been made so much aware of the glaring discepancies and obvious problems that all of them must be dishonest to some extent.

3. We are frequently debating whitepapers, blog entries, youtube videos etc., and usually based on their own merits. We often ask why such works, if they purport to be scientific, don't get published in scientific venues, and the fact that the truth movement, in 9 years of busy work, has not placed a single paper in a respected peer-review journal is a very telling sign of the overall weakness of their arguments. Here's where the issue of Bentham's reputation becomes important: The Truth Movement often proudly presents the Harrit-paper precisely because of the claim that this publication lends merit and credibility to ideas of intentional demolition and thermite use. We discuss the reputation of Bentham, because truthers have made it an issue. Richard gage and others at AE911T, for example, never fail to drop the word "peer-reviewed" prominently when mentioning the claim that thermite traces were found. Since truthers made it an issue, we picked it up (and apart).

4. Please do never forget that the the measured data of the red-grey chips does NOT match any data measured on real thermite:
- Too much silicon
- Too much energy released
- Ignition temperature too low
- No explanation fot the organic matrix
- No chemical bonds established
- No direct proof of elemental Al
- No proof that O was provided by the red material rather than surrounding air
- No conclusions about what the grey layer is
- No tests done on known thermite, for comparison
- Failure to identify the crystal structure of the Si-Al-O-rich regions
- The MEK treated sample was not shown to be consistent with the DSC-treated samples a-d
- The flame-torched sample (resulting in iron-rich spheres) was not shown to be consistent with samples a-d
- Samples a-d showed grossly differing properties in the DSC
- Etc.



It's a bad bad bad paper, no matter where it was published, and it is nearly inconceivable that none of the 7 (iirc) authors realize at least some of the more obvious problems, which all but invalidate the conclusions. Therefore I call dishonesty of some degree.
 
Oystein said:
2. Your options A and B basically ask, if the authors were honest. Difficult question, since they were several. Previously, we had assumed that Harrit and Jones were mainly responsible, with the others just signing on. We have learned in the meantime that at least Farrer was actively involved. I find it entirely possible that, for example, Jones is 100% dishonest, Farrer is 100% honest but gullible and incompetent rather than deluded, and Harrit thinks he's honest but is deluded. Speculating on motives and mental states isn't very helpful when discussing the merits of this particular paper (it will, however, become relevant when we will discuss the public profile of these people, as they show up on youtube and other mass media to proselytize a non-scientific populace). Overall, I'd say their data is honest, but the disconnect between data and conclusions is partly honestly mistaken, partly dishonestly fabricated, where it is unknown to what extent which of the authors were already aware of the disconnects when the paper was written. Today, all of them must have been made so much aware of the glaring discepancies and obvious problems that all of them must be dishonest to some extent.
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Thank you (Dave as well)....thoughtful answers. Personally, I beleive Jones is a lying profiteer, while some of the other scientists may only be guilty of gullibility.
 
Oystein said:
4. Please do never forget that the the measured data of the red-grey chips does NOT match any data measured on real thermite:
- Too much silicon
- Too much energy released
- Ignition temperature too low
- No explanation fot the organic matrix
- No chemical bonds established
- No direct proof of elemental Al
- No proof that O was provided by the red material rather than surrounding air
- No conclusions about what the grey layer is
- No tests done on known thermite, for comparison
- Failure to identify the crystal structure of the Si-Al-O-rich regions
- The MEK treated sample was not shown to be consistent with the DSC-treated samples a-d
- The flame-torched sample (resulting in iron-rich spheres) was not shown to be consistent with samples a-d
- Samples a-d showed grossly differing properties in the DSC
- Etc.
Click to expand...
My bold...

I am surprised that no Truther has picked up on this to say that whatever exotic variety of thermite was used in the supposed CD is unknown to the public and therefore has no comparable; or that this is proof that it is not 'normal therm*te'...
 
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