And until you write a peer reviewed paper and get it published in a real building industry journal you are not even going to get a yawn!
Not to derail... but I'm going to derail to go all pedantic on everyone.
Getting a legit paper published in a legit journal is actually just the
start of the knowledge being validated in the field. It still must be accurate and robust enough to survive any criticisms that come after publication
and it has to have sufficient utility to be referenced by other papers. Mere publication of the knowledge does not in and of itself validate anything. It
can't; no matter how big the research team, they're still only representing a view from their limited perspective. That's why we see a multiplicity of studies, as well as the occasional meta-analysis take place. Anyway, as an illustration of what I'm getting at, take a look at a pair of randomly chosen published articles (which, BTW, have zero to do with truther proposals) that were written to refute either a hypothesis forwarded by other papers, or a specific accumulation of knowledge:
- "Is the Oxidative Modification Hypothesis Relevant to Human Atherosclerosis?" (Steinberg D, Witztum JL., Circulation. 2002 Dec 10;106(24):e195; author reply e195)
- "A Review and Methodologic Critique of the Literature Refuting Whiplash Syndrome" (Freeman, Michael D. DC, PhD, MPH; Croft, Arthur C. DC, MS; Rossignol, Annette M. ScD‡; Weaver, David S. DC§; Reiser, Mark PhD, Spine: 1 January 1999 - Volume 24 - Issue 1 - pp 86-96)
The first paper directly cites other, specific published papers it claims to refute. The second is more tackling an existing body of works. But my point is that
both of these illustrate what I'm saying. Any conclusion drawn in any paper will either stand up to further scrutiny when the findings from other studies get published, or they'll be shown to be erroneous due to the light shed by further research. But the knowledge generation process is
ongoing; it doesn't halt in its tracks with the publication of one work. And that's the mistake that's been made with the truthers: The thought that the publication actually "proves" that they're right.
No, it doesn't. What it
is is the starting point for that information to be used by others to conduct further knowledge generation. And that leads to the second point I made: A study must also provide enough knowledge to be used by other studies, whether those other studies are supportive or refutative. Again, look at the above papers. I'm not even sure they're correct in their refutation of previous works (I'm not an expert in the fields those papers and the previous works cited within exist in). For all I know, those two links are the aberrations, and the knowledge they purport to refute is what's correct. But the point is, the studies conducted are done well enough for one to build on the other. And in turn, some others will build on these. But that can only happen if the knowledge documented is sufficiently accurate (and as a side note, sufficiently honest, so as to give later researchers a solid platform from which to analyze and/or critique) to test via further studies.
And that's why the critiques of the Bentham paper, as well as any other "studies" that truthers and other pseudoscientists/woo peddlers in any other field of woo/quackery/whatever are so damning: It's because they don't understand this process, and what peer review and journal publication
actually represents. Yes, all that conspiracy myth making is being criticized because it's factually wrong. But it's
also being criticized because it illustrates just how dead wrong woo peddlers get the whole process of knowledge generation. That's the point that conspiracy fantasists miss, and it's also the reason that the specific critique against Steven Jones was so harsh: He
knows what the valid process is. Yet, he circumvents it, then tries to sell people that his alternative is legitimate. He commits a double mockery in comitting pseudoscience
and trying to legitimize the illegitimate. Which is why I characterize him as a fraud rather than a misled fool: As a published university scientist, he
does know the difference. Yet he takes the route through Bentham Open, commits lousy methodology in the process, and messes up his conclusions by drawing ones unsupported by his data to boot.
He operated in a way antithetical to legitimate science. And he's never apologized for it!
But, back on topic: My ultimate point is legitimate publication is only the
start of validation. Not the end point.
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Can't you grasp that it doesn't matter! Unless someone finds actual evidence of another initiation method other than impact and fire (and after nine years of FAIL on that.....good luck!) then NOBODY CARES OR SHOULD CARE.
To change gears from above: I couldn't agree with this more. A sequence of critiques can only travel so far before
something must be asserted. The fact of the matter is, no truther has even come close to disproving the currently accepted theory. All they've either tried to do is show that the basis for the conclusions is wrong (and demonstrated utter ignorance regarding what knowledge exists in the first place), or that there's evidence of an alternate possibility for collapse propogation (which actually doesn't address
initiation, and which also happens to be fatally flawed). Even if they were more disciplined and academic, their output shows how miserably they've failed.
But, their efforts always aimed at the general population, who tends not to have all the information to begin with. As I've said before, their goal is no longer knowledge generation or narrative validation. It's nothing more than proselytization.
