The sad case of Niels Harrit

Patriots4Truth said:
hint: cutter charges

(and now it's late and I'm going to bed)
Click to expand...
I recently watched a program about the history of explosives, I think it was on the BBC 4 channel. Two parts were relevant to the whole explosives at ground zero.

First was a description of exactly what an explosion is. Many truthers don't know this because you can't have silent explosives.

Second was a discussion about shaped charges and experiment using a shaped charge to cut an H beam by some old fossil who always turns up on explosives shows.

I'll have to do some googling to see if I can find it because it shows clearly what a cut steel H beam looks like after demolition and also shows how LOUD the explosion was.

Got it - "Explosions: How We Shook the World" was the TV program.

Part 4 of 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMChtqJBAP8&feature=related

Skip to 4:32. At 5.00 we get a close up of what a cutter charge leaves as evidence on the steel it's cut. Nothing like that was ever found nor is there any evidence for the multiple BANGS that would have accompanied the demolition.
 
Patriots4Truth said:
Why don't you publish your results Sunstealer?
Click to expand...
To what ends?

Sunstealer: Hi, I'd like to submit a paper rebutting a non-peer reviewed paper that appeared in a vanity journal.
Journal: OK. What was the subject of the paper?
Sunstealer: Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe.
Journal: Well seeing as none our readers would have read it and the fact that it's obviously rubbish I don't think it would benefit our journal or our readership.
Sunstealer: Thought so, sorry to trouble you.
Journal: Perhaps you could make a youtube video.
Sunstealer: Hey! Enough of that.

The thing is P4T it doesn't matter where the rebuttal is published or posted, truthers simply won't believe a word of it. They didn't when they read the JREF thread so why would they do so in a peer reviewed paper? [which by the way would mean the reviewers would have to read (and review) the Harrit et al paper too thus negating the point]
 
Patriots4Truth said:
Why respond to Niels et al.'s paper? Perhaps:
Click to expand...
As Sunstealer, Mr. Mackey, Dave Rogers and numerable other people with degrees in science and engineering have commented, there is absolutely nothing in it for academics. To whit:
1.) To shoot down truthers. God knows that there is a lot of debunkers on the internet that like to at least try to shoot down truthers.
Click to expand...
Despite their insistence otherwise, truthers are a loosely collected group of idiots. The Church of Trutherism is a scam perpetrated by people with no morals on people with no critical thinking skills. Why should I concern myself with the way idiots spend their money?
2.) Resume material. I shouldn't have to ask why someone would want resume material.
Click to expand...
Speaking as an experienced researcher, I can assure you that no papers published in open access journals appear on my CV. I have one paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one in Analytical Chemistry and one in the Journal of Cement and Concrete Research. Those three, among the 8 I've published as first author (more than 20 as a co-author) are on my CV. Non of my CV papers are rebuttals. Only a researcher with very little research experience would need a rebuttal paper in an open access journal to bulk up the CV.
9.) Students, teachers and/or scientists who are familiar with the paper, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS) and/or differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) might enjoy making a project out of WTC dust analysis.
10.) Original conspirators of 9/11 might want to silence "truth support"/propaganda
Click to expand...

Regarding the last two, speaking as a scientist who is familiar with SEM-EDS, I can assure you that I'm not even mildly interested in doing this project. The reason is: I know it's a waste of time. I don't care what they find in the dust, the first thing the researchers need to prove is that you can do particle analysis of dust from a building collapse and prove that the building was destroyed with thermite. To do that, you need two identical buildings, one which will collapse due to fire alone and one which will collapse due to fire and thermite charges. Then you need a random sampling of dust from both collapses, from which you perform double blind studies of the compositions of the dusts. With those data sets, you can use multivariate statistics to determine what the true differences are between the n-dimensional compositional data sets. If a true difference exists, then you've proved that the method is reliable.

That's step 0. Prove the method is reliable. Without that, everything else is hokum.
 
Sunstealer said:
To what ends? [...]
The thing is P4T it doesn't matter where the rebuttal is published or posted, truthers simply won't believe a word of it. They didn't when they read the JREF thread so why would they do so in a peer reviewed paper? [which by the way would mean the reviewers would have to read (and review) the Harrit et al paper too thus negating the point]
Click to expand...

Indeed...truthers dismiss the dozens of journals corroborating collapse due to fire out of hand and the approval of the ASCE & the NFPA, but gladly take the faux academics of "the scholars" & the list of non-experts at AE911Truth. All a rebuttal would do is create another laundry list of excuses.
 
Patriots4Truth said:
His own data proves that they found "active thermitic materials" - hence the title of the paper. If anyone doesn't like the results of his tests or wishes to challenge the paper then they are encouraged to publish a paper doing just that.
Click to expand...

I know that I am late getting to this... but I will reply anyways.

no it doesn't. His own data suggests that he needs better methodology, he needs to eliminate confounds, he needs to have a better sample of the original materials, he needs a better control and he needs to conduct his "experiments" in an neutral atmosphere to demonstrate tha there is any "thermetic" materials which are exothermic.

once he cleans up the methodological mess, then we can talk about his data. Until he does, it is psuedo science AT BEST.

Secondly, his "data" wasn't "published" in any scientific sense. It was a vanity journal which would publish your shopping list for $700. That is vastly different from any decent peer reviewed journal. There are hundreds of them, in dozens of languages... and they choose one that is a joke.

Do you really not know the history of this "paper?" Really?


The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). -Niels et al

You do realize that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get a hold of these instruments and that many scientists use these instruments quite regularly?
Click to expand...

And yet it must take a 'rocket scientist' in order to do any form of proper methodology... because Niels et al bolluxed it up so badly.

Fix the methodology, and then we can talk about the "data." Until then it is just BS.
 
Patriots4Truth said:
Yes the paper is getting to be old. Almost 2 years since the paper was published and no one else has written a paper that refutes the presence of active thermitic bi-layered chips consisting of a red layer that is an engineered nano-composite substance.
Click to expand...

Thats because it isn't a "paper" in any scientific sense. It is a methodological disaster that is 'published' in a vanity journal.

No self respecting scientist would bother to refute utter ******** like this. It is like there are no scientists who are refuting "flat earther papers" or any scientists refuting "creationist papers."

Try again. (maybe take a research methods class or an experimental design course... it will help your confusion.)
 
Patriots4Truth said:
hint: cutter charges

(and now it's late and I'm going to bed)
Click to expand...

[hint cutter chargers are explosive which transfer down the columns into the ground and would be detected.]

[double hint: try again with facts, figures and evidence.]

Edited by Rat: 
Edited for civility. Let's keep it polite, please.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If it wasn't published, how do you know about the study? Published means to make public. An open journal is the best way, since it is free for people to read. You are so focused on the means through which the study was made public. How about your ideas about specific aspects of the study itself?
 
Please specify. You throw out general terms such as "better methodology" - better in what specific way? "better sample" - do you propose cherry picking samples, or objectively taking the samples as they come? "better control" - this was not a comparison type of experiment, but a chemical identification. "neutral atmosphere" - what difference does a researcher's thinking make to a spectrometer?
 
>It was a vanity journal which would publish your shopping list for $700.
OK you're on with this bet. Submit your shopping list to the Bentham Open Chemistry and Physics Journal, and if it is accepted and published, I'll pay your $700 fee.
 
cicorp said:
If it wasn't published, how do you know about the study? Published means to make public. An open journal is the best way, since it is free for people to read. You are so focused on the means through which the study was made public. How about your ideas about specific aspects of the study itself?
Click to expand...

We've all given our analyses of the flaws inherent in the Jones/Harrit study quite a while ago:
Those are posts by member Sunstealer, but it's the threads themselves I'm pointing out. The discussion of the merits or lack thereof of the Bentham thermite paper has already occurred.

It would be a good idea for you to do a forum search for such topics before posting.
 
cicorp said:
If it wasn't published, how do you know about the study? Published means to make public.
Click to expand...
Good point. Every tweet is published in exactly the same sense that Harrit's paper was published.

cicorp said:
An open journal is the best way, since it is free for people to read.
Click to expand...
Another advantage of open journals over the kind of journals found in university libraries is that open journals are archival: No web page has ever disappeared from the World-Wide Web. You can prove that to yourself by visiting
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

cicorp said:
You are so focused on the means through which the study was made public. How about your ideas about specific aspects of the study itself?
Click to expand...
The study itself was rot.

cicorp said:
Please specify. You throw out general terms such as "better methodology" - better in what specific way? "better sample" - do you propose cherry picking samples, or objectively taking the samples as they come? "better control" - this was not a comparison type of experiment, but a chemical identification. "neutral atmosphere" - what difference does a researcher's thinking make to a spectrometer?
Click to expand...
The highlighted question is answered by the last bullet below.

  • better methodology: a methodology that could distinguish
    • samples that burn in the presence of oxygen from samples that burn without external oxygen
    • elemental aluminum from bound aluminum
    • paint from thermite
  • better sample: more representative, better provenance, more material so it can be shared freely with other researchers
  • better control: chemical identification involves comparing the observed results with the corresponding results for known materials
    • example: if you're going to use spectrographic and calorimetric analyses to assert that something is thermite, then you ought to compare its spectra and calorimetry with known samples of thermite
  • neutral atmosphere: an atmosphere that does not contain oxygen or other highly reactive gases
Despite their many methodological errors, the authors of that paper concluded that their material does not look or act like any thermite they or anyone they know has ever seen. From that fact, they concluded that their material was double top secret thermite.

(You'll have to trust me on that, because the paper itself is no longer available online.)

You may call that "thinking". I call it foolishness.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom