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.
Specify means list specifics.
The information I linked
was specific. The first post established that the microscopic morphology of the substance analyzed was identical to kaolin, and went on to demonstrate
using Jones' and Harrit's own data that the other characteristics revealed by the EDX spectra supports this.
The second link was accidentally a repeat of the first one
. Interesting that you did not correct me on that, but that's not important. What's important was the information I meant to link:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=4659658#post4659658
That post further discussed the microscopic morphology of the material by using Jones's and Harrit's SEM micrographs to demonstrate how the elements present were distributed in the platelets (the Al/Si/O layers did not contain much Fe, and vice versa, plus the Al/Si/O were more than just intermixed, they were bound somehow), how they were associated with each other (again, the Al was not free, plus the shape of the platelets combined with the way the individual elements were distributed indicated aluminosilicates), and what this all added up to (kaolin). Known micrographs of kaolin were then posted for comparison, and the EDX spectra was reinvoked to seal the argument that Jones's and Harrit's own data indicated the presence of kaolin instead of thermite. When the aluminum is not free, but instead bound up in a molecule, the there's nothing available for the iron to react to, therefore this absolutely cannot be what the authors claim it to be.
Is that specific enough for you?
You want more?
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=140644
That's the thread where we hashed out the point made in Dave's post:
The maximum possible energy yield from a thermite reaction is 4kJ/g. The largest energy yield reported from a single DSC trace on a single sample in Harrit et al's results is 7.5kJ/g. Dr. Harrit claims that this demonstrates that the reaction is a thermite reaction. I'll leave it to you to decide whether he was incompetent or dishonest, but there is no possibility of him having been right.
And, as I already said, this alone is enough to invalidate every conclusion drawn in the paper.
Specific enough?
Dave
We've
mentioned this in the past:
But the thing that truthers ignore is that there's an ultimate limit to the amount of energy a perfectly stoichiometric iron oxide/aluminum redox releases - thermite's enthalpy of reaction - and this is inviolate. That limit is due to the chemical bonds themselves. Anything short of that is due to whatever real-world imperfections exist that engineering might be able to alleviate, but once you've released up to the energy of formation, you're at the chemical limit, period. And this is utterly, blatantly ignored by 99.99% of the people citing Harrit and Jones (only
Metamars among the truthers has grasped this). Harrit and Jones noted energy releases above the 3.9kJ/g limit, but handwaved it away by saying that the excess was from the "organic ingredients" forming the matrix. Thing is, that's such a blatant and stupid attempt to deflect from the fact that the enthalpy figures contraindicates thermite that it turns into pure rubbish: How do you separate out the energy contributed by the supposed thermite from the energy contributed by the organic oxidation? You can't. And they didn't. Yet in spite of that, they make the claim that the energetics show that thermite was present. That's a total fail all around.
You see, it's details like this about the Bentham paper which leads me to dismiss it. People can complain all day about Bentham's practices and be justified, and people can wrangle all night about vanity publications to their hearts desire, but when all that is put aside and the actual content is examined, it falls painfully short. The research has the trappings of science with none of the ability to clarify and establish knowledge. It's cargo-cult science. And merely following the rituals of the scientific process doesn't gain you anything if the data and interpretation of such is bunk.
Even more on that topic:
Ultimately, the point is that their own research contradicts
a fundamental physical property of a thermite redox reaction: It's in excess of its
enthalpy of reaction, which is the maximum possible energy release that a reaction can give. That excess was even something admitted to by Jones and Harrit, but they handwave it away with an excuse that additional organic material boosted the output and gave that reading. It's a handwave because they did nothing to establish that the reading did indeed involve some "thermitic" component, nor did they attempt to rule out that their reading was
all organic combustion. In short, they cite the energy density as one of the fundamental reasons they concluded the presence of thermite, but did so without determining that it was indeed a thermite reaction that occurred during the calorimeter test!
While conveniently forgetting that their DSC results give only a single peak, suggesting rather strongly that there is only a single exothermic reaction taking place. And if there's only a single reaction, then it can't be a thermite reaction of any kind.
Dave
Or to sum up that last pair of posts, Jones and Harrit
in their own paper tried to suggest the presence of a pair of reactions - the thermite reaction, plus the "boost" from the organic "matrix" combusting - when their own data very clearly demonstrated that there was only one (there would be more calorimeter peaks at different points had there been more than one reaction). This also being in the face of their own claims that their energy readings above and beyond the chemical maximum that thermite can provide was supposedly provided by a different material combusting during their test.
And in all of this, I haven't even referenced R.Mackey's post, or any of the other flaws noted in the research. Heck, I haven't even touched all of my
own observations about it, let alone the plethora that already exists. Thermite is a dead-in-the-water proposal. All the arguments for it have been firmly refuted. And all the problems in the Bentham paper that Jones and Harrit coauthored have been discussed. They're not nitpick flaws, they're
fundamental ones. Showing that data contradicts conclusions and then explaining how specific data contradicts specific conclusions is as specific as you can get. And the Jones/Harrit argument has been refuted on its
specifics.
Next time, please examine the posts we point you at instead of complaining. They were linked for a reason.
