As the below post most closely matches my thoughts on the matter I'll use it as a sounding board
No, we shouldn't throw the NIST report out the window. It's a useful reference with a lot of factual information.
Exactly. As I stated, NIST is a starting point and an example of the level of research and calculation that is required in any report that the authors wish to put forth as a radical alternative to impact and fire induced damages caused collapse, for any of the three WTC structures.
You would be terribly mistaken to assume that the lack of response to your regurgitation of AE911Truth's arguments is a sign that we agree with any of it. Far from it.
It's just that we want you to use your own eyes and brain and come up with your own ideas about it, perhaps in discussion with people here.
We here have looked at NIST's work and come to accept it , often with slight modification. I have yet, however, to see any truther look at AE911T's work, as sparse as it is, and accept it in anything other than in its original form.
That said, I have often stated that poking holes in NIST sequences, or calculations, does nothing at all, whatsoever, nada, zip, zilch, to support any hypothesis that includes thermite or explosives. THAT is THE major failing of the entire 'truth' movement, and AE911T is as guilty as any other group. They have no working hypothesis beyond "it was done by some deliberate means other than hijacked aircraft, impact and fire".They have a few scattered details. One example being a few bits of circumstantial observations which if stretched are suggestive of the existence of thermite, but none of which do not require more definitive investigation. For ANY true sceptic that simply cannot be enough to go on.
For the record I agree with ozeco41 that the collapse of the PH into the building is hard evidence that the main column directly below had buckled.
What exactly caused the buckling is conjecture; NIST has provided a reasonable model to explain how it might have happened, but another model might find something significantly different.
In any event, the EPH then western structures on the roof, plus the buckling evidenced as the 'kink', plus the rapid progression of window breakage below the EPH are directly significant evidence of a large and progressing internal collapse well before the failure of the exterior moment frame.
I wouldn't mind if a university were to take on the task of doing a model of either WTC 7 or WTC 1 or 2. I think it would add something of value to the understanding of the collapses.
There was a thread suggesting the MIT + UCLA were setting up a reference for exactly that type of work.
But I remain highly doubtful that any thorough and competent investigation would ever support the CD hypothesis,........
Nor is there any inkling that any group is about to even try to do an investigation with regard to overcoming all the evidence for the null hypothesis, that 19 hijackers took 4 planes, slammed two into the tallest structures in the NYC skyline, another into a highly visible and very large office structure alongside a major waterway in Virginia, and were unsuccessful in maintaining control of the 4th aircraft and crashed it into afield in Penn. That the death and destruction occurring after these events is all directly attributable to those aircraft crashes.