Allen773
Graduate Poster
How about we flip and revise the question: Troofers, name one architect or engineer-who is arguing in good faith and is qualified in the relevant areas of expertise-who doesn't agree with NIST.
Brian Good Challenge: Name one independent architect or engineer who agrees with NIST
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abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
How about we don't. When the challenge was wheeled out to provide any accredited engineer who does not acceptt the 911 baloney, in the expectation that none existed, the proponent ran away. I know that I am one. I know for a fact that jay is one. Ergo the original claim is crap.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
I'm sure Richard Gage would like to argue that the members of his organization are fully qualified and are arguing in good faith. That last bit is the sticky wicket. If you're talking about expert testimony, which this would be, then how do you go about judging good or bad faith? But in Gage's case, when you see people who have reasonably appropriate credentials (i.e., appropriate degrees, appropriate licenses, relevant job experience) among his following speaking patently from a personal, socio-political, or other irrelevant standpoint, what do you say?
In this type of argument I've found the legal tests for expert testimony to be useful, whether the question is being tested at the law or not. I'm not saying it has to be legally admissible. But I think the legal tests of admissibility for expert testimony help us ask the right questions. The question at hand has to be legitimately a matter of a science that is founded upon real scientific principles and has a body of scholarship etc. around it. The opinion has to be related to the question and has to be based on distinct and enumerable principles of the science. The opinion has to be based on methods that other equally qualified practitioners understand, accept, and would use.
Consequently these are the questions I tend to ask when evaluating expert opinions.
1. Is the claimant legitimately an expert?
2. Is the claimant's expertise relevant to the question?
3. Is the claimant speaking in his capacity as an expert?
4. Can the claimant articulate the elements of his expertise and its underlying science that support his opinion?
5. How much of the claimant's opinion is factual and reasonable (even if the facts are specialized knowledge), versus how much is discretionary judgment?
6. What methods did the claimant use to form his opinion?
7. Is the question one on which there is a clear scientific consensus among the relevant experts?
8. Is the claimant's opinion in the minority or the majority of any such consensus?
9. Has the claimant discussed, published, or otherwise made his opinion available to other (unbiased) experts for criticism and commentary?
So I would weigh good-faith expert testimony along those lines. So far I can't see that Gage can produce an expert that scores high on this test.
"Show me an expert who agrees with X," where X is the majority view within the relevant field is a bit of a red herring. I read the professional literature in many fields that apply to my work. I agree with nearly all of it. That doesn't mean I go out to web forums and blogs and write copiously on all the things I agree with. Agreement is not generally trumpeted, and so to ask for it affirmatively is the red herring.
That said, on controversial subjects you can usually find at least one qualified professional who will have responded to allegations he finds disagreeable. And so yes, you can find a number of qualified structural engineers to endorse the substance of the NIST findings.
In this type of argument I've found the legal tests for expert testimony to be useful, whether the question is being tested at the law or not. I'm not saying it has to be legally admissible. But I think the legal tests of admissibility for expert testimony help us ask the right questions. The question at hand has to be legitimately a matter of a science that is founded upon real scientific principles and has a body of scholarship etc. around it. The opinion has to be related to the question and has to be based on distinct and enumerable principles of the science. The opinion has to be based on methods that other equally qualified practitioners understand, accept, and would use.
Consequently these are the questions I tend to ask when evaluating expert opinions.
1. Is the claimant legitimately an expert?
2. Is the claimant's expertise relevant to the question?
3. Is the claimant speaking in his capacity as an expert?
4. Can the claimant articulate the elements of his expertise and its underlying science that support his opinion?
5. How much of the claimant's opinion is factual and reasonable (even if the facts are specialized knowledge), versus how much is discretionary judgment?
6. What methods did the claimant use to form his opinion?
7. Is the question one on which there is a clear scientific consensus among the relevant experts?
8. Is the claimant's opinion in the minority or the majority of any such consensus?
9. Has the claimant discussed, published, or otherwise made his opinion available to other (unbiased) experts for criticism and commentary?
So I would weigh good-faith expert testimony along those lines. So far I can't see that Gage can produce an expert that scores high on this test.
"Show me an expert who agrees with X," where X is the majority view within the relevant field is a bit of a red herring. I read the professional literature in many fields that apply to my work. I agree with nearly all of it. That doesn't mean I go out to web forums and blogs and write copiously on all the things I agree with. Agreement is not generally trumpeted, and so to ask for it affirmatively is the red herring.
That said, on controversial subjects you can usually find at least one qualified professional who will have responded to allegations he finds disagreeable. And so yes, you can find a number of qualified structural engineers to endorse the substance of the NIST findings.
I am an architect licensed in NYS since 1982... my very first job was with Emery Roth and Sons in 1972 who were the architects of the WTC. I did not work on that project if memory serves me correctly.
I am not an expert in steel frame high rise buildings. The experts required would be structural engineers as the issue at hand is not architectural but structural in nature. Of course architects learn structure and are qualified to design structural systems.... but they don't in large complex structures.... They use structural engineers such as LERA. So even the most qualified architect's testimony/opinion is really not terribly relevant.
Having said the above, I don't agree will all of NIST's work but accept the fire/heat cause of the 3 collapses. I find the opinions of the causes of collapse of Guy Nordenson PE, Colin Bailey PE and several others who submitted affidavits in support of a 2010 lawsuit a better explanation. The cae was dismissed... but the affidavits still stand as sworn statements.
I am not an expert in steel frame high rise buildings. The experts required would be structural engineers as the issue at hand is not architectural but structural in nature. Of course architects learn structure and are qualified to design structural systems.... but they don't in large complex structures.... They use structural engineers such as LERA. So even the most qualified architect's testimony/opinion is really not terribly relevant.
Having said the above, I don't agree will all of NIST's work but accept the fire/heat cause of the 3 collapses. I find the opinions of the causes of collapse of Guy Nordenson PE, Colin Bailey PE and several others who submitted affidavits in support of a 2010 lawsuit a better explanation. The cae was dismissed... but the affidavits still stand as sworn statements.
abaddon
Penultimate Amazing
Well that's three.
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
That depends on the context. First, one of the big reasons you need to employ properly licensed and terribly clever structural engineers on a high-rise steel-frame building is because the viability of that project from the get-go depends on a highly efficient structural system, which in turn employs methods of design, validation, and construction that are unique to that type of building, and may qualify as a bit of magic.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater is suffering hogging in the cantilevered beam structures. No one explained to Ll.W. what "hogging" is in steel members, so he didn't address that in the structural design. It's a sound design in that the structure is perfectly adequate to bear a residential load and more. But there are principles of structural design that are curious and arcane, so responsible architects hire good structural engineers to advise them.
Similarly (or conversely, if you will) I was privileged to witness the steel-hanging for the Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The architect is Frank Gehry, noted for fluid designs that demand unconventional structural systems, which I was able to witness being constructed. Gehry's team uses CATIA, the same CAD/CAM/CAE software used to design airliners, to work out the structural system -- obviously in collaboration with their structural engineering subcontractor. That's a responsible approach. AutoCAD just doesn't cut it here.
So exotic buildings often demand exotic structural systems, and this requires specialized experts. And when a failure occurs, it will just as easily occur in a way that may surprise a layman. A layman naturally has his impression of what load-bearing structures look like and how they should behave. But it's not necessarily a well-informed impression. Even within the priesthood of structural engineering there is still the sub-specialty of forensic structural engineering -- the determination of why and how structures fail. While most structural engineers should have a reasonably good understanding of this field (because they have to test and validate their designs), there are additional investigative methods that come into play. Forensic structural analysis is it's own branch of science.
Now, having laid this groundwork, let me go back to the beginning and say that some of the structural analysis that pertains to 9/11 is certainly well within the training and experience of an architect. That's because some of the conspiracy claims are so daft as to easily run afoul of anyone from any discipline who has taken Determinate Statics or Indeterminate Statics. An architect is certainly able to understand that an unbraced column is prone to buckle. He can understand that a steel-truss floor can sag and impose transverse tension loads on vertical members, pulling them out of plumb. So while we certainly wait for the forensic structural analysts to do their thing, there are arguments that those of lesser (but still formally instilled) expertise can defensibly judge.
So I think where you're going with this is to suggest the question is poorly formed and should ask only for engineers, not architects. In that NIST's work was primarily concerned with engineering, then that's appropriate. But in the larger question of who can apply expertise, for some conspiracy arguments this could include architects.
But see, don't sweep that kind of agreement too far under the carpet. There can be no lengthy report produced on a deadline that does not contain details with which qualified practitioners may quibble long after. To accept that NIST's work may have been improved had they had more time, attention, or wiser analysts is not to say that the conclusions are necessarily worthless. But that's how conspiracy theorists want to operate. They set an absurdly high standard for the "official narrative," expecting that it cannot be met. And they try to parley every quibble such as a truss seat into some global, nefarious conspiracy. The focus on detail is what they want, and when you or I or anyone else says, "Yeah, the report is probably flawed in some set of details," that's wrongly assumed to be confirmation that it's deeply flawed and must be discarded -- and that it opens up enough leeway to allow their patently crackpot theories. In their world, the "official narrative" has to be complete and correct to the nth degree in order to be credible.
To say that you have an appropriate level of trust in and respect for NIST's conclusions is all that's required. Much as conspiracy theorists would love to paint their critics as worshipers of the "official narrative," we are not. I'm comfortable with the notion that while you can say abstractly that some investigative body "should have" done something differently, it doesn't materially affect the findings we care about.
And that's important. An unchallenged affidavit has limited legal value, but in the context of the thread it's important. The thread doesn't ask whether some suitably qualified expert has withstood all reasonable challenge, but simply whether endorsement from independent practitioners exists. It does, and the affidavits are a good form of it.
Jay,
I don't completely dismiss the NIST work. It's not a black or white... you're either pregnant of not sort of position. My experience with 9/11 has been a learning one because my knowledge of structure is pretty fundamental though an order of magnitude more than the layman.
So I have no problem with columns losing bracing becoming weaker and unstable and subject to buckling nor sagging loaded floors exerting lateral pull. I can accept this conceptually. But I find two things troubling about these as the key drivers of the collapse. In the case of 7 the sim done by NIST is wildly different from real world. It does begin with a column 79 buckling and end in total collapse. But it's clearly not the sim with matches real world. That is the basis for my loss of confidence in this as the mechanism for 7.
The twins real world offer similar divergence from the NIST model. The worst fires were on the east side of 2wtc, but it was the north facade which shows the IB... and similar for 1WTC which leads me to conclude that the collapse was core led not truss led... and more than that it is only speculation for me. Other engineers such as Nordenson et al can do a more informed analysis. And it happens to make more sense to me and align with my own hunches in both cases. All these analyses need to be informed by the details of the structure and not treat these towers are garden variety steel lattice rectangular bay steel frames.
So perhaps there are different lessons to learn based on how the heat effected THOSE designs... than how heat effects ANY design???
I don't completely dismiss the NIST work. It's not a black or white... you're either pregnant of not sort of position. My experience with 9/11 has been a learning one because my knowledge of structure is pretty fundamental though an order of magnitude more than the layman.
So I have no problem with columns losing bracing becoming weaker and unstable and subject to buckling nor sagging loaded floors exerting lateral pull. I can accept this conceptually. But I find two things troubling about these as the key drivers of the collapse. In the case of 7 the sim done by NIST is wildly different from real world. It does begin with a column 79 buckling and end in total collapse. But it's clearly not the sim with matches real world. That is the basis for my loss of confidence in this as the mechanism for 7.
The twins real world offer similar divergence from the NIST model. The worst fires were on the east side of 2wtc, but it was the north facade which shows the IB... and similar for 1WTC which leads me to conclude that the collapse was core led not truss led... and more than that it is only speculation for me. Other engineers such as Nordenson et al can do a more informed analysis. And it happens to make more sense to me and align with my own hunches in both cases. All these analyses need to be informed by the details of the structure and not treat these towers are garden variety steel lattice rectangular bay steel frames.
So perhaps there are different lessons to learn based on how the heat effected THOSE designs... than how heat effects ANY design???
Newtons Bit
Penultimate Amazing
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JSanderO, you should review the ethical standards of your state. Making a public statement in your capacity as an architect that is factually incorrect is a violation. Architects cannot design structural systems. For short buildings, they're allowed to follow prescriptive methods available in codes such as the IRC as everyone is allowed to do this. But this still doesn't even get close to "designing structural systems".
You know exactly what I meant... Licensed Architects are permitted to design buildings in NYS.... including the structure.
I am not violating any ethical standards by making this statement. That is pretty lame comment.
DGM
Skeptic not Atheist
Actually he's right (although it's a petty argument). As a general contractor, I have the same right to design as you do. Some things I do need an "engineer stamp" same as you. You design the concept and I build it. If the structure falls outside standard (code) rules, we call the engineer.
Newtons Bit
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
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Get it in your head, JSanderO: you are not "qualified to design structural systems".
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
And here we see a classic refutation of one of the basic assumptions behind the monolithic conspiracy theory of 9/11. Architects and engineers fighting like cats in a sack, and yet the one thing they all agree on is that 9/11 was not an inside job.
Dave
My qualifications are not the issue. The issue YOU raised is whether and architect is licensed to design structures in a building in NYS. They are.