Loose Change - Part III

[Kiwiwriter]

Logrolling in our time

It was peer reviewed by other 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who happen to be physicists. Hence the "peer" review -- don't think for a minute it was peer reviewed by structural engineers. The review took place before publication in a book on 9/11 conspiracies. IIRC (but I'm not sure) it's in an anthology of 9/11 CT articles edited by David Ray Griffin. I could be wrong about that last point. Relying on memory here.



That, I don't know.

It's sort of how neo-Nazis will quote each other as proof the Holocaust didn't happen. It just goes round and round in an endless circle....but never outside of the circle.

 

[Brainster]

It was peer reviewed by other 9/11 conspiracy theorists, who happen to be physicists. Hence the "peer" review -- don't think for a minute it was peer reviewed by structural engineers. The review took place before publication in a book on 9/11 conspiracies. IIRC (but I'm not sure) it's in an anthology of 9/11 CT articles edited by David Ray Griffin. I could be wrong about that last point. Relying on memory here.

Here's a link to a letter from a "Scholar" to the head of the engineering department at BYU asking them to take down their disclaimer. The relevant section (Item #6) reads:

One of Dr. Jones’s research papers ["Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?"] has undergone relevant and sufficient peer-review, and has been accepted for publication in a book to appear later this year, titled "9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out" (Northampton, Mass: Olive Branch Press, 2006), edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. In fact, as you may know, this paper had been peer reviewed for a publication by Elsevier Press. But after the stated concerns about "rigorous technical peer review," the paper was withdrawn and submitted to a different publication and peer reviewed again. One of the editors, while maintaining anonymity of the reviewers, disclosed that four PhDs reviewed this paper, two of whom were physicists (and thus peers).

I'm not an academic; is anonymous peer review typical? I could understand anonymity if the paper is rejected. Note that this letter is coming from a philosophy professor, citing an unknown publication, an unknown editor and unknown physicists. This does not exactly inspire great confidence.

 

[kookbreaker]

Here's a [
I'm not an academic; is anonymous peer review typical? I could understand anonymity if the paper is rejected. Note that this letter is coming from a philosophy professor, citing an unknown publication, an unknown editor and unknown physicists. This does not exactly inspire great confidence.

As I understand it, anonymous peer review is done, but within speciality journals, and you can be assured that those peers are specialists in the subject of the journal.

This publication, and Griffin's little journal, is using that aspect of peer reivew to hide the fact that they really have no relevant experts agreeing with them.

 

[dubfan]

Oh, now *this* is entertaining.

Merc the Jerk has claimed to have discovered the foolproof technique for silencing skeptics (which is basically, if jets are such effective tools for controlled demolition, why don't professional demolition experts bring down buildings by flying jets into them?). He posted this twice -- once in the WTC sub-forum, and then again, with a link to his original post, in the Skeptics sub-forum.

So then I replied -- twice. Once in the Skeptics sub-forum, and then again, via a link to my original post, in Merc's original WTC thread.

Except, as you'll note if you followed that last link, he's deleted my post. Twice. The first time I posted, he just deleted it without saying anything. So I posted my reply again, along with the editorial comment "the way you silence skeptics is by deleting their posts". He deleted that one too, and replaced it with a post of his own, saying "No skeptics allowed."

 

[JamesB]

This is the book. Anonymous review seems a bit bogus. If someone believes in your book, what good is their word if they are not willing to put their reputation on the line to vouch for it publicly?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1566566592/sr=8-5/qid=1151081419/ref=pd_bbs_5/103-1241019-6801455?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Anyone want to read my paper on the grand unifying theory? It was been peer reviewed by 20 PhDs, including 4 Nobel Prize winners. Anonymously, of course....

 

[chipmunk stew]

Oh, now *this* is entertaining.

Merc the Jerk has claimed to have discovered the foolproof technique for silencing skeptics (which is basically, if jets are such effective tools for controlled demolition, why don't professional demolition experts bring down buildings by flying jets into them?). He posted this twice -- once in the WTC sub-forum, and then again, with a link to his original post, in the Skeptics sub-forum.

So then I replied -- twice. Once in the Skeptics sub-forum, and then again, via a link to my original post, in Merc's original WTC thread.

Except, as you'll note if you followed that last link, he's deleted my post. Twice. The first time I posted, he just deleted it without saying anything. So I posted my reply again, along with the editorial comment "the way you silence skeptics is by deleting their posts". He deleted that one too, and replaced it with a post of his own, saying "No skeptics allowed."

The blank looks he gets from skeptics when he takes this approach is not the look of someone who is thinking, "Man, I don't know--he really got me there!" It's the look of someone who's thinking, "It's probably a lost cause trying to explain the complex question fallacy to this guy."

edit--dubfan, you must have missed the sign when you tried to climb up into the treehouse to visit the LC club with their newspaper hats and wooden swords.
"NO SKEPTIKZ ALLOWD!!!"

 

[JamesB]

Hey, now they have their own journal, open only to conspiracy nutbars of course. How "scholarly".

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

 

[dubfan]

Merc's reply after being confronted with having deleted my posts, twice:

I know since I posted it in the Skeptics forum, they would try and bring it here.

Straight up, as an Admin and the OP, I WILL delete any trollish comments or Skeptic comments.

0 Tolerance.

 

[Brainster]

Hey, now they have their own journal, open only to conspiracy nutbars of course. How "scholarly".

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

Check out the WTC7 paper by Kuttler, in which he proves that WTC7 could not have collapsed by pancaking from the top. Of course, since nobody claims that WTC7 came down that way the value of this particular paper is minimal.

 

[dubfan]

Hey, now they have their own journal, open only to conspiracy nutbars of course. How "scholarly".

http://www.journalof911studies.com/

The Dixon paper's pretty hilarious, too. On the Opie & Anthony show, one of their call-in guests was an airline pilot who flew into LaGuardia, right past the towers, some time after they'd been hit.

 

[chipmunk stew]

Merc's reply after being confronted with having deleted my posts, twice:

You've gotta admire their...nevermind, there's nothing to admire.

"Fire Damage":

NIST Metallurgical Team/Dr. Frank Gayle, August 2003 AP news...

ready to "rule out weak steel as a contributing factor in the collapse."

"most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C (or 500F)."

It always bothers me the way this quote is misinterpreted. NIST did not rule out weakened steel as a contributing factor in the collapse. Which is clear when the quote is read in its original context.

 

[chipmunk stew]

The Dixon paper's pretty hilarious, too. On the Opie & Anthony show, one of their call-in guests was an airline pilot who flew into LaGuardia, right past the towers, some time after they'd been hit.

I'm fairly certain that the plane(s) shown in the pictures in Dixon's paper would have been clearly identified and in communication with the control tower, and that the control tower would have made a vigilant effort to get assurances that the plane(s) were under no distress.

 

[Brainster]

Oh, now *this* is entertaining.

Merc the Jerk has claimed to have discovered the foolproof technique for silencing skeptics (which is basically, if jets are such effective tools for controlled demolition, why don't professional demolition experts bring down buildings by flying jets into them?). He posted this twice -- once in the WTC sub-forum, and then again, with a link to his original post, in the Skeptics sub-forum.

So then I replied -- twice. Once in the Skeptics sub-forum, and then again, via a link to my original post, in Merc's original WTC thread.

Except, as you'll note if you followed that last link, he's deleted my post. Twice. The first time I posted, he just deleted it without saying anything. So I posted my reply again, along with the editorial comment "the way you silence skeptics is by deleting their posts". He deleted that one too, and replaced it with a post of his own, saying "No skeptics allowed."

He's back to that idiotic "this was such a neat and tidy demolition" bit. Where do they get off with that? Three buildings other than the towers completely collapsed, four others partially collapsed, ten buildings suffered major damage and something like 20 other buildings suffered moderate damage.

 

[pgwenthold]

He's back to that idiotic "this was such a neat and tidy demolition" bit. Where do they get off with that? Three buildings other than the towers completely collapsed, four others partially collapsed, ten buildings suffered major damage and something like 20 other buildings suffered moderate damage.

This is perhaps the most useful graphic posted in any of these threads.

Shoot, just the fact that WTC7 sustained damage at all rules out the claim that they "fell in their own footprint." 1 Liberty Plaza got damaged, and it looks like it is a long block separated from WTC 2.

Upon closer inspection, the best way to describe it is that 1 Liberty Plaza is basically 2.5 WTC2 widths away from the base of WTC2, and yet sustained damage. WTC2 fell into "its own footprint"? The damage on 1 Liberty Plaza indicates a damage area 36 times the size of the WTC2 footprint!*


*1 Liberty Plaza is 2.5 WTC2 diameters from the edge of WTC2, 3 diameters from the center. Assuming a circular damage area, the footprint would be proportional to the WTC2radius^2. 1 Liberty Plaza is 6 radii away (3 diameters), which would be a damage area of (6*WTC2radius)^2 = 36*WTC2radius^2 = 36*1 footprint

 

[pgwenthold]

So as I implied in my last post, I really like the damage map provided by brainster. Kudos.

I have done some analysis based on that picture. The first thing I did was to draw a circle (dashed line) around each of the towers to try to include most of the damaged areas. Thus, I set the size of the circle large enough to cover the damage to the south and SW of WTC2, assuming that building is the cause of the damage. Similarly, I drew a (dashed) circle around WTC1 large enough to include most of the damage to the north. You can see that these regions overlap strongly. The circle for WTC1 might be a little small, but I keep it conservative.

To characterize the fall of the towers, I then cut the diameters of those circles in half. This is what I would say is the estimate of the area on which the towers fell,* indicated by the solid circles.

Did the towers "fall on their own footprint"? Hardly. The falling area for WTC2 is 16 times the area of WTC2 itself. The inner damage area for WTC1 is 18 times the area of WTC1.

A couple of comments:
1) First, just looking at the picture it is clear that you cannot explain the extensive damage to surrounding areas by towers "falling into their own footprint." Buildings very far away were damaged.
2) It's easy to underestimate the difference between area and distance. Even keeping all the debris within one building radius of the building perimeter produces FOUR times the area in which stuff can fall. As such, the density is going to be a lot less over that whole area. Ask a CTer how much area would a building fall into if it weren't a free fall. 10 times the area? Heck, 10 times the footprint is still barely big enough to get across the road, and shouldn't damage the WFC buildings or the Verizon building. The fact that WFC2 and WFC3 and the Verizon building sustained major damage tells you that it fell into more than 10 times its footprint.


*To ROUGH approximations, if we treat the falling as a gaussian distribution, and consider the solid circle to include about 95% of the damage, then that would correspond to 2 standard deviations. Thus, the inner circle would constitute about 1 standard deviation, or 65% of the damage. That's why I just cut it in half.

(Edited to correct the figure legend)

 

[CptColumbo]

So as I implied in my last post, I really like the damage map provided by brainster. Kudos.

I have done some analysis based on that picture. The first thing I did was to draw a circle (dashed line) around each of the towers to try to include most of the damaged areas. Thus, I set the size of the circle large enough to cover the damage to the south and SW of WTC2, assuming that building is the cause of the damage. Similarly, I drew a (dashed) circle around WTC1 large enough to include most of the damage to the north. You can see that these regions overlap strongly. The circle for WTC1 might be a little small, but I keep it conservative.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehost/210449c381fd6cea.gif[/qimg]

To characterize the fall of the towers, I then cut the diameters of those circles in half. This is what I would say is the estimate of the area on which the towers fell,* indicated by the solid circles.

Did the towers "fall on their own footprint"? Hardly. The falling area for WTC2 is 16 times the area of WTC2 itself. The inner damage area for WTC1 is 18 times the area of WTC1.

A couple of comments:
1) First, just looking at the picture it is clear that you cannot explain the extensive damage to surrounding areas by towers "falling into their own footprint." Buildings very far away were damaged.
2) It's easy to underestimate the difference between area and distance. Even keeping all the debris within one building radius of the building perimeter produces FOUR times the area in which stuff can fall. As such, the density is going to be a lot less over that whole area. As a CTer how much area would a building fall into if it weren't a free fall. 10 times the area? Heck, 10 times the footprint is still barely big enough to get across the road, and shouldn't damage the WFC buildings or the Verizon building. The fact that WFC2 and WFC3 and the Verizon building sustained major damage tells you that it fell into more than 10 times its footprint.


*To ROUGH approximations, if we treat the falling as a gaussian distribution, and consider the solid circle to include about 95% of the damage, then that would correspond to 2 standard deviations. Thus, the inner circle would constitute about 1 standard deviation, or 65% of the damage. That's why I just cut it in half.

Which direction did WTC 7 fall? Was it south? Could some of the damage to the north of the complex be attributed to 7's collapse? Was collateral damage taken into account for this diagram?

I'm just asking for clarification.

 

[dubfan]

So as I implied in my last post, I really like the damage map provided by brainster. Kudos.

I have done some analysis based on that picture. The first thing I did was to draw a circle (dashed line) around each of the towers to try to include most of the damaged areas. Thus, I set the size of the circle large enough to cover the damage to the south and SW of WTC2, assuming that building is the cause of the damage. Similarly, I drew a (dashed) circle around WTC1 large enough to include most of the damage to the north. You can see that these regions overlap strongly. The circle for WTC1 might be a little small, but I keep it conservative.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehost/210449c3d8a22403.gif[/qimg]

To characterize the fall of the towers, I then cut the diameters of those circles in half. This is what I would say is the estimate of the area on which the towers fell,* indicated by the solid circles.

Did the towers "fall on their own footprint"? Hardly. The falling area for WTC2 is 16 times the area of WTC2 itself. The inner damage area for WTC1 is 18 times the area of WTC1.

A couple of comments:
1) First, just looking at the picture it is clear that you cannot explain the extensive damage to surrounding areas by towers "falling into their own footprint." Buildings very far away were damaged.
2) It's easy to underestimate the difference between area and distance. Even keeping all the debris within one building radius of the building perimeter produces FOUR times the area in which stuff can fall. As such, the density is going to be a lot less over that whole area. Ask a CTer how much area would a building fall into if it weren't a free fall. 10 times the area? Heck, 10 times the footprint is still barely big enough to get across the road, and shouldn't damage the WFC buildings or the Verizon building. The fact that WFC2 and WFC3 and the Verizon building sustained major damage tells you that it fell into more than 10 times its footprint.


*To ROUGH approximations, if we treat the falling as a gaussian distribution, and consider the solid circle to include about 95% of the damage, then that would correspond to 2 standard deviations. Thus, the inner circle would constitute about 1 standard deviation, or 65% of the damage. That's why I just cut it in half.

(Edited to correct the figure legend)

Very helpful. Can I post this at LC? (or perhaps you would like to -- I'd encourage you to do so if you are so inclined)

 

[Gravy]

We could come up with an easy taxonomy on the CTers. Although the possibilities seem endless, they're fairly finite.
1. Overarching Plot:

That's a good, simple list. I think one addition could be made:

9) Whom do you REALLY think is responsible (c'mon, we won't tell)

A. The Jooooos

B. The Jooooos

C. Bohemian Grover

 

[Ducky]

Bohemian Grover totally ripped off the joooooos.

 

[Gravy]

Oh, now *this* is entertaining.

Merc the Jerk has claimed to have discovered the foolproof technique for silencing skeptics ...
Except, as you'll note if you followed that last link, he's deleted my post. Twice. The first time I posted, he just deleted it without saying anything. So I posted my reply again, along with the editorial comment "the way you silence skeptics is by deleting their posts". He deleted that one too, and replaced it with a post of his own, saying "No skeptics allowed."

Porca Miseria! When he gets out of high school he'll find that the delete key doesn't work so well in real-life situations.