New articles at the "Journal of 9/11 Studies" (JoNES)

[Oystein]

Since said "journal" is currently putting out new articles at the blazing rate of about 1 every 10 months, I think one thread to cover all that is new will suffice.


The latest paper is a legal opionion:

The Cause of the Destruction of the World Trade Center and the Admissibility of Expert Testimony
 by Stevan D. Looney [must resist obvious snark], March 2015

From the abstract:

Under the standards established by the United States Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786, 125 L. Ed 2d 469 (1993) and its progeny, expert testimony offered to support the official theory and hypotheses concerning the cause of the destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 (the WTC) on September 11, 2001 would probably be excluded from admission into evidence by an impartial judge in a civil or criminal proceeding. In contrast, expert testimony presenting an alternative theory and hypotheses explaining the cause(s) of the destruction of the WTC grounded in and adhering to accepted and reliable scientific principles using the scientific method would satisfy the Daubert test and would be admitted into evidence.

I have not read the article as I have next to no tools at my disposals to parse and judge a legal opinion. Perhaps LashL, JayUtah, Loss Leader and others with apparently some law background want to dive into this?

On the author: He signed the AE911T petition approximately around the turn of year 2010/11. From his profile:

Degree:
JD

Biography:

I am a trial lawyer with over 30 years of litigation experience. I am one of the earlier members of Scholars for 911 Truth and Oath Keepers. I am also a cofounder of Veterans for 911 Truth www.v911t.org. I wrote the mission statement for v911t and conceived the idea to display the flag with the union down.

Personal Statement:
It is obvious to any conscious thinking person who takes even a few hours to evaluate the available evidence, or even simply watch the video of WTC 1, 2 and 7, that these buildings were felled with explosives. WTC 1 and 2 were pulverized into dust. WTC 7 was felled in a more traditional manner into its footprint.

So he must have been an active truther since at least early 2006, when the Wayback-Machine first archived v911t.org^*.

He is one of 37 lawyers listed at the Sutin Law Firm in Albuquerque:
http://sutinfirm.com/professionals/lawyers/stevan-douglas-looney
He sports a J.D. (1980) from the University of San Francisco and is between 60 and 64 years old.



^*For giggles, visit v911t.org today The website-account was first suspended in February 2012, then re-released in Dec 2013 with a new layout, and disappeared again a year later.

 

[Dave Rogers]

How depressingly familiar - same ****, different genre. I like the suggestion that there have been previous, but unsuccessful, attempts to cause the collapse of steel-framed structures by crashing jet airliners into them and that these attempt failed, which is implicit in paragraph 3a's statement that the prior rate of success at collapsing buildings by this method is 0%. And I think the statement at the end of the second paragraph of the introduction takes the "Well, duh" prize for this month:

The official theory and the alternative theory or theories of the cause(s) of destruction of these buildings are not in agreement.

Perhaps someone needs to look up the meaning of the word "alternative".

But in the end, this simply exposes the absence of a compelling argument on the part of the truthers; they're admitting that the only way for them to win the argument is by preventing the other side from taking part.

Dave

 

[JayUtah]

IANAL, but that paper is a load of twaddle.

First, the NIST method was subjected to rigorous peer review in the customary journal and according to the customary methods. The author is simply ignorant of it. Claims that Truther pseudoscience has been peer reviewed cite only the Toronto conference. The "peers" in question are merely other Truthers. The author can cite no attempt to seek peer review among a broader audience.

On the falsifiability question, the author simply declares ipse dixit that the "alternative" has been tested. His evidence is no more than the fact that explosives are widely used in controlled demolition. And later, his margin-of-error argument is both contrived and misapplied. It's meant to apply to the methodology used to study the evidence and arrive at a scientifically justifiable conclusion. But the author cites no such methodology -- again he merely handwaves in the general direction of Toronto. And the stellar "zero error rate" he bestows upon AE911T is not for any method they employed, but for the success rate of commercial, professional, controlled demolitions.

The degree to which this lawyer has mangled the legal question of falsifiable methods simply boggles the mind. He's not even in the same ballpark as the proper concept.

Next, on the methodology question, the same tactic is employed as was for peer review. The cites water inspector Kevin Ryan (again, at Toronto) as an authority, and his opinion is the only evidence. Conversely, the Toronto conference is invoked again as evidence for the rigorous methodology the Truthers purport to employ.

On the question of general acceptance, the author blatantly lies by omission. He claims that "many qualified experts" have reviewed and rejected the conventional story, but his citation on that point is merely a broad, handwaving reference to AE911T, which constitutes only a tiny fraction of the relevant experts. That doesn't even qualify as marginal acceptance. He further merely handwaves to AE911T as evidence to support his claim that the more a qualified expert studies the alternatives, the more he is apt to support them. As we've seen, few signatories cite scientific arguments as the reason they signed, and none polled were able to articulate the scientific claims of the organization.

The author freely admits that no applicable hearing has been held. His paper instead speculates on what he believes the outcome of such a hearing would be, and in doing so merely uses the Daubert doctrine as a framework from which to launch the standard Truther rhetoric, veiled in pseudolegal and pseudoscientific arguments. As is common in the analysis of the JFK assassination by legally minded conspiracy theorists, this author also here just lays out his side of the case and imagines that he would win.

 

[Orphia Nay]

From the abstract:

Under the standards established by the United States Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceutical, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S. Ct. 2786, 125 L. Ed 2d 469 (1993) and its progeny, expert testimony offered to support the official theory and hypotheses concerning the cause of the destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 (the WTC) on September 11, 2001 would probably be excluded from admission into evidence by an impartial judge in a civil or criminal proceeding. In contrast, expert testimony presenting an alternative theory and hypotheses explaining the cause(s) of the destruction of the WTC grounded in and adhering to accepted and reliable scientific principles using the scientific method would satisfy the Daubert test and would be admitted into evidence.

This is the Wikipedia entry on that case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_v._Merrell_Dow_Pharmaceuticals,_Inc.

I do not think it sets the stage for what Looney hopes.

"After Daubert, it was expected that the range of scientific opinion evidence used in court would be expanded. However, courts have strictly applied the standards in Daubert, and it has generally been successful in excluding "junk science" or "pseudoscience", as well as new or experimental techniques and research that the decision might have been expected to deem admissible."