Neither bill nor Heiwa gets it.
Bill thinks that it is critical that Bazant support the NIST conclusions. Bill, it is not.
It would not matter if Bazant, or a dozen structural engineers, called a press conference tomorrow and announced that they were throwing their professional credibility behind Gage & ae911t. In fact there are several precedences for older scientists doing exactly this sort of strange thing.
If Bazant were to do something that foolish, then community would do two things. First, because of his history & credibility, they would listen carefully to what he had to say. Then his ideas would get critiqued just as rigorously as anyone else's. Bazant himself, because of his age, his lifetime of service, would be treated kindly. As one would with any respected figure who is losing his faculties. And the community would mourn the loss of a great figure. And move on.
The point is that engineering & science are cults of IDEAS, bill. Not cults of personalities.
It does not matter that Bazant's ideas came from Bazant. It's the IDEA that stands or falls on its own.
Bazant's degree only gets his ideas a wide spread audience. It was the community, NOT Bazant, that judged his theories valid.
And these are the parts that Heiwa doesn't get.
He thinks, like you do, that his degree, or his history, are the sources of validity for his nonsense. They are not. He thinks that he, on his own, can judge his ideas correct. He can NOT.
In ALL cases, the consensus of the community emerges from open, rigorous, CHALLENGING debate. It's a painful, blood-letting process for those who get in the arena.
Here is Anders' failing. He is afraid to get into the arena. He refuses to acknowledge, discuss and to respond to challenges to his whacky theories. And without that, there is no opportunity to correct them.
He gets beat up, early & often, then takes his ball & goes home.
What Anders does not realize, but is about to find out, is that you & Kreel are his saboteurs, bill. And that Ryan Mackey, Dave Rogers, architect, Myriad & his other local "tormentors" are his best friends. Because anyone who points out your errors to you before you go public & embarrass yourself is, in fact, your best friend. It's just the strange nature of this business.
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Of course, Bazant's background, training, and discipline make it HIGHLY likely that he is not going to commit egregious errors in his analysis. I would wager that he did, in fact, make a bunch of errors in the first drafts. Errors that were caught and corrected precisely because of the collaborative nature of the process.
So, Bill, there is nothing that would prevent a patent clerk, or even a marine architect, from coming up with an idea that turns the field on its head. But those revolutions do not come out of thin air. And it is ALWAYS best to "bet the house" in these cases.
Because the odds are incredibly long. Even if I'd never laid eyes on Heiwa's work, I'd lay 1000 to 1 odds against him. Because, bill, for ever single crackpot who turned out to be an Einstein, there were 10,000 crackpots who turned out to be crackpots.
Having seen his work, and his process, it is patently clear that the odds in his favor have plummeted to zero.
tom
PS. I thought Heiwa was actually submitting his theories in a paper, not a discussion letter. I retract my predictions of his impending doom. Nobody cares about a discussion letter. It'll get dismissed with a sarcastic remark. And then ignored.