Tony Szamboti Publishes a Technical Paper about 9/11 Truth

[DGM]

Oho, we've got a funny boy here. I'll be keeping an eye on you, mister!

Works for me. I don't hide from my statements.

 

[ozeco41]

The paper has a narrow focus:
It takes the assumptions of the Bazant & Zhou paper(s) - so "columns in line resisting collapse" - and presents maths which claim to show that Bazant's original maths were wrong. But it does not show how it matters.

I have already posted a critique of the paper in the other two threads where this topic has been under discussion - cannot post links due to my current limited technology - I'm travelling away from homebase and "real" computers.

Ergo has extensively disagreed with my comments so I must have been close to the mark.

Some significant points arise from the paper:
1) It destroys the foundation of "Missing Jolt" and Szamboti is a co-author.
2) It is a complicated "proof" of the generally accepted understanding of the mechanism of Twin Towers global collapse being caused by material falling down the office space "tube" and leaving perimeter columns to fall away. The explanation being the one which Major_Tom re-discovered and labelled ROOSD (But he did not invent the mechanism despite numerous inferences) At least one of our newer trolls has insisted that M_T's precision "mappings" are needed to prove the mechanism labelled "ROOSD". That is crap - it rewrites history. The identification of the mechanism predates M_T and the label ROOSD by some years.
3) In the setting of exploring the limitations of Bazant's work the paper is an incomplete argument - I called it a "Three leg stool with two legs missing."

This thread could be merged to the one where the active discussion is. Discussion of the narrow focus of the paper is redundant - any value it has lies only in the context of applicability of Bazant's work.

And all the usual nonsense about "peer review" is as distracting as ever. The tests of a paper are "Are its claims true?" and "So what if they are?" NOT "Is it peer reviewed?" OR "How big a degree does the Author have?"

Over in the other thread I summarised the paper as effective trolling because it has features to irritate people across the spectrum from truthers/trolls to "hard line BazantOPhyles" - plus all of us rational skeptics caught in the middle ground.

 

[TheJamesrocket]

Ah, outright denial of reality. From this point, nothing you have to say is worth listening to.

Dave

Believe me, mr rogers, the feeling is mutual. I wouldn't EVER want you as my neighbor

 

[Miragememories]

Geez, whats with you guys? You're so quick to throw any journal associated with the twoof movement under the bus, just like the fools who were claiming that the JEM had jumped the shark for publishing critiques of bazant. If you don't like people talking about the CD stuff, then just say it! Don't make up arbitrary reasons as an excuse. The fear of concepts implicating the powers that be has been a universal constant throughout human history. The reason there hasn't been a been a REAL investigation into the 911 attacks is not because an absence of evidence that the original commission report is false, but because of widespread moral cowardice amongst the populace. That is hardly surprising.

People worry more about how they are perceived by peers than whether they are standing up for the truth (which, by the way, how do we have anyway of knowing? I mean hey, this is the postmodernist era, after all...). Having a class of menial wage slaves who self-censor themselves is what has allowed the state to continue with their blatant power grabbing in the wake of 911. It has been said time and again, true power comes out of the barrel of a gun. The people know this, but they are too afraid to acknowledge it. Look at what happens when you tell them that taxation equals force! They act like a resentful, cornered rodent. This fear of fingering the ruling authority is an ancient cultural artifact, which remains even though we have something called a bill of rights.

Well said.

MM

 

[jaydeehess]

As a Canadian further west than Gord in Toronto, I can also say I have not heard of Langara. The other two however we do know have credentials.

I might ask ergo and James when any truther engineer will get around to a paper illustrating a CD collapse instead of one such as this that seeks only to say to Bazant, 'did not happen the way you said'?

 

[thedopefishlives]

Even if the column ends had all met, by some freakish chance (right after the monkeys typed Shakespeare and pigs sprouted wings and flew), is there any reason to think that this would have affected the progression of the collapse in any way?

This is the argument that ergo, et al., seem to be having right now. They seem to think that it would (and thus, Bazant et al. is wrong). Bazant and Zhou, however, mathematically demonstrated that it would not. As far as I can tell from the tidbits disclosed in these threads, this paper does not concern itself with disproving this math, but rather setting up an elaborate strawman wherein the authors prove that this scenario did not occur in reality - which has been the consensus for some time.

 

[LSSBB]

This is the argument that ergo, et al., seem to be having right now. They seem to think that it would (and thus, Bazant et al. is wrong). Bazant and Zhou, however, mathematically demonstrated that it would not. As far as I can tell from the tidbits disclosed in these threads, this paper does not concern itself with disproving this math, but rather setting up an elaborate strawman wherein the authors prove that this scenario did not occur in reality - which has been the consensus for some time.

Exactly.

 

[LSSBB]

Well said.

MM

Why, because his beliefs align with yours?

 

[NoahFence]

Geez, whats with you guys? You're so quick to throw any journal associated with the twoof movement under the bus, just like the fools who were claiming that the JEM had jumped the shark for publishing critiques of bazant. If you don't like people talking about the CD stuff, then just say it! Don't make up arbitrary reasons as an excuse. The fear of concepts implicating the powers that be has been a universal constant throughout human history. The reason there hasn't been a been a REAL investigation into the 911 attacks is not because an absence of evidence that the original commission report is false, but because of widespread moral cowardice amongst the populace. That is hardly surprising.

People worry more about how they are perceived by peers than whether they are standing up for the truth (which, by the way, how do we have anyway of knowing? I mean hey, this is the postmodernist era, after all...). Having a class of menial wage slaves who self-censor themselves is what has allowed the state to continue with their blatant power grabbing in the wake of 911. It has been said time and again, true power comes out of the barrel of a gun. The people know this, but they are too afraid to acknowledge it. Look at what happens when you tell them that taxation equals force! They act like a resentful, cornered rodent. This fear of fingering the ruling authoritys is an ancient cultural artifact, which remains even though we have something called a bill of rights.

We're working with reality here. There was no CD. So why not mock 'papers' that claim CD?

 

[Scott Sommers]

I'm familair with Szamboti and Szuladzinki (I believie they are forum members here), but I have never heard of the third author, Richard Johns from Langara College in Canada. Google finds a philosphy instructor and nothing else. Does anyone know who he is?

I have never met Richard Johns. He apparently has a background in computer science but has a PhD in philosophy from the University of British Columbia. I understand he has a background in computer science, but I am not such how significant this is.

Langara_College^WP? Now there's an institution I have never heard of before.

Langara College is part of the 2-year college system of the Province of British Columbia. I understand it has been promoted and can now offer some degrees. The full name now is Langara University-College. Faculty there are teachers. There is no rank and no research requirement for being hired or as a job requirement. I doubt Richard Jones has published anything else.

 

[Scott Sommers]

Geez, whats with you guys? You're so quick to throw any journal associated with the twoof movement under the bus, just like the fools who were claiming that the JEM had jumped the shark for publishing critiques of bazant. If you don't like people talking about the CD stuff, then just say it! Don't make up arbitrary reasons as an excuse. The fear of concepts implicating the powers that be has been a universal constant throughout human history. The reason there hasn't been a been a REAL investigation into the 911 attacks is not because an absence of evidence that the original commission report is false, but because of widespread moral cowardice amongst the populace. That is hardly surprising.

People worry more about how they are perceived by peers than whether they are standing up for the truth (which, by the way, how do we have anyway of knowing? I mean hey, this is the postmodernist era, after all...). Having a class of menial wage slaves who self-censor themselves is what has allowed the state to continue with their blatant power grabbing in the wake of 911. It has been said time and again, true power comes out of the barrel of a gun. The people know this, but they are too afraid to acknowledge it. Look at what happens when you tell them that taxation equals force! They act like a resentful, cornered rodent. This fear of fingering the ruling authoritys is an ancient cultural artifact, which remains even though we have something called a bill of rights.

Since you posted this in response to my OP and show this in your post I will respond.

It is not a very good journal. Many journals have so few submissions they publish almost anything. The review process is more like an editorial process where the editors tell the authors how to change spelling, style and format to meet the journal requirements. There is no scholarly review. I have reviewed many papers for such journals and while a few of them are listed on Thompson indexes, such as the SCI, many are listed on SCOPUS. A look at the editorial board found CVs that were very much similar or even inferior to my own. Some people on the editorial board had never published anything.

I would say the same thing about any paper in this journal. While I congratulate Tony and his team on their initial success, a journal like this is probably more desperate for papers to publish than Tony is to find one. In that sense, they are well-matched. But the publication itself will probably go unnoticed in the larger world of construction research, probably forever.

 

[Scott Sommers]

double post

 

[MileHighMadness]

I said this on another thread...Tony are you going to submit this paper to be published in the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering? Will you try and present the paper at the ASCE structures congress 2014 in Boston?

 

[Tony Szamboti]

I said this on another thread...Tony are you going to submit this paper to be published in the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering? Will you try and present the paper at the ASCE structures congress 2014 in Boston?

And just like I said to you on the other thread

For somebody who claims to know something about engineering and science you ask some strange questions.

The paper was published by the International Journal of Protective Structures. Journals do not allow papers previously published by other journals.

 

[beachnut]

And just like I said to you on the other thread

For somebody who claims to know something about engineering and science you ask some strange questions.

The paper was published by the International Journal of Protective Structures. Journals do not allow papers previously published by other journals.

They could not fool ASCE with a 911 truth paper, but the IJPS was gullible.

 

[Scott Sommers]

And just like I said to you on the other thread

For somebody who claims to know something about engineering and science you ask some strange questions.

The paper was published by the International Journal of Protective Structures. Journals do not allow papers previously published by other journals.

Tony please, let's be civil. I don't know what MHM knows about engineering or science. I do know what he or she means.

While I congratulate you on the publication of your paper, my post was intended to point out that the venue renders the importance of the findings to be almost insignificant. There are many journals that are desperate for papers. I do not know how many submissions International Journal of Protective Structures gets. I am surprised by their editorial board, though, and take this as an indication of the depth to which the journal penetrates into legitimate academic engineering. I went through the names listed and found that some of the members of their board have published nothing that I can find. So if this is who they have on their board, I can only wonder who is doing their reviewing for them. My experience with 3rd and 4th tier journals, such as IJPS appears to be, reminds me of how many journals of this sort have trouble finding reviewers, especially for highly specialized papers. I suspect that in many cases, it was the people listed on the editorial board who did the review. And as I have said, I have trouble understanding what gives at least some of the IJPS editors the background to make such expert judgements. In all honesty, you appear to have a strong academic and research background that some of those listed on the IJPS editorial board.

The issue that keeps coming up is why you and similar researchers have waited so long to start publishing papers of this kind. I suspect it is because the intelligentsia of 9/11 Truth, in which I include you and your friend Richard, have been waiting for that avalanche of research you were certain would follow once think tanks like AE9/11T brought the true facts of 9/11 to professional attention. But that never happened. Sometime around the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack by the Jihadist terrorists, you and what was left of the Truther intelligentsia began to take it seriously that you would have to do this publishing yourself. And you did.

I congratulate you on your initiative. I congratulate you on your publication in a serious venue. But I hope you understand that what MHM meant with his or her post was clearly that we are looking for you to publish these findings in a venue with greater credibility than one that appears rarely cited and, as such, almost entirely uninfluential in the field it claims to represent. For me personally, as a non-engineering specialist, I wonder how much more space there is in engineering scholarship for the critique of a model that I am told was never intended as the final word on the WTC collapses. But I guess we will find out soon enough.

Once again, congratulations. I look forward to seeing this work published in a venue with a higher level of respect in the profession.

 

[beachnut]

Tony's paper is not technical, it is woo.

Yet, the thin aluminum wings cut through the much thicker steel.​

LOL, no science, just woo. A fact is made to sound like doubt. Much thicker? Much? Is that engineering, or what?

With a silly statement like this in the paper, the "International Journal of Protective Structures" has no rational review, it had the special woo review. How do CT papers make it into a real journal?

 

[kid meatball]

As a Canadian further west than Gord in Toronto, I can also say I have not heard of Langara. The other two however we do know have credentials.

I might ask ergo and James when any truther engineer will get around to a paper illustrating a CD collapse instead of one such as this that seeks only to say to Bazant, 'did not happen the way you said'?

Langara is a pretty respectable institution in B.C. Not internationally known, but that doesn't mean it's some fly by night ESL college. Serves some 23000 students annually.

 

[Scott Sommers]

Tony's paper is not technical, it is woo.


LOL, no science, just woo. A fact is made to sound like doubt. Much thicker? Much? Is that engineering, or what?

With a silly statement like this in the paper, the "International Journal of Protective Structures" has no rational review, it had the special woo review. How do CT papers make it into a real journal?

I don't know if this is a serious problem. I do know there are very serious publications that deal directly with this issue.
Wierzbicki, T. and Teng, X. (2003). “How the airplane wing cut through the exterior columns of the World Trade Center.” J. of Impact Enrg. 28, pp.601–625
The IJIE was established in 1983 and has an impact factor of 1.922. This is not especially high for an engineering journal (also). But it is respectable, particularly for a specialized journal.

I suspect this point got through because the paper was reviewed by someone who doesn't know this is an issue in the WTCs or perhaps even impact engineering. This often happens with 3rd or 4th tier journals and this lack of depth among reviewers is a great deal of what makes them not 2nd or 1st tier. Judging from its editorial board, the paper may not have even been reviewed in any sense we are thinking of the process.

Tony, while I applaud your attempt at rigor, getting these findings publishing in something like IJIE or one of these ASCE journal
http://www.asce.org/PPLContent.aspx?id=17273 would go a long way to making the peanut gallery shut up. I look forward to you making it happen.

 

[fourtoe]

Solid job on publishing a PR journal article, Tony. Especially since this journal so far, doesn't seem nearly as sketchy as the one Jones published in a few years back.