...and Jones is thinking is flawed about 9/11 as well.
Flawed in a particular way I've seen before. A few other physicists I've seen -- whether formally qualified or just "I know a lot of physics" -- seem to think that because they practice the abstract "mother" science upon which so many others are predicated, they know all the applications of that science.
In Jones' case, the physics he practices is the kind that deals with little fiddly bits of matter too small for most of us to know or care about. It's exactly the kind of stuff they did at INEL when he was there, but not the kind of physics that tells us why ships capsize in following seas, or why an aluminum airplane can poke a hole in a steel wall, or why buildings fall down.
These generalists (or misapplied specialists) as a rule don't appreciate the methods of the specializations or derived sciences they criticize. More aptly, they don't
know about them. So when they jump in, they try to derive everything anew from first principles. Those derivations aren't
per se wrong. But they don't approach the type or degree of knowledge the specialists practice successfully.
Structural analysis is a highly developed science. It's rigorously predictive enough that the law requires us in some cases to undertake it for safety purposes. It's correct to say that it's based on classical Newtonian mechanics. However, it's not correct to say that everything valuable about it can be found in the opening chapters of
Principia. Practical engineering depends, in many cases, on curves fit dumbly to empirical data. These tend to be more predictive. Newton still applies, but we have learned that it applies in nuanced ways that aren't typically discovered through theoretical derivation.
Embed one end of a steel I-beam solidly in concrete and let the free end cantilever outward. How much weight on it until it fails? In the mode of Jones you could derive a model for it based on how far from the fulcrum you hang the weight, the cross-sectional area of the beam, and some notions about the inherent resistance of steel to bending.
Or you could just hang weights from it until it yields. That's the engineer's approach. Do that a bunch of times with different weights and distances from the fulcrum, and then fit curves to it. That doesn't mean that the curve-fitting equation will look like it's derived from a Newtonian ideal. But it does mean that it captures actual behavior. It also lets you look at modes of failure, such as what happens if torsion occurs as part of the loading. I-beams are notoriously susceptible to torsion, and they don't resist much load after one end rotates. That introduces the notion of anisotropic behavior. In the synthetic approach, that would be folded into the cross-sectional area consideration. Anything other than a circular cross section will resist bending moments in a complex way relating to the geometry.
The analytical approach seems "messy" to physics generalists who want to show their prowess in the form of pages of densely notated derivations. But that's now Newton did it. When Sir Isaac got around to studying the mechanics of cantilevered beams, the engineer's approach was exactly what he used. And because of imprecision in his measurements, he actually ended up fitting the wrong curve to it and later scientists had to revise his findings. He had the right idea; he was just limited by circumstance.
So Jones "augments" the existing models with simplistic ideas that his generalist's intuition say should apply -- conservation of momentum and energy. These are true scientific principles, but they don't apply to structural analysis in the specific way Jones thinks they do. He applies them at the macro scale, where Newtonian mechanics doesn't really explain a lot of observable behavior.
Jones isn't the first physicist to be unaware that materials properties don't scale in naively predictable ways, hence the cinder block gaffe. He isn't the first physicist to suppose that columns are robust enough to let a structure topple significantly before buckling. He isn't the first physicist to hubristicly suppose that those who have taken the basic principles of his science far beyond his comprehension and into the realm of practical use and descriptive nuance, are somehow ignorant. Yes, the models used for structural analysis in the real world include such things as conservation of energy and momentum. But not necessary as explicit terms.
And so after cobbling up his own untested models based on handwaving allusions to first-year physics, Jones then berates the authors at NIST and elsewhere for not using them. Why don't they include the basic concepts? he asks. Perhaps because these are the people whose PhDs are relevant to the problem and whose methods have been tested and validated many times over the 200 years of rational engineering.
That's how real stuff gets done. I've seen generalists propose elaborate synthetic (i.e., extended from first principles) methods for problems that practitioners solve analytically (i.e., by considering elements of observable behavior) using simple control laws -- "if this happens, do that." And the analytical solutions are always more predictive and robust. Why? Because a synthetic approach requires you to consider
all the applicable first principles (including those you may have forgotten) and put them in an appropriate context according to what order of effect you think they have. The analytical approach necessarily includes all the whys and wherefores. And it considers them as they are actually seen to combine to produce aggregate results. It's impossible to forget to include something you didn't know about or you didn't think was important. In the larger sense, this is why licensed engineers have to sign off on certain things, not physicists.
Nearly all physicists I know are quite honest about what they don't know. I had a guy talk to me about measuring diffraction for some research he was doing. He kept peppering his pitch with disclaimers about what he had yet to work out on the practical end of things, and saying things like, "I probably don't know as much about this as I need to." Jones is one of the uncommon exceptions: the physicist with delusions of grandeur. Well, or of competence. Granted, it's a problem more among amateur physicists than professionals. But a small minority of physicists seem to fall into the same trap some physicians do -- a sort of God complex. The "glaring omissions" he attributes to the professional investigators are reckoning merely according to his untested notions, not against the actual licensed, peer-reviewed science. His expertise in particle physics does not mean his expectations in structural engineering have value.
