just like a yeast infection...
Posted on 08/07/2006 5:28:09 PM PDT by Graybeard58
Kevin Barrett believes the U.S government might have destroyed the World Trade Center. Steven Jones is researching what he calls evidence that the twin towers were brought down by explosives detonated inside them, not by hijacked airliners.
These men aren't uneducated junk scientists: Barrett will teach a class on Islam at the University of Wisconsin this fall, over the protests of more than 60 state legislators. Jones is a tenured physicist at Brigham Young University whose mainstream academic job has made him a hero to conspiracy theorists.
Five years after the terrorist attacks, a community that believes widely discredited ideas about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, persists and even thrives. Members trade their ideas on the Internet and in self-published papers and in books. About 500 of them attended a recent conference in Chicago.
The movement claims to be drawing fresh energy and credibility from a recently formed group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
The organization says publicity over Barrett's case has helped boost membership to about 75 academics. They are a tiny minority of the 1 million part- and full-time faculty nationwide, and some have no university affiliation. Most aren't experts in relevant fields. But some are well educated, with degrees from elite universities such as Princeton and Stanford and jobs at schools including Rice, Indiana and the University of Texas.
"Things are happening," said co-founder James Fetzer, a retired philosophy professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth, who maintains, among other claims, that some of the hijackers are still alive. "We're going to continue to do this. Our role is to establish what really happened on 9/11."
What really happened, the national Sept. 11 Commission concluded after 1,200 interviews, was that hijackers crashed planes into the twin towers. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, filed 10,000 pages of reports that found fires caused by the crashing planes were more than sufficient to collapse the buildings.
The scholars' group rejects those conclusions. Their Web site contends the government has been dishonest. It adds: the "World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions" and "the government not only permitted 9/11 to occur but may even have orchestrated these events to facilitate its political agenda."
The standards and technology institute, and many mainstream scientists, won't debate conspiracy theorists, saying they don't want to lend them unwarranted credibility.
But some worry the academic background of the group could do that anyway.
Members of the conspiracy community "practically worship the ground (Jones) walks on because he's seen as a scientist who is preaching to their side," said F.R. Greening, a Canadian chemist who has written several papers rebutting the science used by Sept. 11 conspiracy theorists. "It's science, but it's politically motivated. It's science with an ax to grind, and therefore it's not really science."
When asked what did happen in 2001, members often step outside the rigorous, data-based culture of the academy and defer to their own instincts.
David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor, acknowledges this isn't his field, but says "I'm smart enough to know ... that fire from airplanes can't melt steel."
When they do cite evidence, critics such as Greening contend it's junk science from fellow conspiracy theorists, dressed up in the language and format of real research to give it a sense of credibility.
Jones focuses on the relatively narrow question of whether molten metal present at the World Trade Center site after the attacks is evidence that a high-temperature incendiary called thermite, which can be used to weld or cut metal, was involved in the towers' destruction. He concludes thermite was present, throwing the government's entire explanation into question and suggesting someone might have used explosives to bring down the towers.
In fact, say Greening and other experts, the molten metal Jones cites was most likely aluminum from the planes, and any number of explanations are more likely than thermite.
And the National Institute of Standards and Technology's report describes how the buildings collapsed from the inside in a chain reaction once the floors began falling.
BYU's physics department and engineering school have issued statements distancing themselves from Jones' work, but he says they have not interfered.
These nutty professors have every right to their viewpoints, as long as they don't bring them into the classrooms while they're on the clock.
I want tenure at my job! Can I do good work for a year or so and then get insulated from the threat of firing? Is there any other job that allows this?
On 9-11, 19 Muslims killed 3000 people. They have murdered over 1 million in Sudan. For the conspiracy believers I leave you with 5 letters.
Y.A.A.F.M.
I guess that AP doesn't care that a GENUINE conspiracy is afoot to smear Israel in the attacks on Lebanon.
Enough of these seditous bastards who claim "Rove did it".
We have real enemies and if this seditious sect won't stand up against the Islamic militants, I'll lump them all in the same boat. They both stand against America.
The kooks over on Liberty Post are convinced that Sept. 11th was a George W. Bush plot to bring about the NWO.
I probably agree with that.
(BYU's physics department and engineering school have issued statements distancing themselves from Jones' work, but he says they have not interfered.)
Sorry, but these academics have used the fact that they work for respectable universities to advance their conspiracy theories. The only way universities can distance themselves from them is by firing them. Absent that, they are responsible for these professors and are de facto supporting them. They should be held into account by parents who are sending their kids and money to these universities.
another link
9/11: Debunking The Myths
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
just like a yeast infection...
Y.A.A.F.M.
http://zipperfish.com/free/yaafm12.php
Maybe you've seen this, maybe you have'nt. If you haven't, check it out, you'll enjoy it.
Lol, yup. That's where I stole it,,, errr, I mean errr, borrowed it...... :) It takes awhile for it to load up since I'm on dial up, but I think I'll watch it again!
Proof positive of Paradox's Axiom. The "smarter" the individual, the greater the power of self-deception.
The word I heard from one theorist was that Popular Mechanics mysteriously replaced their entire writing staff just before this piece. So it goes that they MUST have been replaced by the great world conspiracy.
Seriously!
And proof of the tinfoil-hat-wearing status of these Kooks is shown by this one!
Did the super-secret Federal Government NSA transporter "beam" them out of the airplanes? None of the footage shows any open/missing doors, so I don't know how they could have bailed out....
Maybe the REAL hijakcers were CIA operatives radio-controlling the planes...yeah, that's the ticket!
I just find it so entertaining that every time some Kook starts making some sort of sense, they then throw some goofy statement in that just totally brings us back to reality.
I guess it is true - a lot of college professors hit the bong WAY too much over the last few decades!
You left out the biggest piece of those crazies' puzzle - it was the Joozzzeee who orchestrated it all and used their money,power, and influence (after all, don't they own all the media...) to bring about 9/11 to force the US to join them in their anti-Islam/world domination agenda....
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