More Publicity For Conspiracy Theorists
The Associated Press jumps merrily aboard the lunatic special with an article on the 9/11 denialists. Despite the fact that almost every one of the so-called Scholars for 9/11 Truth are not educated, in any way whatsoever, in the fields that they decide to pass judgment on, AP gives them a free ride and free publicity.
Would they do the same thing for Holocaust deniers? They sure don't for creationists.
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 FR 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."
This is really quite simple. At this point, according to the article they have exactly one physicist and one former associate professor of mechanical engineering on board their happy little train. The rest are liberally educated in liberal arts. This quote tells all you need to know: "
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."
Well, this isn't my field, but since I slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night, I'm qualified to do brain surgery.
People like this are not smart enough to know what they are ignorant of. That would be physics and engineering. Having two on your side means you're only outnumbered by several million who do know what they are talking about.
By Black Jack, Sunday, 6 August , 2006 @ 5:16 pm
Does it seem curious these 9/11 denialists apparently have no interest in the collapse of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City? After all, on April 19, 1995, in the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in US history, 168 people died and hundreds were injured.
A large building with a day care center for children collapsed following an explosion. One might think folks so compellingly drawn to the collapse of the Twin Towers might have some interest in similar events. But, no, it doesn’t seem so. Now why might that be?