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The Pseudo-Science of the '9/11 Truth' Movement
By Edmund Standing
In recent months, a number of high (and not so high) profile celebrities have publicly offered support to conspiracy theories regarding the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Central to the claims of many who embrace notions of 9/11 as an 'inside job' is that credible scientific research by mainstream scientists supports this position. In this article, I shall briefly look at two qualified academic scientists who hold that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by a cabal of scheming neo-conservatives in Washington DC. The picture that emerges is not one of mainstream scientists whose research is trustworthy and should be urgently addressed. Instead, we find purveyors of extreme and fact-free conspiracy theories, scientists who appear to have little regard for the scientific method, and who mirror in every way the pseudo-scholars found in other fringe 'research' areas such as 'Creation Science'.
Dr Steven E. Jones
Steven Jones is a retired Professor of Physics. His retirement from his post at Brigham Young University followed a period in which the university placed him on paid leave due to controversy over his claims of a 9/11 conspiracy involving the 'controlled demolition' of the World Trade Center's twin towers. Brigham Young University is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) and run under its 'Church Educational System', and Jones is a committed Mormon. Throughout his career, Jones' main area of academic interest has been 'alternative energies', including the widely discredited 'Cold Fusion'. However, in addition to this, he has also been keenly involved in Archaeometry 'research', the entire aim of which has been to give an academic sheen to the claims of the Book of Mormon. Jones is 'scientific advisor' to the Ancient Historical Research Foundation, a pseudo-scholarly body that produces research on ancient American cultures and peoples such as Native Americans, Aztecs, and Mayans. The central purpose of this work is to support the Book of Mormon's absurd 'historical' claims, and, with this aim, Jones has engaged in a search for evidence of 'pre-Columbian' horse remains in North America. In addition to this, he has also published a risible paper in which he claims to have found evidence in ancient Mayan artwork 'proving' the Book of Mormon's claims regarding Jesus visiting America. The article, entitled 'Behold My Hands: Evidence for Christ's Visit in Ancient America', concludes:
These discoveries have provided me a deeper appreciation for the reality of the resurrection of Jesus and of His visit to "other sheep" who heard His voice and saw His wounded hands as did Thomas. My hope is that these new insights will encourage you to seriously consider the Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Christ. Why don't you start reading right away?
Having spent his career swimming in the murky of waters of religiously inspired pseudo-scholarship and dubious 'scientific' fringe areas, Jones has in recent years turned his attention to the attacks of September 11th 2001, and now claims to have evidence proving WTC towers 1 & 2 were brought down in a 'controlled demolition'. For Jones, the 9/11 attacks were an 'inside job', orchestrated by 'neo-conservatives' to justify the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries, inflate military spending and expand Israel. Indeed, Jones has confidently asserted that 'by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this'. Rather than seeking to have his 'research' published in credible, peer reviewed academic journals, Jones simply started his own. The online 'Journal of 9/11 Studies' seeks 'to provide evidence-based, peer-reviewed research that furthers the cause of truth and justice'. As such, it largely publishes articles focusing on the supposed 'controlled demolition' of the twin towers, but has also included a variety of sociological and political pieces, including a desperate article which claims that it is psychological blocks, as opposed to a complete lack of evidence, that stops more people subscribing to 9/11 conspiracy theories. In common with 'journals' set up by Creationist outfits, the claim that the journal is 'peer-reviewed' turns out to be misleading at best. Of course, if one's peers are all Creationists or conspiracy theorists, then one's articles may indeed be peer reviewed, but this peer review process is hardly likely to challenge any of the extreme and unscientifically supported claims to be found in those articles. Indeed, a statistical summary of the 'journal''s output has revealed that 'fourteen of the 43 papers, or nearly a third of the papers accepted by the editors, are written by the editors themselves' and that 'of the original 43 papers, the numbers of papers written by someone with a PhD in a science, who is not one of the editors of the journal themselves, and who is not merely rebutting another previously held conspiracy theory comes out to a grand total of... 4, or a mere 9%' . But what of the quality of the research? Aside from the fact it is so dubious that the authors do not dare submit it to credible, mainstream journals, it often contains errors that are simply embarassing. For example, Jones has attempted to buttress his claim that he has found proof that cutting charges were used to 'demolish' the twin towers by pointing to an image supposedly showing molten metal glowing at Ground Zero. A quick search by the conspiracy debunker Pat Curley revealed the source of the glow to be nothing more nefarious than a high-powered portable light.
Jones, then, is a man who believes in the mythology of Mormonism, whose last academic post was at a 'university' that institutionally subscribes to this same mythology, a man who has an interest in fringe science, who associates with a 'research foundation' devoted to archaeological 'anomalies', and who claims to have found evidence proving Jesus visited America. Adding to this career of idiocy, he now edits a journal promoting totally unscientific theories about the 9/11 Islamist terrorist attacks, and heads another crackpot 'research' group called 'Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice' (a group, which, unsurprisingly, he co-founded).
Dr Judy Wood
From 1999 to 2006, Wood was an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, and the majority of her academic work has been in the field of materials testing. So far so good, but then comes her 9/11 'research'. Wood claims that she 'started to question the events of 9/11 on that same day when what she saw and heard on television was contradictory and appeared to violate the laws of physics'. Despite the fact that no major scientific body believes the World Trade Center building collapses pose any questions related to the laws of physics, Wood clearly knows something they don't. For Wood, the WTC collapses constitute a 'New Hiroshima'. While some conspiracists go so far as claiming that the World Trade Center was demolished using 'mini-nukes' and that 9/11 was a 'nuclear demolition', for Wood, the 'New Hiroshima' was carried out using 'directed energy weapons'.
As with most 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Wood has drawn her conclusions based on highly contentious interpretations of photo and video evidence of the events of September 11th. By carrying out a highly selective analysis of these images, Wood has concluded that the WTC structures became 'dustified' during the collapses. She claims that there is a 'lack of suffient debris' to corroborate the 'official story' of the towers collapsing due to their structural integrity being fatally compromised by a weakening of the steel due to the extreme heat produced by fires following the plane crashes. Consequently, according to Wood, all the evidence points to the WTC buildings having been destroyed by 'Star Wars beams', and she is promoting this claim in tandem with Dr Morgan Reynolds, a former White House chief economist (2001-2) who believes no planes were used on 9/11 and all video evidence of planes is fake and shows little more than 'cartoons'.
In making her case, Wood employs a dazzling array of neologisms and pseudo-scientific terms and concepts. She refers to various 9/11 phenomena using terminology such as 'jelly beams' and 'jellification', 'Alkaseltzer', 'Shaving Cream', 'toasting', 'Fuzzyblobs', 'Fuzzballs, 'Cheetos', 'fuming into nanohaze', 'fuming rust', 'lathering up', 'Silly String', and 'dustification'. Wood's work is so absurd that even fellow 9/11 conspiracy theorists are able to see it for the lunacy that it is, and mainstream debunkers have no trouble dispensing with her claims either.
Despite this, Wood is a respected member of another 9/11 research group, 'Scholars for 9/11 Truth', which announces itself as 'a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11'. The group was founded by Professor (of Philosophy) James Fetzer, a man whose academic oeuvre includes 3 books advocating JFK conspiracy theories, and who co-edits another online 'journal', 'Assassination Research - Journal for the Advanced Study of the Death of JFK'.
In common with other 9/11 conspiracy theorists, Wood embraces numerous pseudo-scientific and paranoia-induced and inducing beliefs. She shares Steven Jones' interest in 'Cold Fusion', although, according to Wood, Jones 'sabotaged cold fusion and he is sabotaging the truth about 9/11'.
Conclusion
Contrary to the claims that 9/11 conspiracy theories are backed by 'real science' and 'real scientists', the picture that actually emerges is remarkably similar to other fringe movements such as Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Holocaust Revisionism: academics making extraordinary claims without the extraordinary evidence required to back them up, selective use of evidence, an obsession with alleged 'anomalies', allegations of 'cover-ups', claims that their 'research' is being suppressed by 'the establishment', persecution complexes, the setting up of self-serving and self-referential 'journals' and 'scholarly' groups, infighting, egotism, and paranoia.
In reality, there is no more evidence for the claim that 9/11 was an 'inside job' than there is that God created the world in six days, that the Holocaust never happened, that Jesus walked in America, or that an angel dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad. These are faith based positions, and to attempt to claim there are credible 'scientific' reasons for embracing conspiracies about the September 11th attacks is an insult both to real science and to the memory of those who died on that day.
Edmund Standing holds a BA in Theology & Religious Studies and an MA in Critical & Cultural Theory. His other articles on this website can be found in the articles archive.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com...int.php?num=320
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