Thursday, November 23, 2006

Jones at Berkeley

Here's a video of Steven Jones at Berkeley last week. Comments:

1. Jones spends a great deal of time giving his credentials; there is a long discussion of his work on cold fusion, with far too much detail for the audience.

2. Jones has a self-deprecating wit that is quite disarming if a trifle dry. It is difficult to dislike him, unlike, for example, Uncle Fetzer, who is a little prickly at times, and at times you can remove the "ly" from that description.

3. Jones once again emphasizes WTC-7; we get the familiar claim that "If you dropped a steel ball off the roof, it wouldn't fall much faster."

4. Jones also claims that controlled demolition causes buildings to fall at close to free-fall times. I would like to see his evidence for this. The few occasions I have timed actual controlled demolitions, they took longer than free-fall.

5. Jones claims that the NIST study underway on WTC-7 includes only floors 8-46. He also states that he hopes that the NIST study will consider explosives. Of course, if Jones had been reading Screw Loose Change, he would know that the NIST study will include:

Investigation of hypothetical blast scenarios
Evaluation of thermite as a possible blast substance


6. At 35:00, Jones cites Joseph M. Phelps, who helps us understand with regard to WTC-7's collapse, "That airplane couldn't cause this." This puts Mr Phelps, who's apparently quite an expert on the structural engineering of golf courses, squarely in the OCT camp, since nobody I know claims that an airplane caused WTC-7's collapse, at least not directly (of course, American Airlines Flight 11 indirectly caused it).

I decided to take a break at this point, since Jones moves on to discussion of the collapse times of the two towers.

3 Comments:

At 23 November, 2006 10:42, Blogger James B. said...

LOL I love it when he says he submitted his paper to the Journal of 9/11 Studies...

Dude, it is your own journal, you started it! That would be like me stating that I submit my posts to the blog Screw Loose Change for publication.

Ironically he says that his paper was in a book before the journal. When I sent him a paper that I had written for our Journal of Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories, Dr. Jones accused me of violating academic ethics because I had already "published it".

 
At 23 November, 2006 12:00, Blogger The Artistic Macrophage said...

Like I have always said, I will give his paper acknoledgement, when, and only when, it has been PROPERLY and INDEPENDENTLY (1) Peer Reviewed, and (2) published by a reputable scientific or engineering journal. until then it is horse crap. EOS.

TAM

 
At 27 November, 2006 11:01, Blogger Vader said...

LOL I love it when he says he submitted his paper to the Journal of 9/11 Studies...

Well, that's basically what got him suspended from BYU. Rigged peer review is a violation of academic standards. If he hadn't resigned, there's a fair chance he would have been dismissed for cause.

 

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