Why The Chain of Custody Matters

Over in the thread at Truth Move, Victoria Ashley says:

John, the chain of custody issue is cooked up by the debunkers. The handling of the samples was done no differently then typical scientific studies, and much research out there on the dust uses the same methods and no police were involved. The USGS did not have police escorts, the UC Davis researchers did not get dust from the police, etc. That is just not done in scientific studies, which is what this is. In fact, most studies never say anything about how the dust was obtained, only where it was found.

And in a sense, she's right. Nobody cares where the USGS or the EPA (which she mentions later) got their samples. But there's a crucial difference here. The chain of custody matters precisely because the Troofers are claiming this is evidence that nanothermite was used to bring down the towers. Presumably they would like to use this as evidence in a court of law, which has very strict standards for chain of custody.

She BSes a bit here:

John, yes, it looks like the French researcher did not have the equipment to do the crucial calorimetry test so could not be considered to have done a significant independent analysis. Thanks for reminding me about him, I'd forgotten what the issues were about his attempt to analyze the samples.

Let's reiterate what he said:

The chips do not react even when heated to 900 degrees C. He doesn't need a calorimeter to measure that. BTW, although he mostly found red chips instead of red and gray ones, that doesn't matter, because Jones claimed that it was the red portion that showed the thermitic reaction.