Red-Gray Chips Tested and Determined Not to Be Thermite

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you.  Here's the report; there is active discussion going on at JREF. Main point:

The red/gray chips found in the WTC dust at four sites in New York City are consistent with a carbon steel coated with an epoxy resin that contains primarily iron oxide and kaolin clay pigments.

There is no evidence of individual elemental aluminum particles of any size in the red/gray chips, therefore the red layer of the red/gray chips is not thermite or nano-thermite.

 (Bolding added for emphasis).  Kudos to Chris Mohr for pursuing this matter and to all the folks who contributed funds to the effort.  So far no response from the supermagiconanothermite team of Jones, Ryan or Harritt.

Goodbye Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal

Well, well, it looks like they do have some standards after all. Bentham Publishers has dropped the journal which published the Active Thermitic Materials paper by Harrit and Jones:

There is an Open Physical Chemistry Journal, but the Thermite paper is not located there. If you do a search for Harrit, the paper is shown on their site, but it's a ghost; clicking on the link gives you a 404 error.



But I'll let the Von Trapps have the final word:


Hat Tip: moorea34 at JREF.

Bentham Comedy Continues

It seems that the storied nanothermite paper is collapsing into to its footprint at freefall speed. A former professor at the University of Ottawa did a critique of the paper and sent it to the supposed current editor. Guess what? The supposed current editor resigned awhile ago. Why?

1) I was not editor of the journal at the time the manuscript you refer to was received and processed. I was not involved in its handling, and in no way do i agree with its conclusions. In fact i do not even know how the paper's peer reviewing was handled - or if it was reviewed at all. The journal never wanted to disclosed this matter to me

2) What may be even worse - noone seems to be at the helm of this Journal. Months ago -simply after becoming acquainted with the article you mention, its possible misshandling, etc- i submitted my immediate resignation as editor to the open chemical physics journal. As you can see from the email below, my letter of resignation was received and acknowledged. However, i still appear as the journal's editor - in fact i'm still receiving manuscripts to handle (which i naturally ignore).

(bolding added for emphasis).

Yep, he resigned over the Harrit/Jones paper. Note in particular that the professor who critiqued the nanothermite paper is sympathetic to the "Truth" Movement.

Hat Tip: grandmastershek at JREF.

Ready for a Laugh?

Guess who exposed himself as the peer-reviewer for Steven Jones' Active Thermitic Materials paper?

No, not Snoopy. That would be deserving of some respect. Instead it's that sack of fecal matter inhabiting the hockey jersey, David L. Griscom. Does that seem like a harsh assessment of such a kindly-looking old phart?

Well, Griscom has earned it and more. In a movement not exactly blessed with sensitivity, he came up with the single-most offensive theory put forth by the Truthers: All the passengers on the four doomed flights are alive and living it up in Tahiti.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

As I have pointed out in the past, the reason these retards believe that somebody could be persuaded to betray their friends, family and country, is because they themselves would jump at the opportunity, provided the Swiss bank account was handsome enough.

So yes, the guy who "peer-reviewed" Jones' paper is a Troofer moron himself. Professor Jones tries to put a smiley face on it:

The reviewer's name is Prof. David L. Griscom. Among his impressive credentials, Prof. Griscom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the AAAS.

Well, he's certainly an AAAS-hole, Steven. But even the Troofers have their limits, and in the comments, loosenuke points out:

Does his promotion of theories, for which there's no actual evidence, such as 'all passengers survived' and 'the Pentagon was hit by a fighter jet', affect your opinion of his credibility- why or why not?

And JO911S published a letter by Griscom Feb 07; why didn't you mention this?

I think you previously mentioned that Bentam was given suggestions for reviewers; was Griscom one of the people suggested?

Jones does a little shuffle:

I do not think that Prof. Griscom's studies on 9/11 "compromise" him as a reviewer -- he critiqued the paper critically as a scientist, giving (as he said) the authors twelve pages of comments and questions. This scientific thoroughness is unusual in a review (from my experience) -- very unusual.

I do not know how the editors selected the reviewers, and I do not know the name of the other reviewer.

Never mind that he's a nut; his nuttiness wasn't evident in his review of our paper. And the second part is a dodge; loosenuke didn't ask him how the reviewer was chosen, just whether Jones recommended him. Given that Jones used to point out Griscom as an example of another physics professional for 9-11 "Truth", it's not hard for me to guess the answer to that question.

But it gets even better. Jones says he doesn't know who the second peer-reviewer was. Not to worry, the next commenter says:

I do know the name of the second Peer Reviewer, who obviously wants to stay anonymous yet. All I can say is that his reputation is undoubtable, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that if Sitting Bull knows him, he must indubitably be another fruitcake.

Mostly About the Bentham Open Chemical/Physics Journal

A terrific bit of debunking here. Note that the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal only published four papers in 2009. Care to guess their total for 2010? Here's a hint; it's a nice, round number.

Bentham Journals Get Punk'd! Again.

LOL, remember all the pride that the kooks expressed when Jones and Harrit, et. al., got their paper published in the "peer-reviewed Bentham Open Journals?" Well, turns out that's not the only BS paper published at that venue:

Earlier this year, Davis started receiving unsolicited emails from Bentham Science Publishers, which publishes more than 200 "open-access" journals – which turn the conventional business model of academic publishing on its head by charging publication fees to the authors of research papers, and then making the content available for free.

As the emails stacked up, Davis was not only encouraged to submit papers, but was also invited to serve on the editorial board of some of Bentham's journals – for which he was told he would be allowed to publish one free article each year. "I received solicitations for journals for which I had no subject expertise at all," says Davis. "It really painted a picture of vanity publishing."

Oh, but it gets better, much better. After creating their paper with a computer program that generates nutty stuff:

Davis and Anderson, writing under the noms de plume David Phillips and Andrew Kent, also dropped a hefty hint of the hoax by giving their institutional affiliation as the Center for Research in Applied Phrenology, or CRAP.

Yet four months after the article was submitted, "David Phillips" received an email from Sana Mokarram, Bentham's assistant manager of publication:

This is to inform you that your submitted article has been accepted for publication after peer-reviewing process in TOISCIJ. I would be highly grateful to you if you please fill and sign the attached fee form and covering letter and send them back via email as soon as possible to avoid further delay in publication.

The publication fee was $800, to be sent to a PO Box in the United Arab Emirates.

Of course, those of us who've been paying attention know that the Bentham Journals got punk'd the first time when they published the ridiculous paper by Harrit, Jones, Ryan and Szamboti.

Hats off to Philip Meir Davis and Kent Anderson, who pulled off the hoax. Here's a sample of the computer-generated nonsense:

In this section, we discuss existing research into red-black trees, vacuum tubes, and courseware [10]. On a similar note, recent work by Takahashi suggests a methodology for providing robust modalities, but does not offer an implementation [9].

It makes more sense than what Jones and Harrit published.

Hat tip for this excellent find to alienentity at JREF, who points us to this post by Volatile, also at JREF.

Update: More discussion here. Turns out that the footnotes have some hilarity in them, including a 2005 article by Alan Turing and Timothy Leary (both dead by that point--Turing had been dead for 50 years), and Noam Chomsky's work on vacuum tubes and voice over IP protocols.

Davis posts here.

What is surprising is that the assistant manager claimed that the article went through peer-review although there is no evidence that it actually did. Anyone with English proficiency — with or without a degree in computer science — would recognize that this manuscript makes absolutely no sense.

Remember Jones claiming that this was the most rigorous peer review he'd ever undergone? I'm certainly hoping that's not true.

Update: Fallout from the incident:

Bambang Parmanto, a University of Pittsburgh information scientist, resigned from his editorship at The Open Information Science Journal (TOISCIJ) after reading a story on The Scientist's website yesterday (June 10) that described a hoax paper submission to the journal. Editors at journal claimed to have peer reviewed the article and slated it for publication pending the submission of $800 in "open access fees."

"I didn't like what happened," Parmanto told The Scientist. "If this is true, I don't have full control of the content that is accepted to this journal." Parmanto said that he had never seen the phony manuscript that was accepted by TOISCIJ. "I want to lessen my exposure to the risk of being taken advantage of."

You may recall that the editor of the Journal that published Harrit and Jones' paper also resigned immediately after that paper was accepted.

By the way, Parmanto may have to wait for awhile for his name to be removed from the masthead; check out the first comment here:

Well done! I have had my doubts about that journal for quite some time. Actually, I have long ago withdrawn from the so-called editorial board because I felt something was wrong. I am actually a bit shocked to find out that my name still figures on the list!!

Bentham Editor Resigns over Steven Jones' Paper

Looks like the "peer-review" didn't include the editor:

"They have printed the article without my authorization else, so when you wrote to me, I did not mean that the article was published. I can not accept, and I have written to Bentham, that I withdraw myself from all activities with them, "says Marie-Paule Pileni, which daily is a professor specializing in nanomaterials at the prestigious Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France .

The language sounds a little stilted, but it's translated from the original (Danish).

Update: A translation of the article from Steve S, one of our commenters:

Editor in chief resigns after controversial article on 9/11
28 April 2009
From videnskab.dk ( Danish science news service)

An article on explosives in the World Trace Center was published in a scientific journal without the editor in chief knowing about it. Now she is resigning, she tells Videnskab.dk ([science.denmark])
By Thomas Hoffman (th@videnskab.dk).

It created a great attention, surprise and suspicion when the Open Chemical Physics Journal in April published a scientific article on remains of nanothermite which were found in great amounts in the dust from the WTC.

One those most surprised is apparently the editor in chief of the journal. Professor Marie-Paule Pileni first heard about he article when videnskab.dk wrote to her to ask for her professional assessment of the article’s content. The e-mail got her to immediately close the door to the journal.

“I resign as the editor in chief”, was the abrupt answer in an email to videnskab.dk

PRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION
A telephone call reveals that editor in chief Marie-Paule Pileni had never been informed that the article was going to be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, which is published by the journal giant Bentham Science Publishers.

“They have printed the article without my permission, so when you wrote to me, I did not know that the article had appeared. I cannot accept this, and therefore I have written to Bentham that I resign from all activities with them”, explains Marie Paule Pileni, who is professor with a specialty in nanomaterials at the renowned Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in France.

She feels not only stabbed in the back, but is puzzled that the article on dust analysis following the terror attack on the U.S. on 11 September 2001 could at all have found its way to the Open Chemical Physics Journal.

“I cannot accept that this topic is published in my journal. The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period.” Concludes the former editor in chief.

FAILING GRADES TO THE JOURANL
The editor-in-chief’s dramatic departure gives critics additional reason to doubt the article’s conclusions, but Marie-Paule Pileni points out that because the topic lies outside her field of expertise, she cannot judge whether the article in itself is good or bad.

Nevertheless, the publication gets her to give the Open Chemical Physics Journal failing grades.

“I was in fact in doubt about them before, because I had on several occasions asked about information about the journal without having heard from them. It does not appear on the list of international journals, and that is a bad sign. Now I can see that it is because it is a bad journal”, says Marie-Paule Pileni and continues:

“There are no references to the Open Chemical Physics Journal in other articles. I have two colleagues who contributed to publishing an article which was not cited anyplace either. If no one reads it, it is a bad journal, and there is not use for it”, is the harsh verdict.

The professor informs us that a few years ago she was invited to be editor in chief of a journal which would open new possibilities for new researchers and because she supports the idea of open access journals where the articles are accessible to everyone, she said, “Yes” thank you.

“It is important to allow people to try and gain success, but one should not be allowed to do everything, and all this is certainly a bunch of nonsense. I try to be a serious researcher, and I will not have my name connected with this kind of thing,” concludes Marie-Paule Pileni.

DOES NOT CHANGE THE INVESTIGATION
The editor-in-chief’s decision is viewed as regrettable by the Danish chemist Niels Harrit, who is one of the authors to the controversial article on nanothermite in the dust from the WTC.

“It surprises me, of course, and it is regrettable, if it discredits our work. But her departure doesn’t change our conclusions, for it is a purely personnel related thing she his angry about. I still believe that we have carried out chemical physics, and if there is something wrong with our study, she is welcome to criticize us for it,” says Niels Harrit, Associate Professor at the Institute of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen.

It is Niels Harrit’s coauthor Steven Jones who was in charge of contact to Bentham, and therefore the Danish researcher is presently not aware which responsible assistant editor the group has been communicating with.

However, he does know the names of the two researchers –so-called referees—who have reviewed he article, but he will not give their names because they ‘are in principle anonymous’.

DANE WITHDREW FROM THE JOURNAL
Niels Harrit’s superior at the University of Copenhagen, Nils O. Andersen has himself participated in the pool of researchers who could be selected as editor, on an article which should be published in The Open Chemical Physics Journal. He has recently chosen to resign from the journals Editorial Advisory Board.

He informs videnskab.dk that the decision has nothing to do with Niels Harrit’s article, and that he otherwise did not achieve having any experiences with the journals, so that he cannot shed further light on how the journal operates.

“Open access is an exciting development, and as a principle the idea should be tried out for there is no reason for the commercial publishers to earn money from our work. But professionally, the journal lay at the margin of my expertise, and as I had said No to be editor of two articles, I decided that I would not use my time on anything else.”, explains Nils O. Andersen, dean of the faculty of Natural Sciences and editor of the European Physical Journal D.

It has not yet been possible to get any comment from Bentham Science Publishers.

Thanks, Steve!

Jones & Company Go the Vanity Publishing Route Again

The Raw Story runs with it:

A team of nine scientists have unearthed startling data from dust gathered in the days and weeks after the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11. They discovered that scattered throughout the dust samples were red and gray chips of 'active thermitic material', or an un-reacted pyrotechnic explosive.

Here's the actual article itself; published again at the Bentham Open Journals, a vanity publishing outfit based in... wait for it... Pakistan.

Ongoing discussion of the article at JREF. I particularly recommend this post, which shows that the chemical signatures are not there.