You Too Can Be a Peer Reviewer!

Apparently things are so bad over at the mostly defunct Journal of 911 Studies that Frank Legge is now begging for reviewers.

There are two papers in need of review for submission to the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

One is by David Chandler and myself. It provides evidence that the witnesses to the path of the plane approaching the Pentagon, who stated that it passed north of the Citgo service station, must have been mistaken. The paper concludes that the only plausible description of the approach is that the plane did not deviate round the service station but flew virtually straight and hit the Pentagon, as described by the vast majority of eye witnesses.

The other is by John Wyndham. Here is the abstract of his paper:
Abstract: The widespread belief among those who question the official account of 9/11, that a large plane did not hit the Pentagon on 9/11, is unsupported by the evidence. The failure of the 9/11 truth movement to reach consensus on this issue after almost a decade is largely due to a failure to rigorously apply the scientific method to the evidence as a whole. This paper, by so applying the evidence to each proposed theory, shows that a large plane hitting the Pentagon is by far the most plausible theory.

Great, so after 10 years of cutting edge research and truthseeking they finally figured out what the rest of us knew that Tuesday morning. And they wonder why nobody takes them seriously?

OK, Now This is Getting Ridiculous

Before I was just making fun of the guy, now he has become a self-parody. I guess this is his idea of peer-review.

What Hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on the Credibility of 9/11 Truth

Frank Legge (BSc, PhD)
flegge@iinet.net.au
21 October 2009

Version 6. Calculation errors in the previous version have been corrected. Version 5 included a table showing that a range of flight paths exist which would enable a Boeing 757 to hit the light poles and the Pentagon without experiencing excessive g-force. As some researchers have stated that this is impossible the issue of misinformation arises and is examined. Version 4 added the preface to clarify the purpose of the paper and to answer some unfounded criticisms. I am very grateful for the help provided. All significant alterations have been identified and discussed in footnotes.

I'll give him another week before I expect version 7.

Wow, That Was Some Peer Review

These people are beyond parody.

Version 5 has considerable revision from page 8 on, and a few minor edits earlier. The main addition is a table showing that there is a range of flight paths which would enable the plane to hit the light poles and the Pentagon, without excessive g-force being encountered.
http://journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf

Already I have found errors in version 5 so there will be a version 6. The errors are in the table of flight paths going over the Navy Annex. The argument remains unchanged however. The paths going over and to the south of the VDOT antenna I still believe are correct.

The Truth Version 4.0

Geez, the troofers have more bug fixes than Microsoft. Frank Legge, one of the editors of the supposedly peer-reviewed Journal of 9/11 Studies, has now published the 4th version of his paper on the Pentagon, and says he might come out with a 5th. Now wasn't this paper supposed to be peer-reviewed before the first version? The thing is, it is still stupid.

Version 4. This version further developed some issues and corrected some errors. It also added thepreface to clarify the purpose of the paper and to answer some unfounded criticisms. Version 3 expanded the implications of publicly accepting or rejecting the official position that a 757 hit the Pentagon. I am very grateful for the help provided. All significant alterations have been identified and discussed in footnotes.

Update: I figured I should throw this in, as it is related to this paper. After the first version came out, I e-mailed Legge asking him a question about a statement he had made. Here is part of the exchange:

JamesB
Are you familiar with the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy?

"Why did the plane aim for the reinforced section, which still had few occupants due to the recent renovation? Would al Qaeda have wanted to minimize casualties? Why did it not hit the relatively weak roof? There were auditors in the damaged section who were investigating the loss of trillions of military dollars. Most of the auditors died, which has led to considerable speculation regarding motive. Who would wish to kill auditors?"

I am not asserting that this event is proof, but that it relates to the probability of foul play. So there is no fallacy.

It is just one more element in the list of odd things. The one I am most interested in is the use of explosives in the towers and WTC7. One could assert that al Qaeda placed the explosives so even that is not proof, but it relates to probability.
FL

JamesB

That is not what you said. You claimed that they aimed for that particular spot because of an importance that you placed on it after the fact. In fact the most probable explanation is simply because that is the side of the Pentagon the plane happened to be flying in from. Your argument is so incoherent even you cannot follow it.

Incidentally this whole "missing" $2.3 trillion thing has been widely misrepesented. It has nothing to do with Bush or Rumsfeld, and in fact was first mentioned in the press in March 2000, during the Clinton administration. You would think a peer-review would catch things like that.

Before going into any further details I have a couple of questions for you. What is your opinion about the twin towers? Were they brought down by explosives? If so, is that not rather odd, given that the NIST report denied the use of explosives?

JamesB

I thought we were talking about the Pentagon. You can't defend your paper from more than 2 questions without having to switch to an entirely different subject? Some peer-review.

And no. I do not believe the towers were brought down with supermagicinvisiblesilentnanotherm*te. The truth burn guys couldn't even figure out how to bring down a 6 foot tall sign with thermite.

Glad I asked you that. Saves me a lot of time. Pointless to defend the Pentagon paper.

The section of his paper that I quoted at the beginning is actually no longer in the paper, it having disappeared somewhere in the last 3 versions. Legge gives no explanation for this. The conversation, unbelievably goes on from there and his logic gets even more strained.

None Dare Call It Science

Frank Legge continues to post in his Journal of 911 Studies (he is one of the editors) with this short paper on the Pentagon. In typical conspiracy theory logic he argues that a plane probably did hit the Pentagon, which proves there was a conspiracy. A lack of falsifiability is the hallmark of crank science.

The position I hold is simple. In answer to the question "What hit the Pentagon?" I say I don't know and attempt to turn the discussion to the more fundamental question "Why was the Pentagon hit?". It should not have been. It should have been well defended. Flight 77, a Boeing 757, was the third plane hijacked, so there was ample time to confirm that real hijackings were taking place, not a war game, and ample time to send up fighters to intercept, as is the normal procedure. One presumes that there were also anti-aircraft defenses
round the Pentagon, as it is the hub of the military machine.

Of course good science isn't based on evidence or observation, but unsubstantiated presumptions. Later on he continues:

The most logical inference from the Pentagon attack evidence is that the perpetrators of 9/11 knew that there would be many members of the public who would become suspicious for one reason or another. The perpetrators realized that a powerful technique for weakening the arguments of the skeptics would be to have them arguing against one another. Like a good playwright they balanced contradictory evidence to keep the public guessing. On cue the media critics gave the NIST report high praise and we were left guessing about the actions
and motives of the people behind the curtain.

This probably won't make him popular with the CIT people, since he claims they are being misled, but that it is the evil NWO planting evidence that is the culprit, not their own warped thought process.

Update: I should also mention this section, which could be the textbook example of "The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy". I always shake my head at the fact that the troofers insist that Hani Hanjour could not have navigated successfully to the Pentagon, despite the fact that it is one of the largest buildings in the world, but then once he did, then he must have targetted the area he it because of its specific characteristics, not because it just happened to be from the side he was coming from.

Why did the plane aim for the reinforced section, which still had few occupants due to the recent renovation? Would al Qaeda have wanted to minimize casualties? Why did it not hit the relatively weak roof? There were auditors in the damaged section who were investigating the loss of trillions of military dollars. Most of the auditors died, which has led to considerable speculation regarding motive. Who would wish to kill auditors?

What the Hell Kind of Paper is This?

The Journal of 9/11 Studies, has not been very prolific lately, with up until now only that single atrocious economics paper since January. I am starting to think that they aren't even trying though, with the most recent post being yet another "paper" by Frank Legge.

If one could actually call it a paper. It is only 4 pages long, and is put together with such bizarre logic and scholarship, that I really am speechless.

If we compare these two explanations for the collapse of the towers it is immediately apparent that they are different in a particularly significant way: the fire based official explanation is a series of events,21 like links in a chain, while the explosive based explanation is a parallel set of scientific studies of evidence. When challenged they behave in very different ways:

If an explanation is in the form of a chain it is only necessary to prove one link wrong todestroy the case. In contrast, with a parallel set of explanations it is only necessary to prove one explanation correct to establish the case. What do we find?

It has already been pointed out that links 2 to 6 of the official explanation are incorrect and link 1, about the fireproofing, has been strongly disputed

Bizarrely though, despite being so short, Legge can't even keep consistent. For example, on page 2 he argues that the steel was not hot enough.

NIST reports that very few samples of steel showed evidence of having been at temperatures higher than 250oC. 3 For collapse to become a possibility the steel would have to be over 650oC and at that temperature it would be red-hot,11 yet no red-hot steel was observed prior to collapse.

By page 3 though, it was.

It was observed that localized heating to temperatures far higher than can be achieved by the burning of jet fuel and office materials occurred in the south tower. Incendiary materials are implicated.

Unbelievable.

A Statistical Summary of the JONES Papers

Earlier, both Pat and I had discussed how Steven Jones had been bragging about the number of "peer reviewed" papers that had been published at his self-styled journal, and how the true number was only a fraction of what he claimed. We did not address the type and quality of the papers though, so I fired up my copy of Excel and did some low-grade data mining (send me an e-mail if you want to see the data set) and categorized the papers listed on their main page.

There are actually 45 papers listed, they claim 43, but two of them are actually interviews, so I am assuming they are omitting those. That is just a guess though, you could reasonably not count many other papers for similar reasons. Four of the papers are not actually original works, but correspondence, including a response from NIST, who I seriously doubt was interested in being submitted to such a prestigious publication.

In any case, out of those remaining 43, Frank Legge was the most prolific author, with an amazing 7 papers, or 16% of the total. Legge is actually one of the more educated authors, with a PhD in chemistry, although oddly enough, none of his papers are within his speciality, a trend that continues throughout most of the papers. The next two most prolific authors are Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan who appear on 5 and 4 papers (two of them are on the same paper) respectively. Why are these names significant? Well, look at the JONES homepage:

Our mission is to provide evidence-based, peer-reviewed research that furthers the cause of truth and justice. More about our efforts toward this goal can be found at the website for Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice.

Sincerely,
Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, and Frank Legge co-editors

They are the editors of the "journal". Fourteen of the 43 papers, or nearly a third of the papers accepted by the editors, are written by the editors themselves.

It gets even worse if you look at the qualifications of the authors. Of the 43, only 23 were at least partially authored by someone with a PhD. Note, this still does not imply that the author even has experience in the field they are writing on, as I pointed out, 7 of those 23 are by Frank Legge, and not in the field of chemistry. Once again, it is mostly the editors, of those 23 PhD level papers, 12, or 52% are by our two PhD editors (Kevin Ryan only has a bachelor's degree). Even worse, 3 of these papers are rebuttals to the no plane theories. While they ironically are among the best work published, they are about as scientifically relevant as publishing a paper arguing that the dinosaurs were not made extinct by the eating habits of Fred Flintstone. If we take these papers out of the count, that brings the number up to a ridiculous 60%.

Explain to me once again how this is a "peer reviewed" academic journal? I am now going to e-mail this post to Steven Jones, and see if I can get it accepted as a paper in his journal.

Update: This could go on forever, but I forgot to mention that 1 of those PhD level papers is a rebuttal by Dr. Frank Greening to a previous paper, and 3 of them are by theology or English professors. So in summary, 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%.

That Peer-Review Process Over At Journal of Nine-Eleven Studies

Doesn't seem to be working (what a shock!). Dr Frank Legge submits an incredibly weak paper purporting to prove that WTC 7 came down by controlled demolition. It's short (five pages including a page of footnotes), spurious and contains almost no factual material. But even the Troofers found boneheaded mistakes:

The statement that the fires did not break windows on the north side of WTC7 is wrong, as can be clearly seen in this video. Hoffman and Griffin get this wrong too.

If the professor is aware of the fact that no plane hit Building 7, why would he use jet fuel in his arguement (sic)? It's a crossover quote from WTC 1 & 2 research, not the result of independent study.

The secondary fuel load in WTC 7 has been attributed to DIESEL fuel that was in a ConEd back up generator storage tank housed in the building.

This isn't dis-info, but it's weak research. Better clean this paper up if you plan on going anywhere with it. We don't need any built-in Straw Men.

I haven't read the whole thing to the end yet, but from what I have read one gets the impression that defenders of the official theory resort to a "fire alone" argument. Of course, NIST is likely to postulate both structural damage from falling debris and fire as the cause.

Heck of a job you're doing there, Jonesy!