Shorter Graeme MacQueen

"They didn't tell me where they got the three seconds, so I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist."

Longer version is that MacQueen (whose scholarly credentials are in the field of Religious Studies) is claiming that the seismic spike from the collapse of the South Tower occurred at 9:59:04 AM. The collapse began at 9:58:59 and the seismic spike is generally attributed to the building hitting the ground. But since the building didn't start impacting the ground until 9 seconds after the onset of collapse, the seismic spike couldn't have been caused by the building hitting the ground. The seismic monitoring station, Lamont-Doherty later adjusted their time of the seismic spike to 9:59:07, or eight seconds after the onset of collapse, which puts it accurate to within one second.

Here's the crux of MacQueen's paper:



And after that, he goes into hilarious detail as he tries to determine the collapse initiation time and the moment of impact. It just goes on and on forever, with MacQueen claiming precision in his analysis of video footage to within 1/1000th of a second despite the obvious fact that he's doing it by the seat of his pants:



Yes, let's suppose it took half a second, then that puts the precise time at 9:59:11.505. Not 9:59:11.504 or 9:59:11.506. It's completely inane, the sort of false precision that any real peer-review by a scientist would have corrected.

But let's grant MacQueen's timing and his precision; it still doesn't mean anything. Whether the collapse began at 9:58:59 or 9:59:00 and the seismic spike was recorded at 9:59:04 or 9:59:07, the basic fact remains that the seismic spike occurred after the building had already started to collapse. Unless MacQueen is going to claim that the building started to collapse and then they blew it up, his point is meaningless.

When Religion and Science Don't Mix

The Journal of 9/11 Studies once again maintains its reputation for academic work expected of a poorly run alternative high school, this time with a paper by retired Religious Studies professor Graeme McQueen regarding the words of firefighters describing the damage to WTC7, as put forth by Ryan Mackey, Mark Roberts and others. The logic employed, is rather fascinating, to say the least.

But let us turn to the third statement I listed in my summary of Mackey’s argument. Is it true that FDNY members rationally concluded from what they perceived that the building was in danger of collapse? Only seven appear to have done so, whereas 50 accepted the collapse prediction from others, typically superiors.

With regard to the fourth point in the argument, is it true that the collapse warnings were mainly the result of a rational conclusion based on observation and training? No. As far as we can tell, no rational conclusion based on direct perception was made in the vast majority of cases.

Basically he is arguing that since not every description of the damage, and the collapse was withing the parameters that he would accept as definitive, that we should ignore all of them, despite the fact that he does not have a single witness to back up a contradicting argument. Amazing.

Another Expert Witness

Professor Graeme MacQueen gives us a lecture on the collapse of the World Trade Center. And yes, MacQueen is a structural engineer. Oh, wait a minute, he's not, he's an associate professor of religious studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Well, always room for one more theologian in the cranks club, but it seems that the structural engineering "Truthers" are being quite a bit more selective.