O Hai, Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal!

It's back...

http://benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm

Related Info:

Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal, Gone?

Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal, Gone?

Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog recently pointed out that the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal has been taken down and thus the "Active Thermitic Material..." paper, in which an international group of scientists report to have found remnants of the incendiary/explosive nano-thermite in dust from the WTC, is gone as well. Pat states that Bentham "looks like they do have some standards after all." I wrote Gregg Roberts, one of the paper's authors, and he informed me that Bentham stated to him that they were "doing development work and the journal should be restored in 7 to 10 days." But even if Bentham takes the paper down permanently all it would mean is that they have buckled to pressure to distance themselves from the controversy it created.

Pat has failed to prove that the paper was not adequately peer-reviewed via the process at Bentham and omits the fact that it was also reviewed by BYU scientists.



Most importantly, no government investigator or "debunker" has yet to refute these findings by conducting forensic tests. To the contrary, the paper's results have been replicated. On that note, here is an interview with chemical engineer Mark Basile from 4/30/2009, which blog contributor Adam Taylor recently posted on YouTube at my suggestion because it wasn't there and his account allows large files. Basile makes it very clear that he has confirmed the findings, but Pat stated that he could "see no direct confirmation of 'nanothermite'; just talk about the iron microspheres and the red and grey chips."

As blog contributor Steve Weathers noted, "That's like saying I don't see an aeroplane, that's just talk about wings, aero-engines, aerodynamics, piloting etc (and then right before your eyes we have a picture showing an actual aeroplane or obvious parts thereof."



Here is an interview with Basile from October of last year, which Pat has not addressed where Basile again states that he has unequivocally confirmed the findings and throws down the gauntlet for anyone to refute him by doing experiments.

I have independently seen thermitic activity within two independent samples of World Trade Center Dust. [...] I would really like to stress that we need a lot more people involved in this work than just the few of us that are doing it right now.

My work with this has brought me to feel that this material is too big of an unanswered question and it really brings us to demand a new investigation. This is hard evidence that can not be refuted.

Anyone can replicate the work that’s been done and confirm that this material is there.

— Mark Basile, chemical engineer

Update March 4, 2011:

O Hai, Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal!

It's back...

http://benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm

Related Info:

Transcript of Basile's 4/30/2009 interview

Knee Deep in Crap

Thanks for walking us through that Conspiracies R Not Us.

I just had a look at their reply to Scootle's reply yesterday and here is mine, and I'm not "in a fuss" I assure everyone.

"Neighborhood Rationalist" at CRNU states that Scootle's "generally speculative characterization of the plane’s maneuvers was pathetic." Well, while I disagreed with most of what Jesse Ventura's program presented on the Pentagon last night, it did do a good job of debunking the counter-claim presented to Scootle that Hani Hanjour simply "tipped the nose twice."



Our Neighbourhood Irrationalist continues, "And, as usual, I think it goes without saying that the claim that Hanjour is naught but a flight-school dropout who was 'incompetent in a single engine Cessna' is a lie by omission - he was, until he wasn’t."

It is then pointed out that the 9/11 Commission stated, "Hanjour persevered; he completed the initial training by the end of March 2001." But as it turns out the only "lie of omission" here is from the Omission Commission.

As is pointed out in an article "Al Qaeda’s Top Gun Willful Deception by the 9/11 Commission":

Turning to the footnote for the claim that Hanjour “completed” training at Jet Tech, one can read (emphasis added): “For his training at Pan Am International Flight Academy and completion by March 2001, see FBI report ‘Hijackers Timeline,’ Dec. 5, 2003 (Feb. 8, 2001, entries…)”. But turning to that source, the FBI timeline does not state that Hanjour “completed” the training, only that he “ended” the course on March 16. The truth is that, as the Washington Post reported, “Hanjour flunked out after a month” at Jet Tech. Offering corroboration for that account, the Associated Press similarly reported that “Hanjour did not finish his studies at JetTech and left the school.”

Beyond exposing the blatant lies of the 9/11 Commission that were obviously intended to exaggerate Hanjour's training, the article also refutes media outlets like New American and Salon who have tried "to 'debunk' the assertion that Hanjour wasn’t a capable enough pilot to have pulled it off."

HistoryCommons.com contains the following entry on Hanjour's perseverance:

Hani Hanjour practices on a Boeing 737-200 simulator for a total of 21 hours at the JetTech International flight school in Phoenix, Arizona. Hanjour also attends ground school and pays just under $7,500 for the training. Despite only completing 21 of his originally scheduled 34 hours of simulator training, according to the FBI this is the best-trained of the four hijacker pilots (see Spring-Summer 2001). However, an instructor comments: “Student made numerous errors during performance… including a lack of understanding of some basic concepts… Some of the concepts involved in large jet systems cannot be fully comprehended by someone with only small prop plane experience.” [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia; Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] The school contacts the FAA to warn it of Hanjour’s poor English and flying skills (see January-February 2001).

The article "How the FBI and 9/11 Commission Suppressed Key Evidence about Hani Hanjour" notes:

The 9/11 Commission Report fails to discuss or even mention this negative written evaluation, even while presenting Hanjour’s substandard performance in a Boeing 737 simulator as sufficient evidence that Hanjour could fly a Boeing 757, an even larger plane! The wording of the final report succeeds in giving this impression, however dubious, even while obscuring the facts: an amazing achievement of propaganda.

Then CRNU treats us to this tidbit from 911myths.com:

One 9/11 Commission footnote (to Chapter 7) is relatively positive. 170. FBI report, "Summary of Penttbom Investigation," Feb. 29, 2004, pp. 52¬57. Hanjour successfully conducted a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg, Maryland, landing at a small airport with a difficult approach.The instructor thought Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation. Eddie Shalev interview (Apr.9, 2004).

First off, there is no evidence that he obtained a certification, as noted on HistoryCommons:

Alleged Flight 77 pilot Hani Hanjour successfully conducts “a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg, Maryland, landing at a small airport with a difficult approach,” according to the 9/11 Commission Report. The instructor, Eddie Shalev, thinks that “Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation.” However, it is unclear what certification the 9/11 Commission thinks Hanjour receives. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 248, 531] Shalev is an Israeli national and has a military background. He began working at Congressional Air Charters in April 2001. [9/11 Commission, 4/9/2004] A stipulation used as evidence at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui will mention the flight, but fail to mention any certification Hanjour allegedly receives based on it, merely saying it is a “check ride with a flight instructor.” Hanjour will subsequently rent aircraft from the company on August 26 and 28. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 68]

Furthermore, there are other important questions regarding this issue. The aforementioned article on suppressed evidence states:

The note gives a name, Eddie Shalev, but no other information about him. Indeed, his identity remained a mystery until January 2009, when NARA released the 9/11 files. Nonetheless, David Ray Griffin had already identified the key questions in his 2008 book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited. Wrote Griffin: “How could an instructor in Gaithersburg [i.e., Shalev] have had such a radically different view of Hanjour’s abilities from that of all of the other flight instructors who worked with him? Who was this instructor? How could this report be verified?”

These are important questions because the two assessments of Hani Hanjour’s flight skills are so radically different that both cannot be correct. The evaluations, made just days apart, are contradictory, hence, mutually exclusive; which raises the disturbing possibility that someone could be lying.

And yes Freeway Airport's chief instructor Marcel Bernard did say that, "There's no doubt in my mind that once that [hijacked jet] got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it." But as the article on suppressed evidence points out, upon accompanying Hanjour on three test flights, instructors Sheri Baxter and Ben Conner at Freeway observed that Hanjour had trouble controlling and landing a single-engine Cessna 172 and based upon their assessments Bernard refused to rent him a plane.

This isn't just a "a battle of the scare quotes" as stated by CNRU, because the perponderance of qualified opinions and other evidence is clearly on our side of the argument.

But Neighbohood Rationolist states that even if the points about Hanjour being an incompetent pilot were conceded that it doesn't matter because "100% of the remaining evidence singles him out as a hijacking pilot."

While this is true, it does not rule out a scenario in which the hijackers were hijacked by remote control. The paper "Plausibility Of 9/11 Aircraft Attacks Generated By GPS-Guided Aircraft Autopilot Systems" demonstrates that the maneuvers attributed to Hanjour are consistent with the use of such technology.

The bottom line is that we do not doubt terrorists were involved in 9/11. When the alleged 9/11 plotters offered to confess at Guantánamo in December of 2008 many probably asked themselves: "What does it mean for the 9/11 truth movement?” The answer is nothing; many people make the mistake of only seeing the issues concerning 9/11 in black and white, as opposed to shades of grey. Even if we accept that bin Laden and gang were the masterminds of 9/11 it does not negate a slew of evidence indicating that they were allowed to succeed and had their results amplified. 9/11 very well could have been an inside and an outside job.

Addressing my blog entry "Super-Duper Thermite: A Year in Review,"

Neighborhood Rationalist states:

I’m confused as to why we got the first link he provides, which doesn’t have a lot to say about our case for why the big thermite article is a fraud. It provides one particularly egregious overstep early on: It quotes an article saying that “Nanosized thermitic materials are being researched by the U.S. military with the aim of developing new types of bombs that are several times more powerful than conventional explosives” to argue that nanothermite “IS an incendiary and an explosive,” even though it is literally chemically impossible for that to be true unless you add something else to the thermite...

Just the use of nano-metals, which makes it nano-thermite, was reported by Las Alamos to "increase the (chemical) reaction time by a thousand times." But something else is added to make it truly explosive. The scientists report that the material found in the WTC dust is mixed in a sol-gel matrix with organic components and as an April 2000 report by Gash et. al. about the sol-gel process states, "Once dry the (hybrid inorganic/organic energetic composite) material burns very vigorously and rapidly with the evolution of significant amounts of gaseous species."

I'll let Steven Jones walk you through it.



We are also informed that thermite's use in incendiary devices "is the exact same as its use in fireworks – as a pyrotechnic initiator."

I'm guessing our friendly neighbor missed this.


http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2010/11/slicing-through-every-single-debunker.html

Back to the nano-thermite, we are told that "it is scientific dishonesty to reject the fact that these are the normal components of the collapse site of a skyscraper." As will be demonstrated here in a second, Steven Jones did his due diligence on this, but commen sense is all that is needed for this one, as Gordon Ross put it, "...If I leave margarine, flour, sugar and fruit in a cupboard, when I next open the cupboard I will not find a fruit crumble. Some mechanism is required to convert the ingredients. Similarly, if I take these same ingredients, set them alight and throw them out the window, I still will not get my fruit crumble."

Next the chain of custody of the samples is questioned, they state, "People mailed him things, and he took them at their word." As Scootle has pointed out this is "effectively accusing the scientists and the citizens of conspiring to fake evidence by manufacturing high-tech energetic nanocomposites." I guess Neighborhood Rationalist is a Conspiracies R Us kid afterall!

Steven Jones addreses both of these points in detail in the following videos.





In this next video chemical engineer Mark Basile reveals that he has unequivocally confirmed the peer-reviewed work of Jones and his colleagues and obtained a completely independent sample of dust from a NYC museum, which leads me to related point. Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog recently posted a critique of the nano-thermite paper by Denis Rancourt.

Rancourt states that, "Many members of the 911 Truth movement use an 'appeal to authority' argument in advancing Harrit's paper as 'peer reviewed' and Harrit himself as a scientific authority with relevant expertise. Anyone using 'appeal to authority' arguments must expect that the authority in question can be questioned."

Rancourt, however, is appealing to his apparent authority as the new king of peer-review, who can trump a forensic evidence based paper that was thoroughly peer-reviewed by individuals more qualified and just as qualified as him, and the replication of the paper's results by a chemical engineer, with a blog post that he purports to be a peer-review.

Great comments by "Sitting-Bull" and "The Masked Writer" here.



Related Info:

The fact that Hani Hanjour -- the alleged pilot of the Boeing airplane which crashed into the Pentagon -- could not fly at all is now being challenged by apparent CIA informant Louai al-Sakka, who says that it was actually Nawaf al-Hazmi who piloted the plane. No, HE Couldn't Fly Either

'Debunker' Pat Curley: the King of Scientific Peer-review

Pat "Yoda" Curley, ready to battle troofer stormtroopers from his Dagobah-like tract home in Phoenix.

One of the peer-reviewers of the "Active Thermitic Material" paper has been identified as Prof. David L. Griscom. The current situation is surmised by "Sitting-Bull" on 911blogger.com:

It took Prof. Griscom 4 long years to become convinced of 9/11 truth. Science did it. And: Some "Debunkers" already claim he was chosen because he was a "truther". That's totally bogus. He did not play a vocal or any role in the 9/11 truth movement prior 2007/2008, Bentham surely did not find his rare blog entries on the issue for selecting him, but did search their database for valuable scientific referees in the field of research with good experience- no wonder they found Prof. Griscom.

Griscom notes that he is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has "refereed at least 600, and possibly as many as 1000, manuscripts" and was himself published twelve times in the American Institute of Physics’ Journal of Chemical Physics.

Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change states that "even the Troofers have their limits" and notes that 911 Blogger user "Loose Nuke," whom I have great respect for, raises the question of whether Jones' recommended Griscom as a reviewer. Pat ignores the fact that Loose Nuke later concurs that "Griscom's credentials establish him as qualified to review" the paper and instead focuses on his perception that Jones intentionally dodged the question about recommendation. This seems unlikely being that authors are allowed to suggest referees as was demonstrated by a study cited by "Swing Dangler" in the comments. This study entitled "Differences in Review Quality and Recommendations for Publication Between Peer Reviewers Suggested by Authors or by Editors" concludes:

Author-and editor-suggested reviewers did not differ in the quality of their reviews, but author-suggested reviewers tended to make more favorable recommendations for publication. Editors can be confident that reviewers suggested by authors will complete adequate reviews of manuscripts, but should be cautious about relying on their recommendations for publication.

So, considering Griscom's qualifications, the results of this study, and the fact we were informed by one of the paper's author's, Gregg Roberts, that, "The other reviewer was not a truther. And that reviewer provided a much less rigorous review then did Griscom - while also recommending publication if the review points were dealt with adequately," it is clear that the review was legitimate and thus Jones would not need to hide if he recommended Griscom. Jones very well could have just fired back a response to Loose Nuke and in doing so failed to adequately address one question asked.

Further evidence that Jones was not dodging the question is demonstrated by the fact that Loose Nuke also asked "Why was David Griscom thanked in the Active Thermitic Acknowledgements?". Jones did not answer this question in the comments, but did essentially answer it it on the Visibility 9/11 podcast at the time of publication:

Usually peer-review is done completely anonymously, but it is possible for a reviewer to identify himself. I've seen that done before. (Note: Jones, has authored or co-authored over forty peer reviewed publications, including three papers for which he was first author in the renowned journal NATURE) In this case one of the reviewers identified himself as a physics professor, a Fellow of the American Physical Society... well credentialed... I checked... like 80 peer-reviewed papers of his own

So it is no secret or problem that Jones was made aware Griscom had been selected as a reviewer prior to publication.

Furthermore, Jones stated in the comments that "BYU scientists did a review of the paper" that led to changes in the report. Jones previously revealed in comments on another post that the paper was "peer-reviewed by the Physics dept. chair at BYU... because two of the authors are from this dept." Elsewhere he revealed that he was told by the chairman that the paper "was sound scientific research and that he was now persuaded that explosives/pyrotechnics were involved in the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11."



Then we have chemical engineer Mark Basile, who was not involved in the paper, recently stating on video that he has unequivocally confirmed its findings and even obtained a completely independent sample of dust from a NYC museum.



French researcher Frédéric Henry-Couannier also confirmed several aspects of the experiments and stated that "the Harrit and Jones team convincingly show that the red-gray chips found in the WTC dust show unreacted nano-thermite." Finally, it was reported by a Danish media outlet that professor of inorganic chemistry Jens Ulstrup, of the Technical University of Denmark, "felt that the assessments were made on the basis of 'very suitable' tests by current standards."

Pat ignores all of that though, because Griscom is a "sack of fecal matter... Troofer moron... AAAS-hole... nut" who has theorized that the planes on 9/11 were swapped out for drones and that the passengers were in on it and are still alive.

Gregg Roberts responds:

Many scientists who have done good work in their field have strange beliefs that have nothing to do with the quality of their scientific work. Using Griscom's analysis of what happened to the passengers and generalizing from that to whether he provided a tough, accurate, technical review of the red/gray chips paper, is an unjustified leap.

All this trash talk is just a way to avoid dealing with what the paper says. Even the editor-in-chief who perversely resigned in protest rather than firing the editor who allegedly published the paper behind her back didn't criticize the paper itself.

Debunking the Debunkers blog contributor Steve Weathers had this to say:

Did Pat just imply that the individuals in the peer-review process favoured the article being published when there was some obvious flaw to the paper that should have prevented publication? Where is the error? Has he cited a peer reviewed response to the material presented? Do the existing peer-reviewers have less of an understanding about the science involved here than Mr Pat Curley? If the fault is so obvious, where is the peer reviewed criticism?

Here is how Pat's peer-review of the paper would have gone.

Pat:

I think what we are looking at here is just "bits of paint and rust." Also, you say here that thermite burns at 400-450°C., but it actually burns much hotter.

Reply from authors:

First off, there is no kind of paint in existence capable of producing a high-temperature chemical reaction as evinced by the fact that the chips produce molten iron spheres. Secondly, paint from the WTC has a different chemical composition. Finally, we soaked the chips in a paint solvent for 55 hours and they remained intact.

In regard to your second point, we were saying that 400-450°C is the temperature that TRIGGERS the reaction. We have forwarded your stunning incomprehension of the material to the editor and expect them to promptly find a more qualified referee.

Joseph Nobles over at the "debunking" site ae911truth.info states, "And yet Griscom says that he couldn’t find anything to criticize about the ATM paper! 12 notes of suggestions he has that makes Harrit, et al. sweat and strain to meet (according to Jones), but none of these are criticisms?"

Nice reading comprehension there Joey. What Griscom actually said was that he "found absolutely nothing to criticize in the final version of the Harrit et al. paper!"

You know, the final version they produced after they made the changes based on his review

Nothing has changed since Steven Jones told "debunkers" to Put up or Shut up on April 7, 2009:

Here's what you need to know (especially if you are not a scientist): UNLESS AN OBJECTOR ACTUALLY PUBLISHES HIS OR HER OBJECTION IN A PEER-REVIEWED ESTABLISHED JOURNAL (yes that would include Bentham Scientific journals), THEN THE OBJECTION IS NOT CONSIDERED SERIOUS IN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY. YOU SHOULD NOT WORRY ABOUT NON-PUBLISHED OBJECTIONS EITHER.

So how do you, as a non-scientist, discern whether the arguments are valid or not? You should first ask, "is the objection PUBLISHED in an ESTABLISHED PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL?" If not, you can and should say -- "I will wait to see this formally published in a refereed scientific journal. Until then, the published peer-reviewed work by Harrit et al. stands...

IF it is so easy to publish in Bentham Scientific journals, or if these are "vanity publications" (note: there is no factual basis for these charges) -- then why don't the objectors write up their objections and get them peer-reviewed and published?? The fact is, it is not easy, as serious objectors will find out.

Related Info:

Prof. David L. Griscom: "Pay for Publish" without Peer Review is False!

Jones' Dust Analysis - Common Arguments Addressed

Why the Harrit Nano-thermite paper has not yet been debunked - "peer review"