Talk:World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories

This is not a forum for general discussion of World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories. Any such messages will be deleted.

NIST only a fraction of the Engineering community

To say that NIST represents the Engineering community is incorrect. I represents only a small fraction of the community as a whole. There is no poll of the community and we have justification for assuming anything about the larger body of engineers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.185.111.14 (talk) 15:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The article cites several reliable sources for the statement that the CDH is rejected by engineers, and you haven't provided any references which say otherwise. The engineers who have spoken in favour of the CDH represent a small minority. Hut 8.5 19:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The response to B7 report

The demolition proponents have responded to NIST in a detailed letter. The letter has now been posted in numerous locations.[1][2][3] It makes no sense to remove the positions of demolition proponents from the page claiming to be about the demolition theory. Please do not remove this letter. 152.131.10.133 (talk) 21:15, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

The claim that these sources are now "unreliable" is clearly grasping at straws as a rationale for not allowing the sentence to be added. These sites -- 911blogger.com, 911truth.org, stj911.org -- are all over wikipedia on the 9/11 pages. Since when did they suddenly become unreliable? bov (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

They're not reliable. I think we've been allowing some slack for messages apparently from and claiming to be from a source reliable among truthers. I'm not sure it's in keeping with Wikipedia policies, but I'm willing to let it stay in the CDH article, with some corrections. It should not be in a non-fringe article. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting that defenders of the official theory on here are trying to hide or bury the challenges to it made by the actual people this article claims to be about, with handwaving about "reliability" and "truthers". The exact same article is posted all over the internet, so the assumption that somehow all these blogs faked this letter, yet none of the 18 authors has noticed or commented, is pretty much as fringe conspiracy theory as it gets. It's like the rightwingers who attack gays and then turn out to be gay themselves . . . Also, tacking the sentence that includes this info onto a long-winded paragraph about the official report, and removing it's date, is another time-honored wikipedia tactic to obfuscate awareness. bov (talk) 20:28, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

It's fascinating that users Hut and Arthur Rubin continue to delete the DATE from a single sentence about the NIST submission comments by demolition proponents. They have no basis for removing it except the need to hide the relevance of it. See here. bov (talk) 20:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Explain the relevance of the date. I don't see it, other than the date being after that of the draft report, and recent enough that no one outside the truth movement would have looked at it yet. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Engineering community = Zdeněk Bažant?

I spent some time reading this article and tried to figure out what was meant by the engineering community. I came to the conclusion that this community equals Zdeněk Bažant (with the possible addition of 9/11 Commission). Is this correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilkkah (talk • contribs) 15:00, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

No - it refers to engineers as a collective body. Hut 8.5 15:16, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

I think there should be more citations in the introductory chapter, in that case. Imho. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ilkkah (talk • contribs) 15:50, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Why? Is there something wrong with the references we have? Bear in mind that the introduction is meant to summarise the rest of the article, and anything sourced in another part of the article doesn't need to be sourced again in the introduction. Hut 8.5 17:26, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

As a WP reader I was quite confused and had to spend a lot of time finding out what was meant by the engineering community. Basically it just links to Bažant paper (in the first chapter). Could be a good idea to elaborate what is meant by the engineering community (imho, again). Didn't mean anything was wrong with the references, just wanted to see more of those [n] in the first chapter. Ilkkah (talk) 22:29, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

The Bazant paper is the reference cited for the information, it's not a link to improve the reader's understanding. I suppose we could link to Scientific community or Scientific consensus. Hut 8.5 06:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, not reader's understanding. Then I missed the point of WP. I thought it was about reader's understanding of things. Ilkkah (talk) 09:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you've missed the point. It's so the reader can verify the information in the article, not for the reader's understanding. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I think it has to be both (yes I checked this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference :-) ... OK, my initial question was trollish, sorry about it. I wanted to understand the engineering community comment, and after considerable research I think I can see why it's there. So I'm not complaining because the comment is there (a couple of days ago I wasn't agreeing on it that much, but maybe I have changed my views a bit), I just wished some more backing/explaining/references for it. Ilkkah (talk) 21:46, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

We can all wish for better references. The problem is that, as the mainstream engineering community generally thinks this theory (or theories) has (or have) been discredited, they're not writing about it any more. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I've linked the term to Scientific community. If necessary I can add two more references to that sentence. Hut 8.5 08:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You can't link it to the scientific community because they are fence sitting on the subject. I think what Ilkkah is talking about is that using the term engineering community should require more than one cite especially as that one couldn't pass a peer review. I suggest citing at least two peer reviewed papers to prove the term is correctly used. Wayne (talk) 15:41, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Explantion for Diagonally Cut Steel Girder

I did not see the diagonally cut steel girder mentioned on this page. This image has been floating around the internet for some time and it has not been explained. (http://media.portland.indymedia.org/images/2006/06/341239.jpg) How did the steel girder get cut at a diagonal angle. The official NIST explanation says the building collapse began with one column. If this girder was not cut by clean up crews then how was it cut, the collapsing building would not have cut it in such a fasion. This potentially crucial piece of evidence needs to be on this page and it needs to be fully explained. 68.229.87.128 (talk) 19:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

In order to add information to Wikipedia articles you need to have references for your claims, can you provide some? I can't see anything in the report saying that only one column failed, can you provide a specific reference for that as well? Hut 8.5 20:00, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

I think you're confused, 68. The NIST report says that building 7 fell because one vertical failed, followed by others. However, the NIST report also says that the two people who were rescued from building 7 after the initial explosions there were rescued after one of the towers fell. The newscasts of their rescue were broadcast before the towers fell. Also, Bazant claims that "the engineering community" agrees with the OTC. However, the real engineering community, as a whole, appears to be just as unconscious as the rest of the population, so Bazant is just spouting baseless propaganda. Neither Bazant nor NIST should be regarded as a reliable souce. We should change the attribution to something more explicit, such as "Bazant claims that the engineering community rejects everything but the official conspiracy theory." FEMA seems to be slightly more reliable.

You will note, however, the recently melted metal around the edges of the cut. Most of the columns were hastily shipped to China and melted down, but some pieces were retained for various reasons. For the ones for which the recently molten metal was recovered, however, it has been shown to be mostly iron with traces of aluminum, sulfur, potassium and manganese, but no chromium, so it comes from some source other than the column itself. Wowest (talk) 06:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

FEMA? Reliable? And NIST report clearly stated that the debris from WTC 7 was made available to researchers. If they weren't actually looked at, it must mean the researchers didn't see the need. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:01, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you seriously arguing that speculations on the meaning of a contextless photo on the internet are reliable, but a world-renowned engineer writing in a peer reviewed journal or a 10,000 page report produced by hundreds of experts aren't? We have no idea who took this photo, where or when it was taken, or what it is depicting. Including the picture with this information would be pure original research. Hut 8.5 13:35, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

This crops up on Wikipedia whenever brainwashing is involved. We have something called mind-control cults. These groups claim to be religions. They have some fairly predictable, but strange beliefs. You can expect, right off the bat that the leader of the group has a unique relationship with God. Maybe he IS God. One guy claimed to be "greater than God," and another, "greater than or equal to God." Some of the members -- or casualties -- got to be that way because they participated in the "sacrament" of LSD in the leader's presence. Some learned to "pray" or "meditate" in a certain way that deprived them of their ability to criticize what they were told. The biggest issue, here, is the practice -- the hypnotic drugs or unwitting self-hypnotic "meditation" or "prayer."

So, some of these groups got together and bribed experts in the relatively small community of scholars of sociology of religion. They got to go to special conferences, all expenses paid. They got consulting fees. Nothing was stated explicitly, but there were certain expectations, which were met. Suddenly "New Religious Movements" were good and special, even if they were neither new nor religious. However, when someone gets deprogrammed from the practice (not always possible), then they recognize that they believed something they were told with no real proof. Maybe they had an astonishing "religious" experience, but that does not make the explanation they were given true, and they have no proof that the leader really was the Lord.

So, who are the main suspects here? Al Queda and several domestic and/or foreign organizations. Is NIST funded by one of the principal suspects? Yes. In fact, it's subordinate to the Bush White House. Can we believe what it says? Maybe. We can certainly extend tentative suspension of disbelief to some of what NIST has to say, but when it contradicts known facts, we have to be suspicious.

Bezant? He says things he has no way of knowing. Is he intentionally lying when he talks about the "community of engineers?" We have no way of knowing that, and he is an expert, but when over 500 lesser experts disagree with him, we have to evaluate what he says objectively. In that context, we really should say "according to Bazant, the community of engineers rejects...." It's about HONESTY.Wowest (talk) 14:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

What you are arguing for has no place in Wikipedia. Wild conspiracy theories can't be used to evaluate the credibility of sources, and the sources in question pass WP:RS with flying colours. The federal government isn't considered a "suspect" by anyone except fringe theorists and our article must reflect this per WP:UNDUE. Even if we take the claims of expert support from the CD supporters at face value they don't represent anything more than a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of experts in the fields in question. This is still original synthesis to advance a viewpoint. Hut 8.5 19:47, 9 October 2008 (UTC)