Dr. John R Moffett fires a salvo at the Dr. Niels Harrit paper on active thermitic material, using the fake paper that was recently published as his talking point. This was as we predicted yesterday.

We really need the heavy hitters to go over there and rebut his arguments. I won't try, since I don't consider my argumentation skills up to the task, but we need sane, well informed, articulate voices to go on the counter-attack. It helps a lot if they are credentialed experts in relevant fields.

Here is my list of points from yesterday that might be used to craft a response. There are other great point on the thread:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/20378#comment-210019

What will happen over and over now, I suspect, is the following:

- A hit piece will be published
- A letter or comment using the Niels Harrit et al paper will be published
- Another comment using this information on Bentham will be posted to discredit the nanothermite research.

We really need to have a very clear, concise, convincing rebuttal ready to post for this situation.
We need someone with a deep understanding of the situation to prepare the talking points regarding:
- the provenance of the dust,
- the rigor of the science
- the actual peer review objections
- the changes to the paper resulting from the peer review
- the reasons to believe that the peer review that was independent of Bentham and that related to Bentham was sound, actually did happen, and was responded to
- why the fact that at least one of the Bentham journals accepted a nonsensical paper does not damn them all
- why solid research has been, and will continue to be, published by Bentham
- anything else supporting the integrity of the review process for the nanothermite paper.
- anything else supporting the integrity of Bentham and the open paper model
- why "pay for publishing" is a red-herring

This set of talking points needs to be done by someone familiar both with the science, the publication process, and who is gifted with words.

We also might consider presenting the case that this was not the Jones paper, but the Dr. Harrit paper. Dr. Jones was not the lead author, as I understand it.

Regards
Mike

(article follows)

OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/911-NanoTech-Thermite-Publ-by-John-R-Moffett-090616-456.html

June 16, 2009

911 NanoTech Thermite Publisher Accepts Fake Paper, Editors quit

By John R Moffett

The 911 Truth Movement has been highly vocal about the publication of an article entitled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” that was published in “The Open Chemical Physics Journal”, which is part of the Bentham Open Science Publishers group of journals.

Researchers from Denmark, the United States and Australia reported that dust samples collected near the collapsed World Trade Center complex contained iron oxide and aluminum flakes whose chemical composition was consistent with unburned nanotechnology-enhanced thermite. Not just a little bit of this super thermite, but enough unburned thermite to account for a full 0.1% of the dust collected after the WTC buildings collapsed. This finding alone should have raised many questions about what the red and grey chips in the dust actually were.

The subgroup of 911 Truthers who are advocating this particular theory of the WTC collapse have declared victory over those advocating the controlled demolition theory, or the missiles disguised as planes theory, or the directed energy weapons theory, or even the secret nuclear reactors in the WTC basements theory, because they now have a “scientific paper published in a peer reviewed journal” to buttress their claims.

It is not surprising that the public is not aware of the fact that the so-called Bentham Open Science publishing group is basically a vanity publication where anyone can publish a “peer reviewed scientific journal article” which is not actually peer reviewed.

This embarrassing fact became all too clear recently when another Bentham “peer reviewed” journal was caught publishing a fake paper submitted by Philip Davis, a PhD student in scientific communications at Cornell University.

Davis used a well known computer program that was designed specifically to generate nonsense science articles which would be spotted as such by any legitimate peer review process. The fake article entitled “Deconstructing Access Points” contained wonderfully nonsensical statements such as “Note that vacuum tubes have less jagged effective
floppy disk throughput curves than do autogenerated robots”.

Despite making no sense whatsoever, the paper was accepted at the Bentham Publishing Groups journal “The Open Information Science Journal” as though it was peer reviewed, despite the fact that the author, Davis, never received any reviewer comments, which is a universal part of the peer review process. Instead, Davis simply received a bill for an $800 fee which was to be sent to a post office box in the United Arab Emirates.

Following the disclosure of the fake nature of the article (and withdrawal of the manuscript) by Davis, the chief editor at the journal, Bambang Parmanto, resigned. "I didn't like what happened," Parmanto told reporters for The Scientist Magazine. "If this is true, I don't have full control of the content that is accepted to this journal." Following this, Marc Williams, an immunologist and stem cell researcher at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry who served on the editorial advisory board of The Open Stem Cell Journal also resigned his position with the Bentham Group.

Previously, the chief editor of the Bentham journal that the Thermite article was published in resigned, and denounced the journal with this statement: “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.” Despite supposedly being the chief editor, she had not been informed that the thermite article was going to be published in her journal.

The advocates for the nanotech thermite theory of the WTC collapse will never accept the fact that the Bentham Group journals are not actual peer reviewed scientific publications, but scientists all around the world are now convinced of the fact.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe the official story of the 911 commission report, and in fact, neither do many members of the 911 commission. But just because that story isn’t correct, it doesn’t mean that missiles disguised as planes, or directed energy weapons, destroyed the towers. It just means that the official story is inaccurate.

The only way to find out what really happened is to have a large panel of independent researchers reopen the case, with access to the classified documents that would be needed to make a valid assessment of all the data. In order to facilitate that happening, the 911 Truth Movement should stop squabbling over pet theories, and concentrate on getting a new investigation with subpoena power and the authorization to view classified documents started. This will take some serious Congressional lobbying by those interested parties. So leave your favorite theories at home, and press Congress for a new investigation.