is Europhysics News announcing it will censor science papers on political grounds?
follow up to Jones et al
A few months back, Europhysics News, the science journal that published the new study “On the Physics of High Rise Building Collapse”, by Jones et al (republished here on OffG), published an interesting range of follow up letters to the editor. Less widely publicised has been an announcement in the same edition from its editors that reads like a declaration of political censorship.
The small collection of “letters to the editor” published in a recent edition of Europhysics News as a follow-up to the Jones et al paper “On the Physics of High Rise Building Collapse” is revelatory on several levels. Not only for the range of views expressed, but also, and perhaps most significantly, as a statement on the level of censorship and self-censorhip currently deemed acceptable in academia.
The letter that received most attention in the alt media is from a “member of the NIST technical staff during the period 1997 – 2011,” and alleging “the more I investigated, the more apparent it became that NIST had reached a predetermined conclusion by ignoring, dismissing, and denying the evidence.” He calls on NIST to “openly share all evidence, data, models, computations, and other relevant information unless specific and compelling reasons are otherwise provided.” Which seems an eminently rational and reasonable demand.
Thoughts from a former NIST employee
I was a member of the NIST technical staff during the period 1997- 2011. I initially joined the High Performance Systems and Services Division and later became a member of what was, at the time, the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the Information Technology Laboratory. My fellow NIST employees were among the finest and most intelligent people with whom I have ever worked.
I did not contribute to the NIST WTC investigation or reports. But in August of this year, I began to read some of those reports. As I then watched several documentaries challenging the findings of the NIST investigation, I quickly became furious. First, I was furious with myself. How could I have worked at NIST all those years and not have noticed this before? Second, I was furious with NIST. The NIST I knew was intellectually open, non-defensive, and willing to consider competing explanations.
The more I investigated, the more apparent it became that NIST had reached a predetermined conclusion by ignoring, dismissing, and denying the evidence. Among the most egregious examples is the explanation for the collapse of WTC 7 as an elaborate sequence of unlikely events culminating in the almost symmetrical to- tal collapse of a steel-frame building into its own footprint at free-fall acceleration.
I could list all the reasons why the NIST WTC reports don’t add up, but others have already done so in extensive detail and there is little that I could add. What I can do, however, is share some thoughts based on common sense and experience from my fourteen years at NIST.
First, if NIST truly believes in the veracity of its WTC investigation, then it should openly share all evidence, data, models, computations, and other relevant information unless specific and compelling reasons are otherwise provided. For example, would the release of all files and calculations associated with the ANSYS collapse initiation mod- el jeopardize public safety to an extent that outweighs the competing need for accountability?
Second, in its reports, NIST makes a great show of details leading to collapse initiation and then stops short just when it becomes interesting. The remainder of the explanation is a perfunctory statement that total collapse is inevitable and obvious. It is easy to see through this tactic as avoid- ance of inconvenient evidence. In response to any challenges, NIST has provided curt explanations from its Public Affairs Office. There were many contributors to the NIST WTC investigation: Why not let them openly answer questions in their own voice with the depth of knowledge and level of detail that follows from the nuts and bolts of their research?
Lastly, awareness is growing of the disconnect between the NIST WTC reports and logical reasoning. The level of interest in “15 years later” is a good example. Due to the nature of communication in today’s world, that awareness may increase approximately exponentially. Why not NIST blow the whistle on itself now while there is still time?
Truth is where our healing lies.
Peter Michael Ketcham, USA
The 9/11 Truth community has, understandably, promoted the above letter as evidence for the crumbling of NIST’s official position on 9/11. But we think the following announcement is in many ways the most relevant to our current time. In the era of “propornot”, campus censorship and the promotion of “anti-free-speech” as the new badge of the Left, below is the official statement by the editors of Europhysics News itself (our emphasis):
The editors respond
It is the policy of EPN to publish by invitation. Prospective authors are suggested by members of our Editorial Advisory Board, who cover various disci- plines and come from different countries.
This particular Feature article ‘On the physics of High Rise Building Collapses’, followed the same route.We expected this topic to be of wide interest to our readers and thus invited the suggested authors to submit their manuscript. EPN does not have a formal review/rejection policy for invited contributions.
In the present case we realized that the final manuscript contained some speculations and had a rather controversial conclusion. Therefore a ‘Note from the editors’ was added, stressing that the content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not represent an official position of EPN.
Since some controversy remains, even among more competent people in the field, we considered that the correct scientific way to settle this debate was to publish the manuscript and possibly trigger an open discussion leading to an undisputable truth based on solid arguments. Therefore we aske dNIST,as principal investigator of the WTC collapse, to send us a reaction to the article. Their response can be found elsewhere on these pages.
It is shocking that the published article is being used to support conspiracy theories related to the attacks on the WTC buildings. The Editors of EPN do not endorse or support these views.
In future, prospective authors will be asked to provide an abstract of the proposed article, as well as an indication of other related publications to allow the editors to better assess the content of the invited articles.
It’s hard to read this as anything but a wholesale rejection of its own decision to publish this “controversial” paper, and an announcement that all future papers will be vetted for political content as well as scientific validity, and that certain authors and/or dissenting opinions will be suppressed. Whatever your opinions on 9/11, and however you view the Jones et al paper, this must disturb you.
We did email Europhysics News to ask them for some clarification. We’ll let our readers know when/if they respond.
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I remember reading the article by Peter Michael Ketcham on-line some months ago and came to the conclusion that his conclusions seemed reasonable to me as a basis for further investigation.
For the editors of Europhysics News to label his article conspiracy theory and state they will be more questioning as to the content of any future articles smacks – to me, at least – of the introduction of a new form of thought police.
And to think that 1984 was only 33 years ago!
The official NIST response to the article (on page 44 at http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2016/05/epn2016-47-5-6.pdf) is as follows:-
• The WTC Towers collapsed because aircraft impact damage and debris dislodged fireproofing from critical steel components, jet fuel-initiated fires burned very hot for long duration when fed by debris and office materials, and the heat eventually weakened the exposed steel until it lost integrity and led to a global failure; and
• WTC7 collapsed because damage caused by debris from the falling WTC1 ignited fires on multiple floors, the heat expanded and dislodged a beam connecting a key perimeter column to both a long-span central beam and a critical internal support column, and the column’s failure set off a chain reaction of failures across the building’s steel infrastructure.
I am no technical expert but I do not recall seeing any aircraft impacting upon and damaging WTC7 from the films and videos shot at the time. I also do not see how aircraft that crashed into WTC1 and WTC2 could have leaked aviation fuel into WTC7, which was too far away from them to be affected.
It seems the official cover-up continues with – now – even an august journal like Europhysics News coming under pressure to participate in the cover-up. What ever happened to scientific impartiality?
The problem with lying is that once someone starts down that road, there is no turning back.
It becomes necessary to pile lie upon lie upon lie until the whole idiotic farrago collapses in an incoherent mess.
We fattened feeder pigs into market hogs on the farm. When the pigs were weaned, we had to make noise and call for them when feeding time rolled around so they’d know it was time to get fed.
It didn’t take long before they associated the sound of the metal bucket scooping up corn with feeding time, and we no longer had to call the pigs, they came running, mouths open and hungry for slop.
That’s what I see when turning on CNN or FOX or MSNBC, etc. People are so well-programmed, that when they turn the Boob Tube to those channels, they sit on the couch, mouth wide open, expecting news, but all they get is slop.
We’re featuring this comment on our front page this week
It’s impossible to read the editorial statement as anything but an announcement of intent to politically censor future submissions. Disgraceful.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
When wealth and the power it brings to bear can influence the viability of a scientists future it also leads to the inescapable logic that in too many cases, the scientist who toes the political and scientific “line” of concordance will ultimately be awarded a future while those who question or offer science in contradiction can be silenced. This is a worrying development in the war on information. Science should not be a political tool, but in many cases it is and EPN is seemingly intent on paving the way for even further silencing of the dissidents whilst endorsing the conformists in whatever political agenda is being promoted on any given scientific study. Scientists careers can be made or broken by such politically driven scrutiny, in effect it is manipulation of truth if allowed to be taken to extremes. We have already seen how certain interests are being served in the scientific community with the withholding of grants (and the accompanying prestige) to people who do not serve monied interests. This could well prove to be yet another example of the truth being hijacked for political and/or financial gain. We have already seen it in other fields of research which then transmutes the benefits of scientific research to the detriment of all those who might benefit from unconstrained but genuine efforts.
We’re featuring this comment on our front page this week
That’s not scientific, to dismiss a pool of data because you don’t like it. As annoying as it might be, to remain scientific you still need to scrutinise what you suspect is disinformation.
Science is not scientific. A scientist must always be on the lookout for his or her sources of funding, which may disappear if controversial areas are investigated. Scientists know this perfectly well and will ignore papers that investigate areas regarded as politically unsafe.
When Nobel Laureate Luc Montaigner conducted work on AIDS viruses and noted their ability to communicate, he concluded that his findings had demonstrated a mechanism by which homoeopathy’s microdoses could influence the body. Meeting with increasing criticism for expressing such views, he took up a post in China citing the increasing intolerance of the west’s scientists as reason. It seems that both China and the former Soviet Union have far fewer qualms about investigating areas regarded as beyond the pale in the west.
One suspects that the west’s loss will prove to be the east’s gain.
When I went to university we were taught to be professional. That meant putting the job before your own selfish needs. I admit that’s a hard call when it threatens your career and mortgage.
Thanks for highlighting this. Thought control is everywhere, but usually invisible. This sounds like the editors are being ‘leaned on’, maybe even threatened. Given the depth and breadth of knowledge about the 9/11 conspiracy (no theory needed, the facts are all too obvious), it’s extremely disappointing to see the ‘conspiracy theory’ meme being rolled out yet again.