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HOME INDEX OF SEPT 11 ARTICLES THE DARK SIDE OF PROFESSOR JONES CHAPTER LIST SCIENCE OR POLITICS ? [[Scientific inquiry is not or should not be dictated by politics (Mooney, 2005).” ]] I couldn’t agree more. The problem is that Jones himself is apparently unable to distinguish between science and politics. As already demonstrated, Jones—under the guise of “science” - chose to rush into a debate on whether the official story of what hit the towers is true - in defence of the official story -even though he didn’t even know what the official story is. One can only suspect a political motivation for such poor standards of work, and this appears to be confirmed by these two statements. [[A March 2005 article in Popular Mechanics focuses on poorly-supported claims and proceeds to ridicule the whole “9-11 truth movement” ]] [[Those espousing weak or untestable claims should realize that they may be damaging the effort to achieve a rational debate of important issues by poisoning the process with “junk science”. ]] Clearly Jones is expressing a worry of a political nature, and this worry led him to rush recklessly to a bold conclusion on a factual matter -one about which he knew absolutely nothing. This behaviour is a long way from anything which could be described as “science”. Jones’ inability to live up to his own exhortation to separate politics from science will be examined more closely in part 4 of this series. Having so seriously confused politics with science, Jones then shows himself as unable to even make a coherent argument about political strategy for the “911 truth movement”. He suggests that an avenue of research should be dropped simply because debunkers ridicule it. Isn’t the whole idea of a “truth” movement to discover, promote and argue what it believes to be the truth? Of course, if Jones believes that a certain avenue of research does not represent the truth, he is welcome to argue that on the basis of the evidence, but worrying over the political implications of how debunkers might react does not qualify as analysis of evidence. The inconsistency continues. Having suggested that a “truth” movement should only concern itself with truth as long as it’s not too controversial, Jones then fails to acknowledge that the very same article which prompted him to suggest that the planes issue should be dropped also ridiculed the demolition evidence. And yet he is unworried by such ridicule in relation to the demolition evidence. So we see that Jones not only applies different standards of evidence to the two issues but also different standards of commitment to the truth. [[I find that the “pod theory” is very weak and distracts from central issues. ]] It’s difficult to imagine a more pompous approach than to simply announce what one “finds” without presenting any evidence for this “finding”. Jones tried to cover this by confusing the issue of “distraction” with the issue of truth. I have no interest in defending the ridiculous pod theory, but the claim that it “distracts from central issues” is absurd. For a start , he fails to define what he means by “central issues”. Since Jones evidently can’t tell the difference between science and politics, then in the absence of a definition, we don’t know whether he’s talking about “central issues” in relation to the science of his paper (the demolition) or “central issues” in relation to the “911truth movement”. But whichever he means, the statement is equally absurd. First, let’s suppose that he means the pure science of the collapse/demolition, free from any political considerations. Jones himself stated that whatever hit the buildings (probably) didn’t bring them down, so how is an argument over the identity of the striking objects in any way relevant to the science of the demolition ? It’s a completely separate issue requiring completely separate analysis. One might as well complain, in the course of a debate over the skeletal structure of amphibians, that someone’s theory on the origin of the first flowering plants is “distracting” from central issues. Did somebody say “junk science” ? Now let’s suppose that Jones was talking about the wider implications of the 911”truth” movement. How can arguments over what hit the towers “distract” from “central issues” about Sept 11? Isn’t the claim that certain specific flights were hijacked and deliberately crashed into certain specific locations somewhat “central” to the official story ? Jones really believes that the issue of which, if any planes were hijacked, and how and by whom and where they went is unimportant to the truth of what happened that day ? Earlier we saw that Jones is unable to distinguish science from politics or truth from political expediency . It appears that he also is unable to distinguish the concept of whether something is true from whether it is important. If you call something a “distraction” it means that you are not interested in whether it’s true. Not being interested in the truth or otherwise of a theory doesn't support the claim that its not true. If the pod theory is wrong, then it should be attacked because its wrong, not because it doesn’t matter. And a claim that it doesn't matter is completely separate to a claim that it isn’t true. The latter claim requires examination of evidence, a concept with which Jones seems to have extreme difficulty. In his reply email to me, Jones sank even deeper into absurdity on these questions. Analysis of that reply will be included in Part 4 of this series. Jones’ thinking processes are so badly scrambled that I’ve had to divide Part 4 into 3 sections to untangle the layered absurdities in such a way that each thread of stupidity can be followed through to its logical conclusion. Section A deals with Jones inability to distinguish science from politics. Section B deals with his inability to display good scientific thinking. Section C deals with his inability to think logically in relation to political strategy. The next problem with Jones’ paper is that of plagiarism. From reading Jones’ paper, one could be forgiven for thinking that his “theory” in relation to demolition was in some way original. There’s nothing wrong with someone providing their own perspectives on work done earlier by others. But in using work which is already well established in the public domain one should not try to present the impression that it is the original concept of the author, or that one has made significant advances on that work when one has not. Proof of demolition (subject to my earlier qualification of the word) had been on the table for years before anybody had heard of Jones. The debate over it had raged for years before anybody had heard of Jones. You would hardly know this from the way that Jones presents “his” theory. And Jones’ presentation did not bring anything new and of significance to the debate. This misdemeanour is made more serious by the fact that much of the work plagiarised by Jones was actually done by the same people whom he by implication, dismisses as “junk” and “poison”, allegedly distracting from the demolition work which they themselves pioneered—years before Jones. The only person to whom Jones gives any credit is Jim Hoffman, who himself plagiarized most of it, and just like Jones, then made poisonous accusations against the very people from whom he had plagiarized. Jones presents little more than a timid, heavily qualified endorsement of something which has already been in the public domain for years, and then like Hoffman, uses it as a platform from which to snipe at other evidence in relation to Sept 11 on the grounds of “distraction”. The awkward problem for Hoffman and Jones is that in many cases, the people pioneering the “distractions” are the same people who pioneered much of the demolition evidence—well before Hoffman and Jones arrived on the scene and began trying to take the credit for it. Widespread awareness of this makes it difficult to accuse the no planers of “distracting” from their own work, so the best solution is to write them out of the history of the development of the issue . Thus the issue of plagiarism is far more important than that of personal credit. This will be dealt with more fully in Part 5 . And Part 6 The low standards of ethics involved in attacking as junk scientists, and “poison’ distraction merchants the same people from whom Jones plagiarizes his work is self evident. This and other ethical misdemeanours will be more fully examined in Part 7. |