HOME         INDEX OF SEPT 11 ARTICLES

THE DARK SIDE OF PROFESSOR JONES -- CHAPTER LIST

WHAT KIND OF PLANE IS IT, PROFESSOR JONES ?

Copyright Gerard Holmgren Dec 17 2005. This work may be freely copied provided that it is not for commercial use. Please cite the author's name, the date of publication, the web address where you found it and the copyright notice.

PART 3a OF  THE DARK SIDE OF PROFESSOR JONES

In Part 2 of this series, I alluded briefly to an embarrassing factual error by Professor Jones in his ill-considered attack on the no WTC plane evidence.

The relevant section of Part 2, under the sub—heading "Getting the facts right" should be read as background to this article.

Part 3 is dedicated to examining in greater depth the implications of this error by Jones and  his subsequent attempt to dishonestly remove the evidence that he had made it.

                          JONES TRIES TO COVER UP HIS LIES

Lets look at his attempt to cover it up.

Jones' erroneous allusion to a 757 is from draft 2.4 of his paper, which was current at the time that I wrote to him on Nov 29 2005. My letter contained a many faceted critique of his paper, part of which was to taunt him about this error.

Below is the excerpt from my letter which deals with that particular aspect of my complaint.

"Your lack of basic knowledge on this subject is exemplified by the fact that you don't even know what kind of plane is under discussion. You twice referred to the Sth tower object as a 757, when anybody who knows anything about the issue knows that the official story claims a 767. You claim to have conducted a  "Careful inspection of the undercarriage of a standard 757"  in relation to a debate over an alleged 767 in order to "find" the theory weak?

"Careful scrutiny" is not the phrase I would use to describe such sloppiness. Did somebody say "junk science" ?

There is an old saying, "those in glass houses should not throw stones ", which I think you would do well to remember.

I would advise first learning something about the issue before taking such a bellicose tone in relation to it. "

Within a few days of me writing to him, Jones had taken down draft 2.4 and replaced it with draft 2.5.

Having anticipated this response, I backed up draft 2.4 before writing to him. There was also a google cache of it, which has since gone off line, but which I backed up here.

Now lets look at the difference between draft 2.4 and draft 2.5 which is backed up here, and a google cache backed up here,since a few days later, Jones replaced it with draft 3.0 (still current at the time of posting this article) in an apparent attempt to further sanitise his error.

Consider the text below.

If you read the entire section, you are reading draft 2.4. If you delete the section in bold font, you are reading draft 2.5.

"I acknowledge that other notions have sprung up in the near vacuum of official consideration of this very plausible hypothesis.  These notions must be subjected to careful scrutiny. I by no means endorse all such ideas.  For example, the video "In Plane Site" promotes the theory that a "pod" holds a missile under the wing of the 757 which hit WTC 2 (see Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  Careful inspection of the undercarriage of a standard 757 leads to the explanation that the so-called "pod" was merely a reflection from the bulged undercarriage (Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  I find that the "pod theory" is very weak and distracts from central issues.

Again, there is a notion that something other than Boeing jetliners hit the WTC Towers (see Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  Scrutiny of photographs and videos provides compelling evidence that jets did in fact hit these buildings (Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  A March 2005 article in Popular Mechanics focuses on poorly-supported claims and proceeds to ridicule the whole "9-11 truth movement" (Chertoff, 2005).  Serious replies to this article have already been written (Hoffman, 2005; Baker, 2005; serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm).

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".  Likewise, the notion that the "explosive demolition" hypothesis should not be debated since it would imply a "conspiracy theory" departs from good science as well as from numerous historical precedents of empirical conspiracies (Jones, 2005).  Scientific inquiry is not or should not be dictated by politics (Mooney, 2005)."

Notice that by deleting the section in bold—that which contains the embarrassing 757 error— the remaining text flows smoothly as if originally written that way.

We can see that Jones hurriedly drew a razor through his text to delete the incriminating 757 error, while leaving as much as he possibly could of the substance of his attack unchanged. This indicates both dishonesty and an admission of the lack of evidence for his bold conclusion.

In draft 2.4. Jones is claiming to have come to a certain conclusion on the basis of a "careful examination" which he claims to carried out. In draft 2.5 , it appears that in actual fact this "careful examination never happened—and yet miraculously, he came to the identical conclusion as in draft 2.4. On the basis of…?

Either Jones actually carried out  this "careful examination" of the wrong kind of plane or he didn't. If he did, then draft 2.5 is a lie. If he didn't, then draft 2.4 is a lie.

In order to limit the damage, Jones could say that he never actually claimed to have carried out such a careful examination himself. That he was merely reporting on those carried out by Hoffman and Chertoff. See the above mentioned sectioned of part 2 in relation to this. However, such a claim would only dig him deeper. As mentioned in part 2, neither of these "examinations ' actually contained the videos in question. How can a study of a standard undercarriage be compared with that of a video, without the video at hand ? Furthermore, of what kind of plane were they examining the standard undercarriage ? If they really were so much in error as to have studied a 757 as claimed by Jones, then their work is as laughable as that of Jones. On the other hand, if they studied a 767, and Jones' analysis of their articles was so cursory as to not even know what kind of plane they were studying, then its obvious that he made no critical evaluation of their work whatsoever.

So whichever way he turns, Jones' claim to have been satisfied of "careful scrutiny " and "careful examination"  in relation to this issue are lies. He merely rushed—without any study at all - to the conclusion which he found politically palatable, and then tried to give it a veneer of credibility by sneaking it into a paper which had carried out a soberly toned analysis of the separate issue of demolition, attempting to use his careful tone on that issue to create the impression that his analysis of the planes issue was of similar quality. And then attempted to continue the deception  when the error was brought to his attention by one of the targets of his attack.

Having immediately made his initial razor cut to remove the obvious factual error , a few days later, Jones tweaked the text a little more—probably after more careful examination of my criticisms - and replaced 2.5 with 3.0, which at the time of publishing this article was still the current draft.

Here's the relevant section from 3.0

From reading the full text below we have draft 2.4 . By deleting the text in bold font we have 2.5. By also deleting the text in larger and different font, we have 3.0. ( An addition in 3.0 is in brackets)

"(At the same time) I acknowledge that other notions have sprung up in the near vacuum of official consideration of this very plausible hypothesis.  These notions must be subjected to careful scrutiny. I by no means endorse all such ideas.  For example, the video "In Plane Site" promotes the theory that a "pod" holds a missile under the wing of the 757 which hit WTC 2 (see Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  Careful inspection of the undercarriage of a standard 757 leads to the explanation that the so-called "pod" was merely a reflection from the bulged undercarriage (Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  I find that the "pod theory" is very weak and distracts from central issues.

Again, there is a notion that something other than Boeing jetliners hit the WTC Towers (see Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  Scrutiny of photographs and videos provides compelling evidence that jets did in fact hit these buildings (Hoffman, 2005; Chertoff, 2005).  A March 2005 article in Popular Mechanics focuses on poorly-supported claims and proceeds to ridicule the whole "9-11 truth movement" (Chertoff, 2005).  Serious replies to this article have already been written (Hoffman, 2005; Baker, 2005; serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/reply_to_popular_mechanics.htm).

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".  Likewise, the notion that the "explosive demolition" hypothesis should not be debated since it would imply a "conspiracy theory" departs from good science as well as from numerous historical precedents of empirical conspiracies (Jones, 2005).  Scientific inquiry is not or should not be dictated by politics (Mooney, 2005)."

From 2.5 to 3.0, Jones has again drawn a neat razor, this time to remove his bellicose accusation of "junk science". This is hardly surprising, given the way in which I played this phrase back to him in my letter of Nov 29 2005.

Here are some excerpts from that letter.

Careful scrutiny" is not the phrase I would use to describe such sloppiness. Did somebody say "junk science" ? There is an old saying, "those in glass houses should not throw stones ", which I think you would do well to remember…

...One might as well complain, in the course of a debate over evolution that a discussion of the skeletal structure of amphibians "distracts" from the issue of the origin of the first flowering plants – or the reverse. Did somebody say "junk science" ?...

...you are– whether deliberately or by accident – in the embarrassing situation of plagiarizing  much of your purported work from the very same people whom you accuse of distracting from it with "junk science"…

...avail yourself of basic facts  – eg the difference between a 757 and 767- before embarrassing yourself with strong phrases such as "junk science" in relation to issues about which you clearly know almost nothing…

...There is another old saying which you would do well to remember. "Don't dish it out if you can't take it."

And in my letter of Nov 30, I expressed my displeasure at his reply thus

"your very first belated contribution to the "movement" was to start dishing out terms such as  "junk science" and "poisoning" in relation to issues where you hadn't even done enough study to know what kind of plane was under discussion. Please do define unity for me...

...confirmation of a full retraction and apology for the shots you made at the no plane theories and the "junk science"  and "poisoning" jibes will settle the issue satisfactorily for me and expeditiously for you.

So I made no secret of the fact that Jones was in for some torrid blowback in relation to the unfortunate combination of his laughable error on the type of plane concerned and his "junk science" jibe, unless he was prepared to deliver a genuine retraction— which he refused to do.

And we can see that from 2.4 through 2.5 to 3.0—the changes apparently made in response to my letter - Jones did everything possible to keep the basic message of his 2.4 draft intact, while removing evidence of his error, and battening down the hatches for the fallout from his "junk science" accusation.

CONTINUE

This is a mirror of http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/whatkindofplane.html