Pat Curley of the Screw Loose Change blog writes:
I love that they got Lynn Margulis, National Medal of Science winner to tell us about the problems with NIST. She must have won her medal in structural engineering, right? Well, no, she won it for microbiology. Which, if we were talking about multiple prokaryotic organisms, would make her an expert. Unfortunately for her, we're discussing steel-framed skyscrapers, on which she's no more educated than your average cab driver.First off, with the exception of her comment on the nano-thermite evidence, Margulis is speaking about something she knows plenty about; that good science requires evidence not be destroyed (which it certainly was) and an investigation to begin with the most likely hypothesis.
We get the usual quote-mining of Danny Jowenko, RIP. The Troofers never mention that he debunked the supposed controlled demolition of the Twin Towers.
As David Ray Griffin writes in his book The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False:
NIST wrote:Furthermore, Griffin notes:
The challenge was to determine if a fire-induced floor system failure could occur in WTC 7 under any ordinary contents fire.
Why would NIST have assumed that this was "the challenge"? Why would NIST, already knowing that buildings such as WTC 7 can be brought down with explosives--and indeed that is the only way in which such buildings had ever been caused to collapse--have asked if a collapse caused by an ordinary building fire "could occur"?
...Physicist John Wyndham... wrote: "NIST's failure to seriously consider other causes besides fire for the building collapses strongly suggests government interference in a scientific process."
Speaking as NIST lead investigator, Shyam Sunder denied this charge in advance, saying: "We conducted our study with no preconceived notions about what happened" That claim is simply not credible, however, given NIST's refusal to begin with the most likely hypothesis...
We also have the testimony of a former NIST employee who had held "a supervisory scientist position at the top civil service grade" until 2001, after which he worked as a part-time contractor until 2006. Although this man wishes to remain anonymous, for fear of possible retaliation, he is known to physicist Steven Jones, who has confirmed that he is indeed who he says he is... Speaking in particular about the implications of NIST's politicization for its work on 9/11-related issues, he wrote:As to Danny Jowenko, the reason he did not think the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolition was due to their unconventional nature, but as the website 911review.com has pointed out:
When I first heard of [9/11 truth] and how the NIST "scientists" involved in 911 seemed to act in very un-scientific ways, it was not at all surprising to me. By 2001, everyone in NIST leadership had been trained to pay close heed to political pressures. There was no chance that NIST people "investigating" the 911 situation could have been acting in the true spirit of scientific independence, nor could they have operated at all without careful consideration of political impact. Everything that came from the hired guns was by then routinely filtered through the front office, and assessed for political implications before release.
A demolition that is planned as part of a covert operation to fit a narrative of events that attributes the total destruction of the building to a different cause (such as a jetliner crash and consequent fires) has a very different set of requirements than a demolition that is planned to legally remove a building in an urban setting.And as 911blogger.com user "stallion4" has noted:
The towers weren't conventional demolitions. They were "top down" demolitions, which are rare in the professional demolition industry...Despite claims to the contrary, Jowenko remained quite sure WTC 7 was a demolition. Perhaps the more conventional nature of WTC 7's demolition can be explained by evidence that indicates 10:45 a.m. was the originally planned demolition time.
Building 7 was a classic demolition job -- bottom up -- the type of demolition that Danny Jowenko is qualified to give his professional opinion on.