Tin Foil Hat Studies at UW?

Perhaps Professor Jones will be hired by the University of Wisconsin.

Publius, at 7:00 am EDT on October 23, 2006

Anonymous petition?

I looked at the petition supporting the 9/11 conspiracy theorist at BYU. On the two pages’ worth of signatures I read, I noticed about one-fourth of the signatures were listed as “Anonymous.” That doesn’t mean the signatories didn’t give their names to the petition, it merely means that they used the option the on-line petition gives them not to display their names on the public list.

I wonder why they did that. If you sign a petition anonymously, have you signed it at all?

Signing the petition anonymously allows a signer to escape any official oppression for espousing his point of view, like a secret ballot, but it also allows him to escape the duty of defending that point of view. It adds intellectual cowardice to political cowardice. You can make any claim you want on the flimsiest of evidence without being regarded as a fool as long as you don’t have to sign your name to it.

Jack Olson, at 11:05 am EDT on October 23, 2006

In Academe, Bias Is Only Liberal

On many occasions on this site, I have read impassioned comments on stories in which the responders railed against the liberal bias supposedly present in America’s college classrooms. “Teach your subject and keep your political views to yourself,” these writers say. Now, we have a teacher who does just that—nobody, from what I can gather, is claiming that he brought his controversial questions about 9/11 into his classroom, unless he was specifically asked about them by students—and yet, he is being forced to retire. He seems happy with this resolution, which is fine. But where are all those members of the “shut up and teach” crowd now? Might it be that they can only muster outrage when the bias in question is of the “liberal” variety?

MarkGraybill, at 3:25 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

It may be true that Jones didn’t espouse his views in the classroom unless asked, but did he use his official title when posting his views elsewhere? This is just as much an abuse of position, and an important one in that it provides legitimacy to the 9/11 “truth” movement that it would otherwise not have.

On the diversity posts... would you have us teach every perspective on every event just because a few people believe them? Perhaps we should teach the views of Holocaust deniers when we discuss WWII? The existence of alternative views doesn’t mean that “diversity” requires that we teach the unsupported ones.

QuakerProf, at 5:50 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

The Plot Thickens

Now we have two intersecting subfields in Tinfoil Hat Studies— the 9/11 conspiracy and the conspiracy to cover up the discovery of cold fusion.

Publius, at 11:20 pm EDT on October 23, 2006

Professor at Brigham Young on 9/11

All viewpoints do not deserve equal consideration or respect. If a conclusion is based on information and data that are patently false all the while ignoring facts and accurate information, then the conclusion is invalid. A University is justified in choosing not to employ a professor who comes to such invalid conclusions. Although it is important for a university to tolerate a wide variety of views, a university also has the responsibility to help students develop good thinking skills ... how to reason from evidence. One who promotes the idea that the United States orchestrated the 9/11 attacks is demonstrating a failure in this regard.

Good thinking skills have nothing to do with liberal or conservative points of view. They have nothing to do with promoting a viewpoint contrary to whatever prevails in the media or the mainstream. Good thinking skills have to do with reasoning from evidence. Diversity stems from people who look at evidence (not speculation),and draw different conclusions from the evidence. Diversity stems from different value systems. Being open-minded alone is not a virtue. As has been widely quoted, and wisely said, “It is good to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”

Patti, at 2:35 pm EDT on October 24, 2006

Good Thinking

This is well put: “If a conclusion is based on information and data that are patently false all the while ignoring facts and accurate information, then the conclusion is invalid. A University is justified in choosing not to employ a professor who comes to such invalid conclusions.” However, the fact that BYU and Dr. Jones are parting ways cannot, in itself, be taken as evidence that he had reached “invalid conclusions". There is, for example, some evidence that financial pressure was applied to the university in terms of research support.

Most important, is the point raised concerning facts and method. To me the central fact is that WTC 7 was observed to fall in 6.5 seconds, only slightly longer than the 6.0 seconds that would be required by an object free-falling from the roof. Given the fundamental laws of Physics (e.g., Conservation of Momentum) and the Gravitational Constant, the rapid collapse would be impossible if the falling floors had been obstructed by stationary ones below, if momentum had been lost in breaking the supporting steel structure, or energy consumed in reducing the structure to rubble.

I suggest that it would be more appropriate to either confirm or disconfirm the facts and Dr. Jones method, rather than to jump to premature conclusions.

phollings, at 6:20 pm EDT on October 24, 2006