Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

History channel recently tried to do a Popular Mechanics style point by point debunking of the 9/11 types. It wasn't bad but the conspiracy has grown so big (as they often do) that I think the time limits and the medium made it hard to give a good technical debunking. The best part comes right at the end. The DJ who is leading the whole Bush did it charge had a hilarious line at the end:

"When Galileo said the world was round and not flat, he was locked up for it."

Galileo never said the world was round. He said the earth revolved around the sun, contrary to church teaching.

Of course, one of the cardinal markers of the pseudoscientist or conspiracy nuts is when he starts comparing himself to Galileo. "Oh they laughed at him too!" Well, they also laughed at the French scientists who claimed they could see n-rays. We laugh at far more stuff that is simply wrong than stuff that has scientific plausibility and evidence.

The documentary was actually kind of interesting and right at the end they went to the producers of Loose Change (you really wanna punch those guys, especially the gap toothed guy) and sort of confronted them with the contradictory evidence ("actually cell phones can operate up to 50,000 feet"). They kind of backed off. Oddly they didn't do that enough.

Given their access to some of the leaders of the 9/11 denier movement, it would have been a far more interesting documentary if they laid the scientific evidence before them and then asked them for comment.

[twg]

They should have sent Penn & Teller after them...