I posted this on another forum:
The whole premise of AE911T is an appeal to false authority since only a small percentage of its members are especially qualified to analyze the collapse [1]. Why is the opinion of a landscape architect, interior designer, electrical or chemical engineer any more valid than a truck driver's or janitor's? Especially since based on their statements very few of them have done their own analysis or read the NIST reports. Many (most?) base their arguments on non engineering aspects (put options, the “stand and down”, "pull it" etc) [2]. I don’t think any are mechanical engineers specializing in building materials and very few of them are structural engineers, as with the architects very few seem to have experience with buildings more than 2 – 4 stories tall.
And as appeals to authority go it is a laughably inadequate one. Gage has signed up about 1000 architects and engineers. About 200 of them live outside the US and roughly 50 of the Americans are retired or don’t work in the field. Thus about 750 working US architects and engineers have signed the petition out of a total of approximately 1.8 [3] million or about 1/22%.
Now of course it is unreasonable to expect all A & E’s who belief there are 'unanswered questions' to sign the petition, however a “Truther” organization called NYC-CAN circulated a similar petition in NYC. It called for a ballot measure to impanel a civilian commission to reinvestigate the attacks. The numbers of signatories is disputed. They claim to have collected over 80,000, about 53,000 from their original submission to the Board of Elections and 27- 28,000 from a later one [4]. The BoE originally said less than 30,000 (the requisite number) were valid but after review said they’d met that target [5]. NYC-CAN acknowledged they couldn’t certify about 20,000 of the original batch. Assuming the same percentage of the 2nd batch had problems they have about 50,000 and assuming the BoE rejected some signatures because the addresses didn’t match or they varied too much from the signatures on file it seems about 50,000 of NYC’s 4.2 million registered votes [6] signed. That works out to 1.2% of NYC's registered voters. Why then after much more time and the facility of signing people up over the internet has Gage only been able to sign up about 0.04% of his colleagues? That's about 1/30 the proportion of NYC voters! Might it be that due to their professional training they are (about 30x) less rather than more likely to believe such nonsense. I guess Gage is right, A’s & E’s are better equipped than average citizens in evaluating the truther's nonsense.
1. http://www.ae911truth.org/signpetition.php
2. IBID click on their names and check for yourself
3. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos038.htm#emply
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#emply
4. http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/search?q=signatures
5. ibid
6. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2...als-gear-up-for-heavy-turnout/?pagemode=print
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0352759320091104
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2...bloomberg_hones_spanish_skills_to_woo_la.html
The whole premise of AE911T is an appeal to false authority since only a small percentage of its members are especially qualified to analyze the collapse [1]. Why is the opinion of a landscape architect, interior designer, electrical or chemical engineer any more valid than a truck driver's or janitor's? Especially since based on their statements very few of them have done their own analysis or read the NIST reports. Many (most?) base their arguments on non engineering aspects (put options, the “stand and down”, "pull it" etc) [2]. I don’t think any are mechanical engineers specializing in building materials and very few of them are structural engineers, as with the architects very few seem to have experience with buildings more than 2 – 4 stories tall.
And as appeals to authority go it is a laughably inadequate one. Gage has signed up about 1000 architects and engineers. About 200 of them live outside the US and roughly 50 of the Americans are retired or don’t work in the field. Thus about 750 working US architects and engineers have signed the petition out of a total of approximately 1.8 [3] million or about 1/22%.
Now of course it is unreasonable to expect all A & E’s who belief there are 'unanswered questions' to sign the petition, however a “Truther” organization called NYC-CAN circulated a similar petition in NYC. It called for a ballot measure to impanel a civilian commission to reinvestigate the attacks. The numbers of signatories is disputed. They claim to have collected over 80,000, about 53,000 from their original submission to the Board of Elections and 27- 28,000 from a later one [4]. The BoE originally said less than 30,000 (the requisite number) were valid but after review said they’d met that target [5]. NYC-CAN acknowledged they couldn’t certify about 20,000 of the original batch. Assuming the same percentage of the 2nd batch had problems they have about 50,000 and assuming the BoE rejected some signatures because the addresses didn’t match or they varied too much from the signatures on file it seems about 50,000 of NYC’s 4.2 million registered votes [6] signed. That works out to 1.2% of NYC's registered voters. Why then after much more time and the facility of signing people up over the internet has Gage only been able to sign up about 0.04% of his colleagues? That's about 1/30 the proportion of NYC voters! Might it be that due to their professional training they are (about 30x) less rather than more likely to believe such nonsense. I guess Gage is right, A’s & E’s are better equipped than average citizens in evaluating the truther's nonsense.
1. http://www.ae911truth.org/signpetition.php
2. IBID click on their names and check for yourself
3. http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos038.htm#emply
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos027.htm#emply
4. http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/search?q=signatures
5. ibid
6. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2...als-gear-up-for-heavy-turnout/?pagemode=print
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0352759320091104
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2...bloomberg_hones_spanish_skills_to_woo_la.html
