The 911 Truth Movement has been highly vocal about the publication of an article entitled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” that was published in “The Open Chemical Physics Journal”, which is part of the Bentham Open Science Publishers group of journals.

Researchers from Denmark, the United States and Australia reported that dust samples collected near the collapsed World Trade Center complex contained iron oxide and aluminum flakes whose chemical composition was consistent with unburned nanotechnology-enhanced thermite. Not just a little bit of this super thermite, but enough unburned thermite to account for a full 0.1% of the dust collected after the WTC buildings collapsed. This finding alone should have raised many questions about what the red and grey chips in the dust actually were.

The subgroup of 911 Truthers who are advocating this particular theory of the WTC collapse have declared victory over those advocating the controlled demolition theory, or the missiles disguised as planes theory, or the directed energy weapons theory, or even the secret nuclear reactors in the WTC basements theory, because they now have a “scientific paper published in a peer reviewed journal” to buttress their claims.

It is not surprising that the public is not aware of the fact that the so-called Bentham Open Science publishing group is basically a vanity publication where anyone can publish a “peer reviewed scientific journal article” which is not actually peer reviewed.

This embarrassing fact became all too clear recently when another Bentham “peer reviewed” journal was caught publishing a fake paper submitted by Philip Davis, a PhD student in scientific communications at Cornell University.

Davis used a well known computer program that was designed specifically to generate nonsense science articles which would be spotted as such by any legitimate peer review process. The fake article entitled “Deconstructing Access Points” contained wonderfully nonsensical statements such as “Note that vacuum tubes have less jagged effective
floppy disk throughput curves than do autogenerated robots”.

Despite making no sense whatsoever, the paper was accepted at the Bentham Publishing Groups journal “The Open Information Science Journal” as though it was peer reviewed, despite the fact that the author, Davis, never received any reviewer comments, which is a universal part of the peer review process. Instead, Davis simply received a bill for an $800 fee which was to be sent to a post office box in the United Arab Emirates.

Following the disclosure of the fake nature of the article (and withdrawal of the manuscript) by Davis, the chief editor at the journal, Bambang Parmanto, resigned. "I didn't like what happened," Parmanto told reporters for The Scientist Magazine. "If this is true, I don't have full control of the content that is accepted to this journal." Following this, Marc Williams, an immunologist and stem cell researcher at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry who served on the editorial advisory board of The Open Stem Cell Journal also resigned his position with the Bentham Group.

Previously, the chief editor of the Bentham journal that the Thermite article was published in resigned, and denounced the journal with this statement: “I cannot accept that this topic is published in my journal. The article has nothing to do with physical chemistry or chemical physics, and I could well believe that there is a political viewpoint behind its publication. If anyone had asked me, I would say that the article should never have been published in this journal. Period.” Despite supposedly being the chief editor, she had not been informed that the thermite article was going to be published in her journal.

The advocates for the nanotech thermite theory of the WTC collapse will never accept the fact that the Bentham Group journals are not actual peer reviewed scientific publications, but scientists all around the world are now convinced of the fact. 

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe the official story of the 911 commission report, and in fact, neither do many members of the 911 commission. But just because that story isn’t correct, it doesn’t mean that missiles disguised as planes, or directed energy weapons, destroyed the towers. It just means that the official story is inaccurate.

The only way to find out what really happened is to have a large panel of independent researchers reopen the case, with access to the classified documents that would be needed to make a valid assessment of all the data. In order to facilitate that happening, the 911 Truth Movement should stop squabbling over pet theories, and concentrate on getting a new investigation with subpoena power and the authorization to view classified documents started. This will take some serious Congressional lobbying by those interested parties. So leave your favorite theories at home, and press Congress for a new investigation.