PhD Physicist Grabbe: Peer-reviewed paper in Journal of Engineering Mechanics

My tenacious colleague Dr. Grabbe has succeeded in getting a paper successfully through peer-review with editors of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. His paper confronts Bazant who previously published a paper supportive of the "official 9/11 narrative" in the same journal.

Sincere congratulations to Crockett for another significant peer-reviewed paper; it was accepted for publication in October 2012 in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics.

Dr. Crockett Grabbe is a physicist who received his PhD from CalTech in 1978. He received a Bachelors of Science with Highest Honors from the University of Texas in 1972.

Dr. Grabbe has also published a notable book providing his scientific analyses of the destruction of the WTC Towers and WTC7. Loaded with photographs, this is his fourth book written for the general public.

"National Swindle on the World Trade Center" challenges the official story of 9/11 with scientific data and analysis. Initial pages are available free here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0098JOSJS#reader_B0098JOSJS

I see that the book is free in Kindle form for Amazon Prime members, a generous offer IMO: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0098JOSJS

Question about Dr Grabbe's paper

came to me via email-- is the paper already available? Not yet -- it has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication and is scheduled to appear in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics (JEM).

We will see whether the paper will be available for free on-line, or if JEM will charge a fee for published papers -- which is common in scientific journals these days. Sometimes the author(s) can pay an additional fee to make the article available on-line, but I don't know if this paper will be open access or not.

Now, if you go to our peer-reviewed paper in the Environmentalist -- you will find that it is "open access" because we paid the fee so that it would be free to you on-line. This paper:

The Environmentalist
Volume 29, Number 1 (2009), 56-63, DOI: 10.1007/s10669-008-9182-4
Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials
Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley and Steven E. Jones
http://www.springerlink.com/content/f67q6272583h86n4/

However, try other papers there and you will find that often they charge a hefty fee for you to get a PDF copy.

Paying the fee for open access does NOT mean that you are paying to have your paper published with lesser peer review, not at all. It means that one is making the paper freely available, open access. There has been some confusion about this; trying to set the record straight here.

We made sure that our "Thermitic Materials" paper was likewise open access -- free to you -- and it went through a rigorous peer-review process also.
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

Congratulations to Dr. Grabbe

Thanks for the notice, Steven.

To clarify your comments on our paper published by The Environmentalist, those interested should note that the peer review process was completed and the paper had been accepted for publication in the print edition before the optional open access choice was discussed. Open access was then made available through a generous donation from a supporter. The authors never paid anything to publish this paper and it would have been published without any fees if we had chosen to let readers pay their own fees.

It is common for readers to have to pay fees for article access or for supporting organizations, for example the author's company or university, to pay processing fees for peer reviewed publications. Due to the importance of these issues, we looked for ways make the information freely available for all.

Thanks for the clarification, Kevin.

Right -- basically, someone had to pay the fee for open access in order for readers not to have to pay individual fees to download the article, which is so often the case these days.

Again, I congratulate Dr. Grabbe for persevering through the peer-review process. I realize it can be grueling at times, having published over 55 peer-reviewed articles in various scientific journals.

On another note, the alternative energy research is going quite well and we are working on a scientific article. Publishing this paper may prove challenging, I expect, even with compelling evidence. Nascent science is not always welcomed with open arms.

Peer Review

Dr. Jones,
Do you mind elaborating briefly on the peer review process for this paper? How is confirmation of peer review received since some discussions on JEM appear not to be peer reviewed? And to be clear this is a technical paper and not a discussion, correct?
Thanks, Red

I have passed these questions on to Dr Grabbe

I understand that JEM is a peer-reviewed journal, and Dr Grabbe recently wrote via email: "The paper is a scientific paper (which Bazant may reply to)". Hopefully we'll have a response to your detailed questions soon. I would like to get the facts straight also.
Please note that in announcing Dr Grabbe's forthcoming paper, based on his email to me, I have not endorsed the paper -- I am waiting for final-form publication.

Response to questions, by Dr Grabbe

Dr Grabbe responds to the questions by Red via email to me, as follows:
Quote:
Response to Red:
Yes, this paper was peer-reviewed after I submitted it to JEM. I am not sure
about your statement that "some discussions are not peer-reviewed" -- the
editor responded 2 months after submission indicating it was. This
was a technical discussion about details of a technical paper.

Crockett Grabbe
End-quote

Thank you both for the prompt

Thank you both for the prompt replies.

The Peer-review Process at JEM

Excerpt from a blog of mine:

The "debunker" Oystein at the JREF Forum replied, commenting that my post "presents Discussion pieces at the JEM [Journal of Engineering Mechanics] as 'peer-reviewed articles', which shows the author (Talboo) know nothing about scientific discourse, or he flat-out lies ('discussions' about a peer-reviewed paper are published by the journal without peer-review)."

First off, after being told on YouTube that, "There is a rebuttal to Zdenek Bazant's January 2011 paper with an editor at JEM right now, "grandmastershek" responded, "You mean Bjorkmans comments? Yeah discussion papers are not peer reviewed."

To which mechanical engineer Tony Szamboti retorted:

No, it is not Bjorkman's comments. It is a substantial correction of major errors in the Bazant and Le January 2011 paper in JEM which are not ambiguous and that their claim that deceleration of the North Tower upper section in a natural collapse would be too small to be visible is erroneous. I hate to burst your little bubble here bubba but I would tend to think Discussion papers are more rigorously reviewed than standard papers, owing to the fact that they are criticizing a published paper and the author of the paper being criticized gets to respond.

Bjorkman (who has "more than 40 years experience in steel structural design and structural damage analysis") noted at The 911 Forum that he sent his discussion paper into the JEM in February 2009 and that following June was "advised it had been reviewed and was going to be published."

Further backing up Szambot's argument, is chemical engineer James Gourley, who described the process of getting his discussion paper refuting Bazant published in the JEM on 911blogger.com. Gourley states, "Not much is ever written about what we go through to get these papers published. The publication of this paper is a case study in the struggles we face." He notes that he had to "remove language that the editors thought was too argumentative" and that he left out a number of points he could have raised, knowing that "it would be difficult to get a paper critical of the official story published in a mainstream scientific journal" and "didn't want to give JEM any reason to reject it."

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), which oversees the JEM and many other scientific journals, makes essentially the same point, in their "ASCE Authors’ Guide," as Szamboti did, that "Discussions present significant comments or questions about the technical content of a technical paper." The guide goes on to state that "Discussions follow the requirements for other manuscripts except that they do not have abstracts, introductions, or conclusions." [All above emphasis added.]

Considered in sum, it certainly looks like discussion papers are indeed peer-reviewed. But just to make certain, I contacted Szamboti as well as esteemed scientist Dr. Crockett Grabbe, who replied:

I know they are peer reviewed in the Journal of Engineering Mechanics, as Richard Johns and I just went through that with our Discussion of the Le and Bazant January 2011 paper [mentioned here]. There was at least one reviewer other than the editor.

Tony Szamboti

JM,

Yes, the discussion papers submitted to JEM are peer-reviewed. I have had
2 papers peer-reviewed & accepted to JEM: one appeared in 4/11 (taking apart Sefen), & the one I submitted early summer of 2011 will appear in October of 2012 (which takes on Bazant).

Crockett Grabbe

PhD in Applied Physics, Caltech, 1978

Source: http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2012/07/update-to-blog-published-2512.html

Great post....

Wow, Anthony Szamboti, goes all gangsta on the guy and calls him "bubba." I love it. Tony is adding street cred to his academic and professional credentials.

Reply from Oystein in Email

Your most recent comment at 911Blogger is a copy and paste of a piece you updated in Julky, and it quotes me - from February!

Please be advised that, in the meantime, I have reformed my position on the matter. This is particularly noteworthy as you reposted your entry under the piece on Crockett Grabbe's Discussion paper that's due in October at JEM, because we have a current thread at JREF on the same topic where I wrote as recently as September 24th (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=8642758#post8642758):

"I ... remember not long ago Tony Szamboti showed an ASCE's document describing also the peer-review process, and from that I remember that I had to concede that they do peer-review beyond merely having an editor proof-read it for appropriateness. It seems they do send out discussion papers to selected peers who may make recommendations for change. So in that sense, yes, discussions seem to be properly peer reviewed."

So you see, JM, I am not afraid to concede openly and explicitly that, for once, someone like Tony was right and I was wrong, and then go on and defend that newly won knowledge against the usual crowd at JREF, giving credit where credit is due. Perhaps you find the fairness in you to update your blog accordingly and add a little note at 911Blogger conceding that I have learned something since february (I can't place a comment there myself - I am on permanent moderation there, and apparently the moderators either never review submitted posts, or never allow mine. Either way, I am effectively censored there).

Of course I go on stating my opinon "that this process isn't handled with quite the same effort and keenness as original papers, considering their desire to publish discussions and closures in a timely fashion, not too long after the original article". Perhaps this could be a rather obvious and incontroversial stance.

While I am at it, I'd like to point out that
1. Steven Jones appears a bit misleading when he calls the article by Grabbe a "paper" - the JEM, as all ASCE journals, distinguishes between "papers" and "technical notes" on one hand, and "discussions" and "closures" on the other. In a strict sense defined by ASCE, Grabbe's article will be a "discussion" "only", not a "paper"
2. Grabbe's wording " I have had 2 papers peer-reviewed & accepted to JEM: one appeared in 4/11 (taking apart Sefen)" is a) equally misleading by calling a "discussion" a "paper" when, in the context you are discussing this issue, the two are not the same thing and b) It is obviously his personal opinion only that he was "taking apart Sefen". I am sure Bazant likewise thinks his closures of discussions by Björkmann, Gourley and Szuladzinski, which were also peer-reviewed by JEM and thus enjoy the same prima facie respectability, have "taken apart Björkmann, Gourley and Szuladzinski".

Excellent news!

Many congratulations to Dr. Grabbe! It is of paramount importance that 9/11 is analyzed properly - uncontaminated by political mandate - using hard data, rigorous scientific method, and with peer review. The mainstream media is so biased that they have gone so far as to promote impossible violations of physical laws/reality in order to promote the fairytale fed to them by their owners and overlords.

Feynman...

Feynman summarizes this sentiment with valuable nuance:

Thanks for the treat......

Jeez Louise, was Cornell ever mobbed up Vladimir Nabokov would have been there at the same time!

From My Collection:

What Do You Care What Other People Think by Ricard Feynman
Genius: The Life and the Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick
Lectures on Physics : Richard Feynman
Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman
Six Easy Pieces : Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher (A compendium of of Feynman's lectures from California Institute of Technology) Richard P. Feynman
Feynman's Rainbow by Leonard Mlodinow

All the above are available on audio. I can recommend all of them.

thanks for sharing

great titles Peter thanks for sharing. I already ordered six easy pieces on paperback but didn't see any audio available at amazon at first glance.. any links for audio?

regards
dtg

It does seem to be available at Amazon....

It is available at Amazon as well as Audible. I chased down the one on Amazon and it is listed new but is actually used (like new). This audio tends to be on the rareish side but a seller on Amazon tells me the title has been re-released.

http://www.amazon.com/Six-Easy-Pieces-Essentials-Brilliant/dp/0465023924

This is certainly good news...

I just wish these journals weren't so inaccessible. The subscription for this one is over $200.00 on top of an ASCE membership. I do understand the costs associated with publication, having worked on a research compendium at one time.
As for Amazon Prime, it is $74.00 for a year but you may be able to get a free trial as I have done in the past. Amazon Prime offers free shipping, free instant viewing of a subset of their online library of movies and free Kindle content as we see here. Its not a bad deal really especially if you shop on line. Just don't forget to cancel.

That said, let me just express my frustration, one more time, about the reticence of the public and in particular academics to the acceptance of the glaring faults in the official 9/11 story and do it from my unique perspective. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. I say that not to brag of course but as a measure of my limitations. In order to earn this degree I had to take two courses in mathematics. One course, that was required, was College Algebra and the other was an elective and I took Statistics for the Social Sciences. I have a more artistic bent and don't take well to the rigors of cyphering as Jethro Bodine would say in that cultural highlight The Beverly Hillbillies . Might I just add that the Zen like clarity of logic, promised me by the nuns at Our Lady, from the stern and assiduous application of mathematical principles never came; that I got from writing pseudo code for the VAX and being an early adapter of personal computers.

"What do you know good?" , the idiomatic greeting goes but more pertinently and pointedly we should ask: what do you know? I went shopping with a Bulgarian women and her five year old son. He was between us as we held his hands. He discovered a cache of pennies, nickels and dimes ensconced by the curb in a viscous syrup of orange soda. Grasping him firmly we flew him over this puddle as he struggled to free himself from our grip. " What is wrong with you people," he shouted: don't you like money any more? He was five and he said this in perfect idiomatic English that he had learned only moments before in his clipped Slavic accent. I was astonished! But the question should be: "what is the matter with you people don't you like knowledge any more?"

Available on the internet are courses from many universities. MIT is one of them. You can download the courses free and for a fee you can receive the texts and the syllabus. I was shocked when I downloaded a few as to me they seemed remedial and way below the level of anyone who might think to apply to MIT. My father told me, rightly I think, that you couldn't learn anything unless you brought something to the table. So, when confronted with the MIT material, I just couldn't believe that anyone that would apply to such a specific rigor as MIT would not be well versed in Chemistry, Calculus, Trig, Physics etc. But these intro courses seemed to me more fit for a good high school than an institution of advanced learning. I have never taken any formal training in any of these subjects: as I stated above, academically my education is somewhat limited. Yet, even I know what an electron spin is and what Actinide series and Lanthanide series are, what Avogadro's number is, what valences are, what molality and molarity are and what a porphyrin ring is and on and on. This is in no way to state that I am somehow intellectually superior, clever, or gifted. I am just curious and this begs the question: "what is wrong with these people don't they like knowledge any more?" Maybe, just maybe, that is why they are so easily hoodwinked: do you think?

So forgive my frustration and perhaps vitriol, when confronted with the obtuseness of so called educated people. Because, even I know, through the thick haze of my Freudian, Jungian, Maslowian esoteric and somewhat crippling education: that Bazant (MIT) is wrong, that Sunder (MIT) is wrong and that Eagar (MIT) is wrong; they are all wrong. And there is the rub! I will bet my back woods state school education on it: that I know more about this subject than several MIT professors. Is it because I am smart or they just don't like knowledge anymore ?

Significant - Well Done

Score another one for the 9/11 science/research community.

The more mainstream 9/11 science becomes, the more difficult it will become for opposing 9/11 propagandists to peddle their fiction.

Great News but what I dont understand is....

how these refutations keep getting published yet Bazant's paper keeps getting published as if it has any plausibility. My take from Dr. Jones announcement here is that this paper went through months of rigorous peer review. It is my perception that Dr. Bazant's papers are sailing right through with little to no review. The Bazant et. al. paper first appeared two days after 9/11 with few changes since then. (I have never seen a list of any changes or updates made to the Bazant et al paper). How much of a peer review can take place in two days? I am no way a scientist, engineer, or expert in structural engineering, (I have a bachelor's in accounting), but even with my limited exposure to physics I can find fundamental flaws in Bazant's paper. Even claiming this "crush down, crush up" concept makes my common sense turn upside down. How does this paper even come back as approved without any notations, change recommendations or outright refusals. Had Bazant's paper landed on my desk for review, I don't think I could approve it for publication. Could anybody here approve it? (a rhetorical question I know) Yet it keeps getting republished. How it this so outside of the editors complicity in publishing it unreviewed? Can I presume Dr. Bazant will publish his rebuttal in the same issue?

dtg (dan)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
[2] The second basic thesis is that intellectual freedom is essential to human society -- freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture." -- Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom:
Andrey-Dmitriyevich-Sakharov (Soviet Physisist and developer of soviet H-bomb)

edit: P.S. What would it take for an "official discrediting" of Bazant's paper? How many refutations must the journal publish before it either retracts Dr. Bazant's paper or issues some declaration that it has been disproved? Certainly Dr. Bazant will never admit it. I am convinced he will take this theory to his grave, but at some point the JEM must recognize the paper's inherent flaws such as lack of mechanical data on how the failures occurred or continued, how the "crush down/crush up" do not occur simultaneously in accordance with Newton's 3rd law, lack of measurements of impacts on the lower floors (of course we all know there are no impacts), lack of experimental precedent or confirmation, or even acknowledgement of how this theory fits the south tower considering the top portion tilted significantly moving its center of gravity. I guess the list can go on ad infinitum.

Re: what it would it take for an official discrediting...

Many here may also know that Tony Szamboti and Richard Johns have had a paper into JEM since January 2011 (? ), which corrects Bazant's "fatal" (as Tony puts it) errors in his"Why the Observed Motion History of WTC Towers Is Smooth" - a paper which was likely written in response to the Missing Jolt critique in the first place. Gregory Szuladzinski also submitted a discussion on this paper.

So, real science is trying to proceed. It's the JEM editors who are sitting on their hands.

Nevertheless, great news about Dr. Grabbe's paper. I hope it makes the problems with Bazant's models clear to everyone.

I Thank Grabbe, Jones, Ryan, et al. for Their Excellent Work

I'm looking forward to reading Dr. Crockett Grabbe's upcoming paper. I've cited the article "Extremely high temperatures during the World Trade Center destruction" published in the Journal of 9/11 Studies, of which Dr. Grabbe is a coauthor, in my below article. I also therein cite the peer-reviewed papers by Jones et al. published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal, the Open Civil Engineering Journal, and The Environmentalist. This article is on physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE). Pages 75-84 of the article concern the 9/11 attacks.

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything

it's always struck me as

it's always struck me as ironic that Bazant assumed freefall acceleration in the first phase of the collapse of the towers to lend credibility to his story, yet NIST had to be cornered before making their admission of the same thing in WTC7. Its comforting to know that on the right side of this debate, we have men of science and integrity who do not misrepresent the facts to suit the outcome that they seek, but rather use the science to step toward the truth that we collectively seek. Dr Grabbe has taken another step for us all here, towards the justice that the truth deserves. Thank you.

Interesting point...

Perhaps Bazant, as an author, granted himself more poetic license than did the bureaucratic troglodytes at NIST who had to push their conclusion through committee.

Or...

That Dr. Bazant could have measured the acceleration of Tower 1 -- seeing that it was 64% of free fall as Chandler has shown -- and that it never decelerated though the collision between the 'top rigid block' and the 'undamaged lower portion' are fully engaged. A clear violation of Newton's Laws which Dr. Bazant finds unnecessary to address.

Yes of Course......

When I referred to Bazant as an author I intended to distinguish him from a researcher. When writing fiction it is the author's job to keep the reader enthralled with the story and one must strictly control too much of the implausible or incredible within the narrative in order to allow for the reader's suspension of disbelief; it becomes a social contract. "Let me tell you a story," I say. The story goes: "I have a dollar....." Well, you know that I have only 90¢ but you are willing to go along with the story and you know that I can do with 90¢ what others do with a dollar (really, I do that every day, just yesterday I bought a $1.58 can of soup on sale for 90¢.) So in my case you play along, because maybe the story is an allegory and you don't want to quibble over dollars and cents. Now, I have another story. This one is not an allegory. It is an analogy. I must now be more careful. This story goes: "I have $20.00....." I have to convince you of that because what is to come in the story requires your complete confidence. Michael Crichton, with an MD from Harvard, uses this technique in his scientific thrillers. This is the technique that Bazant has used. It is a simple if,then,else logical sequence wherein the if and the then has some plausibility but the else is deniable to the alert; in short a fiction.

Right...

But that Bazant formulated his initial model on September 13th without having access to actual blueprints nor having examined any physical evidence nor, apparently, having taken any meaningful measurements is truly astounding. It's anti-science. And to date in his papers and revisions he is claiming the adherence of the greater scientific and engineering community. Can this be true?

I'm a retired construction electrician. If I say to you "Go ahead, the circuit is off", you never take my word for it; you test and lock it out yourself.

Bazant can run circles around me with his manipulation of differential calculus, but it doesn't change the fact that his 'theory' is in direct contradiction of Newton's essential Laws of Motion. He has to know this, though Newton is never mentioned -- that I know of -- in his papers.

You mention 'story telling' and it reminds me of a great old SNL skit about the Clarence Thomas Senate confirmation hearings. The hearings get steered into Thomas's moral compass as he must answer allegations of improper behavior toward Anita Hill.

Senator: "Did you try and take advantage of Miss Hill?"
Thomas: "No, Senator."
Senator Kennedy: "Did you try walking out of the shower naked and acting surprised?"
Thomas: "No, Senator, I did not!"
Old Southern Senator: "Senator Kennedy, women don't like the 'direct' approach. Women like stories and frilly things."

As you might say 'the power of the narrative'.

Over two milliion views of vid regarding WTC7 and Towers

This morning I noticed that a video challenging the official story of 9/11 has reached over TWO MILLION views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEuJimaumW4&feature=related

It specifically discusses the destruction of WTC 7 on 9/11, the skyscraper that was NOT hit by a plane.

Let's see if this works.....

This channel on YouTube is called clbackus. Socialblade (dot) com will give you stats on YouTube channels. This person has 1440 subscribers and several videos. As you can see by the stats this is obviously the most popular. The channel is not monetized; he is not a YouTube partner in other words. Amazingly the most popular monetized channels can make over a million bucks.

Here is a look at the stats for this channel, it is not perfect but will give a little more insight than just views etc.: http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/clbackus

The Video Embedded