Apparently bogus professor attacks conspiracy theorists

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-conspiracy-theor y-director


1 December, 2010

To the Editors of The Scientific American;

I am responding to Michael Shermer's most recent column, wherein your regular columnist misrepresents my positions and my spoken intervention when he was at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada on September 23. For starters he wrongly quotes me as saying I accused him of being a disgrace to the economy whereas I clearly said Mr. Shermer is a disgrace to the academy. I would later learn the extent of the disgrace the academy is bearing when I did research after our September 23rd exchange which demonstrated your columnist is not Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University in California. Michael Shermer does have some professional relationship with Professor Paul Zak at Claremont, but Professor Schroedel, Dean of the School of Politics and Economic at Claremont, indicated she did not even know who this man is. Nor did Michael Shermer appear on the Claremont web page listing that school's adjunct professors of economics.

In Lethbridge Michael Shermer demeaned the work of his Claremont colleague, David Ray Griffin, one of those who fall under the Michael Shermer's unscientifically constructed category of "conspiracy theorist." David Ray Griffin is an accomplished professor with a long and distinguished career. He does not just pretend to be a professor on TV as is essentially the case case with Michael Shermer, who has nothing more than the most ephemeral of claims to be employed at a US university.

Michael Shermer's most recent article is not founded in any serious engagement with the primary documents in the academic fields in which he claims expertise. While he claims to know all about my view of power and authority in the workings of history, he clearly has made no effort whatsoever to familiarize himself with my academic work. The upshot is that he has made me a target of a smear and disinformation campaign, now widely disseminated by your publishing operation.

I am requesting my right of reply in Scientific American: specifically, I am requesting equal space and comparable placing to Michael Shermer's article. Please don't direct me to the comments section on the blog beneath Michael Shermer's attack on me and my reputation. I seek a proper podium to defend myself from your columnist's malevolent disinformation.

You might be interested that my recent text, Earth into Property, was selected by The Independent in UK as one of the best books of 2010. If Michael Shermer was a competent researcher he would have consulted this peer-reviewed text, which includes analysis of 9/11, before authoring his slanderous diatribe, which severely discredits both himself and Scientific American

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony J. Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge

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http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2010/12/michael-shermer-debunks-19-hija ckers.html

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Jonathan Kay Attacks a "Truther" to Introduce His Own Foxified Account of the 9/11 Attacks


by Anthony J. Hall
Professor of Globalization Studies
University of Lethbridge


Jonathan Kay has made it an issue of national news in The National Post that my graduate student, Joshua Blakeney, is the proud winner of the Queen Elizabeth II scholarship for academic excellence. This award will help Joshua in supporting his research for his MA thesis on the academic controversies surrounding the background, substance, and outgrowths of the events of September 11, 2001.

The Editor of The National Post was in a conflict of interest when he wrote the story on my graduate student's scholarship without revealing that Mr. Kay too has an externally-funded agenda of research and publication on 9/11. Moreover, Mr. Kay misrepresented my graduate student's thesis subject by planting the disinformation that "Washington did 9/11." The point of Mr. Blakeney's thesis, as we have discussed it so far, is to evaluate the academic literature on the contested events of 9/11, not to jump immediately to the needed outcome of an empirically-verifiable alternative to the current unsupported and unsupportable government conspiracy theory. Such a needed outcome will require much more than the forthcoming MA thesis by my gifted and hard working graduate student.

Jonathan Kay has already made in clear in a letter to Joshua Blakeney that he will defend the official government conspiracy theory in his forthcoming book, "Among The Truthers." A colleague recently proposed the following short summary of the official government story of 9/11. It is that nineteen Muslims boarded four aircraft in the morning of 11 September 2001. Five of them boarded flight AA11 that departed from Boston; five boarded UA175 that also departed from Boston; five boarded flight AA77 that departed from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.; and four boarded flight UA93 that departed from Newark International Airport. These four terrorist teams hijacked the aircraft in mid-air with knives, seized control over the aircraft and flew the aircraft into buildings, killing themselves, the passengers and the crew. They flew the aircraft designated as flight AA11 into the North Tower, flight UA175 into the South Tower, flight AA77 into the Pentagon and attempted to crash flight UA93 into the White House but did not succeed to carry out their plan due to the uprising of the passengers. The aircraft then crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The hijackers were swiftly identified as having links to al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden later admitted to have personally selected the hijackers for these specific attacks. As a result of the impact of the aircraft who caused substantial structural damage and started a huge fire, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, collapsed, causing thereby the deaths of over 2,500 persons. In total approximately 3,000 persons of dozens of nationalities died as a result of these pre-meditated attacks on U.S. soil.

Joshua Blakeney's MA thesis will deal with various academic critiques of the version of events outlined above. In all probability Mr. Blakeney will want to address the contents of Mr. Kay's forthcoming book. It is being timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary with the events of 9/11. It seems Mr. Kay's book is to be a psychoanthropolgy of the so-called 9/11 Truthers. It is to be published by a subsidiary of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's media empire whose flag ship operations include Fox News. In my view the term, truther, is one that refers to those who do not accept the current government account of the events of 9/11; those who afford importance to the quest for the truth of what actually happened on 9/11.

Jonathan Kay did not pass the test of full disclosure on his own activities as a 9/11 researcher when he decided to make national news of Joshua Blakeney's Queen Elizabeth II Scholarship for academic excellent in his graduate work at the University of Lethbridge. Since Mr. Kay chose to issue a National Post Fatwah on externally-funded research and publication on 9/11-related matters in Canadian universities, he must now come clean in on his own financial arrangements. Who is funding The National Post editor's own agenda of 9/11-related research and publication. Who paid him how much, and for what?

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Professor Hall's text, Earth into Property, was recently selected by The Independent in the UK as one the best books of 2010. Earth into Property is not a 9/11 book in the same sense that Jonathan's Kay's, "Among The Truthers," is a 9/11 book. Published by McGill-Queen's University Press, Earth into Property, provides an account of the genesis of global capitalism since 1492. The volume's contents, however, do include sections that directly address the lies and crimes of 9/11 as well as the genesis of the privatized terror economy, of which The National Post is an integral part.

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Professor Anthony J Hall writes:


Hi Tim.

Thanks for setting up

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december012010/shermer-critique-a.p hp

dealing with
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-conspiracy-theory -director





Here are the links to Joshua's You Tubes on Shermer. They could easily be part of your news item. Also please find a link to the Canadian Charger story that some might find relevant.


Shermer Part 1



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGXm__kqFzQ



Shermer Part 2



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGXm__kqFzQ



9/11 and Academic Freedom



http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=699





I telephoned Fred Guterl, Executive Editor at Scientific American. His telephone number is 212 451-8200


http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/pr/release.cfm?site=sciam& date=2010-04-19

Could we encourage folks to intervene with Scientific American?

Perhaps there should be a comments section on the salem-news piece, with copies to go to

<editors@sciam.com>

Here is an intervention sent by Adnan Zuberi yesterday.

"Dear Editors of Scientific American,

"As a student at the University of Toronto who is up to date with academic publications that are relevant to Michael Shermer's recent article in your publication,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-conspiracy-theor y-director, there appear to be major problems with his scholarship in contrast to peer-reviewed literature. Given his familiarity with economics, he did not address the papers of great importance that I have referenced below and hence his article is highly biased and not evidence based (which is something Scientific American should be).

"One factor that separates good scholarship from poor scholarship is the ability to address and assess confirming and disconfirming evidence of a hypothesis objectively. Shermer's article is not based on any scientific or historical evidence but is instead a collection of opinions and personal conflicts that include an encounter with a scholar who is critical of the official story of 9/11. Such an article is something literally any elementary school student can put together. For example, Shermer writes with regards to detecting a weak "conspiracy theory", "The theory tends to commingle facts and speculations without distinguishing between the two and without assigning degrees of probability or of factuality."

"Unfortunately, Shermer has used the Scientific American with his article by stating certain University of Lethbridge scholars as deceptive and rather than addressing their arguments objectively, he quickly states a list of statements of detecting a weak "conspiracy theory" that give the appearance that the UofL scholars can be dismissed. If Shermer holds an adequate background in economics, given that some of his publications discuss economics, he should provide a balanced analysis by commenting on the following expert probability analysis:
Professor Poteshman (U of Illinois), published a paper in 2006 in the Journal of Business, Unusual Option Market Activity and the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, in which he concluded that "A measure of abnormal long put volume was also examined and seen to be at abnormally high levels in the days leading up to the attacks. Consequently, the paper concludes that there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks." Secondly, a working paper by Howard E. Thompson (University of Wisconsin) et al, Was There Abnormal Trading in the S&P 500 Index Options Prior to the September 11 Attacks?, conclude that "We also employ the CBOE VIX to confirm the conclusion drawn from the call and put options. This, in turn, is consistent with insiders anticipating the 9-11 attacks."

"I look forward to hearing from you regarding what is being done to uphold principles of scholarship at Scientific American.
Sincerely,
Adnan Zuberi"

Thanks again Tim for setting up a base on the Internet to help deal with the degradation to the academy as pepetrated by Michael Shermer and Scientific American.

Yours sincerly,

Tony Hall