Conclusion: NIST’s WTC 7 Report Is Unscientific and False

Excerpted from The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False; copyright © David Ray Griffin, 2009; published by Olive Branch Press, an imprint of Interlink Publishing, Northampton, MA. For more information visit www.interlinkbooks.com. Reprinted by permission.

Conclusion: NIST’s WTC 7 Report as
 Unscientific and False

NIST’s lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, announced with great bravado at his August 2008 press briefing that, although the reason for the collapse of WTC 7 had been a mystery, NIST had solved this mystery. Science, he added, was solidly behind NIST’s explanation. We have seen, however, that there are abundant reasons to consider NIST’s explanation both unscientific and false. 

In this conclusion, I first summarize the major ways in which NIST’s report on WTC 7 is unscientific. Next, pointing out that many of the facts showing NIST’s report to be unscientific also show it to be false, I reflect on the importance of this fact. 

1. NIST’s WTC 7 Report as Unscientific: A Summary

NIST’s report on WTC 7 is not, as we have seen, merely “unscientific” in a loose sense of that term. Rather, its authors have committed scientific fraud in the strict sense being guilty of ignoring, falsifying, and fabricating evidence. 

Ignoring Evidence

The amount of relevant evidence ignored by NIST is impressive. In Chapter 4, we saw, it ignores various kinds of physical evidence, including: 

• Evidence of squibs in videos of the collapse; 

• Video evidence that a vertical row of windows was blown out just as the building began to collapse; 

• Various reports of molten steel or iron in the debris; 

• The report by three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), contained in an appendix to the FEMA report, that a piece of steel recovered from WTC 7 had been sulfidized, vaporized, and oxidized; 

• Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl’s report that a steel I-beam from WTC 7 had been partially vaporized; 

• Evidence from inextinguishable and long-lasting fires that materials in the rubble pile were providing their own fuel and oxidant; 

• Reports by Professor Thomas Cahill and the EPA of particles in the air that should not have been there (assuming the official account of the destruction of the WTC); 

• Reports by three groups of scientists revealing particles in the WTC dust that could have been produced only by extremely high temperatures, including the temperatures needed to melt molybdenum (2,623°C [4,753°F]) and to vaporize steel (2,861°C [5,182°F]);  

• Evidence in particular for thermitic material, including nanothermite, in uncontaminated samples of WTC dust;  

In Chapter 5, moreover, we saw that NIST ignored still more evidence, including: 
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