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Are 9/11 Truthers Still Science-Proof?

Clinical neurologist Steven Novella reflects on his controlled demolition of a truther.
Photo: Wikimedia

There are some debates that just aren't worth having. Don't bother arguing politics with your relatives; don't bother arguing religion with anyone holding a sign outdoors, and don't debate whether the airliners really were responsible for bringing down the World Trade Center Twin Towers with anyone. Of course, this point is itself debatable, which is why Dr. Steven Novella was willing to welcome a 9/11 truther to a debate on his blog.

Novella is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society and also a clinical neurologist. This combination leads him to rhetorical battlefields still strewn with hyperbole and visceral reactions, where logical thought can't be found. He takes on the arguments that link pesticides, dairy, or vaccines to autism on Science-Based Medicine, of Dr. Oz on SkepticBlog, and UFO sightings on his own Neurologica blog.

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It was on Neurologica where Michael Fullerton was given a place and audience to explain why it was really controlled demolition that brought down the Twin Towers and not the airliners and fire as purported in “the official US Government explanation,” to use Fullerton's term.

Fullerton is a Canadian software developer who is the founder of the Canadian group, Vernon 9/11 Truth, a member of Scientists for 9/11 Truth and Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice. He is either so skeptical that the other “mainstream skeptics” like Novella are comparatively dogmatic, or he is a conspiracy theorist whose criteria for “proof” are a moving target. In Novella's concise estimation, “he is a boastful crank.”

At any rate, Fullerton's been contacting prominent skeptics, inviting them to debate which position is more scientific, and therefore true. Only Novella has had a full, four-part debate with Fullerton, the last entry of which was posted yesterday.

Even allowing that Novella is the type of person who engages in debates when the rest of us divert our eyes, debating what happened on September 11, 2001, seems like a particularly fruitless endeavor. It has been 13 years, and there's exactly the same amount of evidence for the controlled demolition people's position as ever—which is to say none, other than an ability to cast doubt about how it should look when an enormous building falls down. No matter how many people set out to debunk them, the Truthers will not be convinced. You'd think having the whole thing on tape, in the most populated city in the country would've been enough.

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I contacted Novella and asked him why he would bother debating someone he'll almost definitely never convince.

“The point of the debate is not to change his mind, but to provide information for the readers,” Novella explained. “I do think these exchanges change minds. There are many people on the fence, or just not informed enough to handle being overwhelmed by a conspiracy theorist armed with lots of factoids. This post, and the many others, give a concise reference for those looking for information.”

Still there's the dilemma that skeptics and scientists face: Engaging with a conspiracy theory or a pseudoscience gives it a certain amount of validity, but if you ignore it, its propagators can say “the establishment is ignoring us, because…” and then fill in whatever: they're in on it, their jobs depend on it, etc.

“I had no doubt my readers would see his arguments for what they were,” Novella said of engaging with Fullerton. “I do try to avoid giving an audience to someone who would otherwise be wallowing in their own obscurity, but Michael has been engaging skeptics for years so I thought a thorough working through of his claims would be helpful.”

Their four-part debate was pretty thorough working over, all right, to the point where you sort of wish Fullerton would do better, or at least make a single cogent point. His first entry basically amounts to, “there isn't evidence that the towers were brought down because of the planes and fires, but because they fell (mostly) symmetrically, we can conclude it was controlled demolition.” He, fairly, leaves out who would demolish the buildings and why, as well as any discussion of World Trade Center Building 7, and doesn't mention thermite until he responds to Novella. His only point is: controlled demolition.

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It was a lousy start that never really improved. Novella pointed to all the evidence in the National Institute for Standards and Technology report, and also that this standard of “mostly symmetrical” is ill-defined and certainly doesn't prove controlled demolition. Fullerton responded by insulting Neurologica's readers, and hanging his argument on the fact that just because one event (airliners hitting the buildings, starting fires) happened before another (the Towers collapsed), doesn't mean that the first caused the second.

In his response, it became clear that Fullerton's standard of proof was higher than just the peer-reviewed conclusions drawn by physicists and engineers. He wanted something that followed of logical necessity. That this also excluded controlled demolition didn't seem to matter; at some point it wasn't about proving his own position didn't matter as much as casting doubt on the official story. As the empiricist David Hume demonstrated, you can't prove causation with the a priori rules of logic.

I asked Novella about this, and he didn't seem to think there was a problem. “Science does not deal with absolute proof,” he said. “We have a known cause and physics to explain what happened, and there is no competing theory with any plausibility or evidence. I cannot prove anything, but logic and evidence support one highly probable conclusion…I think with the NIST report and other analyses, the standard explanation has more than met its burden of proof. Anyone putting forward an alternate hypothesis bears the same burden.”

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It just didn't happen, and its hard to imagine any Loose Change fans reading through the debate and thinking that Fullerton has adequately presented their position.

“I did hope that Michael would have made a better showing,” Novella said. “The 9/11 Truther position is nonsense and pseudoscience, but I would want for a representative to make the best case possible. I don't think Michael did that.”

Although Novella sort of optimistically looked at the “debate” as an exercise in debunking, it seems like it can only lead to more truthers finding their way to his site, hoping to succeed where their brethren failed. I asked Novella if he was ready to have them lining up at his door.

“Skepticism is a game of whack a mole, so yes,” he replied. “At least I hope people will learn some science and critical thinking along the way.”

It's a much more modest goal than reaching the end of the debate and having Fullerton—whose identity, at least online, revolves around being a truther—concede that his position is incoherent. It's probably too much hope for the Heartland Institute to come out and admit that man-made climate change is real. I don't doubt the sincerity of their conviction, but I doubt their commitment to evidence that isn't proving their point.

In addition to learning that I'm sort of a cynical bastard when it comes to engaging with people with different viewpoints, I think I learned from the Great Novella-Fullerton debate that if you're ever presented with proof that you don't like, it's a bad rhetorical look to start backpedaling about what constitutes proof. I sure didn't learn anything about controlled demolition.