An email thread on BBQs latest 1 + 1 = 3 propaganda piece:

Have you see Twatchell’s piece in todays Grauniad?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/

Meanwhile the BBQ is continuing to toe the party line…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6987965.stm

The details of what happened on 9/11 may still be unclear and are important to some individuals. However, the truth of what happened is standing as tall and obvious as the twin towers themselves, and is all that should really matter to most people. It cannot be covered up, but if you are not awake you won’t be able to see it.

9/11 the big cover-up? Actually, 9/11 is still doing the job it was intended to do, 6 years down the line. It is making Twatchell and the 435 people who have posted comments on that piece look at the swinging necklace while their freedoms are stolen from under their noses. It’s good to know we have such focused and sharp-minded intelligentsia bringing our attention to these matters.

Everyone knows about the art of distraction. Including origamists…
http://www.origami-resource-center.com/paper-magic.html

Look at that Troublewit hat!

Now the troublewit (sic!) Twatchell is, he obviously did not put on his paper hat before writing!

Boom!

Did you know that the American Institute of Architects (a member thereof) has fallen on the side of controlled demolition?

http://tinyurl.com/2zv2fq

Twatchell is a classic ostrich posturer.

… and was this ‘study’ by a Cambridge University engineer peer reviewed?
hmmm how can we find out?

It’s in a peer-reviewed journal
http://scitation.aip.org/emo

But the journal has an impact factor of 0.7

This is very low.

Impact factors rate the importance of a journal based on it’s publications, how many times they are cited by others and for how long they continue to be cited. Most ‘average’ journals would be between 1-3. This would probably cover 90% of journals. Anything above three and you start to get good stuff. My latest publications are in journals of around 6-7, of international and broad worth. Above this are really only the truly world-class journals. Immunity, THE one for certain fields of immunology, rates about 18. Nature and science are 20-something. Maybe 30.

So 0.7 is just somewhere to stick a student’s data to get their first publication, basically. And not a very interesting student at that. How the hell this got picked up by BBQ… there we go with the PR people again! Or maybe with a more ‘sinister’ plant-er. Or perhaps I just don’t know the field, but that’s what it would be like in medical sciences.

Here is Keith Seffen
http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kas14/
And his publications
http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~kas14/publicationsChron.html

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Post Tipping Point, Science, Someone Clever Said.