...has been peer refereed and is scheduled for publication in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Research in Political Economy, Volume 23, P. Zarembka, editor, Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming in Spring 2006.
If Stephen Jones is a physicist pretending to be a structural engineer and Paul Zarkambka is an economist, how on earth would that constitute a "peer" review? Peer review is conducted by people knowledgeable in the field in which the paper was written. Did the peer review board for Mr. Zarkamba's book on economics empanel any licensed structural or forensic engineers? If not then Mr. Jones' work was not reviewed by peers.
Mr. Jones' university has released a statement disavowing responsibility for his statements. The engineering department of the same university has released a separate statement repudiating Jones' research. Does this sound like someone who enjoys good stature among the relevant peers?
Therefore I challenge you: name me a scientific journal in which publication of the above paper would impress you...
I suggest
Engineering News-Record (United States) and
The Structural Engineer (U.K.). Both of these journals routinely publish articles pertaining to the failure of structures and the methods for investigating their causes. They are read by some of the most eminent engineers in the world.
Last point: peer refereeing does often go wrong.
As do medicine, car repair, and pet grooming. Does that mean we should forego these practices altoghether when the need arises? A validation process is not discarded simply because it is not infallible. If it is beneficial far more often than it is detrimental -- as is the case with academic peer review -- then its use is preferred over inaction.
And this point is distractionary; the question is not whether peer review has gone wrong either way in Jones' case but why Jones has eschewed peer review in favor of the lone ranger approach.
Why don't you all engage with the content of the papers on the www.st911.org site, instead of these ridiculous ad hominem remarks?
First because the papers are being written from a purported position of expertise. Therefore we judge them according to the criteria for expert witnesses: are they really experts, speaking as experts, concurring with other experts? If the answer is no, then the content is largely irrelevant. It is not ad hominem to examine the expertise of those who claim to be experts in order to determine whether their statements bear further scrutiny.
If a car mechanic writes a paper on dentistry, there may be some value in picking apart its (likely many) factual flaws. But the mechanic bears the burden of proof to show he is knowledgeable in dentistry before the content is putatively accepted.
Second because Jones merely repeats other conspiracy theories (e.g., Hufschmid, Rose) and does no further research on them. Since those underlying theories have been studied ad nauseam for years and rejected purely on factual grounds, there is little further need to reject them again simply because they are repeated. Jones brings little that is new to the table; he merely repeats popular theories under color of academic authority.
Further, Fetzer et al. don't have a good track record of responding to content. I have provided rebuttal material from my professional area of expertise on other questions Fetzer has raised on the many other conspiracy theories he has undertaken to endorse. His response was not to defend his content, but rather to attack my standing to question him because I lacked the academic credentials (i.e., a PhD) that he deemed important. It did not matter to him that his PhD was in a field utterly unrelated (philosophy) to what he was discussing (aircraft design and construction) and that I had years of qualified professional experience in that field.
Regardless of what you may think, Fetzer, Jones and company have the burden of proof to show that their content -- framed as
expert analysis -- really is all that. By claiming that their papers represent opinions made from relevant expertise, they have invoked a commensurate method of examination and refutation which, unfortunately, does not first deal with content.