AND THE LEFT WONDERS WHY AMERICANS HOLD INTELLECTUALS IN CONTEMPT? (via Bryan Francoeur):

9/11 conspiracy theorists energized: Five years later, purveyors claim academic momentum (AP, 8/06/06)

Kevin Barrett believes the U.S. government might have destroyed the World Trade Center. Steven Jones is researching what he calls evidence that the twin towers were brought down by explosives detonated inside them, not by hijacked airliners.

These men aren't uneducated junk scientists: Barrett will teach a class on Islam at the University of Wisconsin this fall, over the protests of more than 60 state legislators. Jones is a tenured physicist at Brigham Young University whose mainstream academic job has made him a hero to conspiracy theorists.

Five years after the terrorist attacks, a community that believes widely discredited ideas about what happened on September 11, 2001, persists and even thrives. Members trade their ideas on the Internet and in self-published papers and in books. About 500 of them attended a recent conference in Chicago, Illinois.

The movement claims to be drawing fresh energy and credibility from a recently formed group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. [...]

Members of the conspiracy community "practically worship the ground [Jones] walks on because he's seen as a scientist who is preaching to their side," said FR Greening, a Canadian chemist who has written several papers rebutting the science used by September 11 conspiracy theorists.

"It's science, but it's politically motivated. It's science with an ax to grind, and therefore it's not really science."

Of course, apply that standard and they'd be down to just the Chemistry department.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2006 7:53 AM