Engineering degree not automatic authority

This is in response to the Jan. 29 guest columns that attempt to explain what happened to the World Trade Center on 9/11. These columns rely mostly on “appeal to authority” with the authors citing advanced degrees to bolster their authority. I have a graduate degree in electrical engineering but I will not claim that this gives me any expertise in evaluating what I saw on 9/11 regarding building collapses.

What I saw on 9/11 involving the WTC towers looked straightforward to me. Descriptions of so-called “dustification” and “disassociation of molecules” in these columns are unscientific at best. There are numerous photographs and statistics about recovered steel and material volume that are totally compatible with the 9/11 commission report.

The assertion that this somehow is related to the work of Nikola Tesla falls right into line with other Tesla conspiracy theorists concerning directed-energy weapons, death rays, earthquake machines and free energy. Tesla was an engineering genius whose major contribution to the world was our AC power delivery system. His name does not need to be associated with crank ideas.

Some of these columnists, who hold engineering degrees, give the majority of us engineers a bad name. Their beliefs fall right into the dubious claims of other conspiracy theorists.

Steve White

Cedar Rapids