Perception & Propaganda: Misinformation
Misinformation is information that is incorrect but not necessarily an attempt to mislead. Misinformation often arises from poor research, biases, and misinterpretations.
Misinformation may also originate from disinformation -- a deliberate effort to mislead -- where the goal of the disinformation is to recruit sincere and unwitting individuals into propagating misinformation. Distinguishing between misinformation and disinformation is usually difficult.
Disinformation techniques have a history of use in military campaigns and are an integral part of false flag operations and information warfare.
- History and methods of disinformation
- Dubious Claims and Theories
- Attacks and ad-hominems
History and Methods of Disinformation
The community of 9/11 researchers has, by and large, avoided the subject of the use of disinformation to discredit their work. However, by the end of 2006, a groundswell of awareness of the problem of misinformation became evident -- the increasingly blatant assertions of transparently unscientific claims by some high-profile individuals within that community could no longer be ignored. One researcher who took a lead in examining the historical and contemporary role of disinformation in sabotaging social justice movements was Michael Wolsey of Colorado 9/11 Visibility with a series of radio interviews.
by Michael Wolsey
The vast majority of mainstream press articles that describe alternatives to the official narrative of the 9/11/01 attack do not seriously address anomalies and unanswered questions. Instead, they highlight unsupported or easily-refuted claims -- the work of "conspiracy theorists" lacking critical thinking skills -- and portray those as representative of all challenges to the official version of events.
The No-Planes-at-the-WTC Theories
In 2005 Morgan Reynolds published the essay Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?, which promoted the idea that none of the plane crashes on 9/11/01 happened. This idea occupied about 40 percent of the essay, sandwiched between a rehash of arguments for the controlled demolition of WTC 1, 2, and 7 previously made by David Ray Griffin. Jim Hoffman wrote a rebuttal to this essay, and Eric Salter provided a more general critique of the WTC "no-plane" theories.
A Critical Review of Morgan Reynolds'
Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?
by Jim Hoffman, June 26, 2005
A Critical Review of WTC 'No Plane' Theories
by Eric Salter, September 29, 2006
Attacks and Ad Hominems
Various Attacks on Steven Jones
Steven E. Jones*, a 20-year professor of physics, brought unprecedented credibility to the challenges to the official explanation of the destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers when he published Why Indeed did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse in late 2005. Predictably, Jones was targeted with a campaign of attacks characterized by misrepresentations of his work and ad hominems, primarily from individuals and personas embracing unscientific alternative theories of the attack.
Shortly before the fifth anniversary of the attack, Morgan Reynolds and Judy Wood teamed up to author the first of several articles featuring ad-hominem attacks against Jones. Jones and Legge addressed factual inaccuracies in the article here:
Reply to Reynolds & Wood
by Steven E. Jones, 8/25/2006
A Response to Reynolds and Wood
by Frank Legge
Jones spoke at multiple conferences in the fall of 2006, documenting his experiments showing evidence of aluminothermics use at the World Trade Center. During December and January of 2006 and 2007, when the Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice was formed, the group was inundated by hundreds of e-mails, legal threats, and public ad hominem attacks. Despite this storm of distractions, Steven Jones maintained a focus on the core issue of assembling the means to enable a legally empowered investigation of the crimes of 9/11/01.