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To find the truth, test falsifiable hypotheses against all evidence you have available. That process leads you to new questions, new hypotheses, new tests, new evidence, and new conclusions. This powerful process moves you away from ignorance and toward the truth incrementally. It guards against three weaknesses humans are subject to when they ignore this method: tendency to jump to conclusions, filters that make you overlook or ignore evidence that does not agree with conclusions you have reached, and fear of rejection or ostracism should you reach conclusions that do not agree with your friends’ beliefs.
We should see how this method works when we apply it to one of the puzzles associated with 9/11. We have some evidence, both eyewitness and photographic, that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the side of the Pentagon. We do not know conclusively what caused serious damage to a fortified building, but evidence it was a commercial airliner flown by Hani Hanjour is weak. That hypothesis is weak because it contradicts, or is inconsistent with our evidence. Virtually no evidence supports it. When we have a situation like that, we try to formulate one or more alternate hypotheses to fit the pattern of evidence more closely.
This powerful process moves you away from ignorance and toward the truth incrementally. It guards against three weaknesses humans are subject to when they ignore this method: tendency to jump to conclusions, filters that make you overlook or ignore evidence that does not agree with conclusions you have reached, and fear of rejection or ostracism should you reach conclusions that do not agree with your friends’ beliefs.
Where does that lead us in our inquiry about the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon? First, it leads us to ask what happened to the plane that supposedly flew into the side of the Pentagon. According to the government’s account, we have a plane with a flight number and a point of origin, passenger manifests, a time of takeoff, the route the plane flew until it disappeared from air controllers’ radar, the time it disappeared from radar, phone calls from passengers on the doomed aircraft, a time of impact at the Pentagon, and some scraps of metal lying on the grass near the crash site. Those passengers boarded the plane, and they did not come back alive. What happened?
You can ask similar questions about Flight 93 over Pennsylvania. What happened? Gradually researchers arrive at this point: we do not know what happened, but you will not learn what happened if you read the 9/11 Commission’s report. The report does not ask the right questions.
I want to wrap up today’s article with a list of 9/11 flight s and associated crash sites, for reference:
- UA Flight 93, a Boeing 757, departs from Newark Airport at 8:01 AM. for San Francisco, taking off with between 26 and 38 passengers (about 16% of capacity) and seven crew members on board. This is the jet which allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania at about 10 AM.
- UA Flight 175, a Boeing 767, departs from Logan Airport, Boston, at 7:58 AM. for Los Angeles with between 47 and 56 passengers (about 26% of capacity) and nine crew members aboard. This is the jet which allegedly hit the South Tower at 9:03 am.
- AA Flight 11, a Boeing 767, leaves Logan Airport, Boston at about 7:45 AM. headed for Los Angeles, with between 76 and 81 passengers (about 39% of capacity) and 11 crew members aboard. This is the jet which allegedly hit the North Tower at 8:45 AM.
- AA Flight 77, a Boeing 757, leaves Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. at about 8:10 AM bound for Los Angeles, taking off with between 50 and 58 passengers (about 27% of capacity) and six crew members aboard. This is the jet which allegedly hit the Pentagon at about 9:35 AM.
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