Quote Originally Posted by Simon Appleton
I think I personally experienced something like this the other day when encountering Adrian's post about 49 academics and 9/11. Reading their stuff led to uneasy emotions and it felt good shortly afterwards to just dismiss them out of hand without thinking about their specific claims.
Funny that you mention it, I had the exact same experience because this group did not fit in with my image of the United States either way. I had a lot of reasoning to catch up with.

There is no way that the sort of conspiracy they suggest could be succesfull in an open, transparant society such as the United States. Besides it has no basis in solid evidence, and what 'evidence' they have is almost entirely suggestion and hearsay.

This left me with the other option that did not fit in: the wacko option. Every country has its stock of idiots lurking in the bushes, and the bigger a country is (and the U.S. is big by almost all criteria) the more bushes it will have and the more idiots hiding in them. So far so good. But the American academic elite are usually relaxed and in touch with reality, to the point of sedateness, and the scientists in particular are either brilliantly or boringly efficient at what they do. And the elite of former higer government officials usually don't throw away their future over some wild claims either.

Yet here we had 50 of them dropping their trousers in public and going 'Look what fools we are!'

Amazing... But don't worry, I am adjusting my image to the facts, not the other way round!