'9/11: Science and
Conspiracy,' not quite
National Geographic Channel special aims to debunk
By Tom Conroy
Aug 31, 2009
Intended to address the issues raised by people who question the official story of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the documentary “9/11: Science and Conspiracy” probably won’t change anyone’s mind on either side.
Airing tonight, Monday, Aug. 31, at 8 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel, the two-hour program depicts several scientific experiments that have been staged to answer the major points raised by the conspiracy theorists.
The documentary, however, doesn’t feel scientific. It often falls back on standard devices to build tension: hushed narration, ominous music, quick cuts to darkened or bleached-out shots of wreckage.
The sound and look clash radically with the documentary’s purpose, making it seem like one of those old “In Search of…” shows, which were intended to question official versions of events, not support them.
The experiments are presented in a more straightforward fashion: Well-credentialed experts attempt to reconstruct events in the attacks that the skeptics, known as “truthers,” say couldn’t have happened the way they were supposed to.
For example, to address the charge that burning jet fuel couldn’t have caused the World Trade Center’s steel girders to buckle, a testing laboratory ignites a puddle of jet fuel below a smaller girder, which buckles in less than four minutes.
Throughout the documentary, some leading truthers view the footage of the experiments and give their reactions. The narrator invites us to observe how they “process information contrary to their beliefs.”
One says that in real life the jet fuel burned out quicker; another says that their theory involves explosives, so this is irrelevant.
Until someone sets up an experiment in which a 100-story building built exactly to the World Trade Center’s specs collapses after being hit by a commercial airliner, these people aren’t likely to change their minds.
Some of the issues raise by the truthers, however, aren’t addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover.
“9/11: Science and Conspiracy” spends too much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories—which isn’t really a hard science. It’s unclear why the producers chose the novelist David Baldacci as one of their experts on this topic.
When asked to provide an overarching theory of how and why the attacks occurred, the truthers who appear on camera are careful to say that they’re only questioning the official story, not offering their own narrative.
But as one writer interviewed on the show points out, any plausible conspiracy would have to involve so many people that someone would have spoken up by now.
That’s probably the best answer to the truthers, but you don’t need science to figure it out.
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