Scientific research methods

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

I was reading an article on scientific studies on the Twin Towers terrorist

attack today and want to compare it to medical studies. Exerpts from

the news article are in italics with a ==> before them for anyone who only

gets text.

==>Faschan spoke to a group of structural engineers in New York on

Wednesday, shortly after the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the

American Society of Civil Engineers released a new report on the trade

center collapse. The study determined that the twin towers could

have survived the impact of the hijacked 767s. They fell victim to

the intense blaze that caused their steel columns to soften and buckle.

"This is not the end of the story - there will now be a new set of research

conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that's

just beginning," Faschan said.

There have been hundreds of studies before on building code failures,

but this incident showed the need for anticipating unusual disasters.

So scientists see the need for computer modeling of new incidents to protect

against the unusal. In the medical field this is the type of approach

that NIH takes - first make sure you know what is happening and have a

sound logical basis for proceeding. To do this, you need background

info such as what happens in animal studies.

==>"This is not the end of the story - there will now be a new set

of research conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology

that's just beginning," Faschan said. Of particular interest to investigators

is 7 World Trade Center, which is believed to have sustained little structural

damage. It was the first fireproofed steel structure to collapse due to

fire alone.

They now feel that they know the cause of the collapse due to tests

and simulations on computers. That is what medical researchers have

done with studies on mice to give the mice the same symptoms as humans

with PD, ALS and now even MSA (Wenning rats).

==>The two-year, $16 million investigation by NIST is also expected

to study ways to "harden" exit stairways to make them less susceptible

to impact and to space them out so one blow might not render them all impassable.

Such designs might have allowed occupants on the floors above where the

planes hit to have escaped.

Once they complete this study, it will be used in new buildings and

to retrofit as much as possible on older buildings. This is like

the stem cell research, if they jump this step and draw conclusions (like

saying adult stem cells can cure PD when it has never worked on mice) -

that is not science - just politics. I'm glad that politicians still

allow science to work in an orderly fashion in building design. Too

bad they feel that scientists don't know how to do medical science.

We could use $16 million for MSA studies.

Something to think about.

Hugs, Bill Werre (who did scientific studies for over 40 years

and sees no conflict between my Christian beliefs and science, as do many

of my scientific and religious friends)