A third problem is that NIST’s answer about sulfur is a straw-man argument. The question NIST answers by referring to gypsum in the wallboard is: Why was there sulfur in the WTC dust? As we saw earlier, however, the real question is: How did sulfur enter into the intergranular structure of the steel? As Steven Jones indicated in a passage quoted earlier, if scientists at NIST “heat steel to about 1000°C in the presence of gypsum,… they will find that sulfur does not enter steel under such circumstances.” NIST, however, ignored this issue. A fourth problem with NIST’s position is that it is circular. On the one hand, as we saw in the Introduction, NIST’s lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, said at NIST’s press briefing in August 2008: “We did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down.” That statement implies that NIST looked for possible evidence and found that it was absent. On the other hand, as we have also seen, NIST said in its “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” published in 2006: “NIST did not test for the residue of these [thermite] compounds.” Although this admission was not repeated in NIST’s 2008 documents about WTC 7, it was implied by its statement that finding such residues would not necessarily have been conclusive. NIST’s statement that it “did not find any evidence that explosives were used” is, therefore, deceptive.
...group of scholars observed in their “Appeal” to NIST: “t is extremely easy to ‘find no evidence’ when one is not looking for evidence.” The circularity in NIST’s position was pointed out by journalist Jennifer Abel of the Hartford Advocate in a story in which she discussed an interview she had with Michael Newman, spokesman for NIST’s Department of Public and Business Affairs. Abel asked: “[W]hat about that letter where NIST said it didn’t look for evidence of explosives?” Newman replied: “Right, because there was no evidence of that.” In response to this strange answer, Abel asked the obvious question: “But how can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?” Newman then responded with a still stranger statement: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time… and the taxpayers’ money.” Newman’s obviously circular position illustrates in a humorous fashion—or at least it would be humorous if so much were not at stake—NIST’s refusal to follow the scientific method’s empirical dimension, which entails that a theory, to be truly scientific, must do justice to all of the evidence that might be relevant. NIST’s failure to test for signs that thermite had been used is even more inexcusable in light of the fact that the Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, which is put out by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), says that, in seeking to determine the cause of a fire, investigators should look for evidence of accelerants, which are any substances that could be used to ignite, and/or accelerate the progress of, a fire.
(The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False by David Griffin)