Reply #54: Look, certainly some people fight against the odds for years often

[stickdog]

risking their own livelihoods in their righteous quests to expose their inside knowledge of corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels. And with a little help, a little luck and a painful enough popular outcry or court remedy, severe governmental or corporate abuses are sometimes significantly curtailed.

However, your believability test for 9/11 skepticism is demonstrably full of shit. Apply the same test to asbestos or tobacco in the 1960s and you'd be promoting murderers while pissing on their victims.

Scientists and engineers simply aren't paid to saddle their employers with huge liabilities. They are paid to use their skills to maximize profits and to be "good team players." Under our current system of powerful economic incentives and disincentives, whistle-blowers will always be the exception rather than the rule.

One or two lone voices of dissent -- no matter how "expert" -- are easily silenced or marginalized. Unless the typically minute percentage of courageous insider altruists reaches some sort of critical mass, even the most righteous/respected insider will find publicizing his or her claims a nearly impossible task. And the lion's share of known/suspected malfeasance will continue apace and/or remain "top secret" without any hint of public consciousness for ever or at least for decades.

That's just Post-Industrial History 101. So if your "Jimmy Scientist Goes to Washington" illusions truly comfort you, I'd suggest you continue avoiding the course material.