Addressing TV Professor Michael Shermer's Unscientific Analysis

Canadian professor counters Shermer's watered down response in Scientific American article to 9/11 realities.

Anthony Hall and Michael Shermer Photos: globalizationstudies.ca and biology.ucsd.edu

(ALBERTA) - To the Editors of The Scientific American;

RE: The Conspiracy Theory Detector - scientificamerican.com

I am responding to Michael Shermer's most recent column, wherein your regular columnist misrepresents my positions and my spoken intervention when he was at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada on the 23rd of September. For starters he wrongly quotes me as saying I accused him of being a disgrace to the economy whereas I clearly said Mr. Shermer is a disgrace to the academy. I would later learn the extent of the disgrace the academy is bearing when I did research after our September 23rd exchange which demonstrated your columnist is not Adjunct Professor of Economics at Claremont Graduate University in California. Michael Shermer does have some professional relationship with Professor Paul Zak at Claremont, but Professor Schroedel, Dean of the School of Politics and Economic at Claremont, indicated she did not even know who this man is. Nor did Michael Shermer appear on the Claremont web page listing that school's adjunct professors of economics.

In Lethbridge Michael Shermer demeaned the work of his Claremont colleague, David Ray Griffin, one of those who fall under the Michael Shermer's unscientifically constructed category of "conspiracy theorist." David Ray Griffin is an accomplished professor with a long and distinguished career. He does not just pretend to be a professor on TV as is essentially the case case with Michael Shermer, who has nothing more than the most ephemeral of claims to be employed at a US university.

Michael Shermer's most recent article is not founded in any serious engagement with the primary documents in the academic fields in which he claims expertise. While he claims to know all about my view of power and authority in the workings of history, he clearly has made no effort whatsoever to familiarize himself with my academic work. The upshot is that he has made me a target of a smear and disinformation campaign, now widely disseminated by your publishing operation.

I am requesting my right of reply in Scientific American: specifically, I am requesting equal space and comparable placing to Michael Shermer's article. Please don't direct me to the comments section on the blog beneath Michael Shermer's attack on me and my reputation. I seek a proper podium to defend myself from your columnist's malevolent disinformation.

You might be interested that my recent text, Earth into Property, was selected by The Independent in UK as one of the best books of 2010. If Michael Shermer was a competent researcher he would have consulted this peer-reviewed text, which includes analysis of 9/11, before authoring his slanderous diatribe, which severely discredits both himself and Scientific American

Yours Sincerely,

Anthony J. Hall Professor of Globalization Studies University of Lethbridge

Scholarship, Scams and Credentials in an Academic House of Cards - Anthony J. Hall for Salem-News.com

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Anthony J. Hall is a Professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge, a public university in the liberal arts tradition, located in Alberta, Canada.