and subsequent uncharacteristic total destruction of the buildings, stating that "we don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone". His name is often mentioned in reporting about 9/11 conspiracy theories. Jones has published several papers suggesting that the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives, but his 2005 paper, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" was his first paper on the topic and was considered controversial both for its content and its claims to scientific rigor. Jones' early critics included members of BYU's engineering faculty; shortly after he made his views public, the BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and the faculty of structural engineering issued statements in which they distanced themselves from Jones' work. They noted that Jones' "hypotheses and interpretations of evidence were being questioned by scholars and practitioners," and expressed doubts on whether they had been "submitted to relevant scientific venues that would ensure rigorous technical peer review." Jones further presented and defended his research before peers at the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters on 7 April 2006 at nearby Snow College. Jones maintained that the paper was peer-reviewed prior to publication. The paper was published in the online Journal of 9/11 Studies, a journal co-founded and co-edited by Jones for the purpose of "covering the whole of research related to 9/11/2001." The paper also appeared in a volume of essays, 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. In April 2008, Jones, along with four other authors, published a letter in The Bentham Open Civil Engineering Journal, titled, 'Fourteen Points of Agreement with Official Government Reports on the World Trade Center Destruction'. In August 2008, Jones, along with Kevin Ryan and James Gourley, published a peer-reviewed article in The Environmentalist, titled, 'Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for energetic materials'. In April 2009, Jones, along with Niels H. Harrit and 7 other authors published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'. The editor of the journal, Professor Marie-Paule Pileni, an expert in explosives and nano-technology, resigned. She received an e-mail from the Danish science journal Videnskab asking for her professional assessment of the article's content. According to Pileni, the article was published without her authorization. Subsequently,