Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

[BStrong]

Do you trust MacAdams?

I trust Mcadams, and my own training at FLETC:

http://www.fletc.gov/

I'm a graduate of several of the different firearms forensic programs.

 

[manifesto]

I trust Mcadams, and my own training at FLETC:

http://www.fletc.gov/

I'm a graduate of several of the different firearms forensic programs.

Ah, good to know.

 

[proudfootz]

Already supplied.

Already refuted.

That you ignored it unfortunately does not make those posts go away...

 

[proudfootz]

Done and done. Chapter 1, page 19 of the Warren Commission Report. Did you have any other questions?

The Warren Commission Report has already been debunked by any number of books.

Back to the drawing board.

 

[proudfootz]

You typed that in response to a post that described physical evidence obtained following up on the witness testimony. Like shells. Why do you assume that the witness testimony alone would be relied on? Or that all were like one example?

The topic of Markham came up, that what I was responding to.

I'm leaving the rest of the Gish gallop for now.

 

[JayUtah]

The Warren Commission Report has already been debunked by any number of books.

And how are those books received among the body of scholars in politics, law, forensics, and history? Are they commonly recommended? Are they widely cited?

 

[JayUtah]

The topic of Markham came up, that what I was responding to.

Lane's handling of Markham was the subject, whereupon you changed the subject to be Markham herself. Then when you refused to qualify your opinion on that subject, you changed the subject again (paraffin tests). When the original subject (Lane's lies) was raised again, you ignored it entirely.

You're bouncing from topic to topic hoping you can appear competent on one of them.

I'm leaving the rest of the Gish gallop for now.

No. You specifically told us we shouldn't base the identification of Oswald as Tippit's killer on "witnesses like Markham." When you suggest more or better evidence should be presented, you don't get to write that presentation off as a "Gish gallop." Nor do you get to deny that the totality of evidence should be considered as a whole, not sliced into compartmentalized pieces you can pretend to tap-dance around easily in turn.

 

[RoboTimbo]

The Warren Commission Report has already been debunked by any number of books.

Back to the drawing board.

Nope. You can either accept the burden of proof or not, makes no difference. Oswald's guilt is the null hypothesis.

Back to the drawing board with you.

 

[Tomtomkent]

My question had nothing to do with primary sources.

Yes. You asked a stupid question. Did you pay attention to the discussion of primary sources? Can you provide any factual error in the article?

 

[Tomtomkent]

The topic of Markham came up, that what I was responding to.

I'm leaving the rest of the Gish gallop for now.

The post you QUOTED stated other evidence discovered by following up on witness testimony. Like bullets. Why would ask if only the witnesses can be relied on if you just quoted a statement that mentions other evidence?

That is not a Gish gallop. It is a good reason to ask if you are reading what you quote.

 

[Tomtomkent]

Already refuted.

That you ignored it unfortunately does not make those posts go away...

No.

You have yet to "refute" the dishonest representation of testimony. Several examples have been posted. All you have provided are reasons you think the conclusion was right, not reasons to excuse the practice.

If I am mistaken quote the post where you showed Lane quoting the entirety of the testimony and admitting that witnesses directly contradicted his conclusions in testimony he chose not to quote. In one example in the remainder of a sentence he selected a few words from.

THEN you will have refuted the claim by showing it was in error.

 

[Tomtomkent]

The Warren Commission Report has already been debunked by any number of books.

Back to the drawing board.

And how was it debunked? Which books? Which is the debunking most commonly accepted by historians as the co census narrative for what most likely happened that day?


Because we already discussed how much useless bunkum can appear in "the literature" and how little is of any use to serious scholars.

There have even been handy hints about reading past the book to the primary source.

 

[turingtest]

Lane's handling of Markham was the subject, whereupon you changed the subject to be Markham herself. Then when you refused to qualify your opinion on that subject, you changed the subject again (paraffin tests). When the original subject (Lane's lies) was raised again, you ignored it entirely.

You're bouncing from topic to topic hoping you can appear competent on one of them.



No. You specifically told us we shouldn't base the identification of Oswald as Tippit's killer on "witnesses like Markham." When you suggest more or better evidence should be presented, you don't get to write that presentation off as a "Gish gallop." Nor do you get to deny that the totality of evidence should be considered as a whole, not sliced into compartmentalized pieces you can pretend to tap-dance around easily in turn.

CT101 is to pretend that the evidence supporting a conclusion they want to disbelieve (in this case, Oswald's guilt) is a chain, and that cutting any one link in that chain is enough to make every other link meaningless and bring the conclusion crashing to the ground. Someone here used the term "preponderance of evidence"; I've always liked the term "consilience (or convergence) of evidence," since the implication is not only that the totality of the evidence supports the conclusion, but also that each piece of evidence supports, and certainly shouldn't contradict, other evidence (if there is apparent contradiction, it's usually by interpretation of the evidence, not the evidence itself). My mental image is of a spider's web, where the weight of the conclusion at the center is supported by the whole web, and each strand of the web is linked to and braced by other strands. So, here, you can cut the strand labeled "Markham," and it doesn't significantly affect the strength of the web, since it's braced by parallel others labeled "Benavides," "Barbara and Virginia Davis," "Scoggins," and "cartridge cases."

And the reason some CTists will insist they have no need to identify any culprit more explicit than "aconspiracydidit!"? Because they can't build a web, and they know it. When they try, it's usually just to throw single strands, between the wish for the conclusion and the conclusion itself, labeled something like "paraffin test!" and not linked to or braced by any related strand, and which is usually easily severed, as BStrong did here with this reference (and to which the usual weak reply is along the ad-hom lines of "do you trust MacAdams?" without ever addressing the substance of the reference).

 

[pgwenthold]

The Warren Commission Report has already been debunked by any number of books..

Depends what you mean by "debunked," I guess. For example, I know that Posner does not agree completely with the Warran report. Then again, in the things where he disagrees, all it does is strengthen the case against Oswald.

So does Posner "debunk" the Warren commission by pointing out that it is wrong in places?

As far as I know, no one currently accepts every word of the Warren report. We have a much better version of what happened now due to modern technology. Of course, it still points right at Oswald, but no one accepts the WR as being right about everything.

 

[Mudcat]

If anything, I think it would be more suspicious if the Warren Commission was right about everything.

 

[turingtest]

Depends what you mean by "debunked," I guess. For example, I know that Posner does not agree completely with the Warran report. Then again, in the things where he disagrees, all it does is strengthen the case against Oswald.

So does Posner "debunk" the Warren commission by pointing out that it is wrong in places?

As far as I know, no one currently accepts every word of the Warren report. We have a much better version of what happened now due to modern technology. Of course, it still points right at Oswald, but no one accepts the WR as being right about everything.

Again, CT101 (and the "C" there could stand for "Creationist" as well)- paint your opponents as "believing in" a perfection equal to their own conspiracy* or deity (as opposed to "having evidence for a chain of events"), and which only needs a few imperfections pointed out, a few holes poked in, to consider "debunked." There are always going to be imperfections and unresolved issues in looking at contingency in retrospect (if only because contingency is a tree with many branches).

*And, yes, whatever particular conspiracy is involved here is, just about by definition, a perfection. I don't know how else to characterize a conspiracy that, after fifty years, has not only achieved its ends by remaining uncovered, but is one which its adherents have so much faith in that they say they have no burden to expose it.

 

[JayUtah]

CT101 is to pretend that the evidence supporting a conclusion they want to disbelieve (in this case, Oswald's guilt) is a chain, and that cutting any one link in that chain is enough to make every other link meaningless and bring the conclusion crashing to the ground.

In my writing I formulate this same concept differently (but congruently) and, years ago, gave it the label Bellwether Fallacy. For those without an extensive background in shepherding, the bellwether is the one sheep in the flock on which you put the bell, according to the principle that where the flock goes, so goes the bellwether.

The Bellwether Fallacy is the notion that a question to which a vast amount of evidence pertains can somehow be decided on the basis of a single "smoking-gun" bit of evidence. For example, the eyeball is allegedly the Bellwether point of Creationism, radiation is the Bellwether point of Moon-landing theorists, and things like the paraffin test are put forward as the Bellwether of the JFK case.

How it works is that the conspiracy theorist picks one point out of the vast realm of pertinent evidence, promotes it as an inescapable key point, and then pretends to debunk or expose it. Then, on the basis of that alleged smoking-gun failure, he declares the rest of the evidence to be irrelevant and thus it's unnecessary to examine it. So if the prevailing theory "must" fail by virtue of that one allegedly slam-dunk line of reasoning, and we thus "know" the prevailing theory is false, then the remainder of the evidence for the prevailing theory must "somehow" work itself out to also be fake or planted or otherwise nonprobative -- even if the conspiracy theorist can't or won't explain how. E.g., "We know the Apollo crew can't have survived the Van Allen belts, so I don't have to explain how we got the Moon rocks; it's obvious they were fabricated somehow because we know they really didn't go to the Moon."

The Bellwether Fallacy is really a composite of two classic Aristotelian fallacies: circular reasoning, and the fallacy of limited scope.

The fallacy of Limited Scope says that a hypothesis that explains or considers only part of the pertinent evidence is less likely to be true than one which explains more of it. It's frequently committed in the quest for parsimony, but committed also routinely by conspiracy theorists because their approach is almost always just to pick away at one thread or another, as you've noted. They havce to commit the Limited Scope fallacy because they don't have a credible alternate narrative from end to end.

Circular reasoning doesn't need much explanation among this group. It's simply presuming the conclusion is true for the purpose of establishing a premise that is circularly dependent upon it. Saying we don't have to consider other evidence for, say, Oswald's guilt in the shooting of Tippit because we know by some smoking-gun means that he was innocent (e.g., that Markham's testimony might be problematic), is the epitome of circular reasoning.

Of course the whole exercise is a strategy not to have to test either the prevailing theory or the conspiracy theory against all the evidence. Doing that would expose that the conspiracy theory really doesn't explain much of the evidence, or explain it any better.

Someone here used the term "preponderance of evidence"; I've always liked the term "consilience (or convergence) of evidence,"...

That was me. It's a legal term and I used it in the context of a legal standard of proof. "Consilience" is a scientific term, and is far more appropriate to a wider discussion of the JFK evidence, or even in a pseudo-legal discussion of who, among all the available suspects, is the most likely to have killed Kennedy.

The interlocutors here have used the "devil is in the details" maxim incorrectly to assume that a conclusion drawn on the basis of consilience can and should be undone by some small outlying detail. Again, this is because conspiracy theories ever only pick away at outlying data points and never address the whole body of evidence.

 

[JayUtah]

As far as I know, no one currently accepts every word of the Warren report.

Nor the HSCA findings. These documents are not some infallible canon that somehow becomes useless after the least bit of tarnish. They are limited in scope, depth, and confidence, just as are the findings of any finite body. And we treat them as such.

We have a much better version of what happened now due to modern technology.

That's a point I raise frequently. We understand the limitations of these bodies that convene for a short time, do their best, and then disband. We understand those findings to be the product of that fixed level of effort and that bounded window of time, and we concede that with greater effort or more time, a more refined understanding could conceivably arise.

And that's why I look to conspiracy theorists with a certain expectation. They tell us that due to their more extensive research they've been able to show us that the Warren Commission got it all wrong. If they say they know enough to tell that someone else got it drastically wrong, then that suggests they know enough to give a more right answer -- i.e., an answer that will garner more and broader support than the work they allegedly discredited.

The premise of all the conspiracy theories is that someone besides or in addition to Oswald bears responsibility, and that the Warren Commission and HSCA egregiously missed the boat on bringing those other parties to justice. So with all this time available to them and all this investigative power they've brought to bear, and under the presumption that the consilience of evidence was grossly misstated by the commissions, it is reasonable to expect a new and better consilience or preponderance. But instead, all they've done is fray the edges of the carpet a little bit. No evidence of some other carpet.

For all the tarnish. these commission findings are still the best (not perfect) examination of all the pertinent evidence and the best distillation of the most likely scenario to explain it all.

 

[Axxman300]

I'm going to repeat myself, so bear with me.

I used to be a big time JFK Conspiracy loon. I read every book on the subject written between Mark Lane's in the mid-60s to the summer just before I got a dose of reality in 1996. I was down with most of it, and was open to all of it.

Why?

I thought that the guys who wrote those books knew what they were talking about. I believed that they had done extensive research.

Turns out they didn't . Half of the JFK CT books feed off of information in other JFK CT books. None of them look at the Warren Commission objectively, instead approaching their work from the standpoint that they were deceived or flat-out lied about their conclusions.

What changed my mind? I went to Dallas in 1996 and visited the Texas Schoolbook Depository Assassination Museum. The first thing that hit me - like a ton of bricks - was how easy the shots were to make from the 6th floor. I mean easy, really, really, really easy. So easy that the rifle was excessively powerful for the shot Oswald had to make. Had an automatic weapon been used he could have killed everyone on the limo, and the other limos.

The second thing was the picket fence on the grassy knoll. I'm sorry, but there is no way a guy with a rifle would not have been seen by EVERYONE, and he would STAND OUT in all of the photos and movies taken that day.

The third factor was the echo in Dealy Plaza. On that Sunday, they were filming the X-Files movie a few blocks away, and the helicopters seemed to come from everywhere. I grew up next to Fort Ord, and I'm good at locating a helicopter from the sound of its rotors. Not there. In fact, in Oliver Stone's comedy, the sound guy complained about the wicked echo the location has. So where you heard the shots come from depended on where you stood.

Vietnam, Texas Oil, the mob, or whatever bogey man you want to prop-up as the true culprit just fall away when you look at the crime scene, and the suspect.

Some guy in Sweden is just too far out of the loop to make any kind of judgement otherwise on this event.

 

[pgwenthold]

What changed my mind? I went to Dallas in 1996 and visited the Texas Schoolbook Depository Assassination Museum. The first thing that hit me - like a ton of bricks - was how easy the shots were to make from the 6th floor. I mean easy, really, really, really easy. .

And yet it STILL took Oswald three shots to hit the target!

This is something I have pointed out before. Conspiracy theorists talk about how amazing his shots were. I take the opposite approach. Why did he take three shots at Kennedy? Because the first two missed. And if he had missed the third, he would have taken a fourth and so on until he ran out of bullets.

He wasn't shooting with sharpshooter precision in the least. He just had multiple attempts. He only needs to be able to hit the target 1/5 of the time to have a 50% chance of hitting it in three attempts.