JFK Conspiracy Theories IV: The One With The Whales

[HSienzant]

You haven't a clue what consilience means, do you?

Spanish for "scatterbrained red herrings".

Not at all. If we were keeping track of your falsehoods and errors of fact, we'd be in the hundreds by now, easily.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience

-- quote --
In science and history, consilience (also convergence of evidence or concordance of evidence) refers to the principle that evidence from independent, unrelated sources can "converge" to strong conclusions. That is, when multiple sources of evidence are in agreement, the conclusion can be very strong even when none of the individual sources of evidence is significantly so on its own.
-- unquote --

So for the rifle alone, for example:
We have the form specifying a known alias of Oswald, appearing to be in his handwriting.
We have the order form specifying his PO box as the ship-to address.
We have a money order in his handwriting for the amount of the rifle purchase, including shipping charges.
We have Klein's business records showing he paid with a money order.
We have Klein's business records showing the weapon shipped had the serial number C2766.
We have Klein's business records showing C2766 was shipped to Oswald's PO box.
We have Oswald's fingerprints and palm print on the C2766 rifle.
We have the paper bag made from Depository paper found in in sniper's nest bearing Oswald's print as well.
We have photographs of Oswald with a rifle - determined by the HSCA to be the rifle bearing the serial number C2766.
We have the rifle itself missing from its normal storage place in the Paine garage as determined on the afternoon of the assassination.
And we have the rifle itself found at Oswald's place of work -- with only one person known to have access to both his place of work AND the Paine garage, Lee Harvey Oswald.

That, my dear conspiracy theorist, is CONSILIENCE. Multiple different disciplines and lines of inquiry all pointing to the same conclusion.

Contrary to your assertion above about what consilience means.

Hank

 

[Axxman300]

Do you know what a gun is?

I am beginning to wonder.

 

[HSienzant]

It means exactly what I wrote, very clearly. You're neck-deep in cowlicks and EOPs but haven't any idea how lost you are in all this. Without logic and evidentiary rigor, you're just wandering down every path that takes your fancy. Hank, who really knows the facts of the case, can't get through to you. Others try to point out your logical fallacies and argumentative dead-ends. And you continue to post pictures of cowlicks without the medical expertise to discuss them coherently or persuasively.

And the bigger problem is he's assuming the photo shows a cowlick at the top-back of the President's head, as opposed to a man-made part in the hair by the autopsists to allow the photographer to better photograph the entry wound.

As another poster likes to say, it's turtles all the way down.

Hank

 

[Axxman300]

Watch how tiny the people are from the sixth floor and you have my answer.

How many times do I think JFK was shot by anyone? IMO it was probably three.

...and now we can add lack of camera lens aperture, and depth of field to the LONG list of things you don't understand.

Just because it looks small on film doesn't mean that's what you see when you look out the window, which you'd know if you pay attention to the real world.

It...was...an...easy...shot...

 

[Axxman300]

The JFK case has a funny way of testing the limits of what can be done with forensic evidence. Every LN thought NAA was the holy grail until courts stopped using it because it was debunked. And on the CT side, let's not forget the blunder with the alleged fingerprints of Mac Wallace on the Sixth Floor. Fingerprint expert Nathan Darby swore on a stack of bibles that the unidentified Sixth Floor fingerprint matched the print of Mac Wallace, but Joan Mellen got yet another expert who concluded that the print did not match. What does this say about the entire field of fingerprint analysis?



.

Oswald's prints are STILL on the rifle. The HSCA actually found them when they did their thing.

 

[Axxman300]

What part of Humes' ARRB testimony are you talking about? He said that the fractures emanating from the large skull defect were so many that pieces of bone would just naturally come off, with minimal sawing of bone necessary.

followed by quote mining

If you read it then you know what he said, and now you're playing games.

The skull was shattered, making the extraction of the brain a simple matter, so where's the mystery?

The photographs would've gone missing before they went to the National Archives, silly. We've talked about the missing photos before.

No, you have SPECULATED about missing photos, not proved there are missing photos. You also have not proved the existing, unseen photographs in the NA do not show conclusive depictions of the damage.

Even Bugliosi conceded the possibility of missing autopsy photographs, albiet with a non-conspiratorial interpretation (something about somebody taking it was a souvenir).

He was speculating too, doesn't make him right. And there are photographs which were taken as souvenirs because these are the one now in public domain. The second photograph of Oswald holding HIS rifle was found in the home of a Dallas policeman years later by his son.

When do you think they "signed off" on the cowlick entry theory?

They signed off on the autopsy.

 

[Axxman300]

Good lord, look at how tiny the people on the street are. It would be torture to use the iron sights. Are you sure you guys don't want to go back to saying the scope was used?

This based on your extensive firearms background? Maybe your years as an instructor at the US Army Sniper School?

Oh, that's right, you've never fired a weapon before at any range.

Torture to use iron sights...that's rich...

 

[Axxman300]

Lol. I know there's something of an issue over whether or not Bobby and Jackie believed the story, and I'm certainly not going to get education about it from you. Just what in Sam Hill are you talking about either way? Kennedy's personal physician, Burkley, is no walk in the park with what little he said about the case. Where was the New York Times and LIFE when he said he "would not like to be quoted" on how many bullets entered Kennedy's body? Is this the kind of thing that you find convincing, or are you just trying to fool the few lurkers?

Burkley is on record as believing the head shot came from the front, which you'd know if you actually read real books.

You would also know that his doctor was a GP, and not a pathologist in the same way that an orthopedic surgeon is not a urologist.

You don't have to take my world for anything, there must be a hundred books about the Kennedys, JFK, RFK, Ted, Jackie, Joe, Joe Jr, and probably their pets. Jack and Bobby faced off against the Mafia in public hearings, they faced down Khrushchev, so if RFK had evidence of a second shooter, or that Oswald had been working with someone he would have nailed them to a wall. LBJ was looking for a crusade, and RFK would have handed him one.

Read a hard back book sometime.

 

[OKBob]

That, my dear conspiracy theorist, is CONSILIENCE. Multiple different disciplines and lines of inquiry all pointing to the same conclusion.

"Consilience" is a term derived ultimately from the Latin "saltire," to leap. Consilience means a leaping or jumping together (con-). As Hank suggests, when evidence from different domains or disciplines converges on the same conclusion, we have consilience--a strong sensation of probability. The psychological impact of consilience is often what leads juries to convict, for example.

There seems to be no tidy antonym for consilience, though once upon a time JayUtah and others played with possibilities on an adjacent thread. I suppose "resilience" is one technical possibility, since it literally means a leaping back or retracting (in self-protection perhaps), but that doesn't catch the sense of anti-consilience.

"Exile" also descends from "saltire"--to drive out. In a sense, those who deny strong convergences are self-exiled from the probable truth.

Oddly, MicahJavah's flippant characterization of consilience as "scatterbrained" does suggest an apt antonym in this context. CTists often seem, to me, to scatter mentally in different directions away from probabilities, self-exiled in their search for random, desultory anomalies.

That's another "saltire" descendant: desultory, literally to leap from horse to horse--a little like a Gish gallop.

(These etymologies, by the way, are nicely gathered together in Eric Patridge's great volume, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, reprinted in many editions. He doesn't include "consilience," which I think may be a comparatively recent coinage.)

 

[OKBob]

Even Bugliosi conceded [snip]

Micah, please state what you mean by your phrase "Even Bugliosi." Are you suggesting that he was biased, incompetent, disinclined to entertain contrary evidence, or something else? Or do you find it appropriate to denigrate your polemical opponents with little words like "Even"?

Also, why do you say that he "conceded" something? He is not your witness on cross-examination. He was a researcher who assembled a massive amount of information and made the argument that Oswald was the lone assassin.

 

[Tomtomkent]

Good lord, look at how tiny the people on the street are. It would be torture to use the iron sights. Are you sure you guys don't want to go back to saying the scope was used?

Only six floors up and they look like ants?
How tall was each floor? Or was JFK smaller than the average man?

 

[abaddon]

What am I supposed to think? The diameter of Kennedy's head would appear to be less than the diameter of the front sight. There's no misleading LN spin to change that.

Would it? The resolution of the human eye is about 1 arcminute. JFK's head at that range would appear to be 700 times that resolution with the naked eye. Thus your claim is that the iron sight would appear bigger so as to occlude JFK's head. How wide would the iron sight have to be for that to be true?

Well, working out the trig, it turns out that your claim is that the iron sight must be 0.7 inches wide of solid metal in order to obscure JFK's head. That's a very odd claim. Not to mention a very odd rifle.

 

[MicahJava]

And the bigger problem is he's assuming the photo shows a cowlick at the top-back of the President's head, as opposed to a man-made part in the hair by the autopsists to allow the photographer to better photograph the entry wound.

As another poster likes to say, it's turtles all the way down.

Hank

"Cowlick" is the neutral, accepted way to refer to the hypothetical higher placement of the entry wound.

I've already said that the red spot could've indeed been a somewhat significant injury to the scalp the doctors found, possibly searching through Kennedy's hair for other wounds.

One thing that indicates the parted hair shouldn't be taken too seriously is a similar patch of hair seen in the back wound photo:

NSFW - autopsy photo

Is that the same general patch of hair seen in the BOH photos? Why does it look different? Is the red spot on the BOH photos the same dark spot with a hair growing out of it?

 

[RoboTimbo]

"Cowlick" is the neutral, accepted way to refer to the hypothetical higher placement of the entry wound.

I've already said that the red spot could've indeed been a somewhat significant injury to the scalp the doctors found, possibly searching through Kennedy's hair for other wounds.

One thing that indicates the parted hair shouldn't be taken too seriously is a similar patch of hair seen in the back wound photo:

NSFW - autopsy photo

[qimg]http://www.jfkassassinationgallery.com/albums/userpics/10001/15355745.jpg[/qimg]

Is that the same general patch of hair seen in the BOH photos? Why does it look different? Is the red spot on the BOH photos the same dark spot with a hair growing out of it?

Where was the entrance wound from Oswald's shot to Kennedy's head? What is the CT position on it? You don't have to live your life running away from it.

 

[MicahJava]

Axxman still won't explain what he means by "lunchbox", as if it meant anything in the first place. He knows more of the skull had to be separated in order to facilitate removal of the brain.

Also where does Burkley said he thought JFK was shot from the front? I thought that claim was from Michael L. Kurtz, who many give reason to believe is a fraud who fabricated interviews.

 

[HSienzant]

Willful? Do not pretend to understand my intent, you do not possess that in your arsenal word crafting.

Your intent is clear. It is to raise conspiracy points and defend them to the best of your ability. That's exactly what you've done so far.

For you to carry Hank's water is amazing, so you must know Hank very well as you reached into his mind to determine his persuasion...

No. I spelled it out pretty clearly in a prior post, and OKBob summarized it adequately. He did say WR when I said WC, and I corrected that - otherwise, as I noted, he was spot on. As I corrected him, I will correct you below.

Go ahead and slice and dice my comments, I did what Hank did and that was abbreviate a descriptive title (Hank did a good job of explaining why he uses "CT" and "LN") into a convenient two "WC". So instead of setting aside the difference between Executive Sessions, Testimony, Evidence, and the final Report... I narrowed it down to WC.

No, you said WR (Warren Report - the one volume detailing the Warren Commission's conclusions, and the evidence they based their conclusions on). And I had specifically said that wasn't the basis of my current beliefs. I quite specifically said I based my conclusions solely on the 26 volumes of evidence and testimony the Warren Commission (WC) published, as well as the 12 volumes the HSCA published.

Which is why my conclusions sometimes differ from both.

It was posted earlier by Hank that he went out and bought the entire set for quite a few dollars back in the day... so I assumed (I understand the dangers of assumption) that he read all of it.

There was no reason for you to assume anything. That's precisely what I said. I read all 26 volumes.

It is easy for one who has only posted a few times to take aim and shoot at people (one of your first post was vilifying Hank, yet Hank let that go and Hank never lets anything go or least on this thread and that is such an outlier)

As has been pointed out to you, your argument about OKBob vilifying me is just a straw man argument you're apparently using to change the subject. There was no outlier activity on my part.

... your repeated use of "do not" certainly elevates in your own mind a level of authority and your duty to enforce said authority.

He basically cautioned you against using logical fallacies and the like. One would think that's advice you would welcome. Apparently not.

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

"Cowlick" is the neutral, accepted way to refer to the hypothetical higher placement of the entry wound.

And we're fully in fringe reset mode, beyond any doubt. No, it's not. You're assuming what you need to prove.

We covered all this six months or more ago. For instance, the below post is from September 27th; 2016:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11511366&postcount=1748

To quote from the above:
It's sleight of hand by conspiracy theorists. By calling it the 'cowlick wound' they are assuming what they need to prove... that the 'red spot' is at the natural part in the hair and isn't the real wound, and that the real wound is lower in the photograph.

By calling it the 'cowlick wound', they also eliminate from consideration entirely the most reasonable explanation, that it's not a natural part in the hair we're looking at, but rather, the autopsy doctors simply combed the hair out of the way to expose the bullet entry wound in the rear of the head.

Pretty slick, right?

They also pretend "south" of the limo is behind the limo, but it's actually forward and to the left of the limo. This is pertinent because the Harper head fragment was found south of where the limo was at the time of the head shot, but some conspiracy authors claim the Harper fragment was found behind the limo -- implying a shooter to the front. But the actual site of the shooter, considering the curve of Elm Street, would be behind the limo. And we can see that Harper fragment in Zapruder film frame 313, spiraling up and outwards at approximately the one o'clock position.

I've already said that the red spot could've indeed been a somewhat significant injury to the scalp the doctors found, possibly searching through Kennedy's hair for other wounds.

It's the entry wound in the rear of the head, according to the HSCA pathology panel. You're saying those experts are wrong. Aren't you?

One thing that indicates the parted hair shouldn't be taken too seriously is a similar patch of hair seen in the back wound photo:

Is that the same general patch of hair seen in the BOH photos? Why does it look different?

"Looks different" is an assertion by you, citing your own opinion, is it not? Is that what the HSCA pathology panel concluded as well?

Is the red spot on the BOH photos the same dark spot with a hair growing out of it?

"...Hair growing out of it" is another unproven assertion by you. Where did the HSCA pathology panel note this?

Hank

 

[HSienzant]

The JFK case has a funny way of testing the limits of what can be done with forensic evidence. Every LN thought NAA was the holy grail until courts stopped using it because it was debunked.

Can you cite where the science was debunked and courts stopped using it?

And on the CT side, let's not forget the blunder with the alleged fingerprints of Mac Wallace on the Sixth Floor. Fingerprint expert Nathan Darby swore on a stack of bibles that the unidentified Sixth Floor fingerprint matched the print of Mac Wallace, but Joan Mellen got yet another expert who concluded that the print did not match. What does this say about the entire field of fingerprint analysis?

Fingerprint analysis is alive and well. As I recall, Darby was in his mid-80s when he made the erroneous ID as it being Mac Wallace's fingerprint.

Hank

 

[RoboTimbo]

Axxman still won't explain what he means by "lunchbox", as if it meant anything in the first place. He knows more of the skull had to be separated in order to facilitate removal of the brain.

Also where does Burkley said he thought JFK was shot from the front? I thought that claim was from Michael L. Kurtz, who many give reason to believe is a fraud who fabricated interviews.

Now that you're in full panicked retreat mode, can you provide the name of a CTist who won't cower away from answering questions? So far, CTists are batting zero since the first iteration of this thread. Other than being gullible fodder for CT authors selling books of course.

 

[Axxman300]

Axxman still won't explain what he means by "lunchbox", as if it meant anything in the first place. He knows more of the skull had to be separated in order to facilitate removal of the brain.

Also where does Burkley said he thought JFK was shot from the front? I thought that claim was from Michael L. Kurtz, who many give reason to believe is a fraud who fabricated interviews.

Again, Humes got the scalp clear, and cut the skull just above the right ear "in a circumferential fashion". He says it was a chore because the skull was so fractured.

On page 101 he says they cut the scalp per standard procedure, and then cut the skull plate off.

So my mistake, they removed the brain the same way that they always do.

I don't know where you got the idea he took it out through the hole. Humes clearly does not say that is how they did it.