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JFK Conspiracy Theories: It Never Ends

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I seem to remember that the phrase was ''a twenty dollar whore.''

Hmm. Two differing memories. However, I hope you realise that if we look at my DVD of the film, and it shows the phrase was "twenty dollar whore" that is just evidence it had been altered to remove the true "Kansas city whore" sentence?


That's how this evidence works right? And if not, does it matter if I find 38 people who also disagree?
 
Nonsense.

I have to deal with eyewitness testimony all the time in forensic engineering. It is the least reliable of all the kinds of evidence I can use. Eyewitnesses will minimize in order to avoid possible blame. They will exaggerate in order to be associated with a noteworthy event. They will change their story to conform to what they believe others' recollections to have been. They will consciously or unconsciously invent detail they believe they should, as eyewitnesses, know but cannot immediately recall.

In crash investigations etc. we have to take special pains to vet eyewitness testimony. Every couple of years in Virginia the NTSB and the FBI together offer joint training in taking eyewitness testimony that doesn't suck. The gorilla guys were there one year.

So I take it that in reference to the medical evidence of the Kennedy Assassination, evidence that has been altered, forged, substituted, planted and simply made to disappear, is superior to the 40 plus medical witness observations at Parkland Hospital based on your superior knowledge as pertains to witnesses in forensic engineering??????
 
So I take it...

Changing horses. You made a general claim about the nature of eyewitness testimony -- i.e., that some number of eyewitnesses would be incontrovertible. I responded to that general claim with my professional knowledge of the nature of eyewitness evidence as generally considered.

Please do not attempt to put other words in my mouth. You are dishonest.
 
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No, in typical conspiracy-theory fashion you want to skip over the discussion of expertise and go right to the claims themselves. White's claims do not make him an expert. White's claims are addressable evidence only when made by an expert, because they require the judgment of someone expert in the field. The merit of the claim cannot be divorced from the foundation of the analysis. Simply because the analysis involves a real-world object such as a photograph does not mean the claims made about it have objective merit that derives from the objective mere-existence of the disputed object.

White himself has stipulated to this need for expertise, claiming to be just such an expert. Unlike you, White does not suggest that the "anomalies" stand by themselves and that any layman can bring this evidence forward -- i.e., that the claims can stand independently of the expertise that generated and supports them. He claims that only he, and expert photographic analyst, is able to discover and properly understand this evidence.

I suspect you already know that White is not recognized as an expert outside his little circle of conspiracy fanatics, so now you desperately try to shift the discussion away from the question of his expertise and expect us to presume (along with you) that he really is an expert. You want to draw attention away from the very discussion that White hoped to have! He styles himself as "the most dangerous photographic analyst to the government" that there is. White himself is very much about his professed ability (his and his alone) to discover "anomalies" in photographs of government-related events.

No, you don't get to do this tap-dance. White claims to be an expert. You claimed White is an expert. Both of you claim that this professed expertise is the basis on which lies the strength of White's claims that involve photographs. That clearly opens the door to a discussion of his expertise. You may not like it, but this is the discussion you ordered up, so live with it. And no, it is not ad hominem to investigate the qualifications someone has claimed to have them and to have based his conclusions on them.

I pointed out that White is not respected in the field. This is not an ad homimen attack, it is a simple statement of fact. One cannot claim to be an expert while simultaneously being rejected by others who have demonstrable expertise. Stature in the field is a measure of expertise. If other people who are as smart as you claim to be, and who have demonstrated their smarts, don't think you pass muster, then this is inimical to a claim of expertise. You don't get to claim everyone else is misguided and that you are the only true expert. That's the charlatan's gambit.

I showed clear evidence that White makes elementary errors in photographic analysis. That is only one of several examples I can cite. Showing that someone commits repeated, egregious error undermines that person's claims to expertise. It is not an ad hominem attack to show that a person clearly lacks specific skills that he has claimed to have and that he says are important to his findings. The "crop-and-resize" trick has been used repeatedly by him to manufacture his "anomalies."

Finally I gave evidence that White overstates his claims. Experts ask non-experts for trust in the form of respecting the conclusions they draw. We expect an expert therefore not to misrepresent or exaggerate. When I find evidence that a purported expert has committed an untrustworthy act in the course of presenting his case, it undermines his credibility as an expert. We expect our experts to report the facts dispassionately, not to skew things in their favor. It is not ad hominem to show that an alleged expert has untrustworthily reported his work. It shows that something other than expertise is coloring his interpretation and judgment.

I have conducted a proper examination of White's claims to expertise according to the customary criteria, such as how a court would voir dire an expert. According to those criteria, White is not an expert. Please some whining about people "attacking" him. If he didn't want his expertise judged, he probably shouldn't have claimed to have any. Now let's turn to who really engages in attack-oriented argumentation.

It is always amusing to see how rapidly conspiracy-mongers want to push their critics onto the "just another ad hominem attacker" pile. White himself tries to shame critics into addressing his claims by labeling them "provocateurs," even though he himself freely admits to "provoking" reactions with his absurd claims against various government entities. I think it's hilarious, Robert, that you dismiss me without knowing the first thing about me or my work. What a sad knee-jerk reaction. I've been told to expect as much from you.

Want to know what your hero did when my criticism of his Apollo photographs first emerged? First he tried to sue me because he thought I had "stolen" that photo from his secret web forums where he and all his whacko sychophants hang out. But of course I had obtained it entirely legally from a source White himself had told could "distribute them as you see fit." He didn't try to claim he was right. He didn't try to address the various points I brought up. No, his first thought was retribution for letting his cat out of the bag.

Then when his efforts to silence me had failed, he called me an "ignorant a--hole" and told the world he was safe ignoring me because I was just another "provocateur" who couldn't appreciate his special genius.

Defend that.

What you continue to do is avoid evidence of anomalies, in favor of piling on with your ad hominem attacks. White may be the worst human being on the planet, but that has nothing whatsoever to do the truth or non-truth of his claims. Your personal claims remain off point and irrelevant.
 
Aha. So you did eyeball it and didn't like the evidence. That's exactly what I thought you'd say.

Sorry, eyeballing a photograph and saying "it looks wrong to me" isn't sufficient here.

Yes, that's about what I'd expect from somebody on sesame street. But not from a legit photographic analysis.

Do you have any legit evidence or should I just counter your layman's opinion with my own layman's opinion? The photos looks fine to me.

Ball in your court.

You can tell me I'm wrong, in which case I'll say "no, you are," or you can cite some legitimate photographic analysis by someone who actually is an expert and studied the first generation materials and concluded they were falsified.

Which is it going to be, Robert?

What "expert" qualifications do your house panel members have other than having worked for the very Am. govt. intelligence organizations that are prime suspects in the crime and the cover-up????
 
What "expert" qualifications do your house panel members have other than having worked for the very Am. govt. intelligence organizations that are prime suspects in the crime and the cover-up????

Limit yourself to one question mark at a time please.

Why do you put such credence in Joke "What is this photogrammetry of which you speak?" White's obvious (Logic 101) errors?
 
In what professional, refereed, or peer-reviewed journal may I read about this experiment? What qualified peers reviewed your work? In other words, what assurance can you give us that your experiment was conducted according to valid methods and principles, and not just the clumsy work of yet another disaffected amateur?



Jack White is not even remotely qualified to work in this field, and is roundly rejected by it as a buffoon, along with his "experiments" which are merely a layman's fumbling with no attention to proper controls or methods. He has no stature in the field. Please don't try to cite him as an expert.



John Costella has no relevant experience or training either, and no stature in the field. He has tried to tell people that since he has a PhD in physics, he is qualified to act as soem sort of a forensic investigator. This is a common tactic among crackpots. They say that because they have some training and experience in one of the foundation sciences such as physics or chemistry, they are qualified to work in all the sciences that utilize them.

Specifically, Costella has tried to posture himself as a photographic analyst. I was contacted by a few people asking me to review Costella's claims regarding the Zapruder film. I found his claims to be so naive as to be laughable. Specifically his almost complete ignorance of the quantitative properties of parallax was enough to dismiss him as yet another crackpot. He told people that he couldn't possibly be wrong because he was an expert in physics and the Zapruder film "contradicted the laws of physics." Unfortunately no, physicists don't learn about projective geometry etc. in their coursework, especially those who work in theoretical or particle physics, as opposed to mechanics.

Costella tried this same bunkum on Apollo photography (my particular area of specialty) and naturally I handed him his head when he tried to declare certain Apollo 11 photographs fraudulent on the same "laws of physics" basis. Of course he puffed out his chest and declared he couldn't possibly be wrong because he had a PhD in physics and we had to respect his deep knowledge of that and all subjects. But of course I was able to present him not only with empirical evidence that his claims were wrong, but also a properly founded mathematical proof. His knowledge of "the laws of physics" were shown to be comically naive on these points. And to this day Costella has never acknowledge or addressed the refutation.

Clearly he has no desire to practice real science when it comes to the various conspiracy theories he dabbles in. He adopts the prima donna attitude of the theoretical physicist and does not respect those who, in addition to expertise in the theory, also have considerable training and experience in the specialized field. He shares certain properties in common in that respect with Jim Fetzer, who also makes Apollo hoax claims that he will not debate with the experts.



This is pure nonsense.

First, you are not scientist. You have no business trying to tell people who are scientists how to go about it. Please don't assume you know what you're talking about; it's annoying.

Second, you don't know the difference between empiricism and reproducibility. The scientific goal of reproducibility means to devise a method of investigation that is as deterministic as possible and accounts as deterministically as possible for all relevant variables. This is so that the results can be said unequivocally to derive only from factors that appear in the study, not from factors that cannot be controlled for such as personal judgment, pre-existing bias, or opinion.

Empiricism, on the other hand, is simply the method and practice of letting the universe display its properties rather that deducing or inferring them from more basic principles. Good science must have reproducibility, but good science does not require empirical methods.

Third, you miss entirely what science is "about" -- at least in the useful practice of it.

Science first requires knowledge and expertise among its practitioners. One cannot move ahead in a field without knowing what has gone behind. Most conspiracy-theorist pseudosciences do not have the relevant body of knowledge. They rely largely on intuition or hastily-Googled smatterings of fact. One cannot formulate proper models, experiments, or conclusions without a pre-existing knowledge of what to expect. Nearly all pseudoscientists lack this foundation. Hence their offerings tumble predictably into the elementary pitfalls that real scientists avoid by knowing the field. Jack White and John Costella know nothing about projective geometry. They do not have a proper foundation in the field, therefore their claims suffer from errors that a study of the appropriate foundation sciences would have led them to anticipate and correct.

Science also requires properly validated methods. Methodology is crucial in proper science. In the field of photographic analysis, there is more than a century and a half of scholarship, and from that has emerged a clear understanding of what will work -- and more importantly, what will not work. There simply is no excuse for not understanding and employing proper methods, for they are how science progresses rather than just standing still. Conspiracy-theorist pseudo-scientists just make things up as they go. Since they lack experience in the field, they clumsily try to derive methods from the ground up. And they never submit these ad hoc methods to any sort of validation or test. So while they purport to be able to use these methods to discern real photographs from fakes, they decline to show you whether they've been able to do so verifiably on any photographs other than the ones they're "analyzing" for their conspiracy theory. Such ad hoc methods are specifically eschewed by the ideal of reproducibility.

Finally, review is essential. While scientists are individually responsible for making progress ("publish or perish"), the field as a whole is responsible for ensuring that the work of individuals passes muster. Hence not only are there formal methods for review prior to publication, there is also informal review among peers where criticism and suggestion has a more profound effect. Conspiracy-theorist pseudo-scientists never submit their work for review in the field as a whole. If they let it out of the corral at all, it is only within the circle of fellow conspiracy theorists who are just as clueless as they. Pseudoscientists flee from any meaningful review of their claims by qualified people.

Please don't try to hold up Costella and White as examples of real science. They practice the antithesis of real science. And just because you say they have conducted "experiments" is not proof that they know what they are doing.



Nonsense. This discounts science based on analytical and synthetic methods.

Very often in forensic science (which I practice professionally as part of my training and practice as an engineer) we cannot replicate exactly the effects of happenstance occurrences. There is an entire body of science in error analysis that lets us proceed with confidence nevertheless. White and Costella are entirely ignorant of it.

Further, your "expert" Costella was trained in a field that specifically eschews empiricism in favor of synthesis and analysis methods. His supposed emphasis on empirical methods over other methods, as a scientist, betrays the only science he can legitimately profess. This is likely because he is completely untrained and completely unskilled in the analytical methods that apply to photographic analysis and interpretation, and simply waves his diploma whenever he is asked about them. And it's also amusing that he completely ignores the empirical refutations of his own claims, on the grounds that "crude" empiricism is no match for his superior analytical skill. In other words, whether he's going to be an analytical scientist or an empirical scientist varies on what he thinks he can get away with. The fact is that he has neither the theoretical nor the empirical understanding of the field.



White's experiments had no basis in valid science. Silly layman's attempts at empiricism do not constitute real science, nor do they dispute the real science demonstrated by others.

More Baloney.
 
What "expert" qualifications do your house panel members have other than having worked for the very Am. govt. intelligence organizations that are prime suspects in the crime and the cover-up????

One question mark at a time please.

Cite a non-insane source that suspects the federal government of assassinating JFK.
 
Forget those photos for the time being Robert, it's the "backyard" photos Im talking about.

Do the backyard photos point to there being a second shooter on the grassy knoll?

Not directly, but since the fake backyard photos were created and published in order to brainwash the public into thinking that their noble government has solved the crime, and the dead perp did it all by himself, and all who claim otherwise are a bunch of loonies, then yes, the faked photos point to an attempt to deny there were any other shooters, including the possibility of grassy knoll shooters. The Direct Evidence of a shooter on the Grassy Knoll are the 40 plus medical witnesses who observed a large blow-out in the back of K's head, and the close up witnesses who claimed they heard and in some cases saw the flash from the Knoll. Plus most of the autopsy witnesses as well who claimed the same observations as to the wounds as did the Parkland personnel.
 
What you continue to do is avoid evidence of anomalies...

Nonsense. The adjudication of some photographic feature as an "anomaly" is a matter of expertise, as I have claimed, as Jack White has claimed, and as you claimed -- until being asked to justify it. What an expert may be able to understand and identify could very easily appear as an "anomaly" to a layman who doesn't know what he's looking at, or who has manipulated the photo in a way to create the anomaly where none previously existed.

Again, you want to structure the discussion so that the true basis of White's claims is not open to discussion. You want the world to presume that White is an expert and that when he says something is legitimately wrong, it is the opinion of an expert. You refuse to consider the possibility that White simply doesn't know what he's looking at because he's not properly trained or qualified and therefore has naive expectations.

...in favor of piling on with your ad hominem attacks.

You have yet to show that any of my statements is an ad hominem attack. You haven't even tried. You just wave your hands, incant the words "ad homimem" and declare victory.

White may be the worst human being on the planet...

I have made no such claim.

I have claimed that White is a poor photographic analyst, contrary to his own claims. I have given evidence of his poor work. You did not address that evidence. Hence you haven't addressed the argument I actually made.

I have claimed that White reports his results dishonestly, contrary to the expectations attending expertise. I have given evidence of his disonesty. You did not address that evidence. This is not general dishonesty, but dishonestly in the specific context of his profession to expertise and the statement of his findings.

I have claimed that White is not recognized as an authority except outside a small circle of disciples. You did not address that evidence. You cannot address his lack of stature in the relevant scientific discipline except to assert further that everyone else has it out for him.

I have simply shown that White's claims to expertise do not stand up under scrutiny. You seem hell-bent on making it seem like something else. I'm simply disputing his claim to be an expert -- what he considers the basis for his "anomaly" claims -- and giving the reasons for my disputation. If you're not prepared to address those reasons, then kindly say so and I won't waste any more time talking to you; I'll just assume your objections are knee-jerk reactions.

but that has nothing whatsoever to do the truth or non-truth of his claims.

His claims to expertise bear on the strength of his findings of "anomalies," in precisely the manner I described, precisely the manner White himself claims, and in precisely the ways in which I have demonstrate him to be incompetent. You and White have the burden to prove that his "anomalies" are real and not just the product of his demonstrated ineptitude.

Your personal claims remain off point and irrelevant.

I have made only one personal claim, and that is to point out where White's own behavior would probably constitute ad hominem argumentation. I did ask you to justify what I consider to be a double standard for personal attacks. You and White seem to apply one set of rules to yourselves and a much different standard to everyone else.

Both he and you have dismissed me without the slightest knowledge of my background and qualifications, and without the slightest attempt to deal with the merit of my statements. I would consider that the epitome of an ad hominem claim -- you are dismissing me because of what you perceive I am, versus what you perceive I have said.
 
Not directly, but since the fake backyard photos were created and published in order to brainwash the public...

Subversion of support. The speculation of motive rests first on the body of the accusation, which is not yet established. The body of the accusation is the authenticity of the photos, which has been challenged only according to invalid ac hoc methods of disproven validity.

The Direct Evidence of a shooter on the Grassy Knoll are the 40 plus medical witnesses who observed a large blow-out in the back of K's head...

That is, at best, indirect evidence.

and the close up witnesses who claimed they heard and in some cases saw the flash from the Knoll.

Again, at best indirect evidence. Direct evidence would be the capture of a man with a gun on the Grassy Knoll immediately following the incident. All the evidence to date amounts to nothing more than tidbits, interpreted as whole according to some as a body of evidence that there "must have been" such a gunman.

Please research the difference between evidence and induction/inference.
 
So I take it that in reference to the medical evidence of the Kennedy Assassination, evidence that has been altered, forged, substituted, planted and simply made to disappear, is superior to the 40 plus medical witness observations at Parkland Hospital based on your superior knowledge as pertains to witnesses in forensic engineering??????


You are simply assuming what you need to prove.

Show evidence has been -

  • Altered
  • Forged
  • Substituted
  • Planted
  • Made to Disappear

Please note you don't get to "show" the above by simply contrasting it with some eyewitness statements and then discarding the hard evidence. That's not how it works, except in conspiracy-ville (aka, any conspiracy book on the Kennedy assassination). If the hard evidence is in conflict with some witnesses, the witnesses lose, and their statements get discarded. Unless you can show the evidence has been tampered with.

But you don't get to simply assume the evidence is tampered with because you find some witnesses whose recollections differ from the evidence. But that is exactly what the conspiracy theorists like yourself have been doing for 49 years.

Hank
 
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Robert, you're splitting hairs now in a desperate attempt to avoid severe embarrassment. The profile of most chins, including Oswald's, as demonstrated by the mug shots, and as you well know, transfers from essentially vertical to essentially horizontal. Hence the shadow line from an elevated light source, (the sun, in the case of the Oswald photo) occurs at a point somewhere before essentially true horizontal, i.e. well in advance of the neck, namely still on the chin. Get it? Or would a simple line diagram help?

I did 3D render that showed the same shadow effect and he still insists it can't be a shadow...
 
So, instead of discussing White's specific evidence anomalies of the backyard photos, you attack the man. Thus, you betray yourself as just another ad hominem attacker with no knowledge or credibility of the subject at hand (With all due respect to your own auto-biographical puffery.


If you could be bothered to do any research you would find that JayUtah has dissected White's work in detail in the past, why should he do so again because of your laziness?
 
I seem to remember that the phrase was ''a twenty dollar whore.''
You are correct, sir. It was "Kansas City faggots" in a different part of the movie.
(See, this is what you do when you are wrong. You admit it and move on. Not make up reasons you really are correct in spite of the evidence. But only if you're honorable and not stupid.)
 
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