Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

By the way, isn't "tracking down false leads" and wasting time, money and manpower what can happen in any investigation such as when the police/FBI interview witnesses who misremember things?

If anything, wouldn't this actually cut down on the amount of manpower required?
 
zeggman said:
So maybe there was no bomb. It's crass and tasteless to speak of Bigfoot when so many people lost limbs.
Click to expand...

This is the second time someone has implied that I'm saying there was no bomb.

My criticism is with the methods of "investigation" you and others seem all to willing to employ here, along with your deluded mentality that you are in the right in doing so. And when I point that out, you react by implying that I thought there was no bomb.

Hint: I think there was a bomb. Two in fact.

Yup, real good critical thinking on display here. I can only imagine how much worse it is elsewhere on the Internet where the standards of evidence aren't so high. And the FBI gets to slog through every last tip from these wonderfully enlightening Internet investigations.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Really? I kind of think their decision said something more along the lines of "we need help so let's allow everybody on the planet to look over the photos/video" - you know, solving a crime by global committee.

ETA: Like I said before, I think this will backfire on the FBI. I fear they will waste precious time, resources, and manpower tracking down false leads and whatnot; and in the process there will be far too many innocent people implicated in the resulting dragnet. You can disagree - won't stop me from criticizing the decision.

And, once again, I really hope I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

It could be an indication that they weren't getting anywhere.

Ordinarily they wouldn't want the suspects to know they were suspects.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Well, the media is nuts then.

I'll remove that claim.
Click to expand...

Not yet. I'll retract my claim.

Jeff saw white hat.

From your link...

A man wearing a cap, sunglasses and a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt looked at Jeff, 27, and dropped a bag at his feet, his brother, Chris Bauman, said in an interview.
Click to expand...

Hoodie guy is white hat guy.

You were right, LTC.
 
zeggman said:
So maybe there was no bomb. It's crass and tasteless to speak of Bigfoot when so many people lost limbs.
Click to expand...

With due respect, I think you're working a little hard to take offense at his comments. Obviously, he is not suggesting that the bombs or bombers are mythical.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Really? I kind of think their decision said something more along the lines of "we need help so let's allow everybody on the planet to look over the photos/video" - you know, solving a crime by global committee.

ETA: Like I said before, I think this will backfire on the FBI. I fear they will waste precious time, resources, and manpower tracking down false leads and whatnot; and in the process there will be far too many innocent people implicated in the resulting dragnet. You can disagree - won't stop me from criticizing the decision.

And, once again, I really hope I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

You are wrong. The FBI when they released the images today explicitly said they want people to see if they personally recognize the men depicted.

The FBI has not released any raw video or photos or asked the public for their opinion. They have only asked the public to send any and all photographs or video they took at the location to the FBI so that the FBI's trained experts could examine them.
 
MattusMaximus said:
This is the second time someone has implied that I'm saying there was no bomb.

My criticism is with the methods of "investigation" you and others seem all to willing to employ here, along with your deluded mentality that you are in the right in doing so. And when I point that out, you react by implying that I thought there was no bomb.

Hint: I think there was a bomb. Two in fact.

Yup, real good critical thinking on display here. I can only imagine how much worse it is elsewhere on the Internet where the standards of evidence aren't so high. And the FBI gets to slog through every last tip from these wonderfully enlightening Internet investigations.
Click to expand...

tell us more skeptical teacher, tell us more.
 
angrysoba said:
I think it is an interesting way to go about it. Whether or not it works is yet to be determined.
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What else are they even supposed to do? It's not like they'd be able to find the guy themselves based on those images. I don't see how they have any other choice than to hope someone recognizes them. Barring other evidence, of course.
 
The FBI previously asked the thousands of people who congregated near the finish line to submit photos and video taken at the crime scene. That combined with media coverage of the marathon and surveillance cameras gave investigators an abundance of images to review.

The team discovered the first suspect "within the last day or so," DesLauriers told a news conference. That enabled them to connect him to the second man.

"Somebody out there knows these individuals as friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members of the suspects," DesLauriers said, while cautioning people that the men were considered armed and extremely dangerous.

A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said that at various times over the last few days investigators thought they might have identified the men in the pictures. But all the tentative identifications proved uncorroborated, which is why the FBI decided to make the images public.

Investigators hoped the men would be identifiable within hours of the release of the pictures and video, a national security official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity.

Investigators were looking at the men for some period of time before deciding to make the videos public, and they had extensive video and still pictures to justify the FBI decision to label the two men as suspects, the official said.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-boston-marathon-bombing-20130418,0,7871333.story
 
Checkmite said:
No; the scientific method is the entire process of forming a hypothesis, testing it, and then drawing a conclusion about the hypothesis from the data gathered.

What's happening in this thread is people making a lot of uneducated guesses which none of us is in a position to test even if they could rise to the level of actual hypotheses. What is happening here has nothing to do with the scientific method.
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My hypothesis was that a person seen next to a woman wearing a pink jacket was Suspect #1.

The data gathered was the color of pants, shoes, jacket, and hat. These tended to support the hypothesis.

Others pointed out a lack of sunglasses, and a streak of red which might have been clothing. Also, no white shirt was visible. These tended to refute the hypothesis.

Perhaps the hypothesis will be confirmed by a clearer picture taken by someone else at the scene. Perhaps it will be refuted. Perhaps the truth value of the hypothesis will remain unknown to me until the end of my days.

Lots of science starts with uneducated guesses. If you think insufficient critical thinking went into any given conclusion, you're free to question it. That's part of the scientific method too.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Yup, so it's bound to work! [/sarc]

ETA: I hope I'm wrong.
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What is it that you'd suggest? What are they supposed to do other than put the pictures out there and receive feedback? That is a pretty standard way for crimes to be solved, actually. I'm having trouble seeing the issue here.
 
LTC8K6 said:
It could be an indication that they weren't getting anywhere.

Ordinarily they wouldn't want the suspects to know they were suspects.
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Good point. This is, in fact, what worries me as well as all else I've said here. If the FBI made this move, then they are desperate - in short, they have no leads.
 
Doghouse Reilly said:
What else are they even supposed to do? It's not like they'd be able to find the guy themselves based on those images. I don't see how they have any other choice than to hope someone recognizes them. Barring other evidence, of course.
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Yes, that is certainly another aspect to it: identifying suspects.

However, what I also mean is people being able to notice movement of particular individuals in the crowd. The more people doing that the more patterns they are likely to detect. Some will be wrong of course, but that could happen with only a small number of professionals scanning the crowd, and in fact in terms of numbers of people looking the likelihood of finding the right person seems far higher. I think the naysayers are being a bit knee-jerk about this.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Yup.

Let us know when you crack the case.
Click to expand...
It's unlikely that any of us will crack the case, because it's unlikely that any of us have first-hand knowledge of who either suspect is or where they may be.

We're examining evidence, just as people do in dozens of other crime-related threads on this forum. If that bothers you, maybe another thread would be more to your liking.
 
Checkmite said:
You are wrong. The FBI when they released the images today explicitly said they want people to see if they personally recognize the men depicted.

The FBI has not released any raw video or photos or asked the public for their opinion. They have only asked the public to send any and all photographs or video they took at the location to the FBI so that the FBI's trained experts could examine them.
Click to expand...

They didn't? :confused:

I had thought they released images to the public. At least, this is what I'd heard on the radio on the way home today: there was going to be a big press conference where images were going to be shared.

And later I heard, again on the radio, that the images/video had actually been shared (by the FBI) and that everyone should look at them.

Personally, I haven't seen any of these photos/video, nor have I looked for them. Am I missing something? Did the FBI not release any photos/video?
 
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