Perception of Reality

[Andrew Mason]

Getting back to the topic "Perception of Reality",  the photo of the lion holding the lion cub vs. the photo of JFK emerging from behind the Stemmons sign at z225. 

If you already have formed the view that the second shot had just occurred at z224 and passed through both men, you will see JFK not reacting in z225 to being shot in the neck because it is much too soon (55 ms) after the shot for him to have begun reacting.  Also, in z224 JFK has his hands down in front of him in a much different position than seen before he passed behind the Stemmons sign.  Since JFK could not have reacted to the neck shot before it hit him, the position of the hands seen in z224 is "natural" and the fact that JFK moves those hands closer to his face/neck afterward is seen as a different move: ie. one in response to the bullet passing through his neck instead of a continuation of the move of his hands from pre-Stemmons to z224.

The problem is that there is an enormous amount of witness evidence that the first shot struck JFK and that the last two shots were close together and not anything like 5 seconds apart.  So by the time JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons sign, there has been only one shot.  So those who are trained to determine facts based on evidence do not interpret frame z224 as showing the second shot SBT.

Now, the question is: which approach has the better chance of reaching the right conclusion?

[Charles Collins]

Getting back to the topic "Perception of Reality",  the photo of the lion holding the lion cub vs. the photo of JFK emerging from behind the Stemmons sign at z225. 

If you already have formed the view that the second shot had just occurred at z224 and passed through both men, you will see JFK not reacting in z225 to being shot in the neck because it is much too soon (55 ms) after the shot for him to have begun reacting.  Also, in z224 JFK has his hands down in front of him in a much different position than seen before he passed behind the Stemmons sign.  Since JFK could not have reacted to the neck shot before it hit him, the position of the hands seen in z224 is "natural" and the fact that JFK moves those hands closer to his face/neck afterward is seen as a different move: ie. one in response to the bullet passing through his neck instead of a continuation of the move of his hands from pre-Stemmons to z224.

The problem is that there is an enormous amount of witness evidence that the first shot struck JFK and that the last two shots were close together and not anything like 5 seconds apart.  So by the time JFK emerges from behind the Stemmons sign, there has been only one shot.  So those who are trained to determine facts based on evidence do not interpret frame z224 as showing the second shot SBT.

Now, the question is: which approach has the better chance of reaching the right conclusion?

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

[Andrew Mason]

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

Cherry picking witnesses who said JFK reacted to the first shot?  There are at least 20 witnesses who said he did exactly that. I must have missed all the witnesses who said that he continued to smile and wave after the first shot for even half a second, let alone 3 seconds as you suggest.  Perhaps you could direct me to just one....

Cherry picking witnesses who provided clear recollection that the last two shots were closer together and in rapid succession?  There are at least 40 who said exactly this.  Why would I cherry-pick the 6 witnesses who gave vague impression that the first two were closer together? 

Who is doing the cherry picking here?

I agree that witness accounts can be inaccurate. People are not audio/video recorders.  But you seem to accept that they are pretty accurate when it comes to recalling the number of shots.  You also agree with the accuracy of those who thought the shots came from the TSBD.  Why would the only issue that they are completely out to lunch on be the pattern of those shots and how JFK reacted to the first shot?  And while you are thinking about that, please explain how 80% of the witnesses who commented on the relative spacing of the shots recalled the same pattern to the shots:  1............2.....3 and that the last two were in rapid succession?

[Dan O'meara]

Witness accounts are frequently inaccurate. You are cherry-picking the witnesses that agree with your idea. That’s not the same as looking at all the available views with an open mind.

When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.
It is an unavoidable consequence of contradictory witness accounts,
The best one can do is provide a narrative that coherently incorporates as much evidence as possible.
There will always be evidence that falls outside any narrative (this is the life blood of conspiracy parasites)
If you can point to a single "open mind" on this forum please do, I would very much like to engage them in debate.

[Andrew Mason]

When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.

No.   Cherry-picking is never appropriate. 
When witness accounts contradict each other, one still has to use a rational fact-finding process to determine what happened.  If witness perception is skewed due to a common factor, such as sound reflections interfering with a witness' perception of the direction of the source of the sound, you may see large groups of witnesses disagreeing with each other.  But if there are no common factors that would induce a common error in witness observations, then errors will tend to be random and accurate observations will agree with each other.   That is just common sense and common experience. And we see this in the evidence in this case.

It is not cherry-picking to find that the 80% who said 3 shots over a matter of several seconds should be preferred to the recollection of Jean Hill who thought there were more than 3 and less than 7 shots, or to A.J. Millican who thought there were 8 shots over 5 minutes, or the handful of witnesses who could only recall two shots or thought there were 4 shots.  The distribution of shots in the shot counting fits exactly with what one would expect if there were exactly 3 shots recalled correctly by the vast majority with conflicting witnesses making errors that are randomly distributed over the other counts.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the witnesses who said that the shots appeared to come from the TSBD are to be preferred over the witnesses who said they appeared to come from somewhere farther south.  There are very sound, rational reasons for concluding that they all came from the SN and no corroborating evidence that any shots came from somewhere else.  The confusion that is evident in the number of witnesses who thought the sound came from other directions is consistent with the sound reflections in Dealey Plaza interfering with a human's ability to determine sound direction.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the third shot and last shot struck JFK in the head.   It is not cherry picking at all to observe that the preponderance of evidence on that issue favours the head shot being the last.  While Charles Brehm thought there was a shot after the head shot, there is nothing to corroborate that and much conflicting.  Altgens was adamant that the head shot was the last.  The Secret Service Agents, the Connallys, the police officers riding close to the President all agreed. Emmett Hudson initially mentioned only a shot hitting JFK when the car was in front of him (he was on the steps going up the knoll).  It was only in his WC testimony that he mentioned a shot after the headshot but his testimony was so at odds with his earlier statements that it is difficult to place much reliance on his WC testimony at all.

It is not cherry-picking to conclude that the second shot struck Governor Connally.  There is consistent corroborative evidence from those closest to the events (the accounts of the Connallys, bystander Gayle Newman, and the Secret Service agents and police officers around and behind the President) and no conflicting evidence that I have found.

[Dan O'meara]

No.   Cherry-picking is never appropriate. 

Who said it was appropriate? Nobody did, so you can back down off your strawman, ok? Oh how you misrepresent.
The point I was making was about a "narrative". Allow me to lay out the rest of my post you so judiciously avoided:

"When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.
It is an unavoidable consequence of contradictory witness accounts,
The best one can do is provide a narrative that coherently incorporates as much evidence as possible.
There will always be evidence that falls outside any narrative (this is the life blood of conspiracy parasites)
If you can point to a single "open mind" on this forum please do, I would very much like to engage them in debate."

The rest of your horsespombleprofglidnoctobuns post is not worthy of repeating other than to say there is no greater culprit of cherry-picking than you. Your Hickey/fringe ruffle  is the worst kind of cherry picking.
Your utterly destroyed  theory of a hit around z271 is predicated on nothing but the cherry picking you so righteously denounce.
I ask for an open mind and I get you 

[Andrew Mason]

Who said it was appropriate? Nobody did, so you can back down off your strawman, ok? Oh how you misrepresent.
The point I was making was about a "narrative". Allow me to lay out the rest of my post you so judiciously avoided:

Well, you said "It must occur".  I disagreed.  I said it must never occur.

"When witness accounts completely contradict each other "cherry-picking" must occur.
It is an unavoidable consequence of contradictory witness accounts,
The best one can do is provide a narrative that coherently incorporates as much evidence as possible.
There will always be evidence that falls outside any narrative (this is the life blood of conspiracy parasites)
If you can point to a single "open mind" on this forum please do, I would very much like to engage them in debate."

The rest of your horsespombleprofglidnoctobuns post is not worthy of repeating other than to say there is no greater culprit of cherry-picking than you. Your Hickey/fringe ruffle  is the worst kind of cherry picking.
Your utterly destroyed  theory of a hit around z271 is predicated on nothing but the cherry picking you so righteously denounce.
I ask for an open mind and I get you 

Well, Hickey is really the only witness who observed JFK's hair fly up on the second shot.  But there is no witness who gave conflicting evidence. So, it is not exactly "cherry-picking" to note that JFK's hair does fly up at z273-276 and that there is quite a bit evidence that a second shot occurred shortly before the head shot.

You do not seem to understand what "cherry-picking" means.  It means that you ignore the preponderance of evidence and go with the one piece of evidence that conflicts with the preponderance of evidence to make your case.  My "horsespombleprofglidnoctobuns post" is just pointing this out.  You still seem to be missing the point.  You seem to be completely unaware that you are "cherry-picking" by concluding that JBC was hit in the back on the first shot and that there was a shot after the head-shot.   Both conclusions conflict with the preponderance of evidence.

[Dan O'meara]

Well, you said "It must occur".  I disagreed.  I said it must never occur.

No you didn't. You never said it "must never occur".
Are you lying or just amazingly confused?

Well, Hickey is really the only witness who observed JFK's hair fly up on the second shot.

Isn't that a wake up call for you?
None of the other witnesses who were looking directly at JFK at the time of the assassination report this.
Doesn't that mean anything to you?
Does it mean anything to you that Brehm describes JFK's hair flying up at the moment of the headshot?
Does it mean anything to you that Hickey fails to mention JFK's exploding head?
Of course it doesn't, because you cherry pick Hickey's faulty observation of JFK's headshot to support your utterly destroyed theory that there was a bullet strike at z271.

But there is no witness who gave conflicting evidence.

Why should any witness give conflicting evidence for something that didn't happen?
Brehm described JFK's hair flying up at the headshot, isn't that counter-evidence?

So, it is not exactly "cherry-picking" to note that JFK's hair does fly up at z273-276 and that there is quite a bit evidence that a second shot occurred shortly before the head shot.

JFK's hair does not "fly up" at this point. His fringe slightly ruffles and no more than that. In your intense, cherry picking desperation you have to grasp onto anything you can and then cry "evidence".

You do not seem to understand what "cherry-picking" means.  It means that you ignore the preponderance of evidence and go with the one piece of evidence that conflicts with the preponderance of evidence to make your case.  My "horsespombleprofglidnoctobuns post" is just pointing this out.  You still seem to be missing the point.

 "...the preponderance of evidence..."

 

You completely ignore the most compelling evidence in this case and hang on to a handful of cherry picked, disparate statements that may or may not support your  theory of a shot at z271.
Please do not spout on about the insidious nature of cherry picking when there is no greater example of it than yourself.