Read every word. The whole rebuttal was just hokey. If you had bothered to read it you would know that it was a farce.
This statement sums it all up. Anybody that is entertaining the idea of reading Mantiks rebuttal I would not waist the time.
Reading this individual’s thoughts is flat out just painful. Mantik does nothing more than try to defend OD and never proves what Speer’s stated was wrong.
This whole fake Autopsy x rays and photos was hoax is just another one of Michael's fantasy stories. Mantik quotes Speer often enough that the real story becomes obvious even in the rebuttal nonsense.
IOW, you'll take the guy who dropped out of college and who worked in the entertainment industry as a marketer and seller, while I'll take the guy who holds an MD in radiation oncology, who worked as a board-certified radiation oncologist for decades, who used OD measurements frequently in his work, who holds a PhD in physics, who taught physics at a major university, and who has had several articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
This is not a bit surprising. Readers should keep in mind that you belong to a tiny fringe of the lone-gunman camp, that your zany version of the shooting is rejected even by the vast majority of your fellow lone-gunman theorists.
I recommend that those interested in doing further reading on OD measurements and the JFK skull x-rays read Dr. Mantik's 2024 book
The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis. It is available in paperback, digital (Kindle), and audio. In the book, Dr. Mantik more fully refines and explains his OD research, partly with the aid of additional OD measurements done with Dr. Doug DeSalles.
For example, regarding the impossible white patch seen on the lateral skull x-rays, Dr. Mantik and Dr. DeSalles performed OD measurements on the skull x-rays of nine other deceased persons in gunshot-to-head cases to serve as controls. They found that the contrast between the light and dark areas on those skull x-rays was only a fraction of the contrast on JFK’s lateral autopsy skull x-rays.
They obtained a range of OD measurements between the brightest and darkest areas on the nine skull x-rays. In general, the brightest areas of the nine coroner’s cases transmitted about two or three times as much light as the darkest areas, a vastly lower light-to-dark contrast than that seen on the JFK lateral x-rays.
On the right lateral JFK skull x-ray, Dr. Mantik took numerous OD measurements of two specific areas: the extremely bright area located anatomically behind the ear, i.e., the impossible white patch, and the very dark area in the front of the skull on the right lateral x-ray.
Amazingly, on the right lateral x-ray, OD measurements revealed that the white patch transmitted about 1,100 times more light than the very dark area in the front of the skull. In striking contrast, on the nine control x-rays from coroner's cases of gunshot-to-head victims, the ratio was only about 2 or 3 to 1 between the brightest area and the darkest area on each lateral x-ray.
These nine control cases, including all of their OD measurements, are discussed at length in Appendix F in Dr. Mantik's book. I quote from Appendix F:
These images [the control x-rays], made on DuPont X-ray film, were collected by Dr. Douglas DeSalles from a coroner’s file dating to the 1960s and early 1970s. DeSalles and I together measured these ODs. Contrary to the JFK X-ray films, no large areas of whiteness or blackness were seen on any of these films.
Three showed small black areas at the anterior tip of the frontal lobe—consistent with brain loss from this site. Measurements were made on nine of these skulls; the other ten did not appear visibly different in any way and were not specifically measured.
For the nine cases above, five sites were randomly selected in each frontal area and five in each posterior area. Means (averages) were obtained and ratios calculated. Case number six, with the highest ratio of 3.89, did have numerous tiny metal fragments in the frontal area; this somewhat higher ratio may have resulted from some missing frontal lobe.
The very low ODs in cases four and nine resulted from quite improper exposure times; despite this, however, the transmission ratios of 1.26 and 0.78 fell within the range of the other seven cases. It is striking that four of the nine cases actually showed greater whiteness (transparency) in the anterior area, i.e., the transmission ratios were less than one!
The primary point, though, is that none of these ratios was remotely like the JFK lateral autopsy films, where the ratio (P/F) was greater than one thousand.
Also recall that JFK had two lateral autopsy X-ray films; both were quite anomalous. By contrast, JFK’s premortem transmission ratios were not remarkable. (The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: The Final Analysis, Post Hill Press, 2024, pp. 498-499)For the benefit of interested readers, Dr. Mantik provides several helpful appendices on OD measurements and the production of x-rays in the 1960s:
Appendix B: The Science and Mathematics of Optical Density
Appendix C: How Were X-rays Copied in 1963?
Appendix D: How Could X-rays Be Altered in 1963?
Appendix E: Patients’ Skull ODs
Appendix F: Forensic Skull ODs Coroner’s Cases: Death via Headshots Skull X-rays in Nine (of 19) Coroner’s Cases
Finally, I should add that only about 15% of my OP deals with Dr. Mantik's research as it relates to the conflict between the autopsy brain photos and the skull x-rays. You'd never know this to read the grasping, labored replies from WC apologists. The OP also discusses Dr. Fred Hodges' finding that the AP skull x-ray shows "a goodly portion" of the right brain to be missing, that Dr. Humes said that 2/3 of the right cerebrum was blasted away, that mortician Tom Robinson said the amount of missing brain equaled the size of a human fist, that several other witnesses said the brain was missing a substantial amount of tissue, and that bits of brain matter from JFK's brain were blown onto 16 surfaces.
