No, I am saying neither corroborates the other because both could be wrong. There is no physical evidence that corroborates either.
Both
couldbe wrong? How could either be right if they couldn’t tell where the shot came from?
Physical evidence is not the only way to corroborate a witness. Since you seem to be afraid of using AI I asked this question:
In researching the witness statements in the JFK assassination, I have found 25 witnesses who independently reported that JFK reacted visibly to the first shot. No one said he continued to smile and wave after the first shot. What is the probability that these 25 witnesses independently made similar incorrect observations and, in fact, JFK continued to smile and wave for 3 or 4 seconds after the first shot?
and Chat GPT gave this answer:
The short answer is: you can’t calculate a meaningful probability from the witness count alone, and any numerical answer would require assumptions that cannot be justified from the available evidence.
Here’s why.
If you have 25 genuinely independent witnesses who all reported that President John F. Kennedy visibly reacted immediately after the first shot, and no witnesses reported that he continued smiling and waving for another 3–4 seconds after that first shot, then that is strong evidence against the “continued smiling and waving” scenario.
However, to compute an actual probability, you’d need to know things like:
* how accurate each witness typically is,
* whether their errors are independent,
* whether they influenced one another,
* what each person’s vantage point was,
* what prior probability you assign to each hypothesis.
Without those inputs, there is no defensible way to produce a number like “1 in a million.”
A simple illustration
Suppose (purely hypothetically) each witness had a 90% chance of correctly identifying whether JFK visibly reacted immediately after the first shot, and suppose their observations were completely independent.
Then the probability that all 25 independently made the same incorrect observation would be:
(0.10)^{25} = 10^{-25}
That is astronomically small.
But that calculation depends entirely on assumptions that are almost certainly false:
* eyewitnesses are not statistically independent;
* they viewed the event from different angles and distances;
* memory can be influenced by subsequent discussion and media coverage;
* some witnesses are more reliable than others.
What historians actually do
Rather than trying to assign a numerical probability, historians and forensic investigators look for convergence of evidence.
If:
* 25 independent witnesses describe an immediate visible reaction,
* the contemporaneous films show an immediate change in JFK’s posture,
* the medical evidence is consistent with a shot having already occurred,
then the combined evidence strongly favors the conclusion that JFK reacted at or very shortly after the first shot.
Conversely, if a theory requires JFK to have remained smiling and waving for another 3–4 seconds after the first shot, that theory would need to explain why:
* none of those 25 witnesses reported that,
* multiple independent observations instead describe an immediate reaction,
* and the visual record would have to be interpreted in a way consistent with that claim.
One caution
The key question is whether those 25 witnesses are truly independent. If they gave statements before being exposed to media accounts, were located at different positions, and had no opportunity to influence one another, then the agreement among them is much stronger than if they all learned details from a common source afterward.
So, while it is not possible to assign a rigorous probability to your question, the existence of 25 independent witnesses all describing an immediate reaction—and none describing several more seconds of smiling and waving—would generally be considered strong evidentiary support for the immediate-reaction account.
Topic: Is it plausible Oswald could have completely missed the limo with his first shot (Read 2946 times)