As noted earlier, Dale Myers claims that the report produced by the NRC/NAS panel (also known as the CBA or the Ramsey Panel) is a “devastating critique” of the HSCA’s acoustical evidence. Not even close. Let’s take another look at this supposedly “devastating critique”:
-- As part of their recalculation of the probability that the dictabelt’s 144.9 impulse pattern was a shot from the grassy knoll, the NRC/NAS panel arbitrarily and wrongly assumed there were two degrees of freedom associated with the shooting position, but in fact there was only one degree of freedom, as MIT mathematician Dr. David Scheim pointed out:
For example, the critical Weiss-Aschkenasy conclusion of a 95-percent
probability of a grassy knoll shot was treated only in a sketchy three-page
appendix [in the NRC/NAS panel's report] that made one outright error -- there was only
one degree, not two, of freedom associated with the position of the shooter along
the grassy knoll fence. (Scheim, The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, 1992, p. 408 n 120)-- In another facet of their effort to reduce the probability of the grassy knoll shot, the NRC/NAS panel used the curious, invalid approach of subtracting degrees of freedom from the obtained matches between the 144.9 impulse pattern and the pattern of the test shot from the grassy knoll. As Dr. Scheim noted, this is “akin to computing the volume of a cube as three by adding its dimensions” (Ibid.).
These two errors were how the NRC/NAS panel reduced the grassy knoll shot’s probability from 95+% to 77.7%. Of course, a 77.7% probability is still a rather high probability.
I have never seen a WC apologist comment on the fact that the Ramsey Panel admitted there was a 77.7% probability that the dictabelt’s 144.9 impulse pattern was caused by gunfire from the grassy knoll.
-- The NRC/NAS panel made no effort to explain the fact that the acoustical fingerprint of the grassy knoll test shot matched the acoustical fingerprint of the dictabelt’s 144.9 impulse pattern in all 26 points.
Queens College acoustical scientists Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy (two of the HSCA’s six acoustical experts) did a sonar analysis and found that all 26 of the echo patterns of the grassy knoll test shot matched with the 26 echo patterns of the dictabelt’s 144.9 impulse pattern (8 HSCA 27-29).
Again, the Ramsey Panel didn’t even mention this remarkable correlation, much less try to explain it.
-- The NRC/NAS panel also used faulty calculations to recalculate the probability of the timing-movement correlations identified by the four BBN scientists (four of the HSCA’s six acoustical experts) between the dictabelt’s impulse patterns and the impulse patterns on the recording of the Dealey Plaza test firing; however, they still ended up admitting there was a 93% probability that the correlations existed because the dictabelt was recorded by a microphone that was in Dealey Plaza during the assassination.
The BBN scientists said there was less than a 1% probability that the timing-movement correlations were the result of chance, based on the value of P<0.01 (i.e., probability less than 1%). The NRC/NAS panel argued that the BBN scientists had miscalculated, and that the BBN value of P<0.01 was actually P=0.07 (i.e., probability equals 7%).
The NRC/NAS panel claimed this meant the importance of the timing-movement correlations was “significantly reduced.” They didn’t bother to point out that a 7% probability that the correlations were the result of chance meant there was a 93% probability that the correlations were not the result of chance.
In the science of statistics, as the NRC/NAS panel members surely knew, if a correlation has a 93% probability of not being a coincidence, that means it is “extremely likely” the correlation is not a coincidence.
I have never seen a WC apologist mention this crucial admission.
BTW, subsequent research has proven that the BBN scientists’ calculations were correct and the NRC/NAS panel’s calculations were incorrect.
-- The NRC/NAS panel made no effort to explain the stunning presence on the dictabelt of N-waves characteristic of rifle fire. What makes the N-waves’ presence especially remarkable is that each of them is followed by a muzzle blast and then by muzzle-blast echoes, just as they should be. Moreover, a muzzle blast follows each N-wave at the correct interval, and the muzzle-blast echoes also follow the muzzle blasts at the correct interval.
Since the panel said nothing about the N-waves and their associated muzzle blasts and muzzle-blast echoes, they also said nothing about the fact that those N-waves occur only among the identified gunshot impulse patterns on the dictabelt, and only in the two impulse patterns that were recorded when the motorcycle’s microphone was in position to record the N-waves.
I spend considerable time documenting and discussing the N-wave evidence in my article
“The HSCA’s Acoustical Evidence: Proof of a Second Gunman”.
-- The NRC/NAS panel made no effort to explain the remarkable windshield-distortion correlations documented by the HSCA’s acoustical scientists and confirmed by testing that they arranged with the New York City Police Department. The panel didn’t even mention these correlations. Since the panel didn’t even mention them, they didn’t comment on the fact the windshield distortions on the dictabelt occur only in those impulse patterns that were recorded when the microphone was in position to record them, and do not occur when the microphone was not in such a position.
Now, let’s review the NRC/NAS/CBA/Ramsey Panel errors that I’ve already discussed in previous replies:
-- The NRC/NAS panel miscalculated the duration of the alleged recording pause (their needle-skip adjustment) by nearly 100% because they didn't understand how the dictabelt machine worked.
-- The NRC/NAS panel originated the whole bogus heterodyne argument because they didn't understand the relationship of the transmitters and didn't understand that broadcasts can be superimposed from one channel onto another in real time.
It is revealing that Linsker and his colleagues abandoned the heterodyne argument in their 2005 response to Dr. Thomas’s research, because they recognized that their own poorly done PCC test disqualified both the Fisher
and Decker transmissions as crosstalk if they used the heterodyne argument.
-- The NRC/NAS panel wrongly assumed that the differences in the energy in the Channel 1 heterodynes and the Channel 2 heterodynes proved that the Decker transmission must have been recorded in real time, because they didn't understand that a broadcast from one channel could have been superimposed on another channel in real time.
To this day, WC apologists cite the NRC/NAS/CBA/Ramsey Panel’s report as the definitive, end-of-story refutation of the acoustical evidence, when in fact it is nothing of the kind. It contains numerous major errors and does not even attempt to address several key items of evidence that support the HSCA’s acoustical findings.
