The Three Morticians, Photographer, and Photo Technician Who Saw the Large Back-of-Head Wound: All "Mistaken"?

[Pat Speer]

9 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

The role that John Hunt played in Dr. Mantik's findings about the Harper Fragment is that Hunt unearthed X-Rays of the Harper Fragment at the National Archives which he supplied to Dr. Mantik, and which played a fundamental role in Mantik moving the Harper Fragment from his previous placement of it to the middle of the occiput. The other cast of characters, Randy Robertson, Joe Riley, Lawrence Angel, Pat Speer and others didn't have access to those X-Rays, and therefore didn't include them in their analyses.

OK, what's going on here? 

1. John Hunt shared the Harper fragment x-rays at the 2003 Wecht Conference. So it wasn't like he was a pipeline to Mantik and Mantik only. 

2. Mantik did indeed convince himself that the beveled corner on the Harper fragment represented a snippet of the entrance defect. He then oriented the so-called mystery photo in a manner supporting this, even though this indicated a defect in the middle of the back of the skull, at the level of the ears, and not the right side of the back of the skull, above the ears, where a number of witnesses placed the wound.

3. And then I entered the picture, with a video series in which I used the shape of the drainage hole in the mystery to establish the angle of the camera to the table. Well, this disproved the interpretations of the Clark Panel and HSCA Panel, and moved the beveled exit in the photo from the coronal suture to near the top of the back of the head. Most everyone in CT land found my analysis convincing. But apparently not Mantik.

4. A few years later, I pointed out that the beveled entrance on the Harper fragment in Dr. Angel's placement of the Harper fragment puts it on the side of the head. And the hate mail pored in. Here I was offering up a piece of info helpful to the CT cause, and I am attacked because I dared second-guess the Wizard of Mantik. Well, years pass, and I come to realize that Dr. Mantik continues to show the Mystery photo in his presentations, but with text boxes or other obfuscations over the drainage hole he well knows I've claimed is the key to understanding the photo. And, even worse, he claims the debris on the Harper fragment is NOT by the temple in the Angel interpretation, and implies that I just can't read x-rays.

5. This goes on for years. Even though it's clear I'm right. And Mantik is wrong. But he won't admit it for some reason. So the Wecht family invites me to Pittsburgh to confront Mantik on this and other issues, and guess what? He goes first and admits I was right. I'm glad he did it. It was the right thing to do. It was just one issue and we both had other things to talk about. But it was nice to see an "expert" admit he was wrong and that a layman like myself could be right. 

So, no, Keven, I wasn't led astray by looking at bad images or whatever. Here is my slide on the lead on the Harper fragment, that finally proved conclusive. I used the Hunt x-ray.

 

 

 

Edited February 1 by Pat Speer

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

...none of the Parkland witnesses said they saw an entrance on the front of the head, i.e., the part of the head they were actually looking at. No one saw it. And Clark, for one, actually looked for it. 

So it obviously didn't exist. I guess.

 

A small entrance wound is easy to miss in a bloody situation.

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

A small entrance wound is easy to miss in a bloody situation.

 

So you admit there are circumstances that can lead to people not seeing things.

[Greg Doudna]

15 hours ago, Keven Hofeling said:

In your own roundabout way, you are describing the principle of charity as applied to formal and informal debate, but that is not the way you have actually conducted yourself toward others -- such as Dr. McClelland and Dr. Mantik -- now is it? You have taken a systematic scorched earth warfare approach toward them and others, impugning their work, their qualifications and who they are as human beings. I've even had a taste of that in the form of your "stalker" allegations in return for exposing your fabrications about Jerrol Custer's ARRB testimony.

Yet you expect charity in return?

Keven, may I ask what is it you are after with respect to Pat Speer? Is it simply about wanting him to clean up some wording about McClelland and a few others, a style reform? Or do you wish to shut down his arguments from having a place on the table in this forum and in wider discussion? 

As I understand it the heated controversies over the medical and autopsy come about over apparent conflicts in data and different attempts to resolve and interpret those. 

As I understand it Pat's present position is not that there was no gaping wound visible in the back of the head. But that there was some gaping wound visible toward the top of and/or to the right of the back of the head (from a gaping wound that was on the right of the head extending also on to the back), that is covered up in the BOH photo by the autopsists having lifted a flap of scalp up in that photo, giving the illusion of no visible gaping wound in the back of the head when in fact there was gaping wound underneath some scalp in an upper part of the back of the head in those photos.

That was autopsist Boswell's own testimony as to how that BOH photo happened, and Boswell identified himself as one of the hands in that photo. Do you seek to make it illegitimate for anyone on this forum to argue in favor of some form of that autopsist's own explanation? Yes? No?

I realize you do not accept that explanation and you give your reasons and have your views, I understand that. Virtually everyone understands at this point that that there are missing photos, some spinning of interpretation by the official bodies, etc. on that autopsy of which the kindest characterization described from all quarters is "botched". That may or may not include actual photo and x-ray alteration too, which is disputed and argued. 

The question is whether you are trying to make illegitimate any place for discussion and/or argument in favor of e.g. autopsist Boswell's own explanation for the BOH photo. 

Are you trying to shut down Pat Speer? 

This is looking like a vendetta, of trying to shut down Pat Speer and his arguments. If that is not correct could you clarify?

Do you seriously believe Pat is being knowingly wilfully evil and dishonest? (That notion is truly absurd.) As opposed to simply (in your view) wrong and bullheaded?

In the academic world I have seen a lot of ideas in my field which I know full well are wrong from academics being bullheaded. (On rare occasions I am afflicted with bullheadedness myself. 🙂 ) I have learned to never underestimate how attached academics can get to ideas once they have committed themselves in print. This is the individualized form of the larger general phenomenon of scholarly conservatism, by which is not meant anything to do with political orientation, but the difficulty in overturning established ideas and ways of thinking once entrenched by simple mere citation of opposing facts.   

All I can say is if your wish is to see Pat Speer's work silenced, and you were to succeed in that, it would be a loss, and many more good minds than just Pat's would be lost to this forum. And if that is not your purpose I hope you would clarify that. 

[Tom Gram]

23 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

The problem is that Pat grossly cherry picks and misrepresents testimony in order to make his case. That's dishonest behavior in my book.

This has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with someone. If someone on my side of an issue was called out for dishonest behavior, I wouldn't say a word in their defense. I'd think he had it coming.

 

 

What Pat has presented is mathematically impossible.

 

 

Using laws of probability, it's very easy to prove that there was a gaping hole in the back of the head. Which means the back of head photos are fraudulent.

That should be the end of the discussion there. But I understand that people have a hard time believing a mathematical proof.

 

 

That's relevant only if you think it's okay to use debunked theories to win converts.

 

Human memory is bit more complex than a coin flip, or a random number generator, or, well, you get the idea. If we were dealing with fully independent observations of the wound where JFK’s head was lifted off the table, inspected by each doctor one-by-one, and notes were taken on the spot that would be one thing, but that’s not the case here, at all. Even then it would be a gross oversimplification to reduce human perception in a highly stressful traumatic situation to a simple math problem. 

I myself have expressed concern with Pat’s use of Kemp Clark to support certain aspects of his medical theories while rejecting Clark’s observations about the wound location and cerebellum. Like if Clark was astute enough to immediately notice features indicative of a tangential wound you’d think he would have been able to distinguish between the top of the head and the occiput. As the top neurosurgeon in Dallas, Clark also should’ve been able to tell the difference between macerated cerebrum and cerebellum, but Clark’s expertise does not mean he was totally immune to making errors.

Full disclosure, I do find it very odd that Clark could have screwed up so badly, and that the other Parkland doctors for the most part corroborated Clark’s observations, but those data points are just that: data points. Evidentiary data points  are not conclusive proof, and the totality of the medical evidence is ambiguous as all hell. 

The truth is, we have no idea what really happened in Trauma Room 1. We don’t have video or photos of the doctors inspecting the wound. What we do have is the Z-film and autopsy photos, and until someone comes up with definitive proof that the photographic record has been tampered with, that record is the best evidence available for the nature of JFK’s wounds. 

Pat could be right that Clark and the other doctors screwed up in placing the wound behind its actual location. It’s also possible that Pat is totally wrong and there really was a hole in the back of JFK’s head extending into the occiput. However conflicting witness statements are simply not enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the autopsy materials are inauthentic. That is why, in my opinion, Pat’s theory that the extant autopsy materials prove conspiracy is important and worthy of serious scrutiny. 

Think about it. We would need independent, peer reviewed, verifiable evidence of photographic forgery in the autopsy materials and/or Z-film to convince someone in a position of authority to reopen the case based on the prevailing theory of a gaping wound in the back of JFK’s head. The chances of that ever happening are basically nil. 

On the other hand, if Pat’s theory that the extant medical evidence is clear-cut proof of two headshots and an impossible SBT can be developed to a level a rigor that mainstream doctors, scientists, etc. start expressing support, that could potentially build enough pressure for some sort of limited reinvestigation of the JFKA. Hell, the results of that investigation could even prove that Pat is completely wrong and there really was a gaping wound on the back of JFK’s head, but hopefully you get my point.

Edited February 2 by Tom Gram

[Greg Burnham]

I would like for Pat Speer to pretend he is in grammar school, or high school, or college…and abide by the minimal standard of proof one learns at such institutions, namely: an assertion is unsupported unless measurable evidence of its validity is supplied.

Pat Speer has not now—nor has he ever in the more than 15 years I have known of him—supplied any quantitative data to support his claim that Mantik, and now Chesser too, are wrong.

Mantik and Chesser published the quantitative (measurable) data that they have relied upon to reach their conclusions. Pat Speer has not published any quantitative data to support his claim that they are mistaken. He just repeats and reposts pseudo-refutations that bear no actual substance. Moreover, no other researchers can “test” Speer's hypotheses (that alleges to refute Mantik) because he has not published the data for all to see.

Could it be that he has no data? If he does have the data to support his conclusions, why hide it? And if he has no data, why are we even entertaining this absurdity?

So, I challenge you, Pat: Publish the HARD quantitative data that you relied upon to reach your “scientific” conclusion that Mantik and Chesser are mistaken. After all, they published theirs.

See: https://assassinationofjfk.net/a-review-of-the-jfk-cranial-x-rays-and-photographs/  by Michael Chesser, MD

[Pat Speer]

3 hours ago, Greg Burnham said:

I would like for Pat Speer to pretend he is in grammar school, or high school, or college…and abide by the minimal standard of proof one learns at such institutions, namely: an assertion is unsupported unless measurable evidence of its validity is supplied.

Pat Speer has not now—nor has he ever in the more than 15 years I have known of him—supplied any quantitative data to support his claim that Mantik, and now Chesser too, are wrong.

Mantik and Chesser published the quantitative (measurable) data that they have relied upon to reach their conclusions. Pat Speer has not published any quantitative data to support his claim that they are mistaken. He just repeats and reposts pseudo-refutations that bear no actual substance. Moreover, no other researchers can “test” Speer's hypotheses (that alleges to refute Mantik) because he has not published the data for all to see.

Could it be that he has no data? If he does have the data to support his conclusions, why hide it? And if he has no data, why are we even entertaining this absurdity?

So, I challenge you, Pat: Publish the HARD quantitative data that you relied upon to reach your “scientific” conclusion that Mantik and Chesser are mistaken. After all, they published theirs.

See: https://assassinationofjfk.net/a-review-of-the-jfk-cranial-x-rays-and-photographs/  by Michael Chesser, MD

So you've returned to join in on the orchestrated stomp-fest. How not-at-all surprising!

Mantik is wrong about the Harper fragment not because his data is wrong, but because his interpretation of his data is incorrect, and he is pushing something that everyone knowledgeable about skull anatomy knows to be untrue. 

Heck, he has admitted that the fragment does not look like occipital bone, and has tried get around this by proposing, without an ounce of "data" in support, thatJFK's occipital bone was deformed by Addison's disease. Do you believe that, Greg? Is that something you really want to get behind? That JFK's bones were deformed, and that we can't use our eyes or common sense to analyze his bones, and must rely on Mantik and his OD readings?

Oh that's right. You claim Mantik has published quantitative data... Only this isn't exactly true, is it? He never published his control data. For his data to be properly analyzed, he would have to have had a large number of controls...x-rays taken by similar equipment of similar wounds. But he made no attempt to do this and instead compared the OD readings of JFK's x-rays to the OD readings on a handful of x-rays made on modern equipment. He compared Apples to Oranges and claimed the apple must have been a fake because it didn't match the orange. 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 2/1/2024 at 12:27 AM, Pat Speer said:

So you admit there are circumstances that can lead to people not seeing things.

 

Of course.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Greg Burnham said:

So, I challenge you, Pat: Publish the HARD quantitative data that you relied upon to reach your “scientific” conclusion that Mantik and Chesser are mistaken. After all, they published theirs.

See: https://assassinationofjfk.net/a-review-of-the-jfk-cranial-x-rays-and-photographs/ 

by Michael Chesser, MD

 

I don't have a problem with Pat disagreeing with Mantik regarding his placement of the Harper fragment in the occiput, as long as he uses facts to make his argument and isn't deceitful.

Though I am more likely to believe Mantik over Pat. Mantik does, after all, have two or three doctors -- one a pathologist -- supporting him, having actually held the fragment in their hands and declaring it to be occipital. (I've always thought it was two doctors, but recently someone posted it was three.)

Pat cites a Dr. Reilly who says there isn't to be seen in a photo of the fragment certain grooves that are supposed to be in the occiput. Well, the doctors who held it in their hand disagreed. About this, Dr. Mantik wrote:

Moreover, the direction of the vascular grooves [on the Harper fragment], although consistent with a parietal site, was also surprisingly consistent with an upper occipital site, which was also not hard to demonstrate. I could easily see these on my skulls (the grooves did go in the right direction) and it was not hard to find photographs in texts that were equally supportive. (I doubt that Angel ever did this exercise, since he automatically ruled out the back of the head, nor do I really know if Riley performed this exercise for the upper occiput, since he seemed so focused on the lower occiput.)

One thing that bugs me about Pat on this topic is that he makes fun of Mantik's apparently saying at some point that Kennedy's skull bone may have been affected by his having Addison's disease. It bugs me because it is a fact that Parkinson's patients are known to have bone problems, including osteoporosis, which result in the restructuring of bones. This occurs from being overly medicated with steroids over a long period of time. The steroid administered to Kennedy, cortisone, was new and considered a miracle drug in the 1950s. It was overly prescribed because of that, with its long-term side effect appearing only later.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

17 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

Human memory is bit more complex than a coin flip, or a random number generator, or, well, you get the idea.

 

Actually, Tom, it's not more complex than a coin toss in this case. I'll explain.

There were about 50 witnesses who said they saw the large head wound. Nearly all of them said there was a big hole on the back of the head, and yet the BOH photos show no such thing.

You say that some of the doctors could have been wrong. Well, let's take that idea to the extreme and see what happens.

Suppose that all fifty witnesses flipped a coin. Suppose further that if their coin came up heads, they would say that the wound was on the back of the head. If it came up tails, they would say that the wound was NOT on the back of the head. In other words, suppose the claims of the fifty witnesses were completely random. They were all idiots, so to speak.

Pat and a few others believe that all those who said there was a hole on the back of the head were wrong. To make the calculation easy, and to make my point, lets supposed that all 50 witnesses got it wrong and placed a large hole on the back of the head.

The odds of getting 50 heads is calculated as follows:

1/2 is the odds of each coin landing heads up.

1/2 to the power of 50 is the odds of all 50 landing heads up.

(1/2) ^ 50 = 1 / 1,125,899,906,842,624

Therefore, the odds of all 50 witnesses wrongly placing the wound on the back of the head would be less than 1 in a quadrillion! And this is for the worst case, where all 50 witnesses are just guessing! Like you said, any of them could be wrong.

Do you see the problem now? The problem for Pat's side is that so many witnesses said THE SAME THING... that there was a gaping wound on the back of the head. The only way so many could say the same thing is if most of them got it right. Not wrong!

 

Now, having made my point, I admit that the calculated odds -- one in a quadrillion -- would be greatly increased (i.e. in Pat's favor) if some of those 50 said that there was no gaping wound on the back of the head. Okay, so let's do a reasonable, informed calculation and see if there is any chance at all that Pat could right. I didn't do this earlier because the calculation is more complicated.

I have studied the back-of-head wound issue extensively. Luckily I have Dr. Aguilar's list of 44 witnesses who were at Parkland and Bethesda hospitals, and their histories of where they placed the gaping wound. There were also the Dealey Plaza witnesses. Their earliest recollections are the best, and so I use them.

As I said earlier, all together there were about 50 witnesses. For my realistic, informed calculation, let's suppose 10 of those witnesses did NOT see a gaping hole on the back of the head. As for the probability of a witness making a mistake, lets assume that they each were half as likely as a random coin toss to be wrong. So instead of  50% (1/2) chance of being wrong, their odds of being wrong were 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 = 25%.

The calculation for this requires to use of the Binomial Probability Distribution (BPD) formula, which is this

 

 

In our case:

success = wrongly seeing a hole on the back of the head
n = 50
x = 40
p = 1/4
q = 1 - p = 3/4

Performing the calculation with this online BPD calculator, the result I get 0%. In other words, there's a 0% chance that 40 of the 50 witnesses would wrongly see a hole on the back of the head!

I was a little surprised to see a 0% chance. Because, though I knew it would be close to zero, I also knew it wouldn't be exactly zero. I concluded that the online calculator I used hit an internal limit of it calculating power.

Wanting to see the real odds, I decided it was worth the effort of calculating it manually, using the above formula and my Windows XP built-in scientific calculator. I knew from experience that this calculator is capable of calculating with extremely large and small numbers. Performing the calculation manually, I got this result:

1 / 2,089,874,696,731,895

So, the odds of 40 out of 50 witnesses WRONGLY placing the wound on the back of the head is less than 1 in 2 quadrillion!

As I said, the problem for Pat's side of the argument is the large number of witness who say they saw a gaping hole on the back. Even if many disagreed with the majority, the odds of so many getting it wrong is so incredibly low that there is no way that they could have gotten it wrong. There is just no way of getting around this.

The bottom line is that it is a proven fact that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. And by virtue of that, it is a proven fact that the back-of-head photos are fraudulent; and that the lateral head x-ray is fraudulent, as is likely the A-P x-ray; and that the Zapruder film has been tampered with.

 

[Tom Gram]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Actually, Tom, it's not more complex than a coin toss in this case. I'll explain.

There were about 50 witnesses who said they saw the large head wound. Nearly all of them said there was a big hole on the back of the head, and yet the BOH photos show no such thing.

You say that some of the doctors could have been wrong. Well, let's take that idea to the extreme and see what happens.

Suppose that all fifty witnesses flipped a coin. Suppose further that if their coin came up heads, they would say that the wound was on the back of the head. If it came up tails, they would say that the wound was NOT on the back of the head. In other words, suppose the claims of the fifty witnesses were completely random. They were all idiots, so to speak.

Pat and a few others believe that all those who said there was a hole on the back of the head were wrong. To make the calculation easy, and to make my point, lets supposed that all 50 witnesses got it wrong and placed a large hole on the back of the head.

The odds of getting 50 heads is calculated as follows:

1/2 is the odds of each coin landing heads up.

1/2 to the power of 50 is the odds of all 50 landing heads up.

(1/2) ^ 50 = 1 / 1,125,899,906,842,624

Therefore, the odds of all 50 witnesses wrongly placing the wound on the back of the head would be less than 1 in a quadrillion! And this is for the worst case, where all 50 witnesses are just guessing! Like you said, any of them could be wrong.

Do you see the problem now? The problem for Pat's side is that so many witnesses said THE SAME THING... that there was a gaping wound on the back of the head. The only way so many could say the same thing is if most of them got it right. Not wrong!

 

Now, having made my point, I admit that the calculated odds -- one in a quadrillion -- would be greatly increased (i.e. in Pat's favor) if some of those 50 said that there was no gaping wound on the back of the head. Okay, so let's do a reasonable, informed calculation and see if there is any chance at all that Pat could right. I didn't do this earlier because the calculation is more complicated.

I have studied the back-of-head wound issue extensively. Luckily I have Dr. Aguilar's list of 44 witnesses who were at Parkland and Bethesda hospitals, and their histories of where they placed the gaping wound. There were also the Dealey Plaza witnesses. Their earliest recollections are the best, and so I use them.

As I said earlier, all together there were about 50 witnesses. For my realistic, informed calculation, let's suppose 10 of those witnesses did NOT see a gaping hole on the back of the head. As for the probability of a witness making a mistake, lets assume that they each were half as likely as a random coin toss to be wrong. So instead of  50% (1/2) chance of being wrong, their odds of being wrong were 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 = 25%.

The calculation for this requires to use of the Binomial Probability Distribution (BPD) formula, which is this

 

 

In our case:

success = wrongly seeing a hole on the back of the head
n = 50
x = 40
p = 1/4
q = 1 - p = 3/4

Performing the calculation with this online BPD calculator, the result I get 0%. In other words, there's a 0% chance that 40 of the 50 witnesses would wrongly see a hole on the back of the head!

I was a little surprised to see a 0% chance. Because, though I knew it would be close to zero, I also knew it wouldn't be exactly zero. I concluded that the online calculator I used hit an internal limit of it calculating power.

Wanting to see the real odds, I decided it was worth the effort of calculating it manually, using the above formula and my Windows XP built-in scientific calculator. I knew from experience that this calculator is capable of calculating with extremely large and small numbers. Performing the calculation manually, I got this result:

1 / 2,089,874,696,731,895

So, the odds of 40 out of 50 witnesses WRONGLY placing the wound on the back of the head is less than 1 in 2 quadrillion!

As I said, the problem for Pat's side of the argument is the large number of witness who say they saw a gaping hole on the back. Even if many disagreed with the majority, the odds of so many getting it wrong is so incredibly low that there is no way that they could have gotten it wrong. There is just no way of getting around this.

The bottom line is that it is a proven fact that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. And by virtue of that, it is a proven fact that the back-of-head photos are fraudulent; and that the lateral head x-ray is fraudulent, as is likely the A-P x-ray; and that the Zapruder film has been tampered with.

 

The problem with this Sandy is that the observations of the Parkland doctors were not conducted as a controlled experiment. It was complete pandemonium, and the witnesses did not view the body or examine the wound in the exact same way. If each witness approached the table in a controlled environment like a silent room, lifted JFK’s head, and recorded the wound location on the spot, this sort of analogy might have some validity - but even then human bias, knowledge and perception cannot be accounted for in a simple probability distribution. 

Like I said, I find Clark in particular to be very problematic to the official medical evidence, and I have similar doubts as many others here about the head wound, but it is certainly not a proven fact that the autopsy materials are inauthentic. Witness statements are simply not enough. We would need legit proof of photographic forgery to convince anyone outside the JFK research community that the photos were faked to conceal a BOH wound - and the original photos are currently locked up at NARA. 

What you might be able to do, and what could be pretty interesting, is to look at how memory, vision, and recall studies are actually conducted in academia, and use that methodology for coming up with a more accurate probability estimate for the Parkland doctors erring in locating the wound. Pat’s website actually has a lot of resources on that angle. I don’t recall seeing anything specific on there regarding probabilities on the head wound issue though, but I haven’t read that chapter in a while so I could be wrong. 

Edited February 2 by Tom Gram

[Pat Speer]

10 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I don't have a problem with Pat disagreeing with Mantik regarding his placement of the Harper fragment in the occiput, as long as he uses facts to make his argument and isn't deceitful.

Though I am more likely to believe Mantik over Pat. Mantik does, after all, have two or three doctors -- one a pathologist -- supporting him, having actually held the fragment in their hands and declaring it to be occipital. (I've always thought it was two doctors, but recently someone posted it was three.)

Pat cites a Dr. Reilly who says there isn't to be seen in a photo of the fragment certain grooves that are supposed to be in the occiput. Well, the doctors who held it in their hand disagreed. About this, Dr. Mantik wrote:

Moreover, the direction of the vascular grooves [on the Harper fragment], although consistent with a parietal site, was also surprisingly consistent with an upper occipital site, which was also not hard to demonstrate. I could easily see these on my skulls (the grooves did go in the right direction) and it was not hard to find photographs in texts that were equally supportive. (I doubt that Angel ever did this exercise, since he automatically ruled out the back of the head, nor do I really know if Riley performed this exercise for the upper occiput, since he seemed so focused on the lower occiput.)

One thing that bugs me about Pat on this topic is that he makes fun of Mantik's apparently saying at some point that Kennedy's skull bone may have been affected by his having Addison's disease. It bugs me because it is a fact that Parkinson's patients are known to have bone problems, including osteoporosis, which result in the restructuring of bones. This occurs from being overly medicated with steroids over a long period of time. The steroid administered to Kennedy, cortisone, was new and considered a miracle drug in the 1950s. It was overly prescribed because of that, with its long-term side effect appearing only later.

 

1. The doctors who looked at the bone in Dallas and said they thought it was occipital were not experts in skull anatomy and were simply offering a quick opinion, at a time when the news reports were claiming the wound was on the back of the head. None of them wrote a report, or performed a detailed analysis. They were simply shown a bone fragment brought to them by Harper. And they looked at it and said "Yeah, that could be from Kennedy because it looks like a skull fragment from (what they believed to be his wound's location)." Dr. Angel was the top expert in the country when it came to forensic skull reconstruction--reconstructing skulls from broken pieces of bone. And Riley is a neuroanatomist. They are the equivalent to Chess Masters while the men who viewed the bone in Dallas are more like guys who play in a local chess club. 

2. Mantik's claim about vascular grooves is smoke. There is a wide groove on the inner aspect of the occipital bone that is not present on the Harper fragment. There is instead a thin line. This is demonstrated on the slide below.

3. More problematic is that the inner aspect of the occipital bone is curved where Mantik places it, and the Harper fragment is almost flat. I have been on steroids for a few years now, and have read about the problems inherent with long-term steroid use, and nowhere is it said or even implied that taking steroids will flatten out the back of my head. 

Edited February 2 by Pat Speer

[Greg Burnham]

So, Pat, rather than accuse me of ganging up on you, please provide the hard DATA that you used to determine that Mantik and Chesser are wrong. You changed the subject. I will consider your failure to post this information as proof that you do not have any supporting data to post.

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Tom Gram said:

The problem with this Sandy is that the observations of the Parkland doctors were not conducted as a controlled experiment. It was complete pandemonium, and the witnesses did not view the body or examine the wound in the exact same way. If each witness approached the table in a controlled environment like a silent room, lifted JFK’s head, and recorded the wound location on the spot, this sort of analogy might have some validity - but even then human bias, knowledge and perception cannot be accounted for in a simple probability distribution. 

 

I'm not buying it Tom.

You want a controlled experiment? Well here you go:

Take 50 coins and flip them. What are the odds that 40 of them will agree (i.e. come up all heads or all tails)?

n = 50
x = 40
p = 1/2
q = 1 - p = 1/2

The online BPD calculator gives the answer:  1 / 109,606

The odd are 1 in 109,606 that 40 of the 50 coins will come up the same.

There is no pandemonium. There is nobody looking for a wound or anything else, etc., etc. There aren't even people involved... just 50 randomly flipped coins. This a very controlled experiment.

Now, replace those 50 coins with 50 witnesses. Each one has a coin and flips it. Now what are the odds that 40 of the 50 coins come up the same? Same as before... 1 in 109,606

Next, let's have each witness say there was a hole on the back of the head if they flip a head, but NO hole on the back of the head if they flip a tail. Now what are the odds that 40 of the 50 witnesses will say the same thing? Same as before... 1 in 109,606

What I have just done is used a controlled experiment to prove that the odds of 40 out of 50 head witnesses agreeing on whether or not there is a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head is less than 1 in 109,606. NO MATTER HOW THE WITNESSES CAME TO THEIR CONCLUSIONS.

This is the very best case that can be made for Pat's side of the argument.

Of course, in reality, many of the witnesses would have given a more accurate answer than a random coin toss. And so the odds would be much lower than 1 in 109,606 that 40 of the 50 witnesses agreed.

The problem for Pat's side of the argument is that there are just too many witnesses agreeing. And there's no way to get around that. As much as you want to Tom, you can't.

It is thereby proven that there was a gaping hole on the back of Kennedy's head. And by virtue of that, it is proven that the back-of-head photos are fraudulent; and the lateral head x-ray is fraudulent, as is likely the A-P x-ray; and the Zapruder film has been tampered with.

 

[Pat Speer]

2 hours ago, Greg Burnham said:

So, Pat, rather than accuse me of ganging up on you, please provide the hard DATA that you used to determine that Mantik and Chesser are wrong. You changed the subject. I will consider your failure to post this information as proof that you do not have any supporting data to post.

Oh God. A man says a dog is a lion. Experts on animals look at the creature and say no I'm sorry it's a dog. But the man says "But I've got data proving it's a lion! Do YOU have any data?"  

Even IF Mantik's data proves there was a hole on the back of the head, his placement of the Harper fragment in this location is silly. In his 2003 paper, he claimed that Angel's orientation for the Harper fragment suggested “a parietal entry (because the lead smudge is on the outside), an option that virtually no one would support.” When I seized upon this and said of course they would support an entry by the temple, he tried to claim that no, the smudge is at the top of the head in Angels' orientation, and not by the temple, and only admitted I was right after being asked by Wecht to debate me at the Wecht Conference.

So, yes, he now admits the lead smudge on the Harper fragment is near the temple in the Angel orientation, which, by golly, is where he proposes there was an entrance.

So his case for conspiracy would be much stronger if he admitted the Harper fragment was parietal, and not occipital. 

So why does he say it is occipital, again? 

Well, he once claimed it fit into the skull in the Mystery photo like a piece in a puzzle. But he then admitted later that there were missing fragments all around it. So there's that.

And, as I've shown, his placement for the fragment in the Mystery photo is deceptive and makes no sense. There is an entrance wound apparent on the photo which he conveniently covers up in his presentations. And there is a drainage hole in the photo which he similarly conceals. 

Now here's the kicker. In my video series I present an argument for the proper orientation of the mystery photo. The director Brad and I measured the proportions of the drainage hole in the mystery photo, then measured the proportions of a round sticker in a number of re-enactments. IOW, we used data to determine the orientation for the photo. 

So how did David establish his orientation? Uhh, he found that the Harper fragment could only be occipital if he claimed the photo was taken with the skull tilted roughly 45 degrees in the image. So of course he claimed that as the orientation of the photo.

This is all old stuff. Why bring this all back up? Does anyone out there really think that David's claims will win the day if that pesky Pat Speer would just stop saying this same old stuff? 

I suspect David has better things to do. I know I do. 

 

Edited February 2 by Pat Speer