Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tuesday, 21 Jul 1992 23:41:55 CDT
From: <U54778@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,sci.skeptic,alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Oswald's Photograph
Distribution: usa
 <MeMSj_e00Vp8A1G3tL@andrew.cmu.edu>
 <1992Jul14.020708.11929@random.ccs.northeastern.edu>
 <182707@pyramid.pyramid.com> <21JUL199214221293@rigel.tamu.edu>
 <182729@pyramid.pyramid.com>

I would like to state that this interchange between Mitchell Todd and
Paul Collachi was the finest, most high minded exchange that I have read in
this newsgroup since I first started reading it.  I humbly commend both
of you on reaching the best insights into the expert testimony aspect of
the nature of this case.  Both
made points that should be kept in mind throughout all the arguments.

Both pro- and anti-WC authors have made statements that misuse and abuse
expert testimony given.  Paul and Mitchell have given us a better definition
of how we may approach expert testimony.  I have long inadequately attacked
Joel Grant with these same points.  We are all like jurors sitting in court.
We are not expected to be experts or to have expert opinions.  We are
presented with evidence and expert opinion on that evidence from both sides.
To argue that one expert is superior to another or insist that an expert for
one side must be believed, regardless of our own commonsense judgements on
the experts testimony, merely because they are an expert is arguing from
a position that throws us back to medieval times with their reliance on
absolute authorities.

Mitchell's references to the HSCA photo analysis is well grounded.  This
section not only gave us the experts opinion's but showed us how they
came to this opinion.  It still remains whether the HSCA team had
exhausted the means of determining whether the photos were fake but the
critic's points were well answered and explained.

Paul's position that experts can be found to give any pronouncements needed
by those calling on them should be something that everyone looking at this
case should keep in mind.  No expert testimony is worth anything unless we
have the primary data and an explanation of how the expert came to this
judgement.  I have read many times the Baden explanation for the SBT and still
find Wecht's dissenting opinion to be superior on the crucial points.  I don't
care if a hundred experts backed up Baden.  Unless they met Wecht's points of
objection with reasonable explanations, I judge them to be incorrect as my
right as a juror of the world.

And let me emphasize an observation of Paul's on the withholding of the
spectrographic test results and their interrim data.  Many critics have
pointed out that if these tests had convicted LHO, officials would have
been posting them on every form of media available.  They would have been
leaked to every paper in the nation.  12 years.  Years of exhausting court
room travail on the part of Weisberg and his lawyers (Fensterwald and Lesar),
of every trick in the book used to stall and stonewall Weisberg's efforts
to make these results public.  And then they hand Weisberg incomplete
papers with no backup data to show where these findings came from.  I ask
you, after so much hair pulling to get these documents, just what are they
worth?  After so much stonewalling, how can we be sure that these results
have any validity at all?  In 1964 and all the following years, after being
attacked constantly by the critics, they had everything to gain by making
these tests public if they pointed to LHO as the guilty party and everything
to lose if the results didn't.  Is the HSCA retesting of evidence worth as
much as the original results?  Emphatically, NO!!!!  Anything could have
happened to fudge the primary evidence in 13 years, as has clearly been
pointed out by many critics.
Of many different attacks on the official story,  this one should make
anyone aware of it deeply suspicious of the validity of the official
version of this case.
ALAN ROGERS
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy,sci.skeptic