Talk:John F. Kennedy assassination Dictabelt recording

message: Frankly, this article is biased and misleading in the extreme. The current product is a naive overview, without adequate substantiation, of an extremely deep and complex technical discussion. The best way to judge the quality of a technical analysis is to consider the experience and qualifications of the parties conducting the analysis. While this is hardly determinative, it provides some insight into assigning likelihoods to conflicting and contradictory results. Specifically:
The study of the recording by Bolt Beranek and Newman was conducted by the foremost scientific acoustics consultancy in the nation. Individual staff members contributing to this analysis were world-class acousticians and statisticians. The result was not something that could be trivially discarded by opinionated but uninformed and incapable people (including the FBI and other critics of this finding). The follow up study by the team from Queens University brought the foremost analytical capabilities from academia to bear on the problem. The QU team made extensive recordings to document the dynamic acoustics of the Dealy Plaza area as a basis for refined modeling of the possible events which led to and extended the orignal BBN analysis.
After news of this analysis became publicly available, the FBI hurried to find someone to refute the evidence. In this they failed miserably. Subsequent commentators were grossly unqualified to understand or pass judgment on the very complex and sophisticated work of BBN and QU. The press was incited to make fun of the BBN-QU studies as the product of "eggheads" to be ignored. Unfortunately, such political and social interference in a scientific effort all too often results in absudities becoming "common knowledge". In this case, the not-so-subtle effort to suppress the scientific/acoustic truth was largely successful, as indicated by the biased tone of this article, which fails to examine the actual qualifications of the various unqualified and partisan groups and individuals who were drafted to publicly oppose the BBN/QU findings, while more or less freely embracing their criticisms. 
I suggest, at a minimum, this article should be flagged as controversial. To present it as a fair discussion is obscene.
68.55.164.69 00:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the above was written by a deceased former employee of BBN, however, the comments that "the FBI hurried to find someone to refute the evidence" and "various unqualified and partisan groups and individuals who were drafted to publicly oppose the BBN/QU findings" should be addressed. First, it was the HSCA who recommend that the DoJ conduct further investigation of the acoustic findings. Second, the NAS group included Norman Foster Ramsey, Jr., Luis Walter Alvarez, Herman Chernoff, Robert H. Dicke, Richard Garwin, and Paul Horowitz, so it is not so easy to dismiss them as unqualified. - Location (talk) 15:42, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Bias

message: I think that the origins of the dictabelt recording may be more relevent then originally thought; maybe that's contraversial?   —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.41.155.8 (talk) 17:47, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you explain what you mean by "the origins", and why they may be more relevant than originally thought? — Walloon 18:39, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dictabelt 

message: All contemporary evidence I have seen from the 1950s and 1960s (packaging, advertisements) spells the word as Dictabelt, not DictaBelt. Ironically, it looks like the Dictaphone historical page is in error about their own product. — Walloon 16:09, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: DictaBelt or Dictabelt

message: Somebody included about a billion dead links in this article to every reference to "IMPULES PATTERNS" and "Impulses".
1- First, begin the IMPULES PATTERNS article, then create a hyperlink.
2- Second, only the first reference to a related topic needs to be linked, otherwise you could practically write the every article with nothing more than hyperlinks.  Basic wiki stuff, here, folks.  207.237.232.74 (talk) 09:14, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your pedantic instruction misses the mark with the misspelling of "impulse" and your use of all-caps words. The confidence level in your expertise in the editing of Wikipedia pages isn't helped by this. Binksternet (talk) 17:11, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the advice.  I see that I misspelled the word; it's due to the fact that while I was removing the multitude of dead links, I copied and pasted from the article itself.  Apparently I used a word that was misspelled and CAPITALIZED initially.   A misspelling (even repeatedly) does not qualify my edits as 'pedantic', and, truthfully, while I may not be an expert Wikipedian, this does not mean that numerous dead links in an article is acceptable.  Isn't that correct?  But it's good to see that you can keep calm and polite and that your focus is on the quality of the article, not on name-calling or pointing out the 'expertise level' or 'confidence' of other wiki-users.  207.237.232.74 (talk) 01:11, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  IMPULES PATTERNS 

message: very poorly organized.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.232.74 (talk) 09:25, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ...and your solution is? Binksternet (talk) 17:08, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ...to point out the fact above, that I believe the article is poorly organized and needs attention.  Perhaps if you are more invested than I, you could review the article yourself, and make your own opinion known here on the discussion page... If not, then perhaps someone else will see my opinion and agree or disagree, and we could discuss it here.  Isn't that how wiki works?  PS- I've retitled this section in a more neutral tone.  You're welcome. 207.237.232.74 (talk) 01:17, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  this article is badly written 

message: :The open-microphone portion of the recording lasts 5.5 minutes, and begins about a minute after the shooting occured at 12:34 p.m. local time<P>
This has to be revised. Virtually everyone agrees that the shooting occurred at 12:30 p.m., not 12:34. If you mean that the recording began at 12:34, that is still not one minute after the shooting occurred. — Walloon (talk) 14:36, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Did you read my sources?  All the experts who have analyzed the tape agree it started a minute after, because of the cross-talk on the tape and for other reasons.  If you mean virtually all conspiracy theorists - sure, but you need to make that clear - and as you may note, I kept that in.  --Mr. Vernon (talk) 04:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

text: and their information was found to be faulted based on "cross talk" that occurs on both channels, but made under the assumption that the two channels were in synch. they are not . 204.101.140.125 (talk) 13:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beginning time 

message: While the technical aspects of the dictabelt evidence are complicated and fascinating, there is a rather large elephant in the room - why is there no discussion on attempts to sync the Zapruder film to the supposed audio recording of the assassination? For a very good reason: The four impulses bear no relation to the visual record of the assassination.
Might be worth incorporating this calibration. Here is a discussion of the issue from Michael Beck in 1998, on McAdams' JFK site  :
If two permanent records of the assassination really existed, essentially a movie and a soundtrack, why not synchronize the two and present the full record? I was soon to find out.
["Conspiracy" author Anthony] Summers presented the shots as occurring (with zero as a reference) at 1.66 seconds, 7.49 seconds, and 8.31 seconds after the first shot. Shots 1, 2, and 4 were said to come from behind and shot 3 from the "grassy knoll".
Since I had already convinced myself that the fatal shot at Z313 came from behind, and that it occurred after the other wounds were sustained by the two men, I decided to synchronize the film, to the soundtrack myself. What I computed (based on 18.3 frame / sec.) was that the shots occurred at Z152, Z191, Z298, and Z313. That was surprising. My original premise was that different bullets hit JFK and Connally. But my shock was that the acoustics record indicated that both men were hit way before they disappeared behind the sign on Elm street. That didn't make sense. Connally was obviously not hit until (I thought at the time) Z230 or so. It just didn't add up.
I then tried to synchronize the time-line using the third (frontal) shot as the fatal headshot at Z313. The results weren't better. I was left with shots at Z167, Z206, and Z313 and one later than the fatal hit. Again, I found frustration since the action just couldn't be linked to the time frame established by the acoustics evidence. What was presented, as "a scientific certainty" couldn't even pass a simple, preliminary examination. This basic fact really made me start questioning the entire set of "facts" presented by the "conspiracy buffs". My government had just completed spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a study that concluded that the acoustics evidence "proved" a conspiracy. But this same evidence couldn't be matched to the Zapruder film. Furthermore, it was obvious that the conspiracy writers like Summers danced around this point or avoided the obvious and simple question. My conclusions certainly didn't match those of Robert Groden who later wrote in High Treason (page 262) "When the fourth shot matched the head shot, no other shots aligned to a verifiable action on the film. But when the third shot was matched up, every other impulse matched an action on the film exactly". I obviously didn't come to the same conclusion.
Canada Jack (talk) 20:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm an utter amateur but I wanted to toss in the idea that, of course, the speed with which a given sound travels from its source (x; y) to a given point (the location of the Dictabelt) may be material to the issue of syncing to the film: was the officer located near the motorcade, near a gunman, or further away? Al Begamut (talk) 05:01, 22 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Calibration of the dictabelt evidence to the Zapruder film 

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