I admit being largely ignorant of Dr. Mantik’s OD study. This thread began as a heads-up for anyone who might be interested in a new book “Thinking Critically About The Kennedy Assassination” by Michel Gagne. I was interested enough to order a copy of the book and have just gotten started reading it. The discussion in this thread regarding Mantik caused me to skip ahead to see what Gagne might have to say about Mantik. Here is a paragraph (from pages 371-372) that seems to sum up some of what Gagne has to say about Mantik.
In 1997, the ARRB discovered during its deposition of Jerrol Custer, a Bethesda Hospital X-Ray technician who was on duty that night, that Dr. Ebersole had indeed seen Mantik’s alleged “6-millimeter object” during the autopsy—a “half circle that appears to be the lightest part of the film […] in the right orbital superior” —after Custer pointed it out to him as a possible bullet fragment. This suggests that the “6.5-millimeter object”already appeared on the X-ray before the body was dissected and was not added later, as Mantik suggests.76 Ebersole dismissed it offhand, telling Custer it was an artifact.77 If Custer is right, Ebersole would presumably have said the same thing to the pathologists if they inquired, which explains why no mention of it was made in the autopsy report and why it was easily forgotten until the HSCA’s Forensic Pathology Panel questioned them about it 15-years later. Like the “white spot” at the back of JFK’s head, the “6.5-millimeter object” is little more than a distraction caused by circular logic. What is missing here is not just a motive, but also the signature hypercompetence of the JFK buff’s all-powerful enemy. Instead, Mantik offers us a one-time ad hoc explanation to suggest that, rather than being devilishly cunning, the men who killed Kennedy were in fact wildly incompetent.78 We can therefore safely conclude that the “object” on the X-ray is just what many experts said it was, an artifact, and that Mantik is seeing monsters in his bedroom closet.
For a "pseudo intellectual" (whatever that means), Gagne's written a solid work. Lots of details but not too much. It's sort of a Reader's Digest version of Bugliosi's work. Minus 87,000 pages.
As you said above, he has large sections that go into great detail debunking Mantik's arguments, specifically about the alteration of the evidence such as the x-rays and photos, Zapruder film et cetera. Mantik says all of this physical evidence - every piece - is faked. Along the way he argues that eyewitness accounts should be given greater credibility than the physical evidence since the physical evidence can be falsified. Throughout his explanations Mantik repeatedly relies on eyewitness accounts over other evidence despite the overwhelming evidence for me about its unreliability.
Some eyewitness accounts are good, some are bad, some physical evidence is good, some is bad/questionable. It seems to be you have to view the reliability of each piece independently and not group them into categories and place one higher or lower than another. This is one of Mantik's major errors. Confirmation bias too, but that's something we all are prone to do. It's unavoidable.
Gagne: "Mantik argues that wherever eyewitness reports diverged from the Zapruder film or other films and photographs [e.g., x-rays, autopsy photos], one should always take the side of the eyewitnesses since their memories are not likely to be manipulated by conspirators the way images can
be manipulated."
