No. I make the assumption that the five did not all agree to lie in the same way. Even if some or all of the five had talked to each other, it is unlikely they would enter into a conspiracy to lie, especially absent some reason to lie about what they had seen. It is much, much, much more likely that at least two of them actually recalled seeing what they said they saw.
No. I?m not assuming five decided to lie. I am postulating that one person was mistaken and influenced four others, before they could be interviewed.
I have never said that the what the majority thinks is a reliable method of determining what happened. It is a matter of the statistical significance of specific observations by a number of observers. What the majority thinks may or may not be statistically significant.
It is not a matter of judgement. It is a matter of probability of independent observers reporting the same observation. That does not happen by random chance.
This is real helpful. To paraphrase what you are saying:
What the majority thinks may have happened is a matter of statistical significance. Except when it isn?t.You can tell when the statistical method can be used using, what appears to me, by intuition. If the majority reports a certain shot pattern, but a minority reports a different pattern, you can tell, that in this case, the majority is right. But in the case of the gorilla film, if the majority reports no gorilla, but a minority reports a gorilla, you can tell, that in this case, the statistical method cannot be used, because the minority, in this case, are probably right.
It is not about intuition. It is about mathematics. The majority of witnesses are rarely way off in their observations of salient facts. Where large numbers of witnesses have been wrong is where their ability to observe or compare is limited and they are effectively giving opinions of what they observed rather than simple describing what they observed. This is particularly so with respect to facial comparisons (eg. witness tries to identify a person that they do not know from a photo line) or a witness tries to compare a sound to something they have heard before.
It?s not about mathematics. It will only be mathematics if the witness errors are random. We cannot assume that.
Not true. Here is my analysis of all the witnesses who observed the limo. 8 said it stopped. Most said it slowed or almost stopped. This is more an illustration of witnesses who were not in a good position to observe whether it actually stopped providing an inference rather than an actual observation.
The bottom line is, using the statistical method to determine the approximate ?Speed of the Limousine? using witnesses fails. We would not know this is we did not have the films of the assassination.
As you acknowledge, the statistical method fails in this case. Probably, indeed, because most witnesses were not in a clear position to see the limousine, only the follow up cars which did (probably) stop. But that did not prevent them from giving a confident opinion. Something we should remember about with the ?Spacing of the Shots? witnesses.
This is a classic case as to why we cannot rely on the statistical method. Because the errors witnesses made were not random. We cannot assume these errors are always going to be random. Which is what we need if the statistical method is going to be dependable.
Could the ?Shot Spacing? witnesses be an example of widespread witness error, non-random witness error, just like the ?Speed of the Limousine? witnesses? Easily. Below is a possible theory:
Most witnesses were distracted. Concentrating on the President and the First Lady. They may have ignored, possibly forgot what they assumed were backfires or firecrackers. When the realized shots were fired, they may have remembered the more recent shots better than the first. Hence:
First shot: Had forgotten about 15 seconds later, it never really got stored in their permanent memory.
Second shot: Remembered, but not very well.
Third shot: Remembered it very well, as a ?Crack-Thump?.
Hence, many may have remembered ?Bang <pause> Bang Bang?.
As I recall, some witnesses thought all the shots occurred in pairs, ?Bang Bang <pause> Bang Bang?.
My theory may be false. But we cannot assume it is false. There may have been not just significant but non-random witness errors, in the ?Shot Pattern? witnesses, just was there was in the ?Speed of the Limousine? witnesses.
