Introduction

      One of the first things I noticed in 1992 when I became interested in the JFK assassination was the low average level of thinking skills in the JFK research community, which was evident in its books, articles, and conferences. It was a particular shock to me because I was used to the higher level of dialog among scientists, where much more attention is paid to careful reasoning and much more respect is given to alternative points of view. When I started to follow the JFK newsgroups, whether on CompuServe or alt.xxx, I saw the same thing but coupled with combativeness and nastiness. I got the strong sense that very few minds were ever changed by the newsgroups. I saw that many of their messages were emotional, petty, and nearly devoid of scholarship. Feuds broke out easily, and it seemed that many of the posters would rather flame their opponents than try to understand them. Worse, large numbers of them were passing judgments in areas they seemed to know little about. The nature of newsgroups seemed to encourage quick, knee-jerk reactions instead of the careful, measured consideration that makes progress possible—machine-gun thrusts and parries do not scholarship make. I was thus not really surprised to find topics going on endlessly without ever being resolved.
      My impressions were informal, however, not the result of careful study. They could easily have been too pessimistic. I was therefore pleased when a recent thread in which I was involved presented the opportunity to check my observations quantitatively. Late on 26 May 2000, Judy (of “JudyandJFK”) sent me an E-mail message to the effect that she had just read my essay “Whose Predictions Have Come True?” on my JFK web site and thought it would be useful to post on the newsgroups alt.conspiracy.jfk and alt.assassination.jfk. The essay compares the implied predictions of the nonconspiracy and conspiracy explanations for the JFK assassination, respectively, that no strong evidence for conspiracy would ever be found and that strong evidence a particular conspiracy theory would indeed be found. The essay notes that in the 36 years since the assassination, the basic predictions from nonconspiracy have been upheld, whereas those from conspiracy theories have not. It concludes by suggesting that as time passes, it becomes less and less likely it becomes that the predictions of any conspiracy theory will materialize. Here is the full text of my short essay.

   One of the classical ways of evaluating a scientific theory is to see whether it correctly predicts other things that are true or eventually discovered to be true. Difficult or improbable predictions count far more than easy predictions do. A well-known example of a difficult prediction was Einstein’s that light waves are bent by massive objects like stars. When this deflection was first observed, it represented a triumph for the theory of relativity. All theories, which are generalizations or extensions from known areas into unknown, predict things. It is very instructive to compare the levels of prediction by the various “theories” in the JFK case.
   But first a word about the meaning of “theory.” Science reserves “theory” for an idea that has survived initial levels of testing and has emerged as a serious contender for “truth.” The idea begins as a mere hypothesis, often one among many that seek to explain a set of observations. The hypothesis must beat out the others and be accepted as the “working hypothesis.” Then it must be tested as rigorously as possible, maybe many times, and refined repeatedly. Only after the working hypothesis has passed all known tests is it accorded the elevated status of “theory.”
   Viewed in this light, there is only one theory in the JFK assassination—the idea of a lone gunman. Not only has this explanation been tested severely, repeatedly, and continuously over the last 36 years, but it has survived that ordeal handily. (Here we define “surviving” operationally, as remaining consistent with all the validated physical evidence—the “strong” evidence that we make so much of in this course.) No such thing can be said for the conspiracy theories, however. Not one of them has survived the same test, for not one is consistent with the same physical evidence that nonconspiracy is. At best, the conspiracies that have been proposed are first-generation hypotheses, or just “hypotheses” for short. They failed to make the cut in that first round that nonconspiracy passed with ease. So we should never speak of the “Cuban theory,” for example, or the “Mafia theory”—they are the “Cuban hypothesis” and the “Mafia hypothesis” that coexist with the “nonconspiracy theory.”
   Let us compare the major predictions of each conspiracy hypothesis with those of the nonconspiracy theory and see how they do. Generically, each conspiracy hypothesis predicts that evidence will be found (sooner or later) to “prove” it true (strictly speaking, evidence that will support the hypothesis). Since only one explanation for the assassination can be true, the conspiracy hypotheses are also implicitly predicting that all other explanations will be found to be inconsistent with the evidence, i.e., that they will be falsified. As we have seen abundantly, the evidence for both these predictions must be physical and validated in order for “proof” and “disproof” to have any meaning. So the conspiracy hypotheses predict that they will ultimately be supported by strong physical evidence and that the other explanations will be falsified in the same way.
   How do the conspiracy hypotheses do? You already know the answer, which is very similar to the one for the question posed at the beginning of the semester as to why, 36 years and multiple investigations after the assassination, none of the many conspiracy hypotheses has edged out the others. None has emerged because none of them have evidence enough to beat out the others, which is a polite way of saying that none are consistent with the physical evidence. So with respect to the first prediction, not one of the conspiracy hypotheses has yet found the necessary physical evidence to support itself. Worse, most of these hypotheses are inconsistent with some of the physical evidence. In other words, the conspiracy hypotheses fail their first predictive test. With respect to their second prediction, that all the other explanations will be falsified by physical evidence, the conspiracy hypotheses fail as well, for the major reason that the nonconspiracy theory is consistent with all physical evidence. Thus the conspiracy hypotheses fail both their predictive tests.
   How does the nonconspiracy theory do? It passes both tests. Its prediction that it will be supported by all physical evidence is borne out in abundance. Similarly, its prediction that the conspiracy hypotheses will either not be supported or will be falsified outright has also come true. To make matters stronger, note that this situation has held for the last 36 years from the moment that the physical evidence was in, which was virtually within 24 hours of the assassination, nonconspiracy was predicting correctly and conspiracy was predicting incorrectly. Nothing about these predictions has changed in 36 years. Now, 36 years is not the end of time, but it is effectively very close to it, given that in that period there have been two huge governmental investigations and a few smaller ones, one massive release of documents, and the continuous intensive efforts of hundreds to thousands of committed citizens. Every day that passes, the probability declines that anything significant remains to be found. The handwriting on the wall is becoming ever clearer, but will the people ever see it?

      I gave Judy permission, and she posted the essay on both sites early on the 27^th of May. Over the next week a lively discussion ensued, totaling 62 messages. The results were so low-grade (though not atypical for these newsgroups) that I decided to summarize them for interested persons to study at their leisure. Other than Judy and me, designated throughout by JM and KR, I have identified the posters solely by sequential letters of the alphabet so as to emphasize that I am commenting impersonally. To add another layer of impersonality, I refer to all the posters as “he” and “him,” even though some were women.
      The table below shows the full structure of the discussion. Other than Judy’s initial post that contained my essay, I have merged the messages from the two newsgroups and divided them into “threads,” or series of messages that began beginning with a direct response to Judy’s first message. There were 12 threads overall, containing 1 to 28 messages each. Seven of the 12 threads contained only one or two messages. The “typical” thread contained 6–8 messages. When reading the responses to the essay, keep in mind that the essay itself was written for the students in the spring 2000 JFK class of the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Political Science. It thus assumed a familiarity with certain terms and ideas that not every reader of the newsgroups will have.
      I had expected that the readers would discuss certain topics related to the core of the essay or to unfamiliar terms. These topics included precise definitions for “hypothesis,” “theory,” “strong evidence,” and “weak evidence,” challenging the thrust of the essay by asking for specific examples of evidential tests that conspiracy has failed but that nonconspiracy has passed, confirming the core of the essay by the fact that so many conspiracy theories are still being discussed, and challenging the idea that the probability of finding proof of conspiracy is declining each year. Instead, the posters immediately veered away from the center of the essay and stayed at its edges, pushing their favorite ideas regardless of whether they were related to the essay.

Table. The full discussion

Ahead to Thread 1
Back to Anatomy Of A Newsgroup Discussion