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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Fri. 10/08/04 05:40:30 PM
   
   

Smackdown!

The Hailey connection.

I've been waiting for this.

In the latest Blogworthies, there are two weblog entries concerning Dr. David Hailey's attempt to demonstrate that the CBSgate memoes could have been produced on an early-1970s typewriter.

I figured that Dr. Joseph Newcomer would have a strong reply. He sure does, right here:

.... I conclude that Dr. Hailey's process for comparison has not only ignored many known facts about the environment, culture, syntax, and form of the documents, but is also scientifically flawed. Many of his assertions without proof are meaningless, and his conclusions, which includes the sentence "there seems to be nothing in the memos that indicates they are faked" cannot be supported by what he calls the "mechanics of the documents". The mechanics of the documents provide overwhelming evidence that his hypothesis is false. I conclude his methodology is poor, his assumptions are too often unfounded, and his evidence does not support his conclusion. He has ignored many fundamental principles of information theory, computer graphic theory (especially pixel quantization), and tends to make claims that are the opposite of what anyone in possession of the CBS files can themselves demonstrate beyond any question. He makes arguments that he claims would invalidate other studies, and at least two of these (his 111th example; transformations under copying, faxing, etc. changing the documents so comparisons are meaningless) are not only without merit, but contradicted by actual experience with the documents in question, a fact he is apparently able to ignore.
In addition, he makes statements that are either meaningless (allusions to "flat earth" legends) or designed to distract the reader from the actual issue (the damaged type examples, transformations under copying and faxing causing distortions that would invalidate any other study).
His results are erroneous, or unsupported by his methodology or his evidence. I state, as a peer reviewer of this paper, that his paper demonstrates a remarkable amount of poor scientific methodology, and ultimately in no way supports the hypothesis that these documents were typed on a physical typewriter that was in existence in 1972....

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 10/08/04 05:40:30 PM
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