Judyth Vary Baker: Living in Exile

[James H. Fetzer]

JIM DISCUSSES THE NATURE OF REASON AND RATIONALITY IN RESEARCH

My purpose here is simply to place the current thread within the framework of three
kinds of rationality and to explain why--what is no doubt apparent to everyone who
has been following it--we are so far beyond the point of diminishing returns. Some
of what I am saying here has been said before but has not sunk in. I'll begin with

(1) rationality of ends =df adopting goals that are logically, physically, and historically
possible, at the minimum, especially when you have the background, the ability and
the resources to make their attainment within the realm of realizable objectives.

(2) rationality of action =df the tendency to act upon your beliefs and motives in order
to accomplish your goals, especially by adopting methods and means that are suitable
for that purpose, which can be measured by their reliability, effectiveness, and speed.

(3) rationality of belief =df distributing your beliefs (or the strength of your beliefs) in
proportion to objective measures of evidential support, when they are applied to the
available relevant evidence, where the requirement of total evidence clearly applies.

Evidence can assume different forms, of course, such testimonial evidence or physical
evidence, which is "relevant" when its truth or falsity or presence or absence makes
a difference to (or affects the likelihood of) the truth or falsity of the issue in dispute.

Ends are irrational when they are logically impossible, relative to the laws of logic
(proving that 2 + 2 = 5), physically impossible, relative to the laws of nature (such
as traveling faster than the speed of light), or historically impossible, relative to the
history of the world to time t (wanting to be the first man to marry Elizabeth Taylor).

Rationality of action and rationality of belief are especially interesting, where neuroses
(such as an approach-avoidance complex, for example) tend to exemplify an incapacity
to adopt methods appropriate to attain your goals, and psychoses (such as schizophrenia,
among others) exemplify an incapacity to adopt beliefs that are suitably related to the
world by virtue of being true or even approximately true, which is a cognitive impairment.

These are independent dimensions, where someone could be high in rationality of action
but low in rationality of belief or high in rationality of belief but low in rationality of action.
Perhaps most interestingly, if one's aim or goal were to discredit a source of information as
an agency assignment, they might know the targeted individual is speaking the truth based
upon inside information, yet persist in attempting to discredit the source by advancing any
number of grounds in trying to create the impression that what they are telling us is false.

There is a profound difference between logic and psychology, of course, because logic is
concerned with the normative principles that define reasoning when it is either valid (as
an example of conclusive deductive reasoning, where the conclusion cannot be false if
its premises are true) or proper (as an example of inconclusive inductive reasoning,
where the conclusion can still be false even when the premises are true). But there can
be a gap between the principles of logic and our own personal habits of mind, namely:



Persons are rational in relation to their beliefs when there is an appropriate correspondence
(which need not be an exact alignment) between their degrees of subjective certitude and
the objective degrees of evidential support. Persons should properly be incredulous about
what cannot possibly be true (such as that 2 + 2 = 5 in pure mathematics or that rabbits
are not animals in ordinary English) and completely credulous about what cannot possibly be
false (that 2 + 2 = 4 in pure mathematics and that bachelors are unmarried in ordinary English).

With respect to measures of truthfulness, therefore, we might employ a truth-quotient index
as a ratio of true statements made to statements made. Persons who are truthful obviously
have high truth-quotient indices, while those who are not have low. In a case where it is
suspected that a person might be a non-truth teller, presumably their truth quotient index
will be low. And that is certainly going to be the case for someone who is presumed to be a
fabricator (teller of tall tails). If such a person's story seems far-fetched initially, then that
creates the presumption that they are not truth-tellers because they have what appears to be
a low truth-quotient. But should it turn out that initially implausible elements of their story are
true, the situation reverses itself dramatically. That has happened repeatedly with Judyth.

The study of the impact of new evidence upon our beliefs (or degrees of belief) is among
the most extensively studied subjects in the philosophy of science and epistemology, where
the predominant approach is known as "Bayesianism" for its appeal to a theorem due to a
mathematician by the name of Thomas Bayes. It interprets probability as a measure of the
strength of our beliefs in relation to the evidence available to us. There are objectivist and
subjectivist interpretations of Bayesianism, but the core of the objectivist interpretation has
it (correctly) that there are definable objective standards relating evidence to hypotheses.

I have remarked that many of Judyth's reports about her life with the man she knew are
highly implausible, which means that they are difficult to believe and, on initial consideration,
appear to be more likely to be false than true. The point I have made is that, when claims
that are initially implausible turn out to be true (or, at least, supported by better arguments
than the alternatives), that has the effect of greatly increasing the credibility of the source.
Monk concedes that this is a human psychological tendency, but expresses hesitation over
whether it is warranted rationally as a matter of logic. The answer, however, is that it is.

Your beliefs about an hypothesis h1, such as that Judyth Vary Baker knew Lee Oswald in
New Orleans, given the evidence e1 available to you initially, which might be formalized
as P(h1/e1) = r1, is called your prior probability. When you gain new evidence, call it e2,
the difference it makes can be measured by the difference between your prior probability
and your posterior, P(h1/e1 & e2) = r2. The new evidence might increase, decrease, or
leave the value of r2 in relation to r1. When it increases the value of r2 in relation to r1,
then it is called "positively" relevant. If it lowers the value of r2 in relation to r1, then
"negatively" relevant. If r2 = r1, the new evidence qualifies as neutral or as "irrelevant".

Ed Haslam appears to have nailed down the key questions to ask, which are discussed, in
particular, at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com/2010/04/ed...rys-monkey.html,
where I have an extract from an updated edition of MARY, FERRIE, AND THE MONKEY VIRUS:

1. Is "this Judyth" the real Judyth Vary Baker from Bradenton, Florida? Or is she
the impostor?

2. Did Judyth know Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963? If she does not have
reasonable proof to support this claim, then there is little point in pondering her story.

3. Was Judyth trained to handle cancer-causing viruses before she went to New Orleans
in 1963? If 1 and 2 above are true, then this point would qualify her as a suspect for
"the technician" that I wrote about in "The Pandemic" chapter.

As he explains, the answers appear to be "Yes", "Yes", and "Yes". And I find it increasingly
difficult to believe that anyone who has studied the evidence could disagree with him on this.
I suggest Nigel Turner's "The Love Affair" and Haslam's chapter are very good places to start.
But if you disregard the evidence and won't even readi posts I have put up on Judyth's behalf,
it won't matter to you. I have several blogs about Ed Haslam and DR. MARY'S MONKEY, which
is the new edition of MARY, FERRIE, AND THE MONKEY VIRUS, which reports new research in
his extremely thorough and painstaking investigations of all of these events in New Orleans.

In addition, on my blog I have also archived Ed's four hour appearance on "Coast to Coast"
and his one hour interview with me, two YouTube interviews with Judyth and blogs about her,
where her book, ME & LEE, will soon appear. Several times I have tried to end the debate
on this thread because there are many advantages to considering the new information that
will be presented in her book. In the meanwhile, however, she will be my featured guest on
"The Real Deal" tomorrow evening from 5-7 PM/CT on revereradio.net. I encourage those
who want to know her better to catch the program. I find her to be completely convincing
and I am going to do what I can to make sure others have access to what she has to tell us.

Anyone who is responsive to new evidence would be expected to have their priors affected
by the acquisition of new evidence in ways that correspond to objective standards. Those
who are non-responsible to new evidence have priors that are not affected by new evidence,
which can represent "closed mindedness". Indeed, one method for pursuing truth is to adopt
the method of tenacity, which means that, when you are subjectively satisfied with what you
believe, then you simply disregard any new evidence. That has been the case with many on
this forum, including, as a prime example, Jack White. No matter what Judyth could present,
Jack is not going to change his mind about her. His prior, which is approximately zero, will be
his posterior, even if we had a video of Judyth and Lee talking with Marcello at the 500 Club!

The fact is that we have a witness, Anna Lewis, who has testified that she and her husband,
David, double-dated with Judyth and Lee in New Orleans and made a visit to the 500 Club,
where they actually met Carlos Marcello. There is more than enough evidence to establish
that Judyth was lured to New Orleans by Alton Ochsner, who wanted someone who had the
ability to conduct cancer research but who was not known to the public and could be tossed
aside when her usefulness had expended. She worked with Lee Oswland and David Ferrie
under the supervision of Mary Sherman on the development of a rapid form of cancer that
could be used as a bio-weapon to take out Castro. That did not occur, of course, but there
are reasons to believe it was used to kill Jack Ruby, who, like Lee Oswald, knew too much.

During the course of this thread, Judyth has produced documents and records that show
she was a talented science student who had precocious knowledge of certain aspects of
cancer research. She and Lee were hired on the same date by Riley Coffee Company, a
front that provided cover for their covert activities. She even signed Lee's work records,
even though her role was never explained to the Warren Commission. As Ed Haslam has
documented, Judyth and David and Mary (who referred to themsevles as "Mary, Ferrie,
and Vary") performed extensive studies with mice and monkeys, all of which was under
the ultimate supervision of Alton Ochsner. Mary was killed in what appears to have been
an arranged "accident", which took place as the commission was turning attention to LHO.

The basic measure of evidential support is that of likelihoods, where the likelihood of an
hypothesis h given evidence e is equal to the probability of evidence e if that hypothesis
were true. Judyth has made many implausible claims about her experiences with Lee in
New Orleans and her activities there. Her attitude, I might observe, is the opposite from
someone who was trying to insert herself into history by fabricating claims. Someone of
that disposition would make many vague or ambiguous claims, which would be difficult to
test. What is most striking about Judyth is that she makes many very precise claims that
make her story far more vulnerable to refutation than if she adopted the safer course. In
my opinion, that greatly enhances her credibility. She knows so much and in great detail.

Now the probability of making false claims when you are "the real deal" is extremely low,
which means that, if most of these claims are FALSE, then the likelihood that she is telling
the truth has to be extremely low. But should it turn out that, under further investigation,
to the extent we can test them, those claims turn out to be TRUE, the likelihood reverses
and becomes very high, since the discovery that those claims are true, especially when
they were initially implausible, provides powerful support for her position. But most of
those on this forum based their judgments exclusively upon the implausibility of those
claims and never bother to consider how many of them have later turned out to be true.

Indeed, it has troubled me during the course of this thread is that, time after time, Judyth
has produced support for initially implausible claims. Yet the vast majority of her critics
have not budged. They continue to disbelieve her, long after she has produced supporting
evidence. As an illustration, just follow the posts in which she responds to Jack. He must
have lodged dozens and dozens of criticisms of Judyth, where, so far as I have been able
to discern, none of them has turned out to be true. NOT ONE! He has even said that if Judyth
had not claimed to have had a romance with Lee, he might find her more believable. But, in
spite of the huge range of issues that have been discussed on this forum, he has never budged.
His priors have remained constant from the beginning and he has studiously avoided her posts.

Doug suggests that Judyth is a damaged witness because of her involvement in research on
JFK. But OF COURSE she is a damaged witness. After deciding to come forward and tell her
story, she has been abused and attacked--often quite viciously!--by those on the McAdams site,
where she initially attempted to present herself, but also on other forums, where she was treated
more or less equally dismissively. She had to conduct research to find out where those who were
attacking her were coming from. In my opinion, she has demonstrated great ability at research, far
greater than most of the members of this forum, including studies of photos, eye-color, linguistics
and much more. But her critics are unrelenting and do not give her credit on any count. NOT ONE!

Doug could be right about some of the details of her story, but its core appears to me to be intact.
He has suggested that aspects of her story may involve embellishments, such as recollecting the
details of conversations they had on various occasions. At one point, I agreed that the reading list
Judyth had provided "appeared to be a bit much", where it read more like a "wish list" than actual
reading by the man who was killed in Dallas. Yet, even here, Judyth had some support for what she
has to tell us in the form of a report by Marina about what Lee read. In fact, it turned out that Lee's
"reading list" had actually been published as an FBI document of the Warren Commission's hearings:



So Judyth wasn't wrong at all. Doug, of course, was not impressed, suggesting that perhaps she had
derived the list from her own study and research. But that is beside the point. Judyth made claims
about Lee's reading that Doug disputed. It turned out that she was right and Doug was wrong. But
he never wavered in disputing her or granted her the least credit for being right. I am reminded of
the attitude of the Bishops of Padua who, when confronted by Galileo's discovery that the moon was
irregular and pock-marked on its surface rather than a perfectly smooth sphere as Aristotle claimed,
said that he must not have been looking at the moon or that the appearance of the moon must change
when it is viewed through a telescope. There are always alternatives to evade the impact of evidence.

Our judgments about plausibility can be strongly affected by our own experience in life, where, I have
suggested, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that a man who is fluent in Russian, has lived in
Russia and married a Russian woman might have different tastes in books and poetry than, say, an
attorney from the mid-west who happens to live in Kalamazoo. Time after time, claims she has made
she has made that seemed initially implausible have turned out to be true. And Jack's latest gambit
about marmosets and monkeys appears destined for a similar fate. His own expert has already said
that cancer research in developing the Saulk vaccine, for example, involved research on thousands of
monkeys, as a necessary stage in the development of a product intended for use on human beings. And
the development of a bio-weapon involved similar stages of mice/monkey research. How could it not?

Without belaboring the point, the objectivity of research derives from the consideration that different
investigators considering the same ranger of alternative explanations and the same evidence using
the same rules of reasoning should arrive at the same conclusions about which hypotheses are true
(acceptable), which are false (rejectable) and which should be left in suspense (neither accepted or
rejected). The acquistion of new evidence, as I have explained, should make a difference, where the
course of this investigation should have changed some minds. So far as I have been able to discern,
however, that has not happened. Those who were skeptics have remained skeptics, while those who
were inclined to believe in her continue to believe in her. For me, it has been a solidifying experience,
because the more I have learned about Judyth, the more I respect her and the more I believe in her.

There have been some acute disappointments along the way. Jack White's obstinance has perplexed me.
Dean Hagerman's cheerleading has bothered me. Doug Weldon's prosecutorial attitude has been upsetting.
Some, too obvious to name, have played a constant role of harassment and belittlement. Others have
made more constructive contributions. Dean Hartwell, for example, has displayed (what I consider to be)
balance and objectivity. I have appreciated Pamela McElwain-Brown and Linda Minor, who have extended
support from time to time. And Gregory Burnham has made a number of posts that have been welcomed
by all sides. Perhaps the most interesting participant, from my point of view, has been Michael Hogan,
who is among the very few who have actually read DR. MARY'S MONKEY, which I consider to be the key
to understanding Judyth's story. So I thank all of you and others, too, for what you have had to say, even
when I haven't liked it and may have argued against it. I believe the enduring impact of this thread will be
in reinforcing my belief that Judyth is the person she claims to be and from whom we all have much to learn.

Judyth Vary Baker will be my featured guest Friday on "The Real Deal" from 5-7 PM/CT on revereradio.net.

TAM SHUD