New book...A DEEPER, DARKER TRUTH

[Peter Lemkin]

I agree with Jack that his [Tom's] basic scientific principals were sound. Could they produce a false positive? Yes!. Did they a few times? Likely! Did they all the time? I think not! Only a few of his conclusions differ some from what most of the rest of us have concluded, through other means. He did not use those other means, for the most part, and did not read all we have read. He worked naively [in the best sense of the word] with the pictures without, at first, knowing the scenario we have come to know and [generally] agree upon. My interaction with TW is not in the book. I imagine much of his other work is not, as well. I know other episodes not covered, as well. I can speak for myself in saying that many puzzling questions he asked me and demanded I ask Tosh to answer are now, after reading the book, more understandable - though no less forgivable (for his never revealing the reasons behind them, nor the photo enhancements he 'did for me' - which I only got long after his death). Charles is right to worry - the opposition will try to make a laughingstock out of his work - and it will be somewhat easy to laypersons, due to the complexity of the methodology. We must put our shoulders to the wheel and get his methodology validated and some of the work repeated, using it - expanding it to other photos, as well. This will NOT be an easy thing to do. But, it is doable! In the meantime, we will all come 'down' with different 'takes' on the likely veracity of his work, generally. I (and Jack) find much merit in his work. The work that shows the 3D hole in JFKs head is (pardon the phrase!) - mind blowing!!!!! [and I think correct]. There are many things I know about Tom not mentioned in the book. It is only a primer on his work. Now, to the real task at hand!....

[Charles Drago]

Peter,

It is safe to say that we find ourselves in agreement on what to me are the two most important issues: validation of method and support of interpretations.

Anyone who attempts to dismiss/demonize Wilson's work absent rigorous, objective scientific testing/replication is by definition an agent of disinformation.

By the same token, anyone who, absent positive conclusions from said evaluations, chooses to champion the Wilson oeuvre is courting disaster.

Jack,

I honor your loyalty and respect your expertise. Don't you ever think otherwise!

All,

Why don't we move this discussion along to solicit ideas for evaluations of Wilson's work?

[Ray Mitcham]

I've recently re-read Tom's book and find him to a credible guy with a very ingenious system for reading information from photos and x rays. ~I would recommend the book to everybody. It is available at Amazon for downloading onto a kindle, etc.

[Charles Drago]

Thanks for being here, Ray.

I met Tom on two occasions, and I was struck by his kind and at times emotional demeanor.

I became, if not heated, then certainly quite forceful when I attempted to get to the bottom of his reluctance to open the kimono fully, so to speak. He was gracious throughout, he expressed sympathy for my argument, but remained steadfast in his belief that he was pursuing our shared missions in the most effective manners possible.

We ... God help me ... agreed to disagree.

A Deeper, Dark Truth does not expand upon Tom's previous public presentations to any meaningful degree, but is valuable nonetheless for the manner in which it introduces Tom's work to a much broader audience.

So here we are, years and years later, still waiting for independent testing of Tom's methods and conclusions.

Nothing changes.

Talk, talk, talk ...

[Jim DiEugenio]

Can i ask a couple of questions, without being accused of being a disinformation agent?

1. How many people saw Wilson's presentation in Dallas at the ASK Symposium in, I think, 1992 or 93?

2. How many people have talked to Groden about Wilson?

[Charles Drago]

Can i ask a couple of questions, without being accused of being a disinformation agent?

1. How many people saw Wilson's presentation in Dallas at the ASK Symposium in, I think, 1992 or 93?

2. How many people have talked to Groden about Wilson?

I saw both of Wilson's Dallas presentations (two different years).

I have not spoken to Bob Groden about Wilson. But to the best of my knowledge, Groden does not possess the expertise required to conduct rigorous scientific testing of Wilson's methods.

[Ray Mitcham]

Can i ask a couple of questions, without being accused of being a disinformation agent?

1. How many people saw Wilson's presentation in Dallas at the ASK Symposium in, I think, 1992 or 93?

2. How many people have talked to Groden about Wilson?

Jim, those are rhetorical questions impossible for anybody to answer without being psychic. Perhaps if you changed the questions to start "Who saw....", you might get answers.

I, for one would answer "no" to both questions. Perhaps you could enlighten us with the reason for your questions.

[Tracy Riddle]

What I know about Wilson comes from other authors (Trask, Wecht, Livingstone). It seems to me that his image analysis process might be useful on high-quality photos and films, but the Z-film and Moorman Polaroid don't really qualify.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Ray:

With all dues respect, they are not rhetorical questions.

THey go to the heart of the matter I think.

When I saw Wilson at ASK, he put up an autopsy photo, I think it was the stare of death photo, and he pronounced that "David Lifton is right. They took the bullets out. You can see one right here." I didn't see any bullet there. But he said this in front of like 500 people.

WHen I talked to Groden about this after I was quite puzzled. Since I have a degree in film, and I have studied photography formally in clssroom situations. So I know something about the actual chemical process that was used back then. (Its all changed now of course.) And even though I knew something about the chemcial process, I had a hard time understanding the methodology behind Wilson.

When I talked to Groden, who knew even more than I did, I asked him, "Bob, I have never heard of anyone in all the literature I have read on film and photography saying you could do something like that. I don't understand how."

Groden said something like: Jim I don't either and I have spent my life in films and photos analysis. In my opinion, what he is talking about is not possible.

BTW, not even Lifton bought it, if memory serves me right. And it endorsed his theory.

Look, I know people in the industry who have worked in digital enhancement of films. And they are state of the art. They don't understand Wilson.

BTW, what book did Wilson write?

I know he was on that idiot's program, Nigel Turner, but I don't know if he wrote a book. I thought Phillips did.

[Albert Rossi]

Moving the post from the McBride thread here where it belongs:

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Originally Posted by Albert Rossi


Let me state, first, that I have Into the Nightmare in my stack of books, and have not yet gotten to it, but am anxious to read it. So I do not know what the arguments about Tippit are that Joseph musters for his hypothesis. But, FWIW, I do know -- outside of Buchanan -- that this identification has been proposed in at least one other place: Phillips, D.T. A Deeper, Darker Truth: Tom Wilson's Journey into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Illinois: DTP/Companion Books, 2009. The epilogue suggests that Badge Man is Tippit because of the supposed pock mark on his left cheek uncovered by Wilson's digital analysis. In my opinion the book is, to be kind, extremely dubious (I am inclined to say totally bogus junk; there is not enough detail in the presentation to understand exactly what the mathematics of Wilson's technique supposedly consists of), but I thought I'd just add this into the mix here for completeness sake.

Originally Posted by Peter Lemkin





I don't want to divert this thread into one on another book, but since it was brought up, just a quick mention - and if more be needed, it should be on another thread. I am one of the few researchers to have worked with Tom Wilson and I'm trained as a scientist and do understand the theory behind his work. I agree that the book about his work suffers greatly in not enlightening the reader as to 1] his methodology and the theory behind it 2] the full spectrum of Wilson's findings - only some. There is nothing wrong, in theory, with Wilson's methodology, but it needs to be independently repeated by others. [by the way he was allowed to use his same technique as a Court approved expert witness many times on various murder and other forensic cases!] Sadly, his family has refused my repeated attempts to release the vast volume of his work, notes, technique, databases and computer programs et al. I'm going to shortly make one last attempt to appeal to them - citing the 50th....but they are either not up to speed on the need for this or afraid - I know not which. I find Wilson's work very interesting and potentially a key to unlock many mysteries. That Wilson uncovered or confirmed a few things does NOT mean that his every finding would be valid. Others, repeating his work would go a very long way to finding out which are valid and which are still open to question. Discarding his work because it is difficult to understand and non-transparent to most is not the correct way to vet it. I think there are some very important finds in Wilson's work - I also find some I am sceptical of - but, again, they need to be repeated to know their full validity. The FBI and other 'keepers of the Big Lie' were VERY worried about Wilson and his work [and I have evidence of this!] and likely worked to feed him some bad information/photos/data in order to discredit him. IMO

Originally Posted by Albert Rossi





Peter, thanks. I didn't mean to divert the thread. I knew nothing of Tom Wilson until I read this book last year. This is characteristic for me, an "outsider" who up until this year has not participated in conferences, blogs, done research, met people connected to the case, etc., etc., but has simply tried, since 1967, to keep up with the case by reading what I estimated as the more important books on it (I have made errors here, though ...). I would be very interested in what you have to say concerning WIlson's method. I have training in computer science and would like to know what the mathematics involves. I'd also like to know more about the court cases. Perhaps you could send me a private message, so as not to clutter the forum with another thread that rehashes this topic. My initial impressions of the book, as I said, were very doubtful, but I agree with you and Charles that the only way to evaluate a scientific method is by repeating it for its results.




Originally Posted by Peter Lemkin

One of several threads on Wilson is [URL="https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?2436-New-book...A-DEEPER-DARKER-TRUTH&"]here.

[/URL]Originally Posted by Albert Rossi


Thanks again, Peter. I read through the thread, and will be reading the article on photogrammetry this evening.
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I've now read the photogrammetry article, which was interesting. It discusses how to use multiple overlapping photographs to achieve coordinate positions of objects in the photographs. But it's not really the same thing as what Wilson is doing, it seems to me.

Let me see if I can restate how his technique is described in Phillips' book: it proposes (via a microchip in a solid state camera) to interpret (through a set of Fourier transforms, I would guess) light reflected off a single photographic surface such that energy levels are mapped to densities and these densities are then digitally represented as grey-scale pixels. He then claims to be able selectively to strip layers from this digital representation.

What troubles me is the following: aside from the fact that information is somehow being added back into the image, and that information has to come from somewhere (in the case of photogrammetry, for instance, 3D is recovered from multiple 2D images; from what exactly is the added info recovered in this process?), how can such a process detect something behind/beyond the 2D surface of the photo (which is itself the chemical capturing of light reflected from surfaces)? That's one of the reasons why I wondered about the mathematics (after rereading the first chapter of Phillips' I was reminded that it was the optical device's "metal oxide semiconductor chip" doing this), and its basis in physical theory. It seemed like a rather astounding theoretical claim to me.

Others here have suggested that independent experimental confirmation is needed; I imagine what is meant by this is showing the repeatability of the results. But without the full procedure being disclosed, that would be hard to do.

In the meantime, it would be great to have a fairly detailed explanation from, say, a physicist, of how and why this technique is at least thought to be scientifically valid; if it is Wilson's unique variation of a standard technique, it would be interesting to know in what that variation appears to consist.