Mary's Mosaic: Toward Consensus

[Charles Drago]

Acting against type, I shall now play the role of consensus builder.

For your consideration: The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.

[Dawn Meredith]

Acting against type, I shall now play the role of consensus builder.

For your consideration: The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.

Thank you Charles.

Well said.

Dawn

[Jim DiEugenio]

Acting against type, I shall now play the role of consensus builder.

For your consideration: The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.

I don't think its well said.

Because I don't know what you mean by the first phrase: "The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis...."

If you would have substituted "falseness" for "falsification" then I think I would have understood the sentence. But the way you wrote it seems to impute that someone did the falsifying. When, in fact, that is not accurate. Janney and Damore decided to go down the path they did e.g. Leary, Douglass, etc.

I will say this as to what I think you are trying to state: The Meyer case would have been better served if no one had written another book on it instead of the book that Mary's Mosaic is. Once Burleigh filled in the relentless life of crime that Crump embarked upon after the trial, I think that is about as far as anyone could take the case. And, to my knowledge, that had not been done before. And was therefore new.

If people wish to say the murder of Meyer is not solved, I really do not have a serious problem with that. Although personally, I think its hard to ignore Crump's record afterwards.

[Charles Drago]

Acting against type, I shall now play the role of consensus builder.

For your consideration: The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.

I don't think its well said.

Because I don't know what you mean by the first phrase: "The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis...."

I'd counter with, "Well written, but poorly understood." We'll agree to disagree.

Familiarize yourself with Karl Popper's definition of "falsifiable" as "testable." That should get you where you need to be.

Now will you address my original proposition?

I will say this as to what I think you are trying to state: The Meyer case would have been better served if no one had written another book on it instead of the book that Mary's Mosaic is. Once Burleigh filled in the relentless life of crime that Crump embarked upon after the trial, I think that is about as far as anyone could take the case. And, to my knowledge, that had not been done before. And was therefore new.

Again, my original statement was made with clarity. But it seems that you've totally misinterpreted it.

I do NOT contend that "[t]he Meyer case would have been better served if no one had written another book on it." Such a position is anathema to the most basic theory of knowledge. How can ignorance breed understanding?

If people wish to say the murder of Meyer is not solved, I really do not have a serious problem with that. Although personally, I think its hard to ignore Crump's record afterwards.

Events in Crump's post-trial life are irrelevant to the MPM case. The case was tried before a jury of Crump's peers. Their verdict: Not Guilty.

Absent your presentation of material evidence directly related to the unsolved murder of MPM and likely to overturn the Crump verdict, your presentation of Crump's post-trial crimes -- real and/or alleged -- is of no value whatsoever to this discussion.

[Jim DiEugenio]

My God Charles, you are beginning to sound like RCD over at Spartacus.

This is not a court room.

We are dealing with what we know today outside of the court room.

To try and brush aside Crump's life of crime afterwards, which was pretty shocking, is ahistorical.

[Phil Dragoo]

http://www.experiment-resources.com/falsifiability.html



Falsifiability, as defined by the philosopher, Karl Popper, defines the inherent testability of any scientific hypothesis.
by Martyn Shuttleworth (2008)

Science and philosophy have always worked together to try to uncover truths about the world and the universe around us. Both are a necessary element for the advancement of knowledge and the development of human society.

Scientists design experiments and try to obtain results verifying or disproving a hypothesis, but philosophers are the driving force in determining what factors determine the validity of scientific results.

Often, they even determine the nature of science itself and influence the direction of viable research. As one theory is falsified, another evolves to replace it and explain the new observations.

One of the tenets behind science is that any scientific hypothesis and resultant experimental design must be inherently falsifiable. Although falsifiability is not universally accepted, it is still the foundation of the majority of scientific experiments.

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WHAT IS FALSIFIABILITY?

In its basic form, falsifiability is the belief that for any hypothesis to have credence, it must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory.

For example, if a scientist asks, "Does God exist?" then this can never be science because it is a theory that cannot be disproved.
The idea is that no theory is completely correct, but if not falsified, it can be accepted as truth.

For example, Newton's Theory of Gravity was accepted as truth for centuries, because objects do not randomly float away from the earth. It appeared to fit the figures obtained by experimentation and research, but was always subject to testing.

However, later research showed that, at quantum levels, Newton's laws break down and so the theory is no longer accepted as truth. This is not to say that his ideas are now useless, as the principles are still used by NASA to plot the courses of satellites and space probes.

Popper saw falsifiability as a black and white definition, that if a theory is falsifiable, it is scientific, and if not, then it is unscientific. Whilst most pure' sciences do adhere to this strict definition, pseudo-sciences may fall somewhere between the two extremes.

PSEUDO SCIENCE

According to Popper, many branches of applied science, especially social science, are not scientific because they have no potential for falsification.

Anthropology and sociology, for example, often use case studies to observe people in their natural environment without actually testing any specific hypotheses or theories.

Whilst such studies and ideas are not falsifiable, most would agree that they are scientific because they significantly advance human knowledge.

Even pure' or true' science must make compromises and assumptions on occasion. The testing of any theory must take into account the equipment and resources available.

Falsifiability is not a simple black and white matter because a theory, which is difficult to falsify at the time, may be falsified in the future.

The Raven Paradox shows the inherent danger of relying on falsifiability, because very few scientific experiments can measure all of the data, and rely upon generalization.

CONCLUSION

For many of the pure sciences, the idea of falsifiability is a useful tool for generating theories that are testable and realistic.

If a falsifiable theory is tested and the results are significant, then it can become accepted as a scientific truth.

The advantage of Popper's idea is that such truths can be falsified when more knowledge and resources are available. Even long accepted theories such as Gravity, Relativity and Evolution are increasingly challenged and adapted.

The major disadvantage of falsifiability is that it is very strict in its definitions and does not take into account that many sciences are observational and descriptive.

Pseudo sciences undertake research without an initial theory or hypothesis. On the other hand, theories such as 'Intelligent Design' would be classed as scientific, because they have a falsifiable hypothesis, however weak.

Read more: http://www.experiment-resources.com/falsifiability.html#ixzz27EOtJ0H2

[Albert Doyle]

I can't see how Jim would ignore the fact Burleigh herself said Angleton tapped MPM's telephone after she divorced Cord. I'm working under the premise that MPM's separation from Cord was mainly driven by her retention of her socialist/pacifist tendencies. This is something that would probably not play well in the inner beltway CIA social circles MPM circulated in so the fact it isn't mentioned isn't surprising. Cicely and Tony could have been close women's ears to MPM and her doings.

It's possible the diary did exist and the reason Angleton didn't bring it forth was because he couldn't get away with not showing the entire thing if he did. The argument isn't that Angleton would have used any dirt he could get against Kennedy in order to divert attention from his assassination. The argument is that the diary may have contained critical conversations that revealed Kennedy's ongoing peace-making intentions or too clearly spelled-out his problems with CIA. This 'Unspeakable' material is something that would have been dangerous to the conspirators because it would have exposed a motive right at the time the conspirators were trying to cement in the Warren Report.

It is possible, I'm afraid, to commit offenses that are the opposite of those committed by Fetzer by ignoring subtle things that might actually be there.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Albert:

Please, did you not read my review? Did you not read Janney's book?

The divorce was not for those reasons. And I backed that up. What Janney tries to do is build a case out of essentially nothing in order to advance that idea. For instance, he uses anonymous sources to say Mary did not like Allen Dulles. Why would that be necessary today?

Please explain to me how Burleigh veriified Angleton had tapped Mary's phone?

Because Burleigh also reported that Mary never questioned the WR. So what was the point?

As per Popper, i would argue that Janney's ideas were already found false many years ago. It was in 1997 that I addressed the tesimony of people like Leary and Truitt. And three years ago when I discussed Douglass.

[Charles Drago]

My God Charles, you are beginning to sound like RCD over at Spartacus.

This is not a court room.

We are dealing with what we know today outside of the court room.

To try and brush aside Crump's life of crime afterwards, which was pretty shocking, is ahistorical.

Of course it isn't a courtroom. If it were, you long ago would have been held in contempt for your repeated efforts to introduce inadmissible "Crump's life of crime afterwards" details as evidence of his guilt in the MPM murder.

It is just as likely that Crump was driven to criminal behavior as a consequence of the emotional impacts of his arrest and trial as it is that such behavior was common prior to MPM's murder.

Put it another way: Your hypothesis is not falsifiable. Therefore it is rejected out of hand.

If you know of inculpatory evidence not available to the Crump jury, then by all means present it.

If not, give up your wholly unconvincing, inevitably futile efforts to overturn a valid verdict with nothing more than transparent arguments from authority, and address my original point:

The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.

If you require additional simplification thereof, don't hesitate to ask

And if, as you claim, I am "beginning to sound like" a certain contributor to the EF Swamp, then your voice on the MPM/Crump issue long ago became indistinguishable from the contemporary voice of Jim Fetzer.

[Charles Drago]

It's a lovely, autumnal Sunday morning here in New England, and my mood is as light and cool as the breeze.

Permit me, then, to simplify further my original challenge:

The falsification of Peter Janney's MPM assassination hypothesis would not resolve the assassination/common crime conundrum at the core of this unsolved murder.


Let's assume, for the sake of argument (as opposed to quarrel), that we discover an e-mail from Janney to a literary agent in which the former declares that, since a novel and screenplay based on his wholly fictional account of an MPM hit scenario have been rejected by publishers and studios respectively, he now will use said tall tale as the centerpiece of what he will claim to be a non-fiction account of the murder. (*)

In other words, let's assume that Janney's MPM hit scenario indeed has been falsified.

Would you agree that said falsification tells us nothing of value about how and why MPM was killed?
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(*) I must note for the record that my hypothetical itself is pure fiction and should not be read as anything else.