Dallas Morning News: Gary Mack and the evolution of a JFK conspiracy theorist

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73. reply to #52

from Enemy of the Truth: Myths, Forensics, and the Kennedy Assassination by Sherry P. Fiester:

"Contemporary forensic sciences have produced revelations in the emerging applications of new methods and new technologies employed in modern crime scene reconstruction and analysis.

Until recently I have chosen to keep many of the forensic aspects of the case at arms length. I agree with earlier statements to the effect that when experts disagree, we are disadvantaged in terms of lacking essential training and education to know whom to support. Some of it may ultimately rely upon intuition or instinct.

What I have recently come to consider is my own slow realization that many of the most current advancements in forensic research represent new facts which may seem counter-intuitive to those who have no training in the related fields of newly emerging technologies and disciplines. I see all of the various stages of our 50 year journey from Dallas to the present as necessary steps in the long slow story of our originally blind struggle to move from darkness to light. I bear no resentment or animosity towards those pioneers who simply did the best they could, based upon what was available at the time, to accurately assess and interpret “their” facts. No one can blame the researchers and critics of the past who genuinely sought to understand questions which truly could not, at the time, have been answered.

We’re a long way from there now, and we are still moving forward. Research developments in the mechanics of head wound ballistics, utilization of unbelievably high-speed photography, radial and concentric fracture sequencing studies of human skulls, symmetrical and asymmetrical beveling in relation to projectile directionality, related subjects of distinguishing back spatter from forward spatter and, perhaps most extraordinary of all, the news that current forensic research indicates the forward movement of President Kennedy’s head (at Z-frame 313) followed by violent rearward movement is consistent with a single gunshot to the head from the front. Studies conducted by Karger (2008), Radford (2009), and Coupland (2011) prove initial transfer of energy causes the target to swell or move minutely into the force and against the line of fire.

I once tried, I mean, I really tried to discuss some of this with a particularly stubborn person whose opinions of his own outdated, misinformed opinions rendered his cup to be too full to accommodate any new anything. He had everything he needed and was content to sit back and bask in the secure warmth that his certainty afforded him.

I suspect that Progress is a train that does not wait for everybody, especially old fatheads, to climb on board before moving inexorably from the station."