Math of Insects

There's a lot to unpack in that. Certainly one would assume a blank slide would be among "what they have." Anyone's necktie(s). Anything that has ever been on an airplane. And so forth. But also, inherent in that statement is an acknowledgment of the limitations of the results as a meaningful resource, until "they have" more. That acknowledgment would also be the caution against taking any of those results as gospel, until better data is acquired. Yes?

I've said it many times and will continue saying it: without control groups, nothing found on that badge or anything else means anything. You can't start with the foregone conclusion (e.g., it was Vordahl, or a Boeing employee, etc) and work backward; you have to start with real information (what particles can truly said to be anomolies?) and work forward. That can only be determined by testing against controls.

My KGB name is Math of Incepts.

I personally find the interpersonal sniping to be a drag. Maybe inevitable, but it’s counterproductive. If I want to see people who are generally the same undermining and impugning each other, I’ll go to my family’s Thanksgiving meal. What is the guitar story?

I don’t think that’s the correct metric. There were a few fairly famous Coopers at the time, including Gary. Its reach would definitely have outperformed its frequency.

Yes. I have said all along that the most obvious reason that the tie might have particles related to the aircraft industry, is that it was found in an aircraft. It also encountered the ‘chutes, which themselves had been in numerous aircraft and related environments. Again: a simple and obvious set of control groups would address this very easily.

Dumb question, but do people mixing metals and rare earth elements in labs and experimental situations really just stand there in their suit and tie? If anything I’d expect their ties to be the most spotless, since they’d work in lab coats and PPE—particularly when doing the kinds of work that might send particles flying. This is the precise reason the data are useless without controls.

I can appreciate that. There is a big difference, though, between knowing a suspect someone else suggests can't be right because of information known only to you, and demonstrating why it couldn't be right for other reasons. If someone doesn't know what you know, they have to fish in other waters. Not all the results will be stupid; just wrong. Really what I was getting at, though, is that I am sensing this suspect will be around for awhile. Whether or not the OG proposers of him ever move on, others will dig in on him. So if there are logical or factual flaws in the case, I think it would do the case itself good for you (or someone) to lay them out. For me, the use of the tie particles is a big one, and of course everyone seems like Cooper when you start in retrospect. I have other concerns as well. But it whereas Petersen is pretty much self-explanatory, I think a logical counter-argument might be needed for Vordahl, if you don't want to see that name float around for the rest of our natural lives.

Fair enough. Is there a way to indicate the NATURE of the evidence that you can't share? Is it evidence that specifically voids the idea that Vordahl could be involved, or is it evidence that points specifically to someone who is not him? I think the arguments against Petersen are so obvious as barely to need to mentioning. As I understand it, the Vordahl presentation went over well. So I think it merits at least spelling out what makes him a lousy suspect. I have some thoughts on it but I'd be curious to hear informed rebuttals. You mentioned the hair part. I think his age qualifies as another. The particles are a whole different matter; but let's say you start with them as gospel (which is not foregone). What makes him a bad destination to arrive at once you do?

You both approach this seriously, which is more than anyone could claim about Mr. "All Petersons All the Time." Neither of you is afraid to argue. I think it would be more productive if Olemisscub made (or presented footage of, if it exists) his strongest argument for Vordahl, and Fly made his strongest argument against. Avoid getting personal, it's counterproductive. While I feel that any suspect based on the tie evidence needs to be considered marginal for now, the fact that Vordahl doesn't NOT look like Cooper, and at least lived in the right part of the country and worked in one of the presumed industries, means IMO he's at least worth having the conversation about, even if to eliminate him from further consideration.

Also, I think it's worth saying that if Petersen is the best suspect from RemCru, then there are no suspects from RemCru.

I am a different kind of JAG: “just a guy.” But I have had serious reservations about the diatoms paper and the tie particle analysis, to the extent I have wondered if they may potentially have impeded rather than advanced the case. You touch on one of them here: it would seem relatively easy to find knowledgeable folks to weigh in on these issues. Gathering data is fine and necessary, but it’s the interpretation that really matters. So where are the knowledgeable critiques or analyses of these data? It is not cheap to pay for publication in Nature’s public access section. Plus that avenue is usually pursued by people who feel their work is crucial NOW instead of at the end of what can often be a two-year publication delay. Who footed this bill? why the rush? Why not take a fraction of that money to have a couple of chemists/biologists/forensic scientists offer actionable feedback on the process and results? Or better yet, why not go through the “front door” and let the work be fully vetted and truly peer-reviewed? (The process on pay to play is technically peer reviewed, but not in the same manner.) The lack of control groups in both cases raises all sorts of questions and red flags as well. The only real control for the tie was a “Boeing employee.” This is not acceptable. It reflects a foregone conclusion that is not yet earned. How about testing something else from that plane—the parachute straps perhaps? Or the same tie from the same era? Or other items in that evidence locker? Or, if you want to go the RemCru route, the tie of anyone else in that lab? I don’t mean to impugn the person doing the work. I just think that as is, it is incomplete in ways that make me wonder if it helps or hinders, and that if there is confidence in the work, its defenders should want it to be skeptically challenged and refined into unassailability.

Well, to be fair it's a very niche topic and no one really knows any better. I remember years ago seeing some news show apologize for the "life hack" guy they had had on a week or two before. Apparently nothing he said was legit; he was either in over his head or a straight up hoaxer. But who would know any different? Some guy says he's an expert and here's the best way to cut a bagel, you go "OK," and maybe you try it or maybe you don't. It's like that with this case. How many people actually know any better? Maybe 15 in the country--none of whom are the targets of that press conference? All Ullis has to do is throw out terms like "evidence" and "patent" and "particles" and "electron microscope," plus call himself...what was it? Historical researcher or something?...and people just sort of take it as so until proven otherwise. Petersen, however, is not unlikely to be the "proof otherwise." I'm not sure a worse suspect has ever been seriously proposed from inside the house. I get the outsiders trying for G. Gordon Liddy or Henry Kissinger or whoever; might as well see if that spaghetti sticks to the wall. But for someone who theoretically "knows better" to try and sell Petersen as a viable option...self-destruction, I think.

Without Ullis, how else would we know that Cooper was actually a blue-eyed, blond-haired, light-skinned, huge-eared, pointy-chinned, finger-missing grandpa from Pittsburgh? Sneaky of that guy to change literally every aspect of his appearance, right down to face shape and a missing digit, to pull off this caper. That crafty criminal!

Lack of peer review or skeptical analysis is one weakness. IMO the sort of stubborn avoidance of control groups for either of the analyses is also untenable. Together they are grounds for disregarding the results until real review and control are incorporated. There's a "me or your lying eyes" approach that has kept me a diatoms-and-particles skeptic until real scientific work is done on both. Would it really have been so hard to dip a piece of paper in the actual water we're talking about and see what the diatom profile was? Instead we dropped money in a fishtank? Not a fan.

It would be hard find more ways someone did not fit the Cooper profile, than the number of ways this guy does not. IMO his family is due an apology. I have a host of issues with the use of that single particle (or any of the tie particles) as gospel, but regardless, of all the places they might lead if you decide to presume they are meaningful, this is the most far-fetched. And your question is important: Can the rest of the particles be explained by the same environment(s) that suggest the first one? If not, it's hard to make the argument that that one's "real" while the others are meaningless. Any new suspect that follows that same single particle, will have to reckon with that question in a meaningful way.

Funny enough, yes I am. My committee chair wrote about her work, though in a different context. While Chael Sonnen can be pretty much summarily dismissed, there was some interest in/talk about the idea that Cooper might have been native. There is a large amount of reservation land up not far from the LZ, and it is one community within which there might not have been any interest at all in cooperating with law enforcement. It would certainly reconcile Cooper's "silence" with the law-enforcement gospel truth that sooner or later everyone talks, or is talked about, in a way that doesn't require him to have died in the effort.

That only matters if the person is ever seen *again.* This is perhaps an inadvertent argument in favor of him having perished...

Right or wrong, I also tend to presume that someone who writes crudely is probably not educated enough (or in the right ways) to produce defensible research. Flip side, I also think the intra-family sniping on these Cooper boards hinders the progress of the case, if there's actually any to be made. I gave up on this board in particular when every day featured 15 new long diatribes by and against a particular poster, even as I was pretty interested in what (for example) Flyjack had to say about certain elements I was curious about. Just ignore each other's static and focus on the data. Easy for me to say from the outside, I know. But that's also the point: the outside is where the new perspectives will come from.

I always knew that Henry Kissinger was the shifty type.

The FBI files say the article is upcoming, which would have been true at the time. The Times article says it got all the way to the layout stage, but was then pulled at the last minute.

I did find it strange that even the title or keyword didn't bring anything up.

If there is an archive for this, I don't appear to have access to it through the university. Ditto the Village Voice for that period. It's not the most popular opinion, but the longer time goes on without a single bit of additional real evidence presenting itself, that fact becomes a data point in itself. As someone said, if your dog goes missing in the woods, and 9 years later its collar turns up, and he's never seen again, you pretty much know what happened to your dog. You don't KNOW, but you know.

While Rummy's "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is true, as time goes on the continued lack of anything new arising, is also a data point in the case, and has to be considered.

And this n of 1 is played out across 10,000 bills in the Cooper case. Every person at every stage of every one of those 10,000 bills would have to have ignored or missed the numbers. It's possible, of course, but the math changes significantly across that number of opportunities. The other variable is that the Alaska guy was caught—meaning, there’s no telling how many of the other bills might eventually have been discovered if he’d gone on spending them.