Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer addresses the Hailey report (Toward Identifying The Font Used in The Bush Memos) – The Hailey Connection. Selected quotes:
“…this is science, not opinion…”
“His results are erroneous, or unsupported by his methodology or his evidence. I state, as a peer reviewer of this paper, that his paper demonstrates a remarkable amount of poor scientific methodology, and ultimately in no way supports the hypothesis that these documents were typed on a physical typewriter that was in existence in 1972.”
Note: If you are getting a “Page Not Found Error”, I’ve saved the page as a PDF you can download.
Related Entries (earliest first):
Fact Checking the Boston Globe In Advance
Rathergate/Haileygate Connection
Dr. Hailey Redux
Wizbang To Be Sued?
I’m getting a NOT FOUND error. Also, this is the message on Dr. Newcomer previos page opn the memos:
The Bush “Guard memos” are forgeries!
My ISP has complained that this page is so popular that it has caused them serious problems, and took the page down. I will happily move the contents to any site that volunteers to host this page, and can give me an FTP link by which I can upload the page and its images.
Here is an experiment they suggested using freecache.org. Click Here to see if it works. This is an experiment-in-progress.
You can contact me at [email protected] if you can host this page.
404 The requested URL /bush2b.htm was not found on this server.
🙁
Charles Johnson over at LGF is hosting a mirror of your previous page, I just noticed, linked just above the dateline on his blog. You might want to contact him. http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/
Charles Johnson over at LGF is hosting a mirror of your previous page, I just noticed, linked just above the dateline on his blog. You might want to contact him. http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/
The Chronicle of Higher Education is portraying Hailey as the innocent victim of a political smear:
http://chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=tpai61rl4iz795iwnv72w00tdtsn06x5
“There is nothing more offensive to a scientist than another scientist who fakes his data. Given he has apparently faked one result, very little of the rest of his presentation could be trusted. Faking scientific results is usually considered grounds for dismissal.”
Looks like Wizbang was right.
What I see in his methodology is closer to the methods used by an illusionist than the methods used by a scientist.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
I found the page through your link.
Poor Dr Hailey. Devastating.
The mechanics of the documents provide overwhelming evidence that his hypothesis is false. I conclude his methodology is poor, his assumptions are too often unfounded, and his evidence does not support his conclusion. He has ignored many fundamental principles…..
now that’s a bitch slap……
Les Moonves says the probe will likely be finished after the election.. that’s a shocker..
to see what he really said, catch my latest catoon..
wasp
I notice Neiwart isn’t addressing this development on his own site. I wonder why that is?
Newcomber is one pissed off believer in the Scientific Method.
A note on the ITC Typewriter font. I asked the company about the history of the font, and they were awesome enough to respond. Here is what they sent to me.
Quote –
ITC American Typewriter was never intended for typewriters. It was designed in 1974 as a proportional spaced typeface that mimicked typewriter type.
– End quote
I forwarded the e-mail to Kevin as well.
I daresay that, if you ever found yourself facing Dr. Newcomer in a debate on ANY subject, you would be advised to just surrender. He could produce scientific analysis that proved the sky is green and the grass is blue and have every person watching convinced he was right, and that includes his opponent.
Steve L:
Are you suggesting that Newcomer is wrong, or are you just suggesting he’s good with rhetoric? I noticed that in MSM articles and commentary he’s been called the gold standard, but if he’s not I’d like to know.
What I find so impressive is how he lays it out and challenges anyone to duplicate or disprove his results. He sure writes with confidence.
No, he would demonstrate the method by which anyone could determine the sky was green – if in fact, it was. Of course, going after Hailey was like shooting fish in a barrel. Much of it was obvious, but it was nice to see it carefully laid out.
Honestly, you would think it would be obvious by now that if there was a typewriter that could have done this, it would have been demonstrated by now. Forget the prize, that would be worth millions to CBS. I have no doubt they had people trying who failed terribly.
From th outset it apperaed that Haley’s purpose was only to try to get CBS off the hook. In his conclusion he admitted that other evidence indicated that the documents were forged, but is putting in a lot of effort, just trying to “provid cover” for CBS.
After reviewing Dr Newcomer’s section on pixels, I am confused as to how Haley acheived such high resolution in looking at the “e”. It makes me wonder if CBS provided Haley with better copies (non-faxed / better than 150 dpi) or if he used some software to improve resolution?
Steve ol boy,
Hailey’s logic adds up to using a lemon to analyze the properties of a grapefruit. Although both are citrus, they both don’t look the same, smell the same or taste the same. If you were to try and sell me a lemon labeled as a grapefruit, I would call you a lier for misrepresenting the the known facts between a lemon and a grapefruit. Hailey’s work is nothing more than trying to sell me a bitter lemon. I don’t and won’t buy into a false analysis.
Newcomer deserves credit for brutally putting down this hoax. He’s on the record as being no fan of Bush, but is the epitome of a professional.
Honest and thorough.
In the October 5th version of Hailey’s PDF, the following statement, among others, was added:
“Finally, it is not the intent of this study to identify the font used to produce the memos.
Rather, the effort is to draw the font and identify characteristics in it that might someday
lead to an exact source.”
It seems that Hailey has not heard the advice; “when you are in over your head, stop digging”.
Hailry posted a severly FLAWED report. Newcomer, being a professor himself, with no political ties, and showing his resume online proved beyond a reasonal doubt that Hailey’s research was flawed, irresponsible and an academic failue. I can not speak for USU, however, if they want to keep the man – more power to them – they reduce the creditablilty of the University in general. USU IS A BIASED UNIVERSITY no matter how you look at it.
Well, okay, it costs money to defend a lawsuit even if you win, so you can’t say that Hailey is a liar, a fraud, and a charlatan.
On the other hand, you wouldn’t exactly say that Hailey is *not* a liar, a fraud, and a charlatan, would you? And if he isn’t, which one of the three isn’t he?
R Alazar mentions the possiblity of the lawsuit that others predicted would be filed against Wizbang. Can you imagine how stupid it would be for USU to go forward on that? Their guy would be completely taken apart under oath. Think of all the versions, and qualifications, and alterations he’s done. Think of how painful the questions would be, now that Newcomer has drawn the road map.
I am sure that if USU or Hailey is speaking to a lawyer, that lawyer would be wise to tell Hailey and USU to not even think about a lawsuit.
yes, it would be stupid for USU and professor Hailey to sue wizbang, but Hailey is seeing his world collapse around him. his academic standing among his peers is certainly dropping rapidly and it wouldn’t surprise me if he decides to blame the evil boggers instead of himself for the shoddy work.
a lawsuit could be the last ditch effort of a desperate man with a dying career.
kevin/paul, make sure you keep us appraised if Hailey goes the stupid route and start a collection.
also, make sure you continue to keep tabs on what he’s doing with his report. he seems to be trying to modify it in massive CYA mode.
Wow, that paper that Dr, Newcomer wrote was so well done. Now Mr. Hailey knows what a scientific study should look like.
props to Wizbang for nipping this report in the bud.
Hailey’s report is pretty funny. One of my favorite bits is that after concluding that the font isn’t times roman, based on the curve of the serif on a character that is, as Newcomer points out, a total of about 11, pixels, Hailey then concludes that the t’s are damaged because they show a filled in upper left hand corner.
Of course, there are fonts that show a filled in upper left hand corner, such as, um, Times New Roman.
In other words, as far as I can tell, Hailey’s analysis is:
1) The font is this Typewriter font, because I said so.
2) Any evidence that the font is some other font is actually evidence of “character damage” and therefore proves the document was typed.
On top of that, he makes the wierd argument that:
1) In his opinion, the document was typed by someone who (i) ordered a version of a monospaced font customized for proportional spacing, (ii) ordered a customized “tm” key, (iii) installed this double customized keyset in a proportional typewriter, then (iv) used this double customized proportional typewriter to type up these six memos but none of the other Bush memos we’ve seen. (I haven’t even gotten into how much of a pain it is to use a proportional typewriter at all, much less center it.) Based on this, Hailey concludes it was completely reasonable for CBS to run the memos, even though CBS got them from a rabid anti-Bush partisan and couldn’t verify their original source, because it couldn’t be proven to a metaphysical certainty that they were false.
Wizbang gets quoted on non-partisan Wired.com!!!
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65250,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
Take a look! YOur disagreemants the the same as death threats and mob violence.
But shooting up GOP headquarters is just Free Expression!
Ha ha you neocon fascstists are sooo stupid. We win again!
I read the Wired.com report. It takes the formulaic (that is, don’t make me actually think today) approach that Hailey is a victim — why are journalists always hunting for victims?
A tenured Ph.D. at a state university is a victim?
Apparently, in our brave new world, free speech means never having to say you’re sorry, even if your report doesn’t pass the laugh test.
The Wired.com report also quotes university officials as complaining that phone numbers are being made available on the internet! “You mean we’re actually answerable to someone?”
“We administer millions in taxpayer dollars, but you don’t actually expect us to TALK to anyone, do you?”
Criticism from “ordinary people” apparently is interpreted as mob tactics by university administrators. Apparently, e-mails are now the equivalent of bullets and guns.
These guys are sensitive. Somebody tell them the 90’s are over, before they waste any more taxpayer dollars on their lawyers for therapy program.
Yow! So this is what a truly ‘scientific’ bitch-slap looks like.
Do these scientist types do this to each other all the time?