Adam,
In one part of your post, you say “…a certain degree of skepticism is very good to have -- but if it pushes you to reach an even more unlikely and improbable solution just because it's more mundane, then you're not really reaching a logical conclusion…”
To me, you’ve just described your own analysis here. You’re ignoring the more likely conclusion in favor of the less likely one. And the far less likely one, at that.
Remember that
Bob Brandenburg’s Harmony and Power study found the probability of a reception by Betty on July 5 to be quite low. The odds were roughly 1 in 800 during the first hour she was listening, 1 in ~330,000 during the second hour, and 1 in ~50,000 during the last hour or so she was listening. Isn’t the logical, most likely, conclusion that whatever it was Betty heard, it was not Amelia and Fred?
Perhaps if the same facts are presented outside the context of Betty’s Notebook you’ll think differently:
Thought Experiment # 1: Let’s assume on the next Niku expedition Dr. King finds a human finger bone at the Seven Site. It is carefully collected to avoid DNA contamination and brought back to the states and analyzed. The lab results indicate that there is a 1 in 800 chance that the finger bone belonged to Amelia. What is your conclusion about whose finger bone Dr. King found? What if the DNA analysis produced a 1 in 50,000 probability, or a 1 in 330,000 probability that the finger bone was Amelia’s?
Now, remember also that we don’t know what day Betty actually heard what she recorded in her notebook. In my reading on this web site, I’ve seen no update to what Tighar Research Document #17 tells us about Betty’s Notebook, which is: “One afternoon in July – the exact date is not known – at about 3 p.m. Betty was sitting on the floor in front of her family’s radio console…” etc. We have no evidence to choose July 5 as the date that Betty heard what she heard, rather than some other weekday that week, or even a weekday the following week for that matter. The probability of a reception was much lower for Betty on those other days, and we have no reason to rule any of those other days out.
So, now, onto
Thought Experiment #2.
Thought experiment #2 begins with Tighar history:
Dr. Kar Burns reanalyzed Dr. Hoodless’s bones measurements using Fordisk. She concluded, with caveats, that there was a 65% chance the castaway was a female, 35% chance the castaway was male.
Now, for the purposes of the thought experiment, let’s suppose that we learn that Dr. Hoodless notebook contains measurements of 5 partial skeletons, and we have no way of knowing which set of measurements were taken from the Niku Castaway because Dr. Hoodless’s notes don’t tell us. One set of measurements yields the 65%/35% ratio, the other four sets all yield 50%/50% gender ratios* when analyzed using the identical Fordisk program used by Dr. Burns. What can be logically concluded about the gender of the castaway?
(note to readers: this is hypothetical example—no need to make a post telling me that we know Dr. Hoodless’s measurements were of the Niku skeleton!).
If you can see how my two thought experiments are essentially equivalent to the two points I raised about Betty’s notebook:
1) The probability of reception on July 5 was low, and
2) Betty might equally well have been listening on several other days with poorer probabilities for reception
then it would be interesting to know if they have changed your conclusions (Adam or others) about Betty’s Notebook.
If my little thought experiments don’t change your mind, so be it. You are free to believe what you wish to, of course. But if Bob Brandenburg’s probability analysis is correct, the chances that Betty heard Amelia, even on the ‘best’ day, were pretty slim.
It has been interesting to think about all the issues surrounding Betty’s notebook, radio transmissions, tides, etc. The collection of information Tighar has amassed here is a great resource for studying this and other issues. I have been more interested in the land search and the sea search—actual artifacts—than the radio transmissions, and I guess in the end, for me the Betty story is compelling, but most probably a false lead in the Earhart disappearance mystery. I do hope to get away from posting on this thread and back to reading and posting on some of the threads that pursue other leads in this fascinating mystery.
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* statistical sticklers will note that I should have made the odds for a Female at least a little less than 50%, but I think the general point is clear.