www.mattkprovideo.com/2026/09/30/expert-observation-versus-amateur-observation/

A thought on testimony from somebody who only knows a little bit about a certain subject, who only got a brief look at something and describes what they think they saw…. Versus testimony from a a trained, certified expert who makes a very detailed examination on that thing… Who’s opinion do you put more stock in?

Just imagine a dental technician who’s looking in your mouth and notices a spot, a bump, on your nose.  Can the dental technician say “that is definitely skin cancer- we should start skin cancer treatments on you?”

No, of course not. A dental technician is not ALLOWED to say such a thing.  It’s unprofessional, it’s maybe even illegal.

The dental technician CAN say “ that looks like it MIGHT BE skin cancer, I recommend you visit a qualified skin cancer Doctor to be sure.” In fact, I think they HAVE to say that.

I’m working on a podcast discussing the ROBERT Kennedy assassination.

As you probably know there is a widely spread conspiracy theory that there are too many bullet holes at the RFK murder scene that could have come from ONE pistol. So there HAD to be a second gun, right?

That seems like a fair presumption.

Until you did deep into the story,

It seems a Police photographer was being shown around the crime scene ( after the fact) by a hotel desk clerk who pointed out what they THOUGHT were bullet holes.  The photographer took pictures of these holes in the walls, and researchers see what they assumed were bullet holes. TOO MANY bullet holes.

A professional Police ballistics expert did NOT certify that these were bullet holes in the walls. There’s a a dozen other ways the back kitchen of a hotel kitchen would have holes in the walls.

Conspiracy books will tell you of the medical technician at Bethesda who said he looked at Kennedy’s head and said that he saw that JFK’s brain was completely gone.  Suggesting that someone took it out- never explaining how, where or why someone could do this.

They leave out that then the body was examined by Doctors, certified forensic pathologists, who said a small percentage of the Presidents brain was missing.

Who do you trust,  a medical technician ( who has more medical knowledge that you or me, but not as much as a Doctor, and not nearly the knowledge a forensic pathologist has) who got a brief look at Kennedys head, or the DOCTORS who did an in depth scientific examination of the brain?

(*By the way this same “reliable” technician later told conspiracy book authors that Kennedys body was in a different coffin than what all the photographs show, he also remembers a cigar smoking General being in the autopsy room, when its been proven this General had just arrived at the airport during the time of the autopsy)

At Parkland hospital nurse made a quick look at Kennedys back wound and made a circle on a diagram indicating the general area of a bullet wound.  Later, forensic pathologists using scientific measuring devices noted the EXACT location of the back wound.  The bullet locations don’t exactly line up.  To conspiracy theorists, that’s proof that the Bethesda Doctors were lying, instead of the simpler explanation that the Bethesda nurse didn’t use a ruler.

The Dallas police got a brief glance at some items in Ruth Paines house, and one cop remembers seeing a “spy camera.”

The FBI took an in depth look at these same items and determined that the “spy camera” was actually a light meter.  I wonder how many non photographers in 1963, or even today, would even know what a “light meter” even was.

A Dallas detective LOOKED at a mangled bullet taken from General Walkers house and noted that it was a “STEEL” bullet.   Later in-depth examinations at a federal level determined that the bullet was actually made from a “COPPER ALLOY”

To conspiracy theorists, this is proof that they are not the same bullet.

Ignoring the simpler explanation that the Dallas Police didn’t see the need to run an advanced ( and probably expensive) metallurgical test on the bullet. But the feds, when they were exploring the possibility that this bullet might have been fired from the same rifle that killed the President, DID feel the need to run advanced metallurgical tests, and had the reason and resources to do so.

Did the Dallas Police even have a metallurgical lab in 1963? Do they have one even today?

Photographic novices think  the shadows in the backyard photos fall in wrong directions- proof of fakery. But photographic experts, civilian and government alike, say they fall in the correct directions. 

Whose opinion should you trust? A novice who took a brief look at something, or a trained expert who made an in-depth scientific examination