Fair enough.

But I have been around a while. And I have seen debacle after debacle.

And I don’t mind calling BS on BS.

Methinks you haven’t been on here very long or actually read most of the posts if you really think that. Sure, there are a few “True Believers”, but there are quite a few of us “Thinkers” on here that don’t think too much of Ketchum or her work (just because we’re not making snide comments doesn’t mean we aren’t critically evaluating her). Do I believe in Bigfoot? No… Do I think he exists? Yes… It’s got nothing to do with belief and everything to do with analysis of the existing evidence and a decision that the preponderance is supportive rather than exclusionary.

“As a skeptic, I am surprised that there aren’t more Bigfoot enthusiasts rising up against the pure imposture of recent weeks. I never realized just how low believers might go.”

OK, you’re Catholic. (What a fun game of pretend!) Some excuse for a human you don’t even need to credit with time of day calls the Pope a jerk. What, do you now see every Catholic who doesn’t yell for the guy’s crucifixion as being In League With The Devil? Some of us pay little attention to sideshows, and see no need to “rise up” against silliness like this.

(And it does nothing for the non-existent case against sasquatch to belittle people, anyway.)

“I am quite sure now that, if Ketchum got herself up in a gorilla suit and paraded around in a video, there would be a link here from some other bigfoot buff discussing how her gait was unlike that of a human and how one could see the underlying muscle structure that confirms that we are looking at the real and holy bigfoot.”

(Um, as I said above.)

Not sure what this has to do with the Patterson-Gimlin film. (My prediction: nothing.) But keeping the conversation grounded in science is the best medicine here. (And no, Melba isn’t doing that very well.) To spend one’s time on crypto sites railing on against the woo-woo aspects of the topic simply highlights how little attention one is paying.

Just sayin’.

If there is a ‘scheme’, it appears to belong somewhere in the Ketchum camp. Don’t confuse this issue with sensible economics; $30 a paper is not going to make anyone a squillionaire, but perhaps Dr. Ketchum is under the impression that this and her other related ventures (up to and including future fundraising for these ‘indigenous peoples’ and a line of Sasquatch-themed outdoor adventure clothing) might indeed pay off.

However, I suspect that money isn’t Dr. Ketchum’s motivation. It’s rarely the motivation in research and more often it’s simply a matter of getting one’s name on the kind of research that puts you at the top of the heap and vindicates your efforts or reputation. Competition for credibility and ‘clout’, patents, book rights and yes, research funding opportunities, are often the grist for this mill.

I’m not dismissing this study out-of-hand; it’s simply never been presented in a way that encourages people to take it seriously, and that’s an incredible shame.

Richard Gibbs admitted he read it, and basically said that he would need the raw data to come to a safe conclusion, meaning (for every literate person) nothing in the paper itself is wrong. Another authority openly commented that he read only the abstract and the conclusion, and that it “didn’t make sense”. Well, sometimes it doesn’t, when you only read the abstract and the conclusion of a years long study on something novel. It has also been said that some of the data points to tech artifacts, though they miraculously appeared in several independent analyses, some of them blind. Contamination has also been mentioned, again and again, though the handling and the procedures, described to great lengths, and the credentials of the involved (many with contamination as key expertise) rule it out. Why? Because you believe (also believers, you see?) such procedures never really took place. Which brings us back to the first paragraph.

After 5 days now, all we have are scientific comments about the design, the bagels, misspellings on a website (!?), the “makes no sense”, the “never seen a homology like that”…from people who never read it, or read across it as if it’s contagious. With all the antagonism, I’d say we would have been reading about the specific methodology flaws and have it trashed by now if it wasn’t… well, rock solid.

As the negative reviews of the data continue to roll in (one scientist referred to the nuclear DNA data as a complete mess), it’s likely she’s simply going to play the ‘bias’ and ‘persecution’ cards and go on her merry way.

That’s the way Skeptics work. Find ways to dismiss the evidence. Find ways to discredit anyone who disagrees with them. In Skepticland, Drs Meldrum, Schaller, Swindler, Sariamento (sp?), Howe, et al are utterly worthless as scientists because they are not Skeptics/Scofftics.

It’s dirty debating, and it says far more about the utter lack of intellectual integrity on the part of Skeptics than it does about proponents.