The Ketchum Report (Continued)

[Cotter]

Hi Melissa, I was referring to his caveat whereas he was commenting on the possibility of not being published due to content.

Something that a lot of posters had commented on early on when the first round of "rejects" were allegedly happening.

Additionally, there was a "I would think" in there as well.

Just pointing out the back doors so to speak.

[Guest]

Drew,

I agree totally. This discovery, especially if it holds true to be a Homo sapien (or at least Homo genus), in my opinion, could be the biggest in millenium. The ramifications of science, politics, religion, etc are immense.

@Drew and Martin - did you catch his caveat?

"I wouldn't rule it out entirely"

Just saying....

Cotter, there is some major scepticism in the science community with regard to BF. But if the science is sound and reproducible, I think it would be accepted. The problem with the MK paper, is that much of it does not follow the general rules of biology - odd DNA structures, a Homo sapien sub species THAT IS NOT HIGLY HOMOLOGOUS TO HSS. If their nuDNA was 99.5% homologous, it would be easier to swallow. In the end, if this all holds up after being reproduced by and independent lab, I hope the scientific community will accept it. We are not there yet.

[Cotter]

@Drew

I don't know, and I sure hope so!

@Ridge - I agree, you'd 'think' it would be accepted.

But it doesn't make it so.

[Guest]

Good question. Dennis Pfohl is now listed as a member of The Olympic Project.

Interesting. Maybe someone, ahem, who knows about the Olympic project could get his take and opinion on this shaking out? If it's a flat out hoax video, one would assume he would not be welcome in a genuine Bigfoot project. Maybe he is a member here and we just don't know it?

[Guest Tontar]

I've seen the video, without the commentary that was provided with your posted video. I've taken a few videos over the years, same with still pictures. Based on my experience, what is shown from my perspective is a telephoto shot. I based this on that if it is in fact under 10 feet per your suggestion. The image would briefly "blur" before coming back into focus. I've had this "blur" effect happen to me many a time.....and it gets my dandruff up when it happens, as the shot I was wanting is now lost.

Narp, the camera is very close to the subject, as Drew suggests. Check out the foreground twigs versus the twigs in between them and the subject. There is far too much side to side movement of the foreground twigs, the ones closest to the camera, as the camera shifts side to side. You can also tell by perspective that the foreground twigs are not that far from the subject. The degree of side to side shift indicates the camera is quite close to the subject,. just on the opposite side of the trees and twigs in between. Were there no foreground twigs to give that away, one might argue for a telephoto lens, but with the twigs in the scene, it pretty much spells it out, the camera is likely less than 10 feet away, and more than 5. Drew nailed it.

Besides, that's not even a big deal at the moment. The big deal will come when, or if the full clip appears, where the thing stands up, supposedly bares its fangs at the camera, then walks away. Anyone want to guess whether it blinks or not?

[Drew]

Cotter, there is some major scepticism in the science community with regard to BF. But if the science is sound and reproducible

Do not confuse Scientific scepticism with regard to bigfoot, with Scientific scepticism with regard to a bad bad paper.

Many of the scientists I communicate with read the paper, the criticism is not with the idea of Bigfoot, but with the paper's conclusions and processes.

Next subject. What is so important about publishing (so it can be viewed) the peer reviews? MK has said over and over again that the paper was peer reviewed. You either belief her or you don't. Having access to the peer review is not going to make you either more or against the existence of BF. It's not even going to give more credence to the character of MK....as you so seemly have a huge mistrust for.

We can see what the criticisms were from the real journal, and see if she addressed them in her final copy.

If she did not, and went ahead and published in her own journal, simply to avoid revising her paper to the liking of the peer review, then you really can't say the paper was 'peer reviewed' can you?

[Guest]

And another article/blog... (struggling to find anything good outside crypto/paranormal sites) hitting the fundamental question of claimed peer review and online journals, something Huffington focused on as well. That kind of fundamental claim..it passed peer-review, by a real journal, then purchased, remains just a strange claim/move. . Although, I see in HP Meldrum did acknowledge there might be some general taboo to this subject ...leaving some question it might have been a good move (?), and I imagine he knows...

This issue remains unanswered, and it shouldn't., really.

http://www.historum....ng-journal.html

btw I don't think this paper would ever make it into court on the issue of "new species proof (what case would that be?) , precisely b/c even if her claim about this other new journal is shown, it would not be sufficient for a court. Melissa, I think mentioned earlier the standards for science based evidence are really stringent and also subject to judicial iruling on admissibility, paper by paper, expert by expert, etc.... this would not make that cut IMO. At least today, who knows in what ways it might be validated in the future, or what that "court" might be. It sure has made the cut with the crypto/paranormal sites not really into the field research scene. ...

Edited February 19, 2013 by apehuman

[Guest]

Do not confuse Scientific scepticism with regard to bigfoot, with Scientific scepticism with regard to a bad bad paper.

Many of the scientists I communicate with read the paper, the criticism is not with the idea of Bigfoot, but with the paper's conclusions and processes.

We can see what the criticisms were from the real journal, and see if she addressed them in her final copy.

If she did not, and went ahead and published in her own journal, simply to avoid revising her paper to the liking of the peer review, then you really can't say the paper was 'peer reviewed' can you?

Drew,

In this case there is both. I agree that the paper is far from good, and I, as a professional scientist, am sceptical about both their process and their conclusions. That said, I am still largely in the closet about my thoughts on BF. I have mentioned it to a few colleagues in my department, but their immediate response is quite telling. I was really hoping this paper would be great, and I could come out with the science in hand. I remain in the closet until further notice.

It would be great to see some of the peer reviews, but I am not holding my breath.

[WV FOOTER]

I just can't Believe that humans could sneak up on a Squatch. Not impossible, but very improbable.

[WSA]

Gotta agree with Meldrum. So far, he's correct, but being very polite to hedge his bet. Me, I hold out no hope Ms. Ketchum's work will be vindicated, standing alone. If there is hope, the Oxford project is it.

[masterbarber]

Here is a question - why is Erickson looking for funding to release this footage? He could have - in Melba's paper. Done, and done. Unless it is just about the financial rewards he thinks are on the horizon. He has been talking about this footage since 2006 (that is the earliest I heard about it) - yet he still hasn't released it? What is his hold up? Why is the financial portion holding him back? He could do what Melba did - create a site, put the video on it - and force people to pay to view the film....

Is he waiting for Hollywood to get on board?

Edited to add:

Did Erickson license this bad part - in the hopes that someone would see it and offer up the finances to fund whatever it is he is doing?? Is that the end game here? Erickson had to know the portion he licensed to Melba was not the part that would convince science of anything (this isn't his first rodeo)..

ALL Good Questions.

In my personal opinion and I don't want to go any further OT but I think DB Donlon gave us the scoop, on what is actually available, quite some time ago:

http://dapht.blogspo...hing-again.html

The only reason that I am getting involved in this at all is because I know something about this case and I believe all the facts ought to be brought out before people get too excited. In 2009 I wrote a post about the film in question -- here's a bit of that post:

On the question of the film that is rumored -- everything that I have heard and seen indicates that it is the same film that Gregg [Clay] described to me in the summer of 2005. I heard then that there were four pieces of footage obtained not by the investigators, but by the original witnesses. All of them were described to me, and of these, two of them would have been very interesting. But the best piece, which is what I assume Dr. Bindernagel and the others have been referring to, was not something that would have convinced me due to the circumstances in the filming.

(One day I will describe exactly why the film wouldn't have convinced me, but I'm sure the owners of the footage want the most bang for their buck when they release their film, and I don't want to take coin out of their hands. And, anyway, it's only my own opinion having never even seen the film!)

I do believe that something was going on at that location, but I do not believe that any legitimate film was taken there. Of course, this is just my belief, and I could well be wrong about it. The central issue about the KY situation will, to me, always be about that cast that Stan made, in which I had clearly seen the dermals in the mud and then [that they had been] transferred successfully to the cast. Recently I learned that Dr. Jeff Meldrum was invited to the location some time ago, and I sent him an email asking whether he had ever been shown the cast, but he did not answer it. If I ever have him on the radio again I will surely ask him in person.

But to the question raised [of] why has it taken so long for this film to go public, my suspicion is that my reservations are shared by the folks who have the film. They have stayed at the location for several years now trying to get more film, and some say that they have, but that none of it is quite as good as the original stuff.

So what would you do? What if you had some film that clearly showed an animal, but you couldn't vouch for the circumstances of the filming? What if you thought you were in the right spot, that you had a lot of secondary evidence that supported the belief that bigfoot were around, and were hell-bent on coming up with your own film? Maybe you'd want to hold off on releasing the film until you had complementary evidence of similar quality. I think this is what has happened, and I don't blame them in the slightest.

That's what I wrote in 2009. I also have a series of posts about the Kentucky films that I wrote in 2007 that I may repost if it seems necessary.

But some other facts need to be kept in mind:

• The property on which the original film was made was sold to Erickson for a large sum of money.
  
• The original filmmakers filmed at least four bits of film and the one mentioned by Cryptomundo sounds exactly like what Gregg described to me back in 2005; if it is the same film, that would mean that it was filmed by the property owners and not Erickson's crew.
  
• The property owners also had several other bits of "evidence" including a tape of grunts and growls and of course the footprint that Stan Courtney cast.
  
• The original film (which is different from the film in question here), the cast of the footprint, and the tape of grunts and growls have all been lost. It was my opinion that a detailed analysis of any one of these items would have proved that they were hoaxed. Notice I said this is my opinion, but it sure would be nice to have these items around to test them. I consider it extremely suspicious that they would have been lost. (If you had evidence of bigfoot that you thought would possibly make you money, would you lose it?) I know the first film was "accidentally" erased. I do not know what became of the taped sounds or the footprint cast.
  

Now, the reason I bring all this up is because of the way that Erickson is presenting this video. Here's a snippet from his site that describes the project and how the video was obtained:

In 2005, I started the Erickson Project. The objective was to conduct the first long term study that would once and for all, prove the existence of the sasquatch. In order to do so I asked Dennis Pfohl and Leila Hadj-Chikh to join me, and we set out to try to awaken the scientific community, attempted to bring awareness to the general public, while silencing the armchair critics, and tried to vindicate the tens of thousands of witnesses who have been ridiculed for speaking out. With only a handful of short video clips ever previously recorded of a sasquatch, the team focused on acquiring more and better video, especially close ups.

After many months of frustrations the knowledge gained by the team’s experiences enabled it to finally achieve success in capturing several video clips of different Sasquatch, including the first 'facial' footage ever recorded

.

Note the part that I bolded there. We know that the original witnesses recorded a "full facial video" of what they said was a bigfoot before Pfohl and Hadj-Chikh were onsite for the project, because Gregg Clay saw it and described it to me in the Summer of 2005 well before the home had been purchased and Leila took up residence there.

[Note: I have updated the below to cut down on confusion some of my wording had caused, and to add a bit more info.]

I believe this is the video that Erickson is making reference to in his description. If it is, why has he misrepresented it as the product of a scientific effort? Because that video was produced by the original witnesses by themselves. If he is referring to video obtained later it is striking that it is described using terms almost exactly like those that Gregg used to describe it to me in 2005. This is how it is described in a recent YouTube video:

A full facial close-up:

~ nose similar to ours (but w/ larger nostrils)

~ slightly chapped, rosy lips

~ pink mouth, blackish tongue

~ pointed teeth, like fangs

~ deep set eyes that dart around and don’t blink

~ her head is round, shaped more like ours than a gorilla’s, but her brow is much more prominent

~ she has lots of fine, flowing hair on her head (dark reddish brown) and soft short hair on her face

~ when she walks away, she moves just like the female in the Patterson Film

That's essentially what Gregg told me in 2005 (though he did not mention chapped lips nor a gait like the Patterson film). He emphasized that there was an animality to the creature. It did not appear at all human like.

More information that Gregg gave me which isn't on this list is this -- you never see the creature's lower legs as this is obscured by brush, and, that he thought the face looked very much like an orangutan. (He also told me that he saw the same creature, or a similar one, in real life through a night vision scope on the witnesses' property, though he only saw the head at that time. Gregg also told me that he was convinced the film in question was legit.)

It sounds like the same video to me. If it is NOT the same video, then the Erickson Project's version would be the 2nd "full facial video" of a bigfoot, but it's not described like that. Would that be because the first was determined to be a hoax? If it was, that should be part of the story. ANY hoaxing on the part of the original witnesses should be part of the story.

I do not forget that weird things happened while I was there. I saw and experienced plenty that would have supported there being something "not ordinary" going on -- the reaction of the dogs alone attests to that. But I did not believe that any convincing evidence had been produced.

There wouldn't be anything new in that..

So let's be clear that I'm not saying that there wasn't a bigfoot there. I have no idea and experienced plenty of weirdness in one day that I thought was quite suggestive. I'd be prepared to learn that there was indeed actually a bigfoot there, whatever that is.

I'm just saying there are reasons to question any evidence that came before the property was inhabited by Hadj-Chikh and Pfohl.

So my question is why has this video apparently finally been made part of a documentary almost six full years after it was filmed? A documentary has long been rumored, but never released.. Is this finally it?

Is the documentary really going to be complete? Nobody interviewed me, for instance. I have pages of notes and emails that can build a timeline of the events of that Summer. I was there to see parts of it first hand, heard other events on the phone as they happened, read reports of other events shortly after they happened, etc. I don't know if anyone else kept this information.

It is all strange to me.

I mean this sincerely -- if someone made a documentary of how this all went down, even without a bigfoot, that would be one fascinating film.

Artists rendering of bigfoot face from film?:

Mask available in 2002 for $275:

[Guest]

^ Melissa, that article seems to summarize it well. Thanks for posting it.

i

it totally skipped all the problems she had with the journals, and some labs, and as usual, nothing about the dna, just the same baloney.

[Guest FootDude]

Ketchum claims that her team did not submit the genetic sequences to GenBank, the open access genetic database, because GenBank only accept sequences from officially recognized species. GenBank has no such restriction, according to Leonid Kruglyak, a geneticist at Princeton University.

Did anyone else catch that?

That's a rather large red flag.

http://phys.org/news/2013-02-bigfoot-genome-sequenced-skeptics.html

[bipedalist]

What she said on C2C was to upload human containing dna you had to have a signed written release from the contributor "good luck with that'

[Guest]

Well, Masterbarber, I don't think it's a stretch to say there is something else going on with this whole "Erickson Project" - just what I have no idea. But, I totally forgot about DB's blog on this. The description he offers here:

A full facial close-up:

~ nose similar to ours (but w/ larger nostrils)

~ slightly chapped, rosy lips

~ pink mouth, blackish tongue

~ pointed teeth, like fangs

~ deep set eyes that dart around and don’t blink

~ her head is round, shaped more like ours than a gorilla’s, but her brow is much more prominent

~ she has lots of fine, flowing hair on her head (dark reddish brown) and soft short hair on her face

~ when she walks away, she moves just like the female in the Patterson Film

Is what I was told about one of the videos - and I was told these things could be seen after the "sleeping bigfoot" woke up. So... Am I correct in assuming that this may not be film owned by Erickson, but the original land owners - who moved? BUT - I was lead to believe that this video would be released and was in Ericksons possession....

I also heard the landowners moved down the road - and took the bigfoot with them..

Edited February 19, 2013 by Melissa