Let's Do Some Math...

[Guest Stan Norton]

Don't you guys have witch sightings in the UK?  Complete with broomstick flying n all?

Crawling with them. Hundreds of the old hags. Pest species really..

[Guest Stan Norton]

They have a brewery like that Wychwood or some such with HobGoblin and Witch ales

 

True! Very yummy...

[Cotter]

Crawling with them. Hundreds of the old hags. Pest species really..

 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH HA HA HA!

 

GOOD SHOW STAN!

 

LOL.

[Guest]

Not irritated Bill just blunt, what I won't accept is someone that really has no idea that has never been here tell me what happened to me that's all. No hard feelings. 

PS: No moose in Oklahoma , Yes this is heart breaking but Elk you bet and I have heard them myself.  

 

Quadraped animal movement sounds are different than Bipedal movement sounds to an experienced bioacoustics person.

 

Ant, understanding your evidence bar is high and nothing wrong with that but in fairness of me sharing my side in depth how about a little more detail like what exact evidence would be adequate for and who do you put all your trust in presenting that you wouldn't second guess?

DNA evidence will be adequate for me. If they can identify a new species of hominid from a pinkie bone then they should be able to identify one with hair follicles or toe nails or boogers.

 

Nature magazine would be a great one to offer the data. I wouldn't immediately dismiss what they say. They would have multiple verifications of the data (peer review) which previous presentations have not had. As long as a number of scientists within the relevant field of DNA consent to the peerage then who am I to disagree? Not that I think Nature magazine is perfect, but they are better judges of their content than I am.

Man way off topic.  This thread is not about their existence or whether the Smithsonian hides historical artifacts (they do).   It's about the estimated population under the assumption that they exist and the math involve to calculate it.   

Oh, I thought we decided the math was too simplistic?

 

If not then I contribute that the math was too simplistic.

So, you "trust" them?

 

That's why you should.

 

Obviously you're afraid about how they would react to that question.

 

Why is that the case?.

I told you how they would react to that question. Whether they have them or not. No fear here. I may be crazy but I don't believe in conspiracy theories in general. In general.

[MIB]

DNA evidence will be adequate for me. If they can identify a new species of hominid from a pinkie bone then they should be able to identify one with hair follicles or toe nails or boogers.

 

I suspect they have tested the genetic material but haven't recognized it for what it is.  There have been a few samples tested in the past that seemed pretty probably for BF DNA given the circumstances they were reportedly collected in.   In some cases, DNA was not identifiable at the time.  The technology for extracting DNA is moving forward rapidly.   Those same samples today, had they not been destroyed when they failed to produce results, might show something.   In other cases, DNA was extracted but via mtDNA testing techniques of the time, seemed too like human mtDNA so the samples were assumed to be contaminated and again, destroyed.  If they were only still available to re-test with current state of the art technology, who knows what we'd find?    Maybe nothing, maybe the mother lode.    The thing was, even mtDNA testing was damnable expensive in the past so you just didn't go forward with testing something you weren't sure of.    Despite her "issues", one thing Melba Ketchum was willing to do was continue forward in testing with samples that would have been deemed contaminated by other labs and discarded.    That may be precisely what is required if sasquatch DNA is very very like human DNA.    It may be distinguishable, but only via the more expensive nuDNA tests which are not usually performed if the mtDNA tests don't show something interesting.  It might even be so similar that we need to improve the technology before meaningful comparisons can be done with repeatable results.    This is why I think it is imperative that anyone who DOES want proof (not me, but I still will offer honest advice) should not send in an entire sample if they are confident in it, they should look for options for long term storage that will preserve the DNA until the technology is good enough to learn something useful from it.

 

Old territory revisited, huh?

 

MIB

[Guest]

MIB

 

Precisely. I understand throwing away evidence from before that failed to yield bigfoot results. It is still not relevant material to the case of bigfoot. And Justin Smeja did just that if I remember correctly. The leftovers had been tested I believe and found to be bear. Justin thought it possible someone had stolen the original sample and replaced it with a frozen bear sample. Considering some of the drama around that whole scene, I actually think that is possible and perhaps even plausible.  

 

Still if such material was found before, there is no real reason more such can not be found. We have better methods to test it today. We also more hypotheses about bigfoot's possible relationship to humans which would also inform any real geneticist's search parameters.

[MIB]

Can you explain that?   I don't see that it isn't relevant material ... or at least would not have been if it weren't lost or destroyed.   Am I missing something?

 

Justin's sample.   What people overlooked is what Justin himself said in an interview ... he was not absolutely sure the sample came from what he shot.   5 weeks passed from the time of the shooting until they returned and retrieved the "whatever it was."   He hoped, but that's about it.    Where things got hinky with his sample was when Dr Ketchum claimed it was bigfoot, it was re-tested at Trent University (right?) orchestrated by Bart and Tyler and proven to be bear, then Dr Ketchum asked Justin to destroy the remaining DNA he'd retained so it wouldn't contradict her findings.  THAT's where Justin's stuff went truly sideways.   If Dr Ketchum had told the truth in the first place, Justin's sample being bear would have been a non-event.  

 

More WILL be found in time.   However, what was turned in to Ketchum was the best of the best that'd been collected over a period of years.   What was left for Sykes to test is the "seconds" and "blems".   What's left to test now is even less than that.    Right now we have a seeming (but very expected, given the circumstances) lack of high probability material to test, at least in the hands of people willing to have it tested.

 

My hopes were on Ketchum because she claimed to have been "converted."  I expected her to be open-minded enough to do honest research instead of being such a deep end nut that she seemingly "cooked" her results.    We need that person who is open-minded, curious, maybe even a "believer", but who does their research in a scientifically rigorous, repeatable way so that others more skeptical can attempt to follow the trail, maybe even more rigorously, yet come to the same conclusion.  I don't see anyone to hang those hopes on, people seem to have too much ego on the line in one direction or another.

 

MIB

Edited April 11, 2014 by MIB

[Guest]

The material would have been relevant IF it had been kept and could have been tested now. Unfortunately that did not happen and so it is irrelevant to the bigfoot saga.

 

The whole Ketchum affair turned me off for a long time. It wasn't even Ketchum that got me hooked but a few personalities here who were convinced. I made the mistake of accepting things at face value on a forum made of personas. I don't fall into that mistake lightly.

[Guest]

Here is my hang up on DNA , ok first lets fully dismiss Smeja I have NEVER believed him but I may be wrong I will never know. Here is the thing, I am intimately knowledgeable of the TEXLA Oklahoma hair sample that was part of the accepted samples presented by Ketchum and regardless of the circus and fail that followed , I swear in my heart that sample is 100% legitimate and he has more of it but the presentation of said findings are so jacked up but yet I believe the results are in their roughly as she said but dang its frustrating. Good samples but terrible situation.. when does it end? Maybe NAWAC scores and the sample is matched to it IDK. BTW Sykes did not respond at a chance to try from this sample for the record but that has been shared here already elsewhere.

[Guest]

Any sample in Ketchum's case is contaminated unfortunately. Not meaning with angel DNA or anything LOL but with Ketchum's bad performance. Stigmatized until material that has not been tainted by known problems in the community and field has been tested and confirmed. After that, older, tainted material may be revisited but none of it can be used to make the case NOW because of this bungle.

[indiefoot]

Not that hard to explain away really. There are lots of sounds that you might be mistaking, especially the simple fact that tree branches knock together in the breeze constantly. I hear that almost every time I'm in the forest. Big or small. Even a small urban green space I can hear those. I can assure you they are not bigfoot woodknock, or even possible bigfoot knocks. 

 

 

What an opportunity. If you were to go out there and video branches knocking together in the wind with enough force to approximate what people are mistaking for BF wood knock you could put that whole phenomenon in the dust bin. Should be doable since you claim to hear it nearly every time you go out there, even in the park down the street. It would be a good thing to back up the kind of claim your making here because on the surface it seems to very dismissive of the abilities of others on this board to be able ti distinguish between every day sounds in the woods and a sound made by a possible Bigfoot.

 

It might just be the way I took it but what you say above seems to qualify as an extraordinary claim. 

[roguefooter]

You don't really read other people's posts entirely, do you?  I've already provided you with facts, not assumptions.

 

 

 

Let's not lose focus of the point of this debate regarding the Smithsonian - potential Bigfoot bones and the facts pertaining to that. Yes there was a dogma that was set in place at that time in regards to NA history and artifacts, but the artifacts they had were still catalogued. None of that translates into anything about Bigfoot bones ever being found or confiscated- those are just assumptions.

 

I stated that the 'conspiracy theory', or should I restate that to the 'Smithsonian Bigfoot conspiracy', starts when people add assumptions to the story, add elements of Super Giants, Bigfoot, and the discarding/disappearance of bones.

 

You made it more than clear that you are assuming the skeletons were taken by the BLM under suspicious reasons. You said: "See them on display anywhere?  They were on display before BLM confiscated them." There is no evidence of any wrongdoing in regards to that, only assumptions.

 

In 1990 the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act became federal law, hence why your skeletons were most likely confiscated by BLM by 1991. Just because you haven't heard they were returned to the Natives doesn't mean they eventually weren't. The government always tends to work ridiculously slow for whatever they consider to be a non-priority.

Edited April 12, 2014 by roguefooter

[JDL]

I'm not claiming they are destroying anything.  I am claiming that they squirrel things away that need to be examined.  This includes large skeletons that represent uncatalogued races of people, whether those be of the Si-Teh-Cah (definitely), or of Bigfoot (possibly).

 

Thomas Powell's own statements as Director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology are damning, and directly indicate his intent personally and institutionally to suppress any anthropological information that he felt was unwise to release to the public.  And elements of this policy continue to influence the Smithsonian.

 

There was at least a century where the Powell Doctrine was in full force, and during this time there are documented cases where remains have disappeared into the Smithsonian never to be heard of again.  I have already given you the reference for this information.  I invite you to actually read it before dismissing it based solely on your personal beliefs.

 

With regard to the BLM, I have no doubt that the NAGPRA was the statutory justification for the confiscation of the remains, but to which tribe could they be repatriated?  The Si-Teh-Cah are obviously extinct, and the only native tribe remaining in that area, the Paiutes, didn't want them.

 

By all accounts, the Si-Teh-Cah represent a different race of humans than any that exist today.  This is worth scientific investigation, as, I would submit, is plenty of other material collected by the Smithsonian during the period when the Powell Doctrine was in full force.

 

I was, by the way, shocked to see the Smithsonian disclose an artifact on the last episode of America Unearthed that conclusively proved Europeans migrated to America during the Ice Age.  Hopefully this represents a thawing of the Powell Doctrine for good.

[roguefooter]

You don't really read other people's posts entirely, do you?  I've already provided you with facts, not assumptions.

 

This makes it very difficult to have a logical dialogue with you when you rant about something, I reply with more than sufficient factual information to counter your argument, and you come back ranting as if you've only read, or perhaps understood, half of the information provided to you.  I'll make one last attempt by repeating the information I have previously provided.  If you persist in not reading it fully, then I see no further point in dialoguing with you.

 

 

First off, you started the dialogue, so seeing no further point in continuing is kind of moot. I don't think that getting upset over an obvious miscommunication is going to solve anything.

 

You seem to not be able to grasp that what I am talking about here is Bigfoot and the conspiracy related to that. Talking about non-Bigfoot related facts of the Smithsonian doesn't provide any "sufficient factual information" to counter that argument, because that information has nothing to do with the 'Bigfoot-Smithsonian conspiracy theory' or the finding of any Bigfoot bones. There is no link between Bigfoot, tall Native bones, and the Smithsonian. There is zero factual evidence or information in regards to that.

Edited April 12, 2014 by roguefooter

[salubrious]

^^ Do you have evidence to support that latter claim?