Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Needing to see a published report before we comment on someones findings seems a tad ironic in this thread. If there is no such paper despite Mulder's claim that the analysis was conducted in the 1970s would that also be ironic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Rumormonger much? Patience, gwasshoppa! ;-) I had a dream about one last night. I'm not sure if sarcastically commenting on the rumors are an indicator of my personality flaws or the flaws of the person who publishes the rumors in the first place. Or the flaws of the community apparently eating itself over the years, reporters reporting on other reporter's speculations-as-fact reporting. Perhaps all of the above... So, someone in the community gets an "insider" to leak that it's the 15th. Someone else "in Feburary", someone else "Thursday" and these come together to mean today. As it's a Thursday, in February, and the 15th... As if this is any different than the hundred other leaks concerning the subject. And, we comment on them, inspect every element, and post every speculation on every aspect of them. For me, my post above was more of a "oh look, a flying car" type of post. Meaning, there is no flying car, I'm being ironic, sarcastic, sardonic, whatever. I'm not actually expecting a paper to be published. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest MikeG Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Robert Lindsay is still saying (today) that the publication date will be the end of Feb. So is Slimwitless, almost. That's only a fortnight. They'll either be right, or they'll be wrong. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Hey, no cutting in line!!! I'm still waiting for Mulder's source that supports his 'an animal could be Homo Sapiens and NOT be human' claim. RayG Which I supplied repeatedly, Ray. Stop repeating requests that I've already satisfied. Humans are H Sapiens Sapiens. Any H Sapiens NOT Hss is not human. It's that simple. on the topic of Tom Moore: He was the Supervisor of the Wyoming Game and Fish Laboratory until about 2005. He morphologically analyzed hairs of unknown origin going back into the early 70s. More information about him and his results is easily obtainable w/a Google/Yahoo search. If there is no such paper despite Mulder's claim that the analysis was conducted in the 1970s would that also be ironic? Tom Moore has nothing to do with the Ketchum study...that conversation was part of a sidebar on the topic of hard evidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LAL Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 E.G.: "Hairs retrieved from a bush in 1968 near Riggins, Idaho were given to Roy Pinker, a police science instructor at California State University, Los Angeles. Pinker concluded that the hair samples did not match any samples from known animal species. Pinker also stated that he could not attribute them as being Bigfoot hairs without a bonafide Bigfoot hair sample to compare to. Hair samples were also taken from a house located on the Lummi Indian reservation in Washington. Three more samples were retrieved from Maryland, Oregon and California. Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Ellis R. Kerley and Physical Anthropologist Dr. Stephen Rosen of the University of Maryland, as well as Tom Moore, the Supervisor of the Wyoming Game and Fish Laboratory, examined the hair samples and stated that all the hair samples matched in terms of belonging to a "non species specific mammal". They concurred in finding that the four sets matched each other, were similar to gorilla and human but were neither, and they did not match 84 other species of North American mammals.5" http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/other_forms_of_bigfoot_evidenc.html Is it possible not everyone writes everything up? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indiefoot Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Does the term human have an agreed upon definition. From what I've read it's debated along with "intellegence". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) http://www.bigfoot-l...ot_evidenc.html Is it possible not everyone writes everything up? It's possible, but I followed this link, did some more digging, and learned that Kerley had published at least 40 papers in his career. He was a top dude in forensic hair analysis. But I couldn't find that he -or anyone else involved - had bothered to publish a paper on what would have been the zoological discovery of the century. The one quote provided in the link (referenced as 5, though there are only four sources listed, btw) was "non species specific mammal", which amounts to 'this hair came from a mammal.' If Kerley, or any of the other scientists involved, had actually published this analysis, we'd be able to look today and see exactly what they did in their analysis, what their analysis revealed, and how they interpreted that analysis. Without a publication, this is just another anecdote. If I was a bigfoot proponent, I wouldn't go around blaming skeptics for not believing such anecdotes, I'd save my ire for those who might have been in a position to prove that the danged bigfoots exist, but squandered those opportunities to do so by not publishing. (And if they tired but were rejected, there'd be proof of that too, including an explanation for exactly why the work was rejected.) @indie: To the people who name organisms based on examinations of their physical remains, "Homo" means "human." Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo floresiensis, Homo sapiens, and any other members of the genus are/were humans. Mulder is wrong. Edited February 16, 2012 by Saskeptic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cotter Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Hi Folks: I've a question. Do both sides of the BF argument agree that unidentified primate hairs have been discovered/validated in North America? If not, how about unidentified mammal hairs? Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Not this side. Many people of course claim to have hairs they've collected and think might be from bigfoots. I've often read that such was the case, but I know of nothing to confirm that such unidentified hairs had been analyzed and truly found to be something unique. Whatever might have been found, analyzed, and left unidentified has not ended up written up in the scientific literature. More to the point though, "unidentified" hair does not mean "bigfoot hair" any more than "unidentified flying object" means that the Klingons are about to launch their invasion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) Saskeptic, if I was in the field, and found some hairs, and took them to a lab to be analysed, and they came back unknown primate,or whatever, would that lab bother to write a paper? Would they keep any sort of documentation on it? Or would the hair, along with their analyse be returned to me? Odds are I would have paid for the work, etc, so why would a lab submit these findings to anyone? I am just trying to understand the process here, I am wondering if there is a reasonable expectation that it would wind in any scientific literature. Edited February 16, 2012 by JohnC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cotter Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) Hi Sas: Yeah, I agree that an unidentified hair, even a primate hair, does not mean/prove it is from a BF, but it could show that something unique is yet undiscovered, if it points to primate hair, well, then a bit more wind in the sails for the BF proponents. Also, it seems a lot of folks put their stock in published scientific papers/journals. Meaning if it isn't published it isn't worth it's weight in salt. Do you feel there is some leeway there, say a report from an FBI or CIA lab stating they have found an unidentified primate hair? Or would you feel that is insufficient? The reason I ask, is that I feel that with the alleged/potential amount of testing done on hairs purported to be from BF (or unidentified primate), is it reasonable to expect the person doing the testing (which would have been contracted from a private source more often than not) to take it through the full gambit of scientific acceptance? Thanks Sas. *edited to add - sorry about the redundancy in my post - JohnC kind of beat me to it* Edited February 16, 2012 by Cotter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Also, it seems a lot of folks put their stock in published scientific papers/journals. Meaning if it isn't published it isn't worth it's weight in salt. It's not that results not published are meaningless or worthless, it's that it's difficult to assess the validity of the work if it was conducted outside the peer-review process. I have published all manner of in-house reports and what-not, and for those I have full authority over what makes it in the report and what does not. I don't really have to answer to anybody. But when I try to publish that stuff in a journal, I've got a huge hurdle ahead of me: I need to convince 3-4 other scientists that every crossed-t and dotted-i is beyond reproach. They may point out errors in my interpretation of my results or things I hadn't considered (but should have) in deriving my conclusion or they may walk me back from some statements in my conclusion that they think overstate my findings. They may even find flaws in which I was blissfully unaware that call the entire study into question. This is the kind of scrutiny to which we scientists know each published manuscript has been (or should have been) subjected, because we're also the reviewers and we know how we rake other peoples' work over the coals! As for FBI and CIA reports, they certainly sound like they would be rigorous, but it's a different process than we use and we don't know how to assess the reliability of such reports. As to whether or not a lab would publish a paper that found something really cool, I don't see why they wouldn't. If I'm a molecular biologist working in DNA lab or hair forensics lab or something, and I do an analysis that really suggests that I've got material from an entirely new species on my desk, then I am totally publishing that. It would be the discovery of the century(ies)! No scientist I know would pass on the chance to go down in history with his/her name mentioned alongside Watson and Crick, or Curie, or Darwin, etc. If it wasn't mine to publish, e.g., if publication rights were the sole responsibility of the person who hired my lab to do the analysis, then I would lobby big-time with that person to publish the paper. Presumably the person who paid money to have the sample analyzed did so because s/he had an interest in identifying it as some unique and groundbreaking. I just can't see how an analysis that really showed something to be unique would not end up in the literature unless . . . the analysis didn't really show that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 In this article Saskeptic, we see a few mentions of hair reportedly being unknown, or primate, or even higher primate. Do you think this is just unsubstantiated rumor? Or if this was the results, why would these results not generate more interest?(As in the uniqueness was over stated?) http://www.bigfootencounters.com/biology/hair.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Not this side. Many people of course claim to have hairs they've collected and think might be from bigfoots. I've often read that such was the case, but I know of nothing to confirm that such unidentified hairs had been analyzed and truly found to be something unique. Whatever might have been found, analyzed, and left unidentified has not ended up written up in the scientific literature. More to the point though, "unidentified" hair does not mean "bigfoot hair" any more than "unidentified flying object" means that the Klingons are about to launch their invasion. If their is other evidence collaborating where the hair was found, like prints, eye witness account, or similar evidence then it would be safe to say it is from a BF. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) ^Given our differing opinions on the word "safe", if we ever find ourselves on a small plane with engine trouble, please let me be the one to check the parachutes. http://www.bigfooten...iology/hair.htm I think there's probably overstated uniqueness and unsubstantiated rumor at work there JohnC. I don't know of a single paper that resulted from any of those examples, though I do know of others that did make it into print. The Wu et al. paper concludes that Chinese "wildmen" exist, based on analysis of isotopic ratios in a hair sample. The Milinkovitch et al. paper concludes that the DNA obtained from a putative yeti sample actually came from a horse. The hair analysis stuff can be frustrating. For example, what's up with Sykes? His statements are almost cavalier regarding his analysis of putative yeti hairs, but I can't finding anything he's published on them. Surely he's a guy he gets how groundbreaking his result would be, . . . if it really was. I suspect the reason he hasn't published on it is because he doesn't think he's really got enough to pass peer review, i.e., there are other explanations for the result he got. We need to be mindful that "unknown higher primate" or somesuch designations don't necessarily rule out humans. It might just mean that the furthest they could go in the analysis was primate - hominid. To identify "bigfoot" based on a unique DNA signature, it's got to be a UNIQUE signature, and it has to placeable on a hominid phylogenetic tree. That's the only way it could be truly distinguishable as not human or chimp or gorilla, but close, and definitely something new. This is why what we're hearing about the Ketchum analysis is so puzzling. If what they're getting is Homo sapiens, then it's awfully hard to confirm that it's not Homo sapiens sapiens, and awfully hard to justify such a DNA result with hairy forest giants that lack technology essential to the description of our species. Wuetal1993.pdfMilinkovitchetal2004.pdf ColtmanandDavis2006.pdf eta, zigoapex, I know I was just being cheeky in my initial response, but let me make sure I'm clear on why I think it isn't "safe" to make the assumption you intimated: Both the Milinkovitch et al. and Coltman and Davis papers analyzed hairs recovered from locations with extensive corroborating data that might suggest the hairs came from yeti and bigfoot, respectively. Surely the people who submitted them for analysis were fully convinced that they had the real deal. I already mentioned the yeti result; the Coltman and Davis paper found the "bigfoot" hair to be bison hair. Edited February 16, 2012 by Saskeptic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts