The Ketchum Report

[JDL]

I would also at this point stay away from "giant" as a characterization. It's too laden with distracting implications.

[Guest]

Agreed JDL it was a misnomer out of the 1800's perpetuated.....lol.

almost forgot....many people got their credientials working on the Piltdown find, yet once it was proven to be a hoax none were rescinded....

just something to think about.

[Guest parnassus]

Are you implying there is a concerted effort to minimize information about reputed giant skeletons?

one of the many delicious features of the "bigfoot is human" idea (and the apparent human height of the subject of the PGF) is that ALL prehistoric (and really, any unmarked) skeletal remains (not just the giant sets) become fair game for the relic-bigfoot hunter. Yippee! Now, let's say there are 1000 unidentified "human" skeletons out there. Even if the odds are only 1 in 1000 that any one of them is a bigfoot, then the odds are 63% that one was a bigfoot.

oh, wait....

[Guest]

It's not about credentials, it's about documentation. I'll take Dunning more seriously if tells us where he looked (and where he didn't look) for information to back up his claim.

It's not my job to defend Brian Dunning in a thread devoted to an entirely different topic, so this will be my last post on this issue here.

Note that Dunning provides a list of references for his essay:

References & Further Reading

Castriota-Scanderbeg, A., Dallapiccola, B. Abnormal Skeletal Phenotypes. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 2005. 3-100, 501-931.

Gerszten, P.C. "An Investigation into the Practice of Cranial Deformation Among the Pre-Columbian Peoples of Northern Chile." International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 27 May 2005, Volume 3, Issue 2: 87-98.

Hippocrates; translated by Adams, F. On Airs, Waters, and Places. Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press, 2009. 20.

Kirks, D. (Editor). Practical pediatric imaging: Diagnostic radiology of infants and children (3rd Edition). Philadelphia: Lippincott-Raven, 1998. 80-200.

Novella, S. "The Starchild Project." The New England Skeptical Society. The New England Skeptical Society, 1 Feb. 2006. Web. 14 Jan. 2010. <http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-starchild-project/>

Smith, B. et. al. "An anatomical study of a duplication 6p based on two sibs." American Journal of Medical Genetics. 3 Jun. 2005, Volume 20, Issue 4: 649-663.

You are, of course, welcome to demand more, e.g., each microfiche of an old newspaper he might have read to prepare for the essay or some assessment of the amount of time or effort he expended in trying to track down relevant references. In my experience, Dunning seems to be someone who would be happy to elaborate for you exactly what he did to prepare for that essay if you contacted him to request such information. If you really think there's some kind of a "hide the big skeletons so no one talks about bigfoot" conspiracy at work here, then why not follow up on your hunch with something as simple as an email to a guy who claims to have looked into the issue? I know that's not as much fun as casting him as biased and discrediting his work, but it's an option.

[JDL]

I don't have any evidence to suggest that anyone's hiding skeletons. I'm just saying nobody's really gone to the effort to look into the old closets.

For future purposes, do you have an estimate of what it would cost to put a few graduate students into the kind of audit I've suggested? I'd be looking to stay under $250k.

[Guest]

^I budget $60k these days for a grad student. That covers stipend, tuition waiver, benefits, etc. for a period of two years. Depending on what you'd want the student to do you'd need cash to support those activities. For example, a basic 2-year master's with a field sampling component I can do comfortably for $150 k. That's covering the student, transportation and field sampling, hiring technicians to work seasonally on the project, etc. Doing more costs more, of course. If I've got a student who plans to conduct research on the Greenland ice sheet, then that field work is going to cost a bit more than I'd normally spend on a student whose field work takes place a 3 hours' drive from campus.

If you're talking about funding for a student to track down some old newspapers, that's cheap. If you want to physically place students in the storage warehouses of our great museums that's probably not so cheap.

[JDL]

I'm looking at the latter, so I figure there will be significant travel costs and probably access fees for various institutions. I'd like to add BLM and a couple of other governmental agencies to the list.

It may take more than $250k, particularly since it looks like the kind of thing that could keep a few people busy for years, but over time it should be sustainable.

I'll use the request for proposal process to get people to map out where to look and to define what, specifically, to look for. If it looks like the overall task is too large for one grant I can break it down regionally. They'll need to start with an exhaustive search of records for items of interest in Phase I. Phase II would be physical examination of a selected number of items, and Phase III would be modern analysis of those items that prove to be other than common. Phase III may be more appropriate for doctoral candidates.

I have to wonder how many items there are in storage around the country that marked as "unknown" or "unidentified". It's appropriate to go back and look at these holdings. With modern analysis techniques, everything old is literally new again, and some of those things that could not be identified when they were discovered can now be catalogued properly. This is worth doing even if they do not reveal remains from a new species or race.

I imagine that if the grant turns up even a few items of broader interest, that others will jump in with additional grants before long.

The Comstock lode had been mined for gold for a couple of years before someone thought to come along and analyze the mine tailings. When they did, they found that dollar amount of silver already out of the mine and laying on the ground exceeded the value of the gold they'd found.

[Guest MikeG]

If you plan on going through every musuem and every university's collection looking for items catalogued "unknown", examine them, and place them into new categories, I think that you'll probably be looking at a lifetime's work for hundreds of people. Pretty skilled people, too, who can look at an object and assess what it is....where others have presumably failed in the past. That's before you even start on the mis-catalogued items, and then there are the "lost" items, such as the cupboard full of fossils collected by Darwin recently re-discovered in the basement of one of our major museums after being misplaced for a hundred years.

Impossible job, I'd say.

Mike

[Guest]

Mulder,

What is the question or "challenge"?

I think I've stated my position pretty clearly perhaps you need to do some review maybe you missed it.

Not really sure what's been conceded but as long as you feel "victorious" lol good for you;)

Cervelo, I posted it right up the thread from you AGAIN.

Nevertheless, I will quote it one last time:

MY question is specific and direct. I shall repeat it again, consisting of two related questions:

1) Please explain to me a viable alternate theory as to where DNA comes from other than a biological sample.

2) Please explain to me how DNA from an undocumented primate (which is the proposed finding of the study) could come from anything other than an undocumented primate.

Ed Conrad, Mulder? Really?

Continuing the sidebar for a moment: argument from derision or ad hom, WTB? Really?

Are you implying there is a concerted effort to minimize information about reputed giant skeletons?

It wouldn't surprise me if there was. It wouldn't be the first time "inconvenient" information was "minimized"...witness what happened in England last year.

Edited April 3, 2012 by Mulder

[Guest MikeG]

What happened in England last year, Mulder?

Mike

[Guest]

Excuse me, I misspoke. This happened back in 09, when the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was proven, via it's own internal emails (which were leaked to the public) to be deliberately falsifying data relating to climate to buttress the case for man-caused global warming. Activities reveled in the email included data falsification, data destruction, and talk about attempting to ruin the reputation of certain journals who had published papers critical of the global warming claim.

[JDL]

If you plan on going through every musuem and every university's collection looking for items catalogued "unknown", examine them, and place them into new categories, I think that you'll probably be looking at a lifetime's work for hundreds of people. Pretty skilled people, too, who can look at an object and assess what it is....where others have presumably failed in the past. That's before you even start on the mis-catalogued items, and then there are the "lost" items, such as the cupboard full of fossils collected by Darwin recently re-discovered in the basement of one of our major museums after being misplaced for a hundred years.

Impossible job, I'd say.

Mike

Gotta start someplace.

[Guest]

There's some interesting conflict of information on the Star Child in that link Saskeptic..

I cut and pasted these statements below.

The primary strike against them is the 2003 DNA analysis. The child had normal human DNA and was male, having both X and Y chromosomes, proving that it had a human female mother and a human male father.

Current Dna Analysis of the Star child skull shows that the mother was human but the fathers DNA came back as no known species, the Nuclear DNA was placed against those of known species in a data base of millions of known species and there was no match. None!

Deterioration of the nuclear DNA could easily explain the lack of similarity to anything known. DNA doesn't stay intact generally. Over the centuries most of it would be unrecognizable. The main reason they could identify the mitochondrial DNA is likely due to there being so many copies of it in each cell. This multitude of mDNA makes it possible for most of the dna stretch to be available. nDNA is tougher to sequence because there is only one copy per cell and if it is deteriorated it is useless.

Aliens evolving on a separate world would not be capable of reproducing with humans as they would not have a genetic code in common. Humans would be more likely to produce offspring with fish than with something from another planet. I also can not fathom why an alien would consider hybridising with humans even if it possible. The likelihood of an infant being viable or of any utility is remote.

[Guest]

Quoth Mulder:

"1) Please explain to me a viable alternate theory as to where DNA comes from other than a biological sample.

2) Please explain to me how DNA from an undocumented primate (which is the proposed finding of the study) could come from anything other than an undocumented primate."

1: Other than some kind of science-fictiony cloning hoax, a biological sample is the only source of DNA. More to the point though, I haven't seen Cervelo or anyone else indicate that they thought otherwise.

2: DNA from an "undocumented primate" could be any number of things depending on the specific analysis used to obtain that highly ambiguous result. If the analysis was one that mapped genetic distance among known primate taxa and it indicated something at intermediate distances between those taxa then yes, that would be proof of something unique. If that analysis indicated something fuzzier, like so close to humans that it would fall within the range of Homo sapiens, then that complicates the interpretation greatly. For example, a "new subspecies of human" DNA result would not seem compatible with physical descriptions of bigfoot. The far more parsimonious explanation would be that the novel DNA indicated humans just like you and me who share some unique signature. This is why some are skeptical that the DNA signature alone - given the allegedly leaked information that it indicated a new subspecies of Homo sapiens - would sufficient as "proof of bigfoot."

[Guest MikeG]

Excuse me, I misspoke. This happened back in 09, when the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was proven, via it's own internal emails (which were leaked to the public) to be deliberately falsifying data relating to climate to buttress the case for man-caused global warming. Activities reveled in the email included data falsification, data destruction, and talk about attempting to ruin the reputation of certain journals who had published papers critical of the global warming claim.

There have been 3 serious enquiries into this, including a parliamentary enquiry, a police enquiry, and an independant judicial enquiry (from memory), and they all concluded the exact opposite. There was some shoddy filing practices, but they were absolutely exonerated of falsifying any data. This is one for another thread, but the parallels with sceptics and whatevers on here is interesting. This was a bunch of climate change deniers harassing the UEA for years and years (my first degree was from there, and they were at it then!). The UEA people didn't feel that they had to co-operate with a bunch of people who just make stuff up, so they didn't............and got hacked instead. Please don't misrepresent the actuality........the academics were blameless in this.

Mike