The Ketchum Report

[Guest Peter O.]

Einstein never once published in a peer-reviewed journal. You are welcome to argue that, as a result, relativity and the photoelectric effect are nonsense.

Off topic, but Einstein's first paper, on the Brownian motion, was published in Annalen der Physik in 1905. It may not have been a peer-reviewed journal in the modern sense of the word, but it was a respected journal nonetheless.

(source: http://en.wikipedia....ierten_Teilchen)

[Guest BFSleuth]

Good point Peter. Also, were there any peer reviewed journals published during Newton's time?

[Guest]

the inflated ego is certainly a well-earned stereotype among scientists

A well-earned behavioral trait is not a stereotype; rather, once earned, it is merely a matter of fact. But, thank you for confirming my observations.

publication in journals of the highest tier is an institutionalized benchmark for our career advancement. While it's certainly an ego-boost to publish a paper in a great journal, without our warped reward systems in academia geared to such journals there'd be a lot less emphasis on doing so. Personally, I just want my work out there so others can access it, so once I hit the tier in which anyone can find my papers, I'm happy. It's the bean-counters in my administration, however, who keep pushing me to aim "higher."

Thank you for confirming that publishing in an elite journal is not an essential element of the scientific method. As I noted above, the publication records of Newton, Darwin, and Einstein prove that publishing in peer-reviewed journals is not an essential element of the scientific method. The essential element is simply to publish so one's peers (i.e., fellow scientists, not surrogate editors) can read and evaluate one's work. That academicians have developed a classist hierarchy of journals is a dysfunction academics have to deal with. Do us the favor of not imposing elitist snobbery onto science.

By the way, Ketchum is not an academic, so inherent academic classicism offers her no career advancement benefit. She could likely have published long ago in another journal, and she could have been making presentations at conferences all this time, despite having submitted a draft to Nature or Science. I agree with you that her constant teases are unbecoming of a professional scientist. I believe the facts support my hypothesis that she is holding out for an elite journal out of ego and insecurity. I believe her sensational public relations blitz is also motivated by ego and insecurity.

The peer review process will hopefully result is a stronger paper.

Hopefully, but, unfortunately, the scientific method has demonstrated that it doesn't.

Let's pretend Ketchum posted her results on a web site instead of (hypothetically) sequencing the genome at the request of an "elite" journal. Wally Hersom would have saved some money at the expense of the conclusion being incomplete or even wrong. Someone might even steal the work, flesh it out and take the credit. The history of science is filled with people that didn't get their due.

No matter where one publishes someone "might even steal the work, flesh it out and take the credit." Publishing (anywhere) makes it difficult for others to claim credit for your work (unless the published it first); fleshing out the work of others is an integral step in the scientific method.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Pteronarcyd

[Guest]

@Mulder: Good on ya for a thorough plan. Sounds expensive though.

It probably would be. Note I said "in a perfect world" at the outset.

What's your plan for convincing the NSF that what sounds like a multi-million dollar investment over several years will result in transformatory science? For example this:

"At the end of the investigatory period, two reports would be prepared: 1) a historical report detailing the findings relating to the pre-existing evidence dataset at the onset of investigation. 2) a report summarizing the field research effort including both field notes and the analysis of any trace evidence obtained (if any) during the active investigation."

doesn't demonstrate a resolution. It doesn't detail how a new species would be described minus a specimen

Since we have hard evidence to examine already, on the "historical" side it is a matter of authenticating and describing the hard evidence already to hand in the proper format.

and, if no specimen is forthcoming, it doesn't demonstrate what's to be learned along the way.

What is to be learned is the authentication of the evidence to hand already, and the ending of the idologically rigid notion that only a "full type specimen" is sufficient to establish a species.

The NSF - or other agencies that would presumably be needed to pony up the cash for the effort you describe - don't take kindly to investing in research without a clear payoff.

The clear payoff is confirmation of the BF species to a degree that compels "mainstream" scientific acceptance.

More to the point, I still don't see demonstrated that what you're calling for is qualitatively different than what we have already.

It's hugely different, as it would be conducted by the "right people" under the "right conditions" to remove the typical Skeptic objections regarding poor credentials and procedures.

For example in Phase 1, do we really need a new analysis of historical accounts to tell us where bigfoots are supposed to be? Why not just go to the BFRO database and look into all the states with > 200 reports and start there? It's obvious that mature forests in CA, FL, OH, OR, and WA would be good places to start. You could also filter for the most recent encounters and for example look into southeastern Oklahoma or wherever the Smeja guy was supposed to have collected his "steak."

Only on a gross level. A full investigative analysis would go beyond the written content of the reports and examine things like time of day/year, elevation, temperature, habitat specifics, etc. In many reports, such information might have to be independently developed. The more detail that can be resolved and incorporated into the analysis, the more finely "tuned" the predictions would become.

It is not impossible that such a more rigorous analysis might yield a trend or pattern we have not yet discovered, leading to an entirely new idea of where, when and how to look.

Next you propose inserting small teams into hotspot areas, presumably to attempt habituations that can lead to the collection of physical evidence. We're led to believe that such contact has been made in TN, KY, OK, OR, VT, FL, and wherever Sasfooty lives (although she declines to describe her case as one of habituation if I recall). So that too is already/has been done. The difference you seem to be proposing is better training of the people involved, correct? The hope is that these teams you would deploy would be able to collect photographic evidence and hairs that could be analyzed. We have that now, don't we?

We do, but it is not accepted because the investigative parties are said to lack credentials and the reports are said to not meet professional standards.

The well-trained, credentialed teams I envision would remove those objections.

Next you propose laboratory teams of perhaps 5 different experts waiting on standby for forensic material to come in. I'm pretty sure we don't have that, but we certainly have had hairs, body impressions, footprint casts, and audio analyzed by experts in those fields. While in multiple high-profile cases the material has been determined to come from prosaic sources, some of that data remain of interest to some experts, e.g., Jeff Meldrum. But without people in the position to publish analyses of that data in mainstream journals willing to do so, there's no case being made outside of the "bigfoot community" that there's anything to that data.

It's a lot harder to dismiss the findings of a fully-credentialed, multidisciplinary team than it is that of a single professional researcher or small group of amateurs.

As I wrote years ago on the BFF 1.0, bigfoot doesn't go mainstream until bigfooters mainstream it.

That is exaclty what I propose. To put people in charge of the investigative effort who cannot be dismissed by the "mainstream" to dot all the "i"s and cross all the "t"s.

[Guest]

BFSleuth,

"Publish or perish" is different entirely from academic elitism and classicism that places journals in a hierarchy. The former is essential in science, because without dissemination of learned knowledge there is no science.

I don't recall hypothesizing that Ketchum is holding out for publication in an elite journal because of a big ego. I merely hypothesized she is motivated by ego and insecurity. It is more likely her choice is motivated by a weak ego. I did say I think big egos abound among academics, but Ketchum is not an academic. Note that Saskeptic claims to be comfortable publishing in non-elite journals. Such attitude may indicate a healthy ego.

Pt

[Guest BFSleuth]

Your hypothesis regarding ego and insecurity are noted. As one who studied psychology I have more than a passing familiarity with the terms. Do you have anything in terms of evidence to give some kind of foundation to your theory, or is this simply conjecture on your part?

[Guest]

Ego of academic personality vs a Micky D's drive thru worker....you might use a correlation scale of -1.0 to +1.0, or a basic 1-10 scale, but I'm gonna guess other factors will inevitably come into play such as physical appearance, area of academics, overall satisfaction with life in general, and of course socioeconomic background to name a few...all of this AFTER you've defined and quantified "ego".

I'd leave it to the psychologists to design the experiment. I'd be stunned to learn that they had no way to quantify ego; I do know they have a definition for it.

However, there appears to be no need to conduct my experiment, as you seem to be ceding my point that the ego of the average academician exceeds that of the average McDonald's drive-thru clerk.

By the way, correlation is not the proper metric to use in such an experiment.

Do you have anything in terms of evidence to give some kind of foundation to your theory, or is this simply conjecture on your part?

Mostly conjecture. I agree with Saskeptic (reluctantly -- what may be his well-ajusted ego may begin to inflate) that her sensationalistic behavior (e.g., FaceBook undertakings, the innumerable "soons") are not characteristic of a professional scientist. A weak ego (or a big one) could help to explain such anomalous behavior.

If you studied psychology in depth you likely required to participate in several on-campus experiments. Can you tell us how many electroshocks you received?

Ego is more generally associated with a specialized (and competitive) skill. Comparing academics against McDonald's employees is a stretch. A more appropriate comparison would be with surgeons, professional athletes, dot-com millionaires, NASCAR drivers, politicians or bigfoot researchers. If you could gauge ego, I think you'd find academics are no different than most people. In fact, I'd put them on the low end of the aforementioned examples.

Ego is specifically associated with being a living human. (There may be evidence of some sense of ego in one or more of the other great apes.)

Thank you for agreeing that it is obvious that the ego of the average academician is greater than that of the average McDonald's drive-thru worker. As such, there is no need to design and implement the experiment. See how much progress we can make when we agree!

I made no claims about average ego size of surgeons, pro atheletes, etc. But, in the spirit of our newfound era of agreement, I am happy to agree with you that they, too, tend to be inflated.

ated.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Pteronarcyd

[Guest Peter O.]

Good point Peter. Also, were there any peer reviewed journals published during Newton's time?

Well, with Einstein I was able to immediately remember the famous Brownian Motion paper, since it "put him on the map" so to speak, so I looked it up.

It seems that the first academic journal devoted solely to science (natural philosophy) was Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which began publishing in 1665. Thus it was contemporaneous with Newton. In fact, to quote Wikipedia, "Famous contributing authors include Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Charles Darwin." I haven't read the Principia, and I'm not familiar with its actual contents, but it seems that the explication of Newton's entire theory and his invention/discovery of the Calculus (at the same time as Leibniz of course) would require the longer book format rather than an article, so you can't really fault him on that one. Kant couldn't have published the Critique of Pure Reason in an article either.

I'd leave it to the psychologists to design the experiment. I'd be stunned to learn that they had no way to quantify ego; I do know they have a definition for it.

There's a Narcissism Scale, IIRC, as there is for other Axis II (personality) "tendencies". I think you're referring to something like that, since "ego strength" has nothing to do with self-inflation and is not problematic, in fact a desired quality of the properly developed individual. While we're on this subject, I'd like to point out that a lot of people in BFery would probably score high on schizotypy, thus rendering their experiences and conclusions a priori suspect.

-----

Anyway, it seems that what's needed is for some sort of committee to be convened and have them issue a consensus opinion of the weight of currently extant evidence. It could include Meldrum and others. Then the rest of the scientific world could either take it or leave it.

Except, that nobody in this "BF World" seems to deal openly enough for this to happen. Maybe something will come of this DNA paper? Though it seems less and less likely...

[bipedalist]

....While we're on this subject, I'd like to point out that a lot of people in BFery would probably score high on schizotypy, thus rendering their experiences and conclusions a priori suspect.

Uhhh.... I think you might want to qualify this statement a tad to those who are known hoaxer's and assclowns.

Otherwise, put up some research and citations to backup your broad and careless brushstrokes..... a good number of people on the forums are waiting, one way or the other......

Edited April 9, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest Peter O.]

Well, bipedalist, I wasn't referring to anyone or anything on this board, but I would consider those blobsquatch videos where people are reading faces and bodies into leaf and tree patterns to be evidence of high schizotypy. Or, take somebody like Tim Fasano, who always thinks anything he finds is somehow related to the skunk ape, when another person wouldn't think that at all.

Edit: Another example is the Sylvanic guy. Maybe he falls under the "asshat" category though ;-)

Edited April 9, 2012 by Peter O.

[Guest]

Off topic, but Einstein's first paper, on the Brownian motion, was published in Annalen der Physik in 1905. It may not have been a peer-reviewed journal in the modern sense of the word, but it was a respected journal nonetheless.

Which is why I carefully chose the words I did. But, thank you for playing.

No one could have published in a peer-reviewed journal in 1905. Such journals were not invented until the mid-20th century. As science grows exponentially, the demand for publication space increases. One enterprising overwhelmed journal editor decided to delegate the responibility of reading submissions and making recommendations for acceptance. In a stroke of marketing genius he called it "peer review" and claimed (without merit) that it enhanced quality and, thus, the prestige of his journal. Other journal editors soon followed, and gullible academics swallowed the story hook, line, and sinker. Besides, it offered to the academics the opportunity to be (supposedly prestigiou) peer reviewers, and peer reviewers, unlike editors, were granted anonymity. What a nice formula to foster corruption -- authority with no hint of responsibility. All because one editor was lazy.

Today academics promote the myth that peer review means quality, despite science showing otherwise. The myth gives them a sense of elitism and helps them keep the little people under control (keep those tax and tuition dollars coming in to gild the lilies on the ivory towers).

Buying into the marketing gimmick of peer review is as silly as buying into Procter & Gambles claim that Ivory Soap is so pure that it floats, another stroke of marketing genius that is also false. Ivory Soap floats because P&G whips a boat-load of air into each bar. If you buy into the myth you pay more for soap and get less.

[Guest Peter O.]

@Pteronarcyd: Yeah, I understand what you're getting at, and agree that that there are confounding factors to the ideal of science, including commercialism and pressure to publish. The ideal of science as the ultimate open source project isn't going to be met in real life.

@bipedalist: Please understand that I'm not saying anyone in Bigfootery is "crazy". Schizotypy is a personality tendency, like narcissism, antisocial behavior, depressive tendencies, etc. I myself would score high on schizoidy, for example.

[Guest]

As someone who's both benefited from and been burned by peer review, I'm yet to see someone describe a better process for evaluating the merit of a submitted manuscript.

Has some of my great work been rejected by peer reviewers I thought were biased/clueless/malcontents doing science a disservice through their dissing service? Yep, but you have the same problem with a single editor or even a standard editorial board calling all the shots. I'd prefer to take my chances with reviewers selected specifically because they have some familiarity with the kind of work I've done.

Does peer review improve scientific quality? Well, every paper I've published is better than the draft originally submitted. In my lab, every grad student's thesis has been immensely improved through the input of committee members.

What do I know though? I must be brainwashed in my Ivory soap tower or some such nonsense.

[bipedalist]

@ Peter O.

Nevertheless cognitive and/or perceptual distortions and delusions are inherent in the disorder you specify. I don't believe it is an appropriate analogue given the context..... perhaps you meant some other disorder.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Thank you for your clarification of your experience with the peer review process, Saskeptic. What was the longest time you took from initial submission to final publication?