The Ketchum Report

[Guest parnassus]

..... Even when the author has the release date they can't really reveal that until the date of the release of the embargo for journalists, usually the day of publication.

BF,

I get the feeling that this sort of material is posted over and over again, as if it came from some first hand knowledge, experience or reliable source; perhaps you can tell us where you got this "information," because it really actually sincerely totally completely (and repeatedly, I might add) doesn't square with my experience. What is your source/experience?

p.

Edited May 8, 2012 by parnassus

[Guest]

As a wildlife ecologist, I find their analysis quite damning regarding bigfoot. Through analysis of the spatial ecology of bigfoot sightings, they determined that the distribution of "bigfoot habitat" correlates very highly with the distribution of black bear habitat in the Pacific Northwest. They focused on the broad niche overlap that must be postulated between bigfoots and black bears, and which would be rather dubious given what we've learned about animal ecology.

Why would you find it surprising to find two different types of large-bodied mammalian omnivores adapted for a certain climate and terrain having a similar distribution mapping? Us lowly members of the "great unwashed" can understand that. It isn't "rocket science".

[JDL]

Are you saying Bigfoot kills the bears? and eats them, to clear a space for it's bigfoot family? The bear hunters wouldn't like that, or the researchers studying bear mortality, and probably the local PEOPLE would not take kindly to a sudden drop in their local bear populations. Humans hunt bears with guns and bows, every year, they kill a certain percentage of bears in a given area, and every year the bear populations come back, and they get hunted again the next year. That is called a sustainable resource, and the DNR officials here in Michigan would NOT take kindly to some GIANT hairy monster coming into their management areas and destroying a valuable and sustainable resource.

Maybe we seldom find dead bears in the woods beause:

A. They die in their dens overwinter

B. A hunter takes his dead bear with them

C. When a bear gets hit by a car, the bear is not in the woods, it is on a road.

D. We aren't looking hard enough http://www.flickr.co...ian/1959124979/

E. There are no (zero) studies showing that the cause of just one dead bear is sasquatch predation. Search google for "Bear mortality causes" you will not find one journal article that says 'eaten by unknown animal', or 'eaten by bigfoot'.

Hmm.... I was half joking.

Let's assume squatch drive bear away when they're a nuisance - Safe bet.

Let's say that on occassion a squatch actually kills a bear in defense of its young, or for other reasons, or comes across a fresh bear carcass - Not too much of a stretch.

It is possible that the squatch takes advantage of the carcass (as a food source, Drew) - 50/50, maybe they don't like bear meat, or bear liver - maybe they do.

I'm not saying squatch hunt bear. Bear have a habit of defending themselves and have some natural armaments, so from the squatch's perspective, though they would likely win out over a black bear nineteen out of twenty times, they may also get injured nineteen out of twenty times. Injury is life-threatening, so we can assume that squatch are smart enough not to wrestle with bears as a matter of course. From the average bear's perspective a full grown squatch isn't worth messing with any more than a human, but there are probably exceptions, just as with humans.

In my comments above, I had pictured the exception of a bear attacking the squatch, not the other way around. In such an encounter, the adult squatch likely prevails, and a prevailing squatch that is injured loses.

I would expect a squatch to use threat displays and thrown objects against bear rather than physical assault.

But I wouldn't put it past a squatch to take advantage of a windfall bear carcass. Thus my bemused suggestion that squatch dispose of the dead bears before we can find them. I did expect the suggestion to elicit response.

[Guest]

E. There are no (zero) studies showing that the cause of just one dead bear is sasquatch predation. Search google for "Bear mortality causes" you will not find one journal article that says 'eaten by unknown animal', or 'eaten by bigfoot'.

Which does not mean that does not happen.

Has it ever occurred to any of your ecological "experts" that by definition, that the ecology of any area where sasquatches are present already reflects that presence? Ther would be no discernible "upset to the balance" because there is no upset to the balance to begin with.

[JDL]

Which does not mean that does not happen.

Has it ever occurred to any of your ecological "experts" that by definition, that the ecology of any area where sasquatches are present already reflects that presence? Ther would be no discernible "upset to the balance" because there is no upset to the balance to begin with.

Would these be the experts that either can't find a squatch or are presumably too timid to admit that they've encountered a squatch?

[Drew]

Which does not mean that does not happen.

Has it ever occurred to any of your ecological "experts" that by definition, that the ecology of any area where sasquatches are present already reflects that presence? Ther would be no discernible "upset to the balance" because there is no upset to the balance to begin with.

You don't think an ecologist trying to figure out how his tagged bear died, would try to figure out what killed it?

Surely some of these must come back, 'Beaten by Giant Upright Primate', I mean they can tell if the bear was killed by another bear, or by a cougar, why don't any of those studies say 'Beaten atop the head by giant fists of a Bigfoot'?

[Guest Crowlogic]

I am very troubled that Ketchum is claiming to have sightings. Now all of my confidence in the Ketchum Report has been 100% shattered. IMO repeat/frequent sightings are the most suspect of all kinds of sightings. Has anyone ever produced a single shred of verifiable evidence that there is anything to those kinds of claims? Good photo, video will suffice but I fear it'll remain just as it is now....Null Set.

[Cotter]

Has there been additional claims of sightings?

Or are you referring to the previous comments made?

However, if there is indeed a habituation sight where these creatures were being studied and samples being taken, I personally don't find it hard to believe that multiple sightings could occur.

Now, if there are claims they are just going out randomly and having sightings.....well....

[JDL]

You don't think an ecologist trying to figure out how his tagged bear died, would try to figure out what killed it?

Surely some of these must come back, 'Beaten by Giant Upright Primate', I mean they can tell if the bear was killed by another bear, or by a cougar, why don't any of those studies say 'Beaten atop the head by giant fists of a Bigfoot'?

Ahhh, but such a bear would likely never be found, assuming the bigfoot throws it over its shoulder and carries it home for dinner.

You would have to prove to me that such a carcass could be found before I will accept arguments to the effect that one cannot be found.

[Guest]

We have evidence of a young Australopithecine who was killed by an eagle about 2.5 million years ago. Meanwhile, bigfoots are preying on black bears but we have no physical evidence of such a thing ever happening. Makes sense to me!

[Guest]

Two things, Mulder:

You mis-attributed that last quote to Saskeptic when I was the one that said "There IS evidence against the existence of bigfoot."

Anyone can quote off of a website, Sas...the question I asked was not for a recitation of some website or CV. I asked who these people are. Under what authority do they claim the franchise to "determine" what exists and what doesn't? What professional standards are used to judge whether those doing the "determining" are qualified, and who reviews their work? Are they answerable to any outside authority?

...

What I am seeing is a self-appointed group that has claimed without basis the authority to determine if an animal exists or not based on standards that they themselves have devised and that they themselves administer. They are accountable to no one, answerable to no one. There is no mechanism for appealing their verdict or having it overturned. There is no outside oversight to check their power.

I agree, it would have been nice for Saskeptic to save you all that work from clicking on links and discovering information for yourself, but if you'd just clicked the "About the ICZN" link you would have found a nice set of answers to your questions:

The Commission

The Commission currently comprises 28 members from 19 countries. The work of the Commission is supported by a small Secretariat based at the Natural History Museum in London.

The Commission operates in two main ways:

• ICZN publishes the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature containing the rules universally accepted as governing the application of scientific names to all organisms which are treated as animals.
  
• ICZN provides rulings on individual nomenclatural problems brought to its attention, in order to achieve internationally acceptable solutions and stability.
  

How it works

Several million species of animals are recognised, and more than 2000 new genus names and 15,000 new species names are added to the zoological literature every year. With so many names, problems are bound to occur. The Commission operates through its quarterly journal, the Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature, in which problems needing a formal decision by the Commission are published for discussion by the zoological community.

The Commission is mandated by its scientific membership of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), and members are elected by zoologists attending General Assemblies of IUBS or other international congresses. Casual vacancies may be filled between congresses. Nominations for membership may be sent to the ICZN Secretariat at any time.

All the bolding is mine.

So you can see it is certainly not "self-appointed," and they don't submit to their "self-appointed standards". Nor are they "accountable to no one, answerable to no one" and there IS "outside oversight to check their power." The outside oversight is the zoological community at large. Now I predict your counter-argument will be to claim the zoological community at large is, itself, biased, "part of the club," "insiders", or, in other words:

basic Skeptical hokum.

(See how that works?)

I think we all can agree that nothing is perfect, everything has room for improvement. If you can think up a better way to regulate and determine zoological nomenclature than a group of individuals elected by zoologists across the world, I would be happy to hear it. Perhaps you think yourself and the general public should also be involved in any contentious zoological issues? And maybe every time you go to the doctor for an illness, we can involve every Joe Blow on the street who's been to WebMD.com. Because you see, Mulder, while you continually claim that "appeal to authority" is always a fallacy, that in and of itself is fallacious.

From Wikipedia:

The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:^[1][2]

1. The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.
   
2. A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.
   

If you don't think the zoological community are legitimate experts on their subject, then I don't think we have much to talk about. That really is like saying, "Doctors are arbitrary arbiters over medical knowledge."

[JDL]

C'mon Sas, I'm just highlighting the absurdity of two groups arguing past each other.

Besides, if a naturalist did find a pummeled bear, their first assumption would likely be that another bear had done the damage, on closer inspection they might, upon noting the lack of claw and fang wounds, state that the death was due to unknown causes. It would never be chalked up to bigfoot unless bigfoot were considered a possibility to begin with.

[TimB]

It looks like the ICZN is a great way to catalog the kinds of animals that are already being cataloged there.

Tim B.

[bipedalist]

She doesn't have control of the release date. The journal has control of that. Even when the author has the release date they can't really reveal that until the date of the release of the embargo for journalists, usually the day of publication.

For some reason I thought the embargo window for journalists was 24 hr.s in advance of release to the public or even one week?

[Guest]

Who and where are all the credible PHD's and co-authors of this supposed paper and why are they not clamoring that this is the real deal and going to happen?

Good question. You would expect the science atmosphere to be be charged with electric anticipation and loud rumor buzz if university department heads and credible scientists in relevant disciplines have joined with Dr. Ketchum to give serious credence to the existence of Bigfoot, NDAs or no NDAs.

Yet, the story of the paper is still flying below the public radar.