The Ketchum Report

[Guest Blackdog]

Proponents didn't start this, Ray...Skeptics did by posting that Nature had rejected the paper, and you kept bringing it up time after time after time.

Which skeptic posted that Nature rejected the paper? Quotes with links please.

[JDL]

Nope...LOL! Just following directives.... and my apologies to the General for not comming up with a better word...

http://bigfootforums.com/index.php?/topic/10951-june-thru-december-2011-sc-actionsbusiness/page__pid__129080#entry129080

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Euphemisms are always fun. Instead of relating the relative positions of one's head and hiney, I prefer the term "aperture impaired" for those whose view of the world is necessarily restricted by the requirement to look out at it through their navel.

[southernyahoo]

This "crap" you refer to is me pointing out an error in your characterization of the origin of Henry Gee's opinion of cryptids, offering you the opportunity to do the honorable thing and apologize to the BFF for that error, and confirming that the petulant "No I won't" reply you offered really was the display of character you wanted to stick with.

There's crap here alright, folks . . .

I have now answered that question twice. This third time, my answer remains the same, but I'll expand a bit if it helps.

I just did a bit of checking on acceptance rates for Nature. Of all the manuscripts submitted, about 2/3 are rejected out of hand. This is "handed back" - these are not sent out for review at all. They are winnowed out by the editorial staff. Note that people generally submit their highest quality research to this journal, so that's thousands of manuscripts each year, written by really smart people who think the work is really important, that never even make it to being considered for review.

Of the 1/3 or so that do get reviewed, only about 1/4 will ultimately get published. According to, you know, Nature, the journal received 10,287 submissions in 2010 and published 809 of those papers, for a roughly 8% acceptance rate. So basically to get published in this journal, your submission must be better than 92% of the best work of the best scientists in the world.

So here's a great example of your lack of critical thinking on this issue, Mulder. Rather than going to the source for actual data to provide a better understanding, you prefer to lob thinly veiled insults at myself and other skeptical BFF members to the effect that somehow we are the reason Dr. Ketchum hasn't published her paper in Nature. We've trumped up Henry Gee's willingness to consider cryptid submissions as one of our diabolical skeptical tactics to keep the world from learning about bigfoot (or something like that - I'm having a hard time figuring out what you really think is the problem here, given that I've already illustrated that our perceptions of Gee's willingness to consider crypto-papers comes from Gee himself.) If you had taken a moment to actually learn something about this journal, you'd have seen for yourself that Nature rejects over 90% of its submissions. Given that information, why on earth would anyone assume that a manuscript submitted there would, indeed, be published?

Of course, it gets stranger still . . .

On what basis would you assume this, given that we don't even know if a manuscript was submitted there?

On what basis do you know that such a paper (if it exists at all) "passed on its technical merits?" What does that phrase even mean?

I'm glad you won't be holding your breath because I have not made any claims about the contents of peer review evaluations of a manuscript submission that I am not even convinced exists.

If Dr. Ketchum prepared such a manuscript, submitted it to Nature, and had it rejected, then she would have received a written explanation for the journal explaining why. If that's the case, she's free to share that information with whomever she likes. I don't understand why people choose to wind their panties in knots over bits and pieces of "leaked" information, the veracity of which is not at all established.

I have to wonder if Henry G. would have been the one to recieve the mauscript for consideration since there is 10,000 plus manuscripts to poor through. Wouldn't a novel and groundbreaking discovery such as an uncataloged primate in north america get some sort of special attention?

[Guest RayG]

Fair comments, all.

I certainly don't hold that, but our Skeptical bretheren seem to be touting the notion that "rejection" = "worthless" AND still won't pony up any evidence that any crit received had any scientific validity.

I suggest you are mistaken, at least with this skeptical brethren. First, what evidence is there that the report was even submitted to a scientific journal? Second, where/when have I ever indicated that rejection = worthless? Third, here's the steps required for publication in the scientific journal Nature. I thought I had posted those steps here in point form a short while ago, but if I did they have mysteriously vanished. If I didn't, then I should have, and I'm suffering from some sort of confusion. Here's part of what they say about acceptance or rejection:

Proponents didn't start this, Ray...Skeptics did by posting that Nature had rejected the paper, and you kept bringing it up time after time after time.

They did? I did?

RayG

[Guest Jodie]

I thought that rumor originated with Lindsay, the skeptics are more than welcome to claim him IMO.

[Guest]

I have a copy, but I'ld have to dig it up at this late hour. It'll wait until the am, but basically, I think I remember him thinking they were some kind of human. I don't know if he wrote that before or after sequencing started. I don't put much faith into what he says either way. The DNA will speak for itself, and hopefully soon.

I'm thinking Paulides had sample DNA sequenced before the involvement of Ketchum and he includes it in Tribal Bigfoot. While I agree we can not have ""faith" in Paulides (he seems not too zoologically astute to me), he obviously has a working relationship (indeed, initiated by him) with Ketchum and says he hand picked her for her open mindedness and ability to figure things out on her own.

I'm suggesting Paulides' views are a prequel, so to speak, to the anticipated DNA report. I just don't see him continuing his human Bigfoot crusade if his views will be undermined by Ketchum's report.

Dang--- I wished I had spent my hard earned money on Tribal Bigfoot instead of the Hoopa Project. TB seems more relevant to the current situation.

I thought that rumor originated with Lindsay, the skeptics are more than welcome to claim him IMO.

No thanks. The guy is as anti-skeptic as some folks here.

[Guest slimwitless]

Lindsay claimed the paper was submitted to Nature last February. It was Matt Moneymaker that claimed the paper was "handed back" by Nature.

Someone on this forum reported the paper was rejected by the first journal but was likely to pass the second after revisions.

Melba Ketchum said the paper was not with the Nature group in early November.

Mix all that in a blender and you end up with a delicious frothy beverage with just a faint hint of truthiness.

[Guest Blackdog]

And somehow Mulder blames the skeptics for starting it?

Maybe he'll use the same logic he used with Saskeptic to make his case.

[Guest slimwitless]

I'm suggesting Paulides' views are a prequel, so to speak, to the anticipated DNA report. I just don't see him continuing his human Bigfoot crusade if his views will be undermined by Ketchum's report.

Paulides likely believes anything in the genus Homo is human. That may be true for Ketchum as well. We'll see.

[Guest parnassus]

I thought that rumor originated with Lindsay, the skeptics are more than welcome to claim him IMO.

I believe you are correct; no we don't want him.

my only post regarding Nature was that it was not considering any such paper.

[Incorrigible1]

Mix all that in a blender and you end up with a delicious frothy beverage with just a faint hint of truthiness.

Jimmy Buffet should put this posting to song.

[southernyahoo]

I'm thinking Paulides had sample DNA sequenced before the involvement of Ketchum and he includes it in Tribal Bigfoot. While I agree we can not have ""faith" in Paulides (he seems not too zoologically astute to me), he obviously has a working relationship (indeed, initiated by him) with Ketchum and says he hand picked her for her open mindedness and ability to figure things out on her own.

I'm suggesting Paulides' views are a prequel, so to speak, to the anticipated DNA report. I just don't see him continuing his human Bigfoot crusade if his views will be undermined by Ketchum's report.

Dang--- I wished I had spent my hard earned money on Tribal Bigfoot instead of the Hoopa Project. TB seems more relevant to the current situation.

No thanks. The guy is as anti-skeptic as some folks here.

I take it that you now have the book "Tribal Bigfoot " Jerry? If so , then you should find two letters from the lab he was using. He doesn't give the name, but it does suggest that he was working with Dr. Ketchum as early as the fall of 2008.

If you've listened to the interview done on Coast to Coast radio with both Paulides and Dr.K , you should be able to confirm that the letters are from Dr. Ketchum.

Paulides has never hidden his views that bigfoot is not a bipedal Gorrila, or how he arrived at that opinion prior to any DNA results.

[Guest]

I have to wonder if Henry G. would have been the one to recieve the mauscript for consideration since there is 10,000 plus manuscripts to poor through. Wouldn't a novel and groundbreaking discovery such as an uncataloged primate in north america get some sort of special attention?

1) Every one of those thousands of hopeful authors considers their work novel and groundbreaking.

2) Just because a paper addresses a topic that we might agree is novel and groundbreaking doesn't mean that the paper itself is either of those things. It could be mind-numbing and unintelligible.

3) You've taken the largest "if" I could find in the fonts - which begins with if such a paper was written at all - and you're speculating about who specifically made the editorial decision on it at Nature? There are many editors at Nature and they tend to specialize on reviewing papers on a rather narrow set of themes. That said, if Dr. Ketchum analyzed some alleged bigfoot tissue and if her analysis suggested that the tissue contained a genetic signature indicating a new extant hominin in North America and if she prepared a manuscript of that analysis and if she submitted that manuscript to the journal Nature . . . then I can't see any way Henry Gee would not personally have read that manuscript. It'd be right up his alley. I don't know how to state this more clearly though: Until such time that Ketchum herself chooses to make public her original manuscript and a written decision letter from Nature addressing that specific manuscript, then there is no assurance of the accuracy of what people think might be happening with this saga.

4) What sort of "special attention" would you recommend the flagship journal Nature apply to this alleged manuscript that would be in keeping with the journal's demanding standards for publication?

What I'm seeing in this thread is classic wishful thinking. People want so badly for Ketchum to publish a paper on bigfoot DNA that they've given themselves over to all manner of invented scenarios to explain the "delay" in its publication. Without seeing the paper itself, I have no reason to believe one exists at all. Most likely one does, and it's probably even been submitted to Nature, but none of us KNOW this to be the case. More to the point though, it seems that because this paper would ostensibly be about bigfoot then a lot of folks assume that it must be an awesome paper. That's a non-sequitur: the topic does not dictate the quality of the work. It could be a truly crappy and unpublishable paper. It could also be a very well written and prepared paper based on a fatally flawed analysis. Why is the first assumption that there's some kind of bias in on the part of the journal, rather than that there was some kind of flaw with the paper? I really don't get the reactions I've read over these past few pages.

[Guest]

+1 from me Saskeptic.

[Guest]

What I'm seeing in this thread is classic wishful thinking. People want so badly for Ketchum to publish a paper on bigfoot DNA that they've given themselves over to all manner of invented scenarios to explain the "delay" in its publication. Without seeing the paper itself, I have no reason to believe one exists at all. Most likely one does, and it's probably even been submitted to Nature, but none of us KNOW this to be the case. More to the point though, it seems that because this paper would ostensibly be about bigfoot then a lot of folks assume that it must be an awesome paper. That's a non-sequitur: the topic does not dictate the quality of the work. It could be a truly crappy and unpublishable paper. It could also be a very well written and prepared paper based on a fatally flawed analysis. Why is the first assumption that there's some kind of bias in on the part of the journal, rather than that there was some kind of flaw with the paper? I really don't get the reactions I've read over these past few pages.

If you were to have an experience with such an animal, an observation of length, say a couple of minutes at a relativity close distance and perhaps some interaction , but you were unable to obtain plausible proof of the incident, and all you had was your experience , would that make you a believer or would you entertain the Idea that you were hallucinating during the experience ?

Edited December 30, 2011 by zigoapex