Claim: New HD video Shows Bigfoot

[NorCal Dave]

It seems the world champion Hide-n-Seek player in the bipedal hominid (non-human) category is in the news again. This time its new compelling footage and DNA news about the big fella. Or at least that's how it popped up a number of news feeds of friends and family who shared it with me. Turns out to be a recycled news story form October 2013 near as I can tell, but it does sound compelling:

Experts analyze new Bigfoot footage - CBS News

WebOct 2, 2013 · Experts analyze new Bigfoot footage A group of scientists gathered in Dallas to reveal new HD video that they say is proof the legendary creature Bigfoot exists. Sharrie Williams reports.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/experts-analyze-new-bigfoot-footage/#x


I was going to just pass on it, but if it's popping up on news feeds, pointing out that its from 10 years ago and that nothing ever came of this press release, which is what it was, should be sufficient but a bit of an explanation is in order.

This is actually one of Dr. Melba Ketchum press events that makes up this "news" story. We covered her a bit in our thread (linked below) on the Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot from the '60s, but that thread ran out to 13 pages and the Ketchum reference was just a small blurb on page 6, so a review is needed.

Without getting too deep, Dr. Melba Ketchum was a Texas based veterinarian that specialized in forensic science. She helped identify diseases in large animals like horses. In the mid '00s she beagain to collect what she thought was Bigfoot DNA samples and having them tested. In 2012 she announced what she had discovered:

After what The Huffington Post described as "a five-year study of purported Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch) DNA samples",[194] but prior to peer review of the work, DNA Diagnostics, a veterinary laboratory headed by veterinarian Melba Ketchum issued a press release on November 24, 2012, claiming that they had found proof that the Sasquatch "is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot#Melba_Ketchum_press_release

@Sharon Hill covered Ketchum and her paper for The Skeptical Inquirer back in 2013 and it's a good read. She notes who Ketchum is and how she got started in Bigfootery:

Who is Melba Ketchum? She is a veterinarian who graduated from Texas A&M veterinary school. She did not complete a PhD.2 While not an academic, she
runs her own genetics lab and has been a coauthor on several published papers but never a lead author.3

The Ketchum story begins in 2008 when her lab was picked to analyze a suspected Bigfoot/yeti hair from Bhutan collected as part of Josh Gates's adventure
show, Destination Truth, which airs on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. Ketchum appeared twice on the show, in 2009 and 2010 (Season 3 numbers
9 and 12), as a forensic analyst. She then became one of the "go to" people for those who had collected DNA samples that they thought might be from a
Bigfoot.5

Ketchum would appear on Coast to Coast AM and described her idea of what a Bigfoot was, mostly human and even tried to get a copywrite of sorts for the idea. An idea her paper would later confirm (bold by me):

With the Destination Truth samples of 2008 apparently the primer for her interest in the subject, in August of 2010, Dr. Ketchum disclosed on the Coast to Coast AM radio program that she had a scientific paper in the works.17 The forthcoming paper provided an excuse for her to avoid discussing the results at the time. However, in the fall of 2010, Ketchum was doing additional interviews about her work.18 Ideas about Bigfoot being a type of human were already formed by other Bigfoot researchers.

A copyright filing in her name dated September of 2010 described a media project related to "a new tribe of living humans." The theme of a book or video was to be "Sasquatch as a modern human with some genetic mutations accounting for their physical appearance."19 This copyright notice foreshadowed the results of her DNA study stating that the project would describe "complete Sasquatch
mitochondrial genome sequence and nuclear DNA variations." Ketchum later brushed aside the notice saying it never came to fruition.20 But, this idea also
corresponded to hypotheses proposed by David Paulides in his book Tribal Bigfoot published in 2009.

After being unable to get an academic publisher to take her study, it appeared in the Vol. 1, Issue 1 of the journal DeNovo. It was the only paper in that issue and the only issue ever published:

On February 12, 2013, Ketchum commented on social media outlets "Buckle up!" and the next day, the paper appeared along with a new press release.49

The study, "Novel North American Hominins, Next Generation Sequencing of Three Whole Genomes and Associated Studies," which analyzed DNA from a total of
111 high-quality samples submitted from across the continent, appeared in the inaugural issue of DeNovo: Journal of Science (http://www.denovojournal.com) of February 13. The coauthors were: Ketchum, P.W. Wojtkiewicz, A.B. Watts, D.W. Spence, A.K. Holzenburg, D.G. Toler, T.M. Prychitko, F.
Zhang, S. Bollinger, R. Shoulders, and R. Smith.

DeNovo appeared to be owned by Ketchum:

Instead of continuing to shop the paper to other sources, she decided to acquire the rights to this unnamed journal,50 suspected to be the Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Exploration in Zoology. Looking into the history of that journal, investigators found it was registered under Ketchum's name on January 9, 2013. This led to serious ethical questions about self-publishing.50

The DeNovo website was created on February 4, 2013, just nine days prior to the release of the paper. Ketchum claims to have documentation of the prior reviews and from the acquisition of
the new journal. These, and any information on which journals previously rejected the paper, have not yet been released.

https://skepticalinquirer.org/newsl...ct-what-to-believe-about-bigfoot-dna-science/

As for the paper, Dr. John Timmer took a look at it for Ars Technica ,also a good read, here's his CV:

John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. John has done over a decade's worth of research in genetics and developmental biology at places like Cornell Medical College and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

He noted Ketchum's previously copywritten conclusions:

The paper itself is an odd mix of things. There's a variety of fairly standard molecular techniques mixed in with a bit of folklore and a link to a YouTube video that reportedly shows a sleeping Sasquatch. In some ways, the conclusions of the paper are even odder than the video. They suggest that bigfeet aren't actually an unidentified species of ape as you might have assumed. Instead, the paper claims that bigfeet are hybrids, the product of humans interbreeding with a still unknown species of hominin.

But:

But my initial analysis suggested that the "genome sequence" was an artifact, the product of a combination of contamination, degradation, and poor assembly methods. And every other biologist I showed it to reached the same conclusion.

Timmer spoke with Ketchum, and she disagreed:

Ketchum was completely adamant that contamination wasn't a possibility. "We had two different forensics labs extract these samples, and they all turned out non-contaminated, because forensics scientists are experts in contamination. We see it regularly, we know how to deal with mixtures, whether it's a mixture or a contaminated sample, and we certainly know how to find it. And these samples were clean."

Without getting into the weeds, Timmer suggests Ketchum's team drew radical conclusions from likely contaminated samples because they refused to admit contamination was possible:

On the face of it, there's simply no way to make sense of this—the European and African DNA, the recent time frame for its arrival, the fact that there must have been so many interbreedings.... The obvious interpretation is that the samples were all from humans or contaminated with human DNA, which nicely explains the diversity and modernity of the sequences.

But remember, to Ketchum, that possibility had been ruled out. In the absence of the obvious, her team went with a far less obvious suggestion: sometime during the last glacial period, a diverse group of Europeans and Africans got together and wandered across the vast empty spaces of the Greenland ice sheet and found themselves in North America.

Timmer ultimately says Ketchum got lots of weird results from degraded and contaminated samples and then forced the results into her already pre-conceived theory of human like creatures running around in the forest. Creatures she told him she has seen:

There's groups of people called habituators. They have them living around their property. And they interact with them, but they're highly secretive because one, people think they're crazy when they say they interact with bigfoot—and I prefer Sasquatch by the way, but bigfoot's easier to say. Finally a group of them came by and said "you want to see 'em? we'll take you and show you." And they did. The clan I was around was used to people and they were just very, very easy to be around—they're real curious about us, and they'd come and look at us, and we'd look at them.

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...-bigfoot-genome-and-the-woman-who-created-it/

So, a blast from the past. Hill's article sums up the media circus leading up to and after the paper was published along with some of Ketchum's inter-related businesses. Timmer covers the results of the paper itself and how they got it wrong.

Patterson-Gimlin film thread:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/patterson-gimlin-bigfoot-film-is-a-hoax.12254

 

[Scaramanga]

I increasingly think this site should have a forum called ' I Know What I Saw', which would cover all the multiple instances where human eyes seem to be able to capture amazing stuff that eternally evades good photography or video. Of course, the implication being that the vast majority of the time people really haven't a clue what they saw.

And the thing is, the entire bigfoot phenomenon really only exists due to the 'I know what I saw' trope. In 50 years we don't have a single verifiable photo....not a trace of DNA...no dead bigfoots or bigfoot bones.

To me that does not make the bigfoot phenomenon useless. On the contrary it makes bigfoot a supreme example of how we cannot trust claims of 'I know what I saw', and just how easily fooled people are by their own eyes.

 

[Mendel]

I increasingly think this site should have a forum called ' I Know What I Saw', which would cover all the multiple instances where human eyes seem to be able to capture amazing stuff that eternally evades good photography or video.

It's called "Rambles". Claims with no evidence have no place on Metabunk—they're undebunkable anyway.

 

[Scaramanga]

It's called "Rambles". Claims with no evidence have no place on Metabunk—they're undebunkable anyway.

I think my point was more that so many sightings of this or that are accompanied with a claim of 'I know what I saw'. James Fox even made a documentary called just that. To me that is a claim of evidence, as it basically an assertion that the witness is so good at identifying things that their testimony alone holds weight. Of course we know that is nonsense, but that is how 'eyewitnesses' see things, and the entire 'I know what I saw' trope has become more prevalent of late and really needs tackling as a thing in its own right.

 

[Sharon Hill]

So are you saying the "Matilda" footage is circulating again? Can you supply the source of who is promoting it?

 

[NorCal Dave]

So are you saying the "Matilda" footage is circulating again? Can you supply the source of who is promoting it?

My bad for actually skipping the main claim, the video. Once I watched the piece, it hardly showed the video and was more about Ketchum's claims. I knew I had linked to Timmer's article in another thread and after finding that I found your article and went that way.

My son sent it to me this morning as it popped up on his Google News feed. He is an Anthropologist, so maybe some AI that curates his news thought this was "Anthropolical". It popped right up when I Googled it. The story is from CBS news, or at least one of their affiliates in Texas.

So, it may be that no one person is promoting it, rather various algorithms are just recycling it for particular audiences.

It's interesting that the story is from October of '13, so a few months after Timmer and many others had raised serious concerns about the paper. Perhaps as you pointed out before, she just went straight for science by press release.

For others, here is a version of the "Matilda" footage supposedly of a sleeping Bigfoot. It could be anything from a sleeping sheep to an animated carpet, but this is what Ketchum used when she promoted her paper even including a link to some version of it in the paper:


Source: https://youtu.be/qzU5Wei6Neo


Also, Melba Ketchum maintains her own website, but it now seems to just be about her collection of novels that seem to be a Bigfoot version of the Twilight series. All of the links in blue are dead (404):

https://melbaketchum.com/

 

[MonkeeSage]

This is actually one of Dr. Melba Ketchum press events that makes up this "news" story. We covered her a bit in our thread (linked below) on the Patterson-Gimlin film of Bigfoot from the '60s, but that thread ran out to 13 pages and the Ketchum reference was just a small blurb on page 6, so a review is needed.

Thanks for the excellent review!

Creatures she told him she has seen:

There's groups of people called habituators. They have them living around their property. And they interact with them, but they're highly secretive because one, people think they're crazy when they say they interact with bigfoot—and I prefer Sasquatch by the way, but bigfoot's easier to say. Finally a group of them came by and said "you want to see 'em? we'll take you and show you." And they did. The clan I was around was used to people and they were just very, very easy to be around—they're real curious about us, and they'd come and look at us, and we'd look at them.

I knew the basics about Ketchum's paper but I wasn't aware she had claimed out hang out with some of the bigfeets/hybrids, yikes.


Also, I was aware of David Paulides from the "Missing 411" conspiracy theory and I knew he was into bigfoot, but I had no idea he was so involved with Ketchum's paper from the start. I found these posts on his bigfoot blog here: https://www.nabigfootsearch.com/bigfootblog.html

Blog #99 Coast to Coast

"Tribal Bigfoot is one of the best books on bigfoot that I have ever read", George Knapp, Host, Coast to Coast AM, 8/30/10

NABS would first like to thanks George Knapp from Coast to Coast AM for an outstanding segment with David Paulides and Dr. Melba Ketchum the morning of 8/31/10. George's professional demeanor, preparation and interview skills make him the consummate professional, thank you George!

NABS is starting to move more into the mainstream of media and public view. You will start to see us taking a prominent role on issues involving bigfoot, sasquatch and wild man issues. The promises we made 6 years ago are coming to fruition and we will celebrate many of those with you in the coming weeks.

On 8/30/10 NABS Executive Director David Paulides was on "Coast to Coast AM" with host George Knapp. This was David's third appearance of Coast to Coast and thanks to Mr. Knapp, NABS released some interesting information regarding their DNA study. We announced that we have been working for the last 2 years with DNA Diagnostics and they were our partners on a comprehensive DNA study of bigfoot/sasquatch genetics. The direct or of the lab, Dr. Melba Ketchum was interviewed the second hour of the show and answered questions about research, DNA and the obstacles incurred by the study. She explained that she has a scientific team assembled of other noted PhD's and they will culminate their research with a scientific white paper, submission to a journal and a press conference.

Six years ago NABS started our journey with a business plan, a specific itinerary of what we would attempt to accomplish. We had NO aspirations of making this a career or lifelong adventure. This was and is not a hobby of our people; it is a full time job. That full time job has allowed us to understand and see issues inside this world that many have either ignored or not observed. Our plan has continued to evolve with each success.

[...]

Blog #102 "Alone We Equal Controversy, Together We Make History"

[...]

The first physical specimens that NABS accumulated took us to the next phase of our plan, sending these samples to a noted expert and working with them towards scientific identification? Where do we take these specimens, who can we trust and who will work with us? We started calling a few select labs, professors and scholars and obtained a list of professionals that had the knowledge and background to give the topic a reasonable chance at success. One candidate immediately came to the top of the list as a proven leader, Dr. Melba Ketchum. Dr. Ketchum has a background in veterinary medicine, is a Moody Scholar and has applied herself to the study of DNA and genetic research. She routinely testifies in the Superior Courts as a DNA expert. Dr. Ketchum is a valuable member of the team and someone who has continually shown her patience dealing with a wide variety of personalities and personal motives. Dr. Ketchum had no idea of the personalities that existed in the bigfoot world until she embarked on this DNA research project, she is now well versed! Dr. Ketchum has more knowledge about bigfoot/ sasquatch and yeti DNA then any other scientific professional in the world and this was obtained through years of perfecting and understanding the techniques of extracting and categorizing associated DNA.

When NABS sent Dr. Ketchum our first hair sample she started the long-term process of attempting to extract DNA. Other people had sent samples to Dr Ketchum with the claim they were from bigfoot, but these samples had always later been identified as a possum, raccoon, etc. The NABS sample was the first specimen that actually intrigued Dr. Ketchum because of the unusual findings that were generated.

NABS continued to extend an invitation for other groups to participate in our study and slowly, very slowly others started to bring their evidence as people read about our study. We now have several parties involved in the research with a variety of backgrounds and professional expertise. The ability to work together, develop synergy and to understand that, "alone we equal controversy, together we make history" will be the bigfoot statement of success.

In the near future the world will be privy to a multi level release of facts that will change the way people perceive the bigfoot/sasquatch/yeti topic. It is the ability for groups to work together and for people to apply their expertise from different professional backgrounds, it is this synergy that will bring the world the biggest bigfoot news since the PG film.

Etc.

 

[JMartJr]

"In the near future the world will be privy to a multi level release of facts that will change the way people perceive the bigfoot/sasquatch/yeti topic."

Interesting to see the "Full Disclosure is Coming Real Soon Now" meme is a thing in Bigfoot fandom as well.

PS: Sorry for incorrect formatting, my phone does not like the MB website controls this morning...

 

[NorCal Dave]

but I had no idea he was so involved with Ketchum's paper from the start

Nice find MonkeeSage. Paulides' blog puts a bit of a different spin on the Ketchum paper. He suggests it was his program and he brought her into it as the DNA specialist:

NABS released some interesting information regarding their DNA study. We announced that we have been working for the last 2 years with DNA Diagnostics and they were our partners on a comprehensive DNA study of bigfoot/sasquatch genetics

We started calling a few select labs, professors and scholars and obtained a list of professionals that had the knowledge and background to give the topic a reasonable chance at success. One candidate immediately came to the top of the list as a proven leader, Dr. Melba Ketchum.

Something he reenforced in Blog #182:

Regarding the DNA Study

The world needs to understand that North America Bigfoot Search was the organizer of the study. We orchestrated the search that led to picking Dr. Ketchum to conduct a study of bigfoot DNA. It was our first submission where Dr. Ketchum obtained unusual results from that DNA, as was explained in "Tribal Bigfoot" (http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/tribalbigfoot.html). It was during a Coast-to-Coast segment that George Knapp and I brought Dr. Ketchum onto the show and explained to the world what we were attempting to accomplish. We had already obtained dozens of bigfoot specimens; we were looking for more from a cross section of North America, Coast to Coast got us that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170209230410/http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/bigfootblog.html

He certainly suggest most of the samples that Ketchum used came from him or through his organization.

In the '13 press conference video in the OP, Paulides name never comes up, but I think this is him sitting at the front table. Ketchum is at the right and next to her is Adrian Erikson, the guy that had the "Matilda" video and seems to have bank rolled a lot of this:

Honestly, I'm pretty good with knowing the classic Bigfoot people, like Krantz, Dehindon, Coleman and the rest. I'm not much up on the newer proponents. I know Jeff Meldrum is like Krantz, the lone actual Anthropologist that seems to believe in the big guy, but after that it seems like a parade of believer/grifters like Matt Moneymaker and maybe Paulides looking to turn their books and YouTube channels into full reality TV shows.

And just for fun, if Paulides is the progenitor of Ketchum's project, he was also a fan of, wait for it...Skinwalker Ranch (also from blog #182):

On the bigfoot section of the lecture I addressed a portion of the book, "The Hunt for Skinwalker" (http://www.amazon.com/Hunt-Skinwalker-Science-Confronts-Unexplained/dp/1416505210/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358790160&sr=8-1&keywords=the+hunt+for+skinwalker) by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. I explained that Bigelow Aerospace (http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/) and the National Institute fior the Discovery of Science (Also owned by Mr. Bigelow) had purchased property on a ranch in Utah explicitly to study aerial phenomena that had been reported by previous owners. Understand, billionaire Robert Bigelow owns Bigelow Aerospace and Bigelow Aerospace is the only privately owned group in the world that has their own space station orbiting Earth. They are a very well funded research group that only hires the top PhD's in the country.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170209230410/http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/bigfootblog.html

And of course, he was often interviewed (promoted) by our old friend George Knapp, the literal Godfather of Skinwalker Ranch:

NABS would first like to thanks George Knapp from Coast to Coast AM for an outstanding segment with David Paulides and Dr. Melba Ketchum

Come to think of it, isn't it strange that SWR has everything from UFOs to wormholes to were-wolves to dino-beavers, but NO Bigfoots?

 

[Ann K]

In the near future the world will be privy to a multi level release of facts that will change the way people perceive the bigfoot/sasquatch/yeti topic.

(Quotation from Paulides)
And yet, all we have are crickets. Can we take this breathless hyperbole and the subsequent silence as evidence of their failure to prove the existence of a crypto-critter?

 

[Mendel]

"In the near future the world will be privy to a multi level release of facts that will change the way people perceive the bigfoot/sasquatch/yeti topic."

Interesting to see the "Full Disclosure is Coming Real Soon Now" meme is a thing in Bigfoot fandom as well.

I thought about commenting on that, but it was written in 2010, and both the movie and Ketchum's paper came out in 2013, so... there was some releasing being done, it just wasn't that earth-shattering. Can't blame them for being optimistic, I guess.

What I found typical about the blog were some "let's throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" types of claims that were completely inconsistent with each other, but going into that would be off topic.

 

[NorCal Dave]

(Quotation from Paulides)
And yet, all we have are crickets. Can we take this breathless hyperbole and the subsequent silence as evidence of their failure to prove the existence of a crypto-critter?

The news story in the OP is from about 6 months after the paper had come out. John Timmers first Ars Technica article questioning it had come out in February of '13. His article I quoted in the OP is dated July of '13 and Sharon Hill's article came out in September of '13. There were others looking into during 2013, so by the time this presentation was made for TV and other reporters in October '13, lots of people had already pointed out the many problems with the paper.

Paulides was aware of this blowback. In an undated blog post (it slots in between a post in early April and one in late May '13) he decries that people are only concerned with the conclusions and not the study:

I spoke for 90 minutes, 1/3 about the bigfoot DNA project and discussed specifics and how people that criticize the study are mostly commenting on the result, not the study protocol. It would appear that very few people have actually READ the study and thus can't and won't make cogent arguments why it should not be fully recognized by science. After 30 minutes of explaining the study, I opened it up for dialogue. There were two questions about DNA, nothing about study specifics. Dr. Ketchum's study will someday be recognized as stellar work, be patient as more scientists read what she accomplished and endorse the work, it is still evolving.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170209230410/http://www.nabigfootsearch.com/bigfootblog.html

Which wasn't true, Timmers first article in February was after he had clearly read the paper:

As far as the nuclear genome is concerned, the results are a mess. Sometimes the tests picked up human DNA. Other times, they didn't. Sometimes the tests failed entirely. The products of the DNA amplifications performed on the samples look about like what you'd expect when the reaction didn't amplify the intended sequence.

https://arstechnica.com/science/201...r-conclusively-proves-that-sasquatch-is-real/

None of the issues raised appear to be delt with in the TV presentation. Maybe they were and didn't make the edit.

Bottom line, regardless of what Paulides and Ketchum continued to say, anybody that understood genetics and wanted to read the paper, had dismissed it, most of them even before the TV press conference in the OP. I'm not sure how much validity it has in the Bigfoot community today.

On a side note, the parallels between Ketchum's research and Vallee's latest Trinty UFO crash research are enlightening. In both cases, they had a preconceived notion of what they would find. Having started with a conclusion, they both found themselves in a position where they had to force the evidence in front of them into already known conclusion, no matter where that then led, even if was even stranger conclusions.

For Ketchum, the idea that Bigfoot is essentially a human with some primate cross breeding was the starting point. So, when she found human mitochondrial DNA along with unknown mammalian nuclear DNA she could maybe make an argument for that, though unfounded.

When she ended up with haplotypes from European and African populations and claimed interbreeding was going on as late as 13,000 years ago and before, she had a problem. There were no Europeans or Africans in North America at that time. That should have been the clincher that her samples were contaminated with human DNA from European and African populations.

But if she admits contamination in some sample it calls into question the other samples and the whole project falls apart. So, she is forced to concoct a new scenario that has Europeans interbreeding with an unknown and undiscovered population of large primates in Europe! These human-ape hybrids then cross over Greenland and the ice sheets into North America, after the Native Americans had arrived via Asia. Bigfoot isn't even indigenous.

Likewise, Vallee's Trinty UFO crash story is based on the 60+ year old recollections of 2 guys, and the fantasy stories of 1 guy about what his father supposedly told him. Vallee's problem is that his still living witness and main source for the case has claimed repeatedly that, at age 8(ish) he went into the crashed saucer and pried a piece off of it. A piece he still has and still shows to people and a piece of the craft that Vallee is well aware of. It's a common piece of aluminum, likely from a water pump.

But, like Ketchum, if Vallee fully admits the piece is from a pump, then that means the story of it being taken from inside the crashed saucer is not correct. If that part of the story is not correct, what else of his main witness's story is suspect. If your entire case is built on the stories of a few people and those stories aren't true, the whole thing falls apart. So, Vallee does a number of mental gymnastics trying to say, yes it looks like a pump piece, but not exactly, so we'll keep investigating it. It could still be alien!

 

[Sharon Hill]

On a side note, the parallels between Ketchum's research and Vallee's latest Trinty UFO crash research are enlightening. In both cases, they had a preconceived notion of what they would find. Having started with a conclusion, they both found themselves in a position where they had to force the evidence in front of them into already known conclusion, no matter where that then led, even if was even stranger conclusions.

For Ketchum, the idea that Bigfoot is essentially a human with some primate cross breeding was the starting point. So, when she found human mitochondrial DNA along with unknown mammalian nuclear DNA she could maybe make an argument for that, though unfounded.

I call this "sham inquiry" - it's something all three of the major paranormal scenes (ghost hunters, UFOlogists, cryptozoologists) do. But it's not unique to them. Anyone with an end goal can make their efforts look "sciencey" or write up their work to be "scientifical" and many people will take it seriously. I documented this in my book (Scientifical Americans, 2017) but it didn't get a lot of attention. Being scientifical is successful with the public because people don't know how real science actually works - they learn "sciencey" stuff from the media. Many people thought Ketchum (and Paulides) were legit researchers but they are really poor ones. Ketchum still has some followers. But not many. She went way too far over the edge when her core audience expected something legitimate. OTOH, Bigfoot and cryptozoology in general really flipped to the occult/supernatural side after this. So, she missed the bus.

 

[Mendel]

Being scientifical

For clarification, is this the same as doing pseudo-science?
(Flat Earth does it, too, btw.)

OTOH, Bigfoot and cryptozoology in general really flipped to the occult/supernatural side after this. So, she missed the bus.

Or she believes in what she does. It can happen to anyone.

 

[NorCal Dave]

"scientifical" and many people will take it seriously. I documented this in my book (Scientifical Americans, 2017) but it didn't get a lot of attention.

I've used that phrase several times on the forum. I have the Kindel version of the book but lost my Kindel. Got a new one and the book is queued up for a flight to London in the fall.

 

[Sharon Hill]

For clarification, is this the same as doing pseudo-science?
(Flat Earth does it, too, btw.)


Or she believes in what she does. It can happen to anyone.

I see a distinction. Pseudoscience is a really broad term and can be applied to wide spectrum of activities or the outcome of those activities. Additionally, pseudoscience suffers from the demarcation problem. So it can be tricky to spot.

Being scientifical is more of a blatant hubristic performance, playing pretend scientist to get some immediate effect on the audience. Ghost hunters, for example, love to be scientifical by using gadgets and jargon that do or mean nothing. They lack all understanding of how science works as a process. If you call them out on it, they often cave. But they don't often get called out; the audiences eat it up because it looks superficially impressive and legit. However, being scientifical means you can drop one idea and jump onto another easily if the new concept is more attention-grabbing.

 

[Mendel]

Pseudoscience is a really broad term and can be applied to wide spectrum of activities or the outcome of those activities. [..] Being scientifical is more of a blatant hubristic performance, playing pretend scientist to get some immediate effect on the audience.

So pseudoscience is the umbrella, and being theatrically scientifical (ideally with the machine that goes "bing") is one way of doing pseudoscience. Thank you!

Spoiler: Monty Python

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcHdF1eHhgc&t=48

 

[PublicStranger]

Considering the supposed ''bigfoot'' has been sighted for hundreds of years dating back to the 1700s, the fact we are yet to see any verifiable deceased body, bones, DNA or archaeological evidence of the supposed creatures leads me to believe one of the two;

a) These creatures are invincible (they cannot die and live forever) and seem to be crime scene specialists, never leaving a trace of their whereabouts including any shedding of hair, saliva or blood. Which is why we have never found a body or a shred of physical evidence.

b) They don't exist and for the people that aren't making up their claims for fame or attention, they probably saw some kind of other similar looking mammal and misidentified it as the common cultural folklore of the 'bigfoot'.

 

[Mendel]

These creatures are invincible (they cannot die and live forever)

Article:

We've spoken to a few people who have claimed to have killed a bigfoot and each person gets very frightened when they get close to their kill. They are frightened at the humanity they see when they eventually get a close look at their body, thus their reluctance to lead officials to the kill. These killers believe they may have committed homicide.

Source: https://www.nabigfootsearch.com/bigfootblog.html

 

[captancourgette]

The was a guy who had the corpse of bigfoot in his freezer, I believe he used to charge people money to look. Eventually someone convinced him to unfreeze it where it was found to be a hoax, I believe he admitted to such as well.

Case closed right?

Not so fast, apparently he now has another bigfoot corpse in the freezer and this time it's for real.
You would think, mate at least choose a different cryptid if you're gonna play that trick

I believe this is the guy, it's been many years since I saw the Documentary about it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Dyer_(hoaxer)

 

[PublicStranger]

The was a guy who had the corpse of bigfoot in his freezer, I believe he used to charge people money to look. Eventually someone convinced him to unfreeze it where it was found to be a hoax, I believe he admitted to such as well.

Case closed right?

Not so fast, apparently he now has another bigfoot corpse in the freezer and this time it's for real.
You would think, mate at least choose a different cryptid if you're gonna play that trick

I believe this is the guy, it's been many years since I saw the Documentary about it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Dyer_(hoaxer)

I think even the second hoax was admitted as such, he then went on to say that even though he keeps hoaxing he does have a genuine body in his custody he just cannot release it to the public. Some people xD