Professor Tracks Bigfoot, also from "The Chronicle of Higher Education" Options

[Yetifan]

LAL wrote (about Meldrum's position on Bigfoot):

He says that's his conclusion, not that he has proof.

Do peer review boards generally accept papers that the creator of which is still scientifically uncertain of the subject of his or hers arguments? Would love to here from Apeman, Saskeptic or any other PhDs on this. Interested in knowing how often, if at all, "probability" arguments, when it comes to taxonomic identification or, at least, consideration of a new species, are accepted for publication.

This post has been edited by Yetifan: Nov 7 2006, 05:41 PM

[peregrine]

LAL wrote (about Meldrum's position on Bigfoot):

He says that's his conclusion, not that he has proof.

Do peer review boards generally accept papers that the creator of which is still scientifically uncertain of the subject of his or hers arguments? Would love to here from Apeman, Saskeptic or any other PhDs on this. Interested in knowing how often, if at all, "probability" arguments, when it comes to taxonomic identification or, at least, consideration of a new species, are accepted for publication.

No PhD here, but yes, absolutely, this does occur. Protoavis is an example. Some scientists have no problem with the evidence and say it supports the existence of an early species of bird, others foam at the mouth at the same suggestion, primarily because, if valid, it predates all but the very earliest of the dinosaurs from which, according to the most favored view, birds evolved.

Summarizing the scoftical logic, "Since nothing can be older than its ancestor, Protoavis can't be real."

Critics (who have invested their careers in the dinosaurs-to-birds theory) have gone to extremes to deride the evidence and launch personal attacks on the scientist who discovered and described the species.

The whole situation, in my mind, is very reminiscent of that surrounding sasquatch evidence, except that it's taking place in the ornithological/paleontological world.

[SoundCatcher]

As I understand it the article landed him an opportunity to be on NPR's"Science Friday" so Jeff should have the opportunity to speak for himself rather than us inferring what he did or did not say.

[Texas Tracker]

You know, now that I think about it, this entire article could all be just a big farce made-up to discredit Dr. Meldrum. He probably isn't even aware of this article. Someone might want to fill him in on what's going on.

I received an email from Jeff, in which he told of a different scenario than what is conveyed in the article.

Jeff wrote that the reporter sensationalized matters a bit, and also misrepresented him. Jeff did point out that while there definitely are some vocal antagonists there at ISU, his tenure is in no way at risk. He said that at no time has he wondered aloud how long he will remain on the faculty at ISU.

He also pointed out that the article was supposed to be about the release of his book, and its positive reception by the likes of Jane Goodall and George Schaller. Somehow, those positive points seemed to have gotten lost in the AP writer's search for a controversy.

[Sunflower]

I received 9 articles in my google alert tonite, the most ever. Somehow I'm not worried about Meldrum taking all this heat. My opinion is he's a big boy and can take care of himself. He is very aware of the controversy and I don't think for a minute that he can't handle it. I do however, believe that the attention is a good thing, because the amount of people reading this on the internet is staggering. My guess is that sighting reports will be on the increase and that will increase the attention on the subject. As they say, it doesn't matter if the publicity is negative or positive, it's still publicity and that's the point. Hopefully, some of those who support this subject and are financially able, will write a check. Note to self: Buy a power ball ticket tomorrow evening.

Sunflower

[Texas Tracker]

Excuse or condone that kind of behavior? Hardly. I just wanted to point out that there wasn't anything all that unusual about one professor or group of professors lambasting another one in a public forum.

Fair enough.

What we don't know about this story is this: Has research at the university been stymied due to the Meldrum effect? For example, whether real or perceived, is there a notion on campus that scientists in other areas (like physics) have been having difficulty getting grants due to the university's association with Dr. Meldrum? I would say that the fear or perception of such a thing could be very likely, and a nugget of basis in reality wouldn't be so hard to envision either.

I don't think that's a problem. The dean of sciences apparently has given his full support to Jeff. I just don't think that would be the case if research had been stymied due to "the Meldrum effect."

Rather, I think it's more basic than that and is rooted in good old fashioned "Cain and Abel" jealousy and rage; the reaction of the antagonist(s) probably has more to do with Jeff appearing in quite a few documentaries and having an Amazon best-seller.

[RogerKni]

OK, so what's the big deal about publishing this in a reputable journal? First, he'd have to demonstrate how he'd ruled out other species as having made the prints he examined. Should be easy enough. Then, he'd have to make the case that the mid-tarsal break really is what's being interpreted in those prints. If that's inconclusive, then the paper is appropriately rejected. Let's say he's successful up to that point, however. He's talking about prints that belong to no other animal, and they definitely show a mid-tarsal break according to the opinions of three peer referees and an editor.

Now he needs to demonstrate that the prints could not have been hoaxed, or at least rule out the possibility of a hoax with some high degree of confidence. That's easier said then done, especially regarding a phenomenon that has been the subject of so many hoaxers down through the years.

Despite whatever snide comments a reviewer might make on a manuscript (I get snide comments back all the time), these people who pooh-pooh Meldrum's work are not all evil closed-minded scoftics. Maybe, just maybe folks, Meldrum's work cannot stand on its own merit. It could be really cool, but it is still inconclusive.

Remember, we're asking "science" to accept the existence of a new and unique creature living essentially under our collective nose based on one scientist's opinion regarding the interpretation of something that's often the product of a hoaxer. If anything, Dr. Meldrum's work should be held to a higher standard than other manuscripts because he is claiming something truly fantastic.

It's been said before that if the evidence so far collected pertained to a variant form of a mundane species, instead of Bigfoot, science would have no problem with it. Even if the evidence were inconclusive, it would be newsworthy enough to be publishable as a "possible," under a title like "Possible Spoor of the Paraguayan Wildebeest Found in Uruguay" (or whatever/wherever). In the 19th century, before naturalists thought they had the big picture complete, articles like that, which suggested possibilities, or speculated on the meaning of evidence, were fairly common. I don't think journals were unscientific to print them, just open-minded, and with an explorer's attitude. I think that sort of practice should continue, and that inconclusive or speculative evidence and hypotheses should not be rejected, even if unlikely.

In saying, this, however, I realize that the dynamics of the human situation make it impossible, pretty much. An editor thinks (and must think, in a democratic society) thus to himself: "If I publish this and some hoaxer comes forward and makes a mockery of it, then I and my journal will never live it down. And even if that doesn't happen, I'll have scoftics commiting hara kiri on my doorstep, and tons of nasty letters from that bunch, and sneers at conventions, and a loss of subscribers, and a general loss of status in the scientific pecking order. So I'll send this paper out for peer-review to scoftics who'll find fault with it because it hasn't provided proof, or 80% proof, and I'll be off the hook." People are really terrified of looking foolish or being socially out of step--more terrified of that than of practically anything. They lack the aristocratic attitude: Nec Pluribus Impar. :new_king:

So I think Meldrum's work should be held to a LOWER standard, because of its vast potential importance and its revolutionary implications. As long as he's not claiming he has proof, but only that the evidence is strong enough to "be taken seriously," there's no reason to reject his work.

The scoftical tactic used to squash publication is the time-honored one of trotting out some variant of the "extraordinary claims" mantra. That's what was done with Bayanov's paper, and other Bigfooters' papers. E.g., "we're asking 'science' to accept the existence of a new and unique creature living essentially under our collective nose." Having set up the strawman that "proof"--indeed, extraordinary proof--must be supplied by the "claimant," his evidence is easy to dismiss on the grounds that it's not sufficiently airtight and rock-solid. (This is how Wegener's (sp?) suggestive evidence about continental drift was marginalized.) But inconclusiveness is no reason to reject it, with such a stake upon the table.

Science has gotten "above itself" if it thinks that what appears in its journals has thereby been annointed as True--or anyway as Respectable Opinion. (And thus that anything that is inconclusive and thereby spoils the illusion must be banished.) At this point, a lot of what it thinks it knows is more provisional than textbooks and spokesmen for science like to let on, and it behooves science to admit it. I.e., that science is largely Probable Opinion, not mathematical certitude--and thus that the difference between "straight" science and "kinky" anomalistics is one of degree, not one of kind. If it keeps its nose in the air, it will come a cropper one day.

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 8 2006, 12:04 AM

[Hairy Man]

I received an email from Jeff, in which he told of a different scenario than what is conveyed in the article.

Jeff wrote that the reporter sensationalized matters a bit, and also misrepresented him. Jeff did point out that while there definitely are some vocal antagonists there at ISU, his tenure is in no way at risk. He said that at no time has he wondered aloud how long he will remain on the faculty at ISU.

He also pointed out that the article was supposed to be about the release of his book, and its positive reception by the likes of Jane Goodall and George Schaller. Somehow, those positive points seemed to have gotten lost in the AP writer's search for a controversy.

That's good to hear. Gee, I would never image the press would misrepresent anyone!?!?!?

[LAL]

Ask any politician.

My dad was once a reporter-photographer for Time-Life (their first, I was told). He quit because the New York office kept rewriting his stories to give them the "New York slant".

[Saskeptic]

Great post, Roger. I agree with much of what you wrote, but disagree on the following:

A 19th century standard for publication is really out of step with a 21st century journal, and rightly so. Western Science probably knows about as much about hydrothermal vent communities in 2006 than it knew about Amazon rainforest communities in 1876. But biologists involved in describing new species in hydrothermal vent communities rely on clear photography and physical specimens, in addition to their "field notes". Even in the 19th century, species were generally not described without a type specimen.

Wegener is another good example of a guy sharply criticized but ultimately vindicated. He made his case for continental drift with an abundance of geological and biogeographical data. It's not like someone hoaxed the presence of emus in Australia, ostriches in Africa, and rheas in South America - they're really there.

So to boil down Meldrum's research to a matter of closed mindedness to "exploration" doesn't really cut it, for me at least. Meldrum has an inference of physical evidence from a source that has repeatedly been shown to be the subject of a hoax. "Potentially hoaxed inferred" physical evidence is not the same thing as physical evidence. It's an uphill climb to publish his stuff, and that's OK. I suspect Meldrum fully comprehends the difficulty in publishing this work in the mainstream, and doesn't fret over it too much.

[RogerKni]

I agree that Meldrum's reliance on Freeman's material is a weak point. But I think it's likely that some of the material he found was genuine--partly because Vance Orchard's descriptions of the activities of Freeman and other local BFers is persuasive. And partly because it looks so genuine, and seemingly stands up to analysis. (Alternative possibility: realistic hoaxing is much easier than we suspect--we just haven't figured out how it was done. :ohmy: Perish the thought. :wink: ) Freeman may have had a child's psychology, where it's OK to make things up sometimes if you're sometimes sincere and are "basically" not making things up. A lot of people are like that--they never really grow up.

But regarding the larger question about the footprint evidence as a whole, I disagree that it has been shown to be repeatedly hoaxed. A large % of prankish hoaxers (varying depending on the situation/context) like to eventually boast of their deed, or "confess" to it. (Even if they haven't done so, as in the case of Heironimus and Morris.) Example: the guy in Indiana who hoaxed Krantz with the plaster cast he sent. And various footprint hoaxers, mostly in snow, who've raise a local-area ruckus.

But no one has come forward to claim he hoaxed any of the 200-some prints in Meldrum's collection, or other collections. That's an indirect indicator of a low hoaxing rate.
Another indicator is the large % of imperfect / low quality / partial tracks found. I wrote about this in my article, "Who'd Hoax a Half-Print?" (or some such title) in Bigfoot Times a few months ago. I.e., a hoaxer has to make his prints look good enough that they'll make a public splash--so he wouldn't make a lot of smudged or partial prints. But such imperfect prints constitute the majority of track-finds.
Another indicator (I believe, although this is only impressionistic because thorough documentation on the context of most track finds is lacking) is the low % of prints that could be suspected of being "planted"--i.e., because they were found in a place where a passerby would be expected to stumble on them.
Another indicator is the absence of any ex-hoaxer demonstrating how he was able to make a realistic track-trail; i.e., one that convinced BF track-experts of their authenticity. The Wallace clan hasn't even gotten to first base on this. You'd think at least a couple of such hoaxers would have come forward since 1958, if hoaxing were common. Several ex-mediums used to confess and "show how it was done," in the 19th century.

I disagree that "A 19th century standard for publication is really out of step with a 21st century journal." I agree that standard's mostly out-of-date, but occasionally it’s still "in order." If journals want to keep this fringe stuff at arm's length, they could agree upon a standard whereby they'd publish it with special fringe-indicators, such as a unique border, and/or some dingbat in the page footing, and/or some special typeface (ransom-note, perhaps), and/or some special "distancing" prefatory note.

This may all be moot soon, I hope. A recent article in Wired (or maybe Discover) described how there's a movement afoot to publish scientific journals online. It mentioned that one of the first such journals has now become the leading publication in its field. Online publication-space is virtually unlimited, so papers that would otherwise be rejected due to lack of space can now be posted. Peer reviewers’ comments are posted in conjunction with such papers--that's fine--that really helps. Maybe articles could be given ratings by reviewers, as well as by readers generally, to help guide subsequent site-visitors, just as is done sometimes in online venues like YouTube (and Amazon). But such journals will play much less strongly the role of exclusionary gatekeepers. So more material on Bigfoot should make it into the scientific mainstream soon. (This implies that special cryptozoological journals aren't needed any longer--or at least that an online journal would suffice.)

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 8 2006, 02:53 PM

[Tirademan]

Well, since Mr. Hackworth is a backwoods skier, former rock climber and general outdoorsy guy, I'm sure he feels he'd know ALL about sasquatch if it existed. No need to examine potential evidence. Check out his website:
http://www.physics.isu.edu/~hackmart/climb.html
http://www.physics.isu.edu/~hackmart/ski.html

Someone should send Physics Boy the Sierra Sounds CD to analyze in his music studio. Maybe he can add to the line of skeptics who can't explain/recreate what is already done!

I also think he should spend more time, in total darkness, on trail in the Redwoods making a sandwich!

tirademan

[LAL]

Example: the guy in Indiana who hoaxed Krantz with the plaster cast he sent.

Actually, it was made by a disgruntled female student of Krantz' and René Dahiden was behind it.

Michael Dennett made up the identity, with approval from his editor, and so stated on this board.

[Saskeptic]

Why couldn't a partial print just be one that didn't "take" from the hoaxer's print-making apparatus?

Why would a print be unlikely to have been hoaxed just because no one had (apparently) confessed to making it?


Whether we like it or not, potential reviewers of Meldrum's work have in their heads that prints are hoaxable, and he'd have to address that issue to get published mainstream.

Re: journals goin online - lots of them are doing this, and new ones are popping up all the time. THe standards for established journals, however, will not be loosened because of the added space available. On-line journals will make it easier to access color figures, photos, and supporting materials as appendices, but the peer review process will remain daunting.


Tirademan - I'll feel a lot better about sasquatch when I can accept its existence based on a preponderance of evidence considered in my sterile (well, hardly sterile!) office, rather than in the woods, at night, when my feeble human brain can make all sorts of connections due to my emotional state. We should want the same for Dr. Hackworth. Until we have better (some?) physical evidence for these things, guys like Hackworth will continue to take pot shots at guys like Meldrum.

[RogerKni]

Why would a print be unlikely to have been hoaxed just because no one had (apparently) confessed to making it?

The claim has been made by many skeptics, you among them, that hoaxing is rampant, etc.
My response was (in effect) that rampant hoaxing implies a multitude of hoaxers, which in turn implies, especially after many decades, at least a few substantiated confessions and realistic track-making demonstrations in soil, similar to what has occurred with crop-circles. (Although the confessions by circle-makers have been mostly made in private to crop circle investigators.) Since such track-making confessions and demonstrations are essentially lacking, hoaxing is unlikely to be rampant. Therefore some or most of the footprints are genuine, probably.
IOW, I'm talking about the collective pattern of evidence, and the probabilities related to that pattern. Probabilities come into play when there are a large enough number of cases to permit reliable statistical inferences. As Holmes said, "While the indivdual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty." Your focus on the individual case is irrelevant.

Why couldn't a partial print just be one that didn't "take" from the hoaxer's print-making apparatus?

That's a possibility--a likely possibility. But a hoaxer who wanted to fool a lot of people would be sure to include at least one good print in a trackway as well. Yet most footprint finds lack that one good impression. My article below makes this point:

Who’d Fake a Forgettable Footprint?
Roger Knights

(Printed in Bigfoot Times, March 2006)

John Green pointed out that a hoaxer needs to make an outstanding statement: “A built-in pitfall for people with fake stories is that they have to make them sound too good. Reports of ordinary sightings are a dime a dozen. They don’t attract the kind of attention that would justify bothering to make them up.” (Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, p. 182)

This applies to footprints too. A photo of a faint or blurred or partial print won’t wind up in the local newspaper. (Imagine the media’s indifference if Jerry Crew had had only a half-print to show the camera.) Nor would a cast of such an item be featured in a museum’s collection or a Bigfooter’s book. So a hoaxer wouldn’t plant fuzzy or fragmented prints at a site. (Aside perhaps from a few as substantiating elements or accidentals at a full-track site.)

And yet most footprint sites DO contain nothing but marginal, “3F” prints (Fuzzy, Faint, or Fragmented). For instance, T. A Wilson wrote, “The striking thing about the tracks was that ninety-nine out of a hundred people would have overlooked them.” (In Pursuit of a Legend, p. 35) And John Green wrote in 1973, “In the past five years … I haven’t seen a good, fresh, unmistakable Sasquatch track anywhere.” (The Sasquatch File, p. 48.) Therefore few of them were hoaxed. Therefore many were authentic. (Putting aside a few “blob-prints” that were wishfully imagined to be more foot-like than they were.)

(It might be objected that faint, fuzzy prints would have resulted from the “snowshoe effect.” And yet all hoaxers would first have made test-prints in their backyards before trying to “make an impression” elsewhere. And, if they’d found they couldn’t make clear test-prints, they’d have used a heavy hammer to pound them in, or restricted their track-hoaxing to mud or soft sand (near bodies of water), or to snow. (Prints in snow are the easiest to hoax and the most likely to be noticed; therefore their rarity—only 25% or so of total track-finds—indirectly supports the proposition that print-hoaxing is rare.))

This is a neat paradox. The unremarkable cases (many, anyway), seen in this new perspective, suddenly become the remarkable ones. The unconvincing cases are, collectively, the convincing ones. It’s like looking at an optical illusion in which, when one shifts ones attention, the “field” swaps places with the “figure” and becomes the significant element.

It’s characteristic of us Westerners to focus our attention on things that stand out, like “good” footprints: Salience = Significance. (According to Richard Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought—e.g., pp. 90 & 109.) It rarely occurs to us to shift gears mentally and consider that the “good” prints might be the worst (the most likely to have been hoaxed) and the “bad” prints might be the best (unlikely to have been hoaxed). Only rarely do we see that insignificance or non-salience might be highly significant. Exceptions: Holmes—“Only one important thing has happened in the last three days, and that is that nothing has happened”; Luke—“Sometimes nothing is a real cool hand.”

(This off-centered viewpoint is, however, characteristic of East Asians. They’re too polite to say so, but maybe everything we know is wrong. (Whee!))

PS: Reports of Bigfoot encounters also “shade off” in a similar fashion. There are a few good sightings, then a multitude of marginal sightings, and then an even larger number of near-encounters: cries, noises in the bush, smells, disturbances in the environment, etc. Here again, the “good” cases, precisely because they’d attract attention, are the ones a hoaxer (or hysteric) would be most likely to have created, and the unremarkable, undramatic cases, considered as a whole, are the least likely. The unremarkable cases in turn give some support to (most of) the good cases, because if Bigfoot is real then there should be a humdrum matrix of fleeting or fuzzy encounters from which they emerge. If encounters were the work of hoaxers in ape-suits looking to make an impact or attention-seeking witnesses, there’d be far fewer “marginals” among the reports.

PPS: Someone else has observed this paradox long ago:

In fact that’s how I was sure it was a ghost: if it had been doing romantic things [like moaning or rattling a chain], I might have suspected that someone was pulling my leg; but hammering nails into walls and sweeping floors, there could be no trick about that; no one would make it so dull.

—Lord Dunsany, “Jorkens in High Finance”

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 9 2006, 12:48 AM

[stanw909]

Perhaps Dr.Meldrum does not submit papers to a jury of his peers because(in the area of North American Ape studies) He has no peers that hard scientists would accept as jurors.Wouldn't jurors have to have at least some of the knowledge and expertise on the subject that Dr.Meldrum has?Since Dr Meldrums colleages won't even dignify the subject with even a cursory glance then I submit that they are not knowledgable enough to judge his work.

[stanw909]

oops.should have said "North American great ape studies"

[RogerKni]

A recent article in Wired (or maybe Discover) described how there's a movement afoot to publish scientific journals online. It mentioned that one of the first such journals has now become the leading publication in its field. Online publication-space is virtually unlimited, so papers that would otherwise be rejected due to lack of space can now be posted. Peer reviewers’ comments are posted in conjunction with such papers--that's fine--that really helps. Maybe articles could be given ratings by reviewers, as well as by readers generally, to help guide subsequent site-visitors, just as is done sometimes in online venues like YouTube (and Amazon). But such journals will play much less strongly the role of exclusionary gatekeepers. So more material on Bigfoot should make it into the scientific mainstream soon.

Re: journals going online - lots of them are doing this, and new ones are popping up all the time. The standards for established journals, however, will not be loosened because of the added space available. On-line journals will make it easier to access color figures, photos, and supporting materials as appendices, but the peer review process will remain daunting.

That’s not true. As described in the first article below, Nature has already launched an experiment in posting online preprints of submitted articles, and seems open to further loosening of the gatekeeper status of their peer reviewers. And established journals that don’t similarly loosen up may become, in time, disestablished—or anyway, marginalized. That’s the implication of the great success of the first two “PLoS” online journals against the established competition within two years of their launch, as described in the quote from the second article below.

Getting published in the illustrious British scientific journal Nature is, frankly, a bitch. It's not just the years you spend designing the perfect experiment, or the hustling for grant money to collect the data. It's not even the long nights of trying to figure out how to express all that work elegantly in the cold language of scientific communication. No – the real trick is getting the editors at Nature to like it.

But that's still just the beginning: Those editors pick three or so relevant experts – from a list Nature requires you to submit – to anonymously assess your work's technical accuracy and overall merit. Those experts bounce it back to the editors, who add their own comments and send it to you asking for more work. If you decide it's worth the time and effort, you do it. And revise. And send it back to the reviewers. In the end, if everyone's satisfied, the article runs. If not, you submit it to another journal, one tier down, and do it all again. The process takes about four months.

That rigmarole is called peer review. Almost every journal does it, from marquee pubs like Nature to highly specialized periodicals like International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering. (No offense to IJCRE – you guys are a helluva read.) When it works, it's genius – quality control that ensures the best papers get into the appropriate pages, lubricating communication and debate. It's the quiet soul of the scientific method: After forming hypotheses, collecting data, and crunching numbers, you report the results to learned colleagues and ask, "What do you folks think?"

But science is done by humans, and humans occasionally screw up. They plagiarize, fake data, take incorrect readings. And when they do? Oy! Somebody always blames peer review. The process is lousy at policing research. Bad papers get published, and work that's merely competent (boring) or wildly speculative (maverick) often gets rejected, enforcing a plodding conservatism. It seems silly to say this about a system that's been in development since the mid-1700s, but the whole thing seems kind of antiquated. "Peer review was brilliant when distribution was a problem and you had to be selective about what you could publish," says Chris Surridge, managing editor of the online interdisciplinary journal PLoS ONE. But the Web has remapped the universe of scientific publishing – and as a result, peer review may finally get fixed.

The proof: In June, Nature began experimenting with a new method online. Authors submitting papers can choose a two-track process. While the work goes through the usual peer review drill, a preprint version gets posted on the Web. Anyone – even you – can comment, as long as you attach your name, affiliation, and email address. As of July, 25 articles had undergone this process, and the journal plans to issue a report late this year on how the test went. (Full disclosure: Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson participated in the project.) "The whole point of peer review is to help the editors select papers that are going to move science forward," says Linda Miller, US executive editor of Nature and the Nature research journals (Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics, et cetera). "If there's a better way, then why not? How could I say no?"

In other quarters, traditional peer review has already been abandoned. Physicists and mathematicians today mainly communicate via a Web site called arXiv. (The X is supposed to be the Greek letter chi; it's pronounced "archive." If you were a physicist, you'd find that hilarious.) Since 1991, arXiv has been allowing researchers to post prepublication papers for their colleagues to read. The online journal Biology Direct publishes any article for which the author can find three members of its editorial board to write reviews. (The journal also posts the reviews – author names attached.) And when PLoS ONE launches later this year, the papers on its site will have been evaluated only for technical merit – do the work right and acceptance is guaranteed. "Data becomes useful only if it's shared," Surridge says. "At the moment, our mechanisms for sharing information are the traditional journals, and if they're hard to get into, data is completely lost."

No one's sure which of these ideas, if any, will prevail. Sure, discarding anonymity will go a long way toward breaking up the old-boys' network, and open comments are great for nailing fakes and plagiarists. (The online community, not peer review, helped bust the South Korean stem cell fraud Woo Suk Hwang.) But Nature is an elite journal that accepts few submissions, a kind of exclusivity that lets universities use publication as a proxy for worth in hiring and promotion decisions. How can they assess papers published online and "reviewed" by an honors physics teacher? Have papers that went through an open process and got rejected been essentially published already? Plus, the idea of all these articles online, free for the Googling, terrifies the lucrative journal-publishing industry.

But seriously: Who cares? An up-and-coming researcher can get more attention from the right experts by publishing something earthshaking on arXiv than by pushing it through the usual channels. Crazy ideas will get batted around in moderated forums, which is pretty much what the Internet is for. Eventually, printed journal articles will be quaint artifacts. Scientific papers will be living documents with data published on Web pages – commented on, linked to, and mirrored by labs doing the same work 6,000 miles away. Every research effort will have thousands of reviewers working in real time. Today's undergrads have never thought about the world any differently – they've never functioned without IM and Wikipedia and arXiv, and they're going to demand different kinds of review for different kinds of papers. It's in their nature.

……..
Varmus is the most visible characterin the movement to free the scientific world of its figurative corks: scholarly journals that restrict the flow of information by charging often hefty subscription prices for access to their content.
……..
Three years ago, through an organization he cofounded called the Public Library of Science, Varmus launched a set of journals, which survive not through subscriptions but by charging $1,500 to most authors (and thus their grant givers) whose articles are accepted for publication. Everything is then put online and kept there, freely accessible to anyone.
…….
Varmus wanted the PLoS journals to have the credentials to immediately draw outstanding submissions. They lured the editor of the top journal Cell to serve as executive director. They hired staff who had worked at both Nature and Science, and they began wooing prestigious contributors. “We felt we could make it work because we had revolutionary fervor,” Varmus says, “plus a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.”
……….
Despite the newness of this model, research published in the flagship journals PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine often finds its way to The New York Times or the BBC. Last June, less than two years after the first issue of PLoS Biology went online, Thomson Scientific, a firm that tracks citation rates, assessed the journal an “impact factor” higher than such established journals as Biological Reviews and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Indeed, in a phenomenally short time, it has become the most cited journal in general biology.

The success of the top two PLoS journals has led to the birth of four more modest ones aimed at specific fields: clinical trials, computational biology, genetics, and pathogens. And this summer, Varmus and his colleagues will launch PLoS One, a paperless journal that will publish online any paper that evaluators deem “scientifically legitimate.” Each article will generate a thread for comment and review. Great papers will be recognized by the discussion they generate, and bad ones will fade away.

(The whole article is at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/varmus.html)
Even if established journals don’t change and aren’t marginalized, the existence of an alternative channel like this will mean that serious studies of anomalistics, such as Bayanov’s, will no longer be filtered out by the enforcers of scientific correctness.

[Saskeptic]

Re: journals going online - lots of them are doing this, and new ones are popping up all the time. The standards for established journals, however, will not be loosened because of the added space available. On-line journals will make it easier to access color figures, photos, and supporting materials as appendices, but the peer review process will remain daunting.

That’s not true.

!?

I hope you're not implying deceit on the part of the Saskeptic, Roger. What I wrote is absolutely true for the 8 professional societies to which I belong, and we're discussing the implications of online publication in every one of them.

If you'd like to see "bigfoot" papers published in mainstream media, then shouldn't the focus be on acquiring better evidence for these creatures rather than the hope that manuscripts can get published once journals relax their standards?



Mod - fixed quotes

This post has been edited by HarryHenderson: Nov 9 2006, 12:58 PM

[Saskeptic]

Why would a print be unlikely to have been hoaxed just because no one had (apparently) confessed to making it?

The claim has been made by many skeptics, you among them, that hoaxing is rampant, etc.

Who used the word "rampant"? Do you disagree that there have been hoaxed prints? If not, then I'm sure we can agree that any print discovered and analyzed must first be evaluated for its potential to have been hoaxed before it can reasonably be expected to withstand critical peer review. If Meldrum has a manuscript on mid-tarsal breaks and he bases his analysis on 100 prints, then I expect that for every print (except for every one that came from the same track) he's presenting information that rules out bears, barefoot humans, and hoaxes, and then that the mid-tarsal break is a real anatomical feature. If he can do that - great! If not, then his work remains inconclusive.

A year ago, there were people who would've staked their reputations on their absolute conviction of authenticity of dermal ridges, sasquatch howls, and the Skookum Cast. The fact that all three have been recently fallen out of favor with many enthusiasts illustrates the need for serious critical review of purported sasquatch evidence.



Mod - fixed quotes

This post has been edited by HarryHenderson: Nov 9 2006, 01:03 PM

[Hairy Man]

A year ago, there were people who would've staked their reputations on their absolute conviction of authenticity of dermal ridges, sasquatch howls, and the Skookum Cast. The fact that all three have been recently fallen out of favor with many enthusiasts illustrates the need for serious critical review of purported sasquatch evidence.

I don't know anyone who staked their reputations on sasquatch howls or the Skookum Cast being what they have been reported to be! I would agree that Chilcutt has pretty much made that statement in regards to dermal ridges.

I also don't agree that all three topics have fallen out of favor with many enthusiasts. I know there are folks who think dermals, howls, the Skookum are bunk, but there are plenty (myself included) that feel that some recordings (Tahoe Scream, for example) have been well analyzed by specialists (such as Cornell University, etc.) to still be unidentified. Onion Mountain is also not the only place dermal ridges have been found.

This post has been edited by Hairy Man: Nov 9 2006, 10:38 AM

[MultipleEncounte...]

Someone should send Physics Boy the Sierra Sounds CD to analyze in his music studio. Maybe he can add to the line of skeptics who can't explain/recreate what is already done!

tirademan

I already did that in my second email to the fellow along with a few other tidbits, and reasons why he should remain open. In my first email to him, I pleaded with the guy to understand that if he is really a scientist, then he has a responsibility to investigate Mr. Meldrum's evidence before making up his mind. I also told him about one of my encounters. I explained that I have never met Mr. Meldrum and have never spoken to him before.

He asked if I found any money under my pillow when I woke up.

I wonder if it is Mr. Hackworth whose tenure needs revoking?

[Saskeptic]

Do you mean to tell me that I didn't even have enough weasel words in _that_ wishy washy statement I made? Egads!

All I'm saying is that people exist - I'm not saying how many or how prevalant they were on the BFF - who would've accepted any of the three items of evidence I presented as "proof" of bigfoot. And then I said that there are now many people - I'm not saying how many - who now consider each of those three pieces of evidence to have been discredited.

I suppose I could be wrong about this, and perhaps a poll could clear it up, but that's the impression I've gotten from participating here over the past year.

[Skeptical Greg]

....

Someone should send Physics Boy the Sierra Sounds CD to analyze in his music studio. Maybe he can add to the line of skeptics who can't explain/recreate what is already done!
...........

tirademan

Hmmmmmmmm.. Can't be explained ... Most likely explanation; must be a Bigfoot ...


Darn ! Lost my place in line... Oh, well...

[RogerKni]

Re: journals going online - lots of them are doing this, and new ones are popping up all the time. The standards for established journals, however, will not be loosened because of the added space available. On-line journals will make it easier to access color figures, photos, and supporting materials as appendices, but the peer review process will remain daunting.

That’s not true.

!? I hope you're not implying deceit on the part of the Saskeptic, Roger. What I wrote is absolutely true for the 8 professional societies to which I belong, and we're discussing the implications of online publication in every one of them.

What I wrote was:

That’s not true. As described in the first article below, Nature has already launched an experiment in posting online preprints of submitted articles, and seems open to further loosening of the gatekeeper status of their peer reviewers.

So I was only saying you were wrong that "the peer review process will remain daunting," not that you'd lied. And you were wrong. So you should have admitted it on the basis of the documentation I produced about Nature’s loosening its peer review process. Your response of citing your eight professional societies that were not abandoning traditional peer review is like saying, "Forget that white crow over there, let's focus on all these black crows over here."

If you'd like to see "bigfoot" papers published in mainstream media, then shouldn't the focus be on acquiring better evidence for these creatures rather than the hope that manuscripts can get published once journals relax their standards?

It's not an either/or matter--I'd like to see both. My main concern is that there be a mainstream channel or forum through which serious work on anomalistics can be presented. It is immaterial to me whether this is accomplished by establishing a new online journal, or by getting established journals to loosen up.

It doesn't involve a deterioration of standards to print serious speculative material that is labeled as such (e.g., using the typographic indicators I suggested). There's even 20th century precedent for this, because Porshnev's radical pro-Hominid paper, "The Troglodytidae and the Hominidae in the Taxonomy and Evolution of Higher Primates," was published in a mainstream journal, Current Anthropology, December 1974. It was accompanied by several critiques from a mainstream POV. There's no rational reason something similar couldn't continue to be done.

And in practice "maintaining standards" devolves into not accepting ANY anomalistic evidence short of proof. So it's just a camouflage for chicken-heartedness or arrogance.

I'm in agreement with you that Bigfoot evidence needs to be firmed up (better documented, better defended, better organized, etc.) and also that Bigfooters should soft-pedal claims of proof, which is psychologically counterproductive and rhetorically risky. The claim should be only that there's enough suggestive evidence to justify taking the matter non-dismissively, mounting an investigation, and funding researchers. (You can send me that million via Paypal. )

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 9 2006, 03:39 PM

[chiawana]

Living here in Idaho, I can tell you there's been a lot of talk about this. Most people think he's a flake, and he's been ostracized by some at ISU. Grover Krantz has had the same problem at WSU. I'm personally glad to see these guys sticking their necks out and not caving to the pressure to just go along with what is "accepted." If everyone did that, we'd never learn anything new. I lived in Washington state all my life until about 2 years ago, so Sasquatch has been a big part of my life for a long long time :-)

[RogerKni]

....
Someone should send Physics Boy the Sierra Sounds CD to analyze in his music studio. Maybe he can add to the line of skeptics who can't explain/recreate what is already done!
tirademan

Hmmmmmmmm.. Can't be explained ... Most likely explanation; must be a Bigfoot ...

Tirademan was criticizing Physics Boy's utter dismissiveness of the evidence. He was therefore implying only that the evidence is strong enough to be non-dismissible. You put words in Tirademan's mouth to set up a strawman you could knock down.

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 9 2006, 04:04 PM

[tugboatwa]

Just a reminder - STAY ON TOPIC!

This is a discussion of the article on Dr. Meldrum, not another rehash of the evidence, or lack thereof, for the existence of Bigfoot.

[Saskeptic]

So I was only saying you were wrong that "the peer review process will remain daunting," not that you'd lied. And you were wrong. So you should have admitted it on the basis of the documentation I produced about Nature’s loosening its peer review process. Your response of citing your eight professional societies that were not abandoning traditional peer review is like saying, "Forget that white crow over there, let's focus on all these black crows over here."

I'm not sure how (at least) 8 societies with no intention of relaxing their peer review standards as they explore online publication compared to one that may possibly do so makes me wrong, but if you say so, I guess I am.

I will, however, happily devour a big bowl of crow (both black and white) when Nature starts publishing bigfoot papers on the kind of evidence Jeff Meldrum has right now.

[RogerKni]

Why would a print be unlikely to have been hoaxed just because no one had (apparently) confessed to making it?

The claim has been made by many skeptics, you among them, that hoaxing is rampant, etc.

Who used the word "rampant"?

You didn’t employ the common scoftical smear-term “rampant,” but what you wrote was 80%-equivalent; you described footprints as:

a phenomenon that has been the subject of so many hoaxers down through the years.

“Many hoaxers”? Name them.
================

I’ve boldfaced a few words below that I focus on later:

Do you disagree that there have been hoaxed prints? If not, then I'm sure we can agree that any print discovered and analyzed must first be evaluated for its potential to have been hoaxed before it can reasonably be expected to withstand critical peer review. If Meldrum has a manuscript on mid-tarsal breaks and he bases his analysis on 100 prints, then I expect that for every print (except for every one that came from the same track) he's presenting information that rules out bears, barefoot humans, and hoaxes, and then that the mid-tarsal break is a real anatomical feature. If he can do that - great! If not, then his work remains inconclusive

First, because the evidence for widespread footprint hoaxing is weak, these prints don’t come under a great cloud of suspicion on that count. Second, I agree that each print should be evaluated, and that a good deal of argumentation should be provided to support the hypothesis that it isn’t hoaxes or the print of some other animal.

But it’s setting the bar to high to ask that hoaxing be “ruled out” in the case of each and every print. Rather, a roundabout justification can be made for lowering the bar globally, employing an analysis of the phenomenon collectively. For instance, by citing Fahrenbach’s analysis of the variance in the foot-width to foot-length ratio in hundreds of prints failed to find the “spikes” in the data that should be there if many independent hoaxers were at work. Similarly, by noting the paucity of soil-track hoax-claimants, and the virtual absence of any demonstrations of how they did it, which is quite at variance with what one would expect--and which is what has occurred regarding crop circles. (Although, because circle-makers are lawbreakers, they haven't been free to publically own up to their deeds.)

And it’s setting the bar too high to rule out the publication of inconclusive results, when dealing with an episodic, non-lab-testable phenomenon of great importance. If someone has established that there’s a 20% (say) chance of finding the missing link, that’s noteworthy—i.e., worth publishing.

If publication harelips the governor (outrages the custodians of normality), so be it. Let such skeptics then seek grants to show how those prints could have been faked (perhaps by offering rewards to hoaxers who’ll confess and demonstrate their methods), or dermal ridges created, etc. (The latter might involve testing six casting compounds in six degrees of dilution at six temperature levels using three pouring techniques and a dozen types of soil. Rather tedious, but that’s what grad students are for.) The search for truth is a dialectical process--and in order to get that process started, the claimant must be given a hearing.

It’s the responsibility of society, not of witnesses or believers, to fund investigation into important and non-dismissible claims of Weird Things, because witnesses and believers don’t have the money or expertise or neutrality or imprimatur to do so adequately. Meldrum’s done enough, if the case he makes is reasonable and his evidence is suggestive, given that he’s dealing with a rare, non-lab set of events.

[LittleBigfoot]

A conservative on the faculty would be treated the same way.

Many university professors ARE conservative...Why drag politics into this? Conservatives are those who want to CONSERVE the status quo...and that includes many professors with narrow-minds. Bigfoot research cuts across political party lines, and I resent you dragging politics into this forum.

[RogerKni]

I'm not sure how (at least) 8 societies with no intention of relaxing their peer review standards as they explore online publication compared to one that may possibly do so makes me wrong, but if you say so, I guess I am.

What you wrote implied that NO established journals would be relaxing their standards:

Re: journals going online - lots of them are doing this, and new ones are popping up all the time. The standards for established journals, however, will not be loosened because of the added space available. On-line journals will make it easier to access color figures, photos, and supporting materials as appendices, but the peer review process will remain daunting.

I pointed out an exception, so I proved you wrong. If you're "not sure how" that makes you wrong, you need a course in critical thinking.

What you should have done was to back down gracefully, by saying for instance that you'd overstated your claim, but that you still believed you were 95% right.

This post has been edited by RogerKni: Nov 10 2006, 12:02 AM

[LittleBigfoot]

[That was for Drew...and I agree with Tugboatwa...keep politics and religion out of this.