Knapp asked her about her insistence that those she's discussed her research with sign disclosure statements. (Knapp himself signed one.) Ketchum explained that it's important to keep the data as uncontaminated as possible.
Then there's the infamous "peer reviewed" journal citation that gives any researcher the cred they need to be accepted in mainstream science and academia. It's a crazy loop: you have to be accepted by the very types of individuals who think you're nuts to be doing this kind of research in the first place, so you're not going to be accepted. Not having been accepted, your research is nothing. If her research isn't accepted into an accepted scientific journal, she's out. So is the star of this thing: Bigfoot.
So, given all this, why is Dr. Melba Ketchum --despite her possible missteps involving communication or style -- being treated badly by some in cryptozoology?
One possible answer to that is the uneasiness among some researchers that Bigfoot might be human, or far more human like, than those researchers have presumed. Some Bigfoot researchers have no problem with promoting a kill -- "for science" they tell us -- or thinking of Bigfoot as a big ape. Or some kind of animal. (Forgetting that we, too are animals.) Bigfoot is intelligent, very cool, what a find! but in the end, "just" an animal.
Many witnesses who've encountered Bigfoot speak of the eerie human qualities of the "creature" and as we know, many have tales to tell of spiritual and paranormal events within those encounters. These aspects of Bigfoot encounters sometimes don't go over very well with the more pragmatic Bigfoot researcher. Are they afraid that somewhere along the line, Ketchum's research presents clues or evidence of "more" here?
Ketchum said in last night's interview that if she is rejected by peer reviewed journals she'll put it out to the public. That would be fantastic, but also a cruelly frustrating gift, since it will be ignored by science.
Credit: we-are-believe.blogspot.com
