Talk:Larry Kusche

Gian Quasar

Has Kusche recieved criticism from anyone but Gian Quasar? Who doesn't have a Wikipedia-article, but who is "recognized as the leading authority in the world on the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle" according to his own web page. Hexmaster (talk) 22:23, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

There's an article that discusses a book by Gian Quasarand it's relationship with the alleged Hutchinson Effect. Interesting that Quasar claims to have started researching the Bermuda Triangle when Larry Kusche had published in 1975 yet Quasar claims to have been the first to completely document it! Anyway, I've tagged the Quasar references, querying their reliability.Autarch (talk) 12:42, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Quasars' essay on Kusches' Bermuda Triangle book takes a list of disappearances from the book. From memory Larry Kusche states at the start of the book that he won't speculate if there is no evidence - there was particularly little evidence for 19th century incidents. Quasar makes a deal of where Kusche says he can't find an explanation, but he doesn't mention that Kusche found discrepancies between what Kusche calls the legend and newspapers. Indeed Kusche was able to find a pattern in that the legend could say weather was good when it was bad and that details about a vessel were inaccurate in a number of cases. Quasar doesn't seem to address this. He also claims that newspapers are inaccurate without providing references to a more accurate result - indeed, much of the page uses sarcasm and innuendo.Autarch (talk) 22:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

In his book, Kusche found some discrepancies between the Bermuda Triangle legend and the facts, but also allowed his own biases and inadequate research to distort the facts. For example, Kusche devotes a number of pages to the USS Cyclops disappearance in his book, but arrives at a conclusion inconsistent with the facts. First, at p. 53, he informs the reader that "the ship was bound for Norfolk* . . ."

"* The destination has sometimes been given as Norfolk, sometimes as Baltimore."

Had Kusche bothered to do more than cursory research from newspaper accounts, he would have discovered that the Cyclops was definitely bound for Baltimore, not Norfolk. See, for example, http://bermuda-triangle.org/html/cyclops_pg2_.html. So why does Kusche claim Norfolk? Because, he argues, a storm off the Norfolk coast on March 10, 1918 is what sank the Cyclops, and a sunken ship discovered off the Norfolk coast in 1968 "might very well be the Cyclops." (p. 64). Accordingly, Kusche "confidently decided that the newspapers, the Navy, and all the ships at sea had been wrong, and that there had been a storm near Norfolk that day that was strong enough to sink the ship." (p. 61). Kusche then congratulates himself for discovering information about this storm, which "was quietly tucked away in the Weather Bureau's statistics sheets where it would remain undiscovered for fifty-six years." (p. 63) Kusche also maintains that, "contrary to public opinion, there never was an inquiry into the disappearance" of the Cyclops (p. 63).

So what's wrong with this picture? Almost everything. First, Kusche was evidently unaware that his speculative hypothesis had been proposed 45 years earlier in the June 1929 edition of Popular Science magazine. In an article titled "Strangest American Sea Mystery is Solved at Last", Alfred P. Reck also claimed that the March 10, 1918 storm off the Norfolk coast had sunk the Cyclops. See http://books.google.com/books?id=XSg...age%22&f=false (article begins at page 15). Reck argued that a ship called the Amalco passed within five miles of the Cyclops north of Norfolk on March 9; however, as Gian Quasar discovered when he examined the voluminous records of the naval inquiry into the disappearance of the Cyclops -- an inquiry that Kusche maintains never took place -- the Cyclops was not due in Baltimore until March 13, and so would have been well south of Norfolk on both March 9-10. See http://bermuda-triangle.org/html/ske..._triangle.html (Reck also misspelled the name of the ship -- it was actually the Amolco; see July 27, 2005 post of "shipwreck" at http://boards.history.com/topic/Deep...33294&start=30

What of the sunken ship discovered in 1968 off the Norfolk coast? "A different wreck was located and nothing resembling the Cyclops was found." See June 16, 2005 post of "goindwn" at http://boards.history.com/topic/Deep...33294&start=30

In summary, Kusche's account of the disappearance of the Cyclops not only brings nothing new to the table, it misleads his readers into thinking that he solved a long-standing mystery because of his diligent research when, in fact, that research failed to uncover either the June 1929 Popular Science article or the extensive naval inquiry into the ship's disappearance. If Kusche had a more open mind and done his homework, he would likely have echoed the official Navy statement about the disappearance of the Cyclops:

". . . The disappearance of this ship has been one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of the Navy, all attempts to locate her having proved unsuccessful. Many theories have been advanced, but none that satisfactorily accounts for her disappearance . . ." See http://bermuda-triangle.org/html/cyclops_pg3.html Rodneysmall (talk) 17:58, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to add a bit more. First google "cyclone tracks", chose images and click on an image showing cyclones on the map of the world. You will see that there are TWO places where the cyclones are especially common and dense. One of the places is centered at the Bermuda triangle, the other one at the Devil's Sea. If nothing else, that alone should make the places very dangerous. Kusche's "research" is very questionable: 1) why would a person of his "incredible talents and abilities" work as a plain librarian? 2) it is very doubtful that a plain librarian would have financial resources and time to properly investigate the Bermuda Triangle and Devil's Sea. Kusche's research is mainly based on newspaper articles, that, of course, is a truly reliable source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.151.126.155 (talk) 05:04, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

References

I have converted the references in this article to the list-defined references format. This format places named reference tags (e.g., {{r|name]]) in the article text and moves all of the reference data to the reflist. The format is described here: Help:List-defined_references. JimGibson1 (talk) 22:47, 8 October 2018 (UTC)