Isn't that a little like saying archaeologists seem to find a suspiciously large number of historical objects, or tornado hunters seem to have a suspiciously large number of tornado sightings?
Non-archaeologists find historical objects, and as a former midwesterner, I can assure you that you need no particular background to be able to see tornadoes. It would, indeed, be very suspicious if _only_ those interested in archaeology or tornadoes claimed to observe these.
I think the problem os being only a single witness claiming to have sighted them? The Loch Ness monster has more reported sightings, so a single witness, imo, is not enough to say with a large degree of certainty that there is a big cat roaming around.
I’m not saying I believe there is a big cat roaming but it’s still unfair to say there’s only been one witness when this is something frequently reported on by multiple unrelated individuals.
Indeed — but with the caveat of assuming accurate journalism and that this really is a good DNA test and result and no caveats were removed in the reporting.
Newspapers are like LLMs: when I'm not already a domain expert I have no way to determine their accuracy, but when I am they're often at least a bit wrong in some important way. This is also known as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.