Some of you may recall the Bigfoot footage I posted a while back — now the full, unedited, complete version without the blurry effects is available. Note that the language here may be NSFW, unless you’re working as a longshoreman.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’m shocked and appalled. Someone call PETA!
Are you begging for mythusmage to start commenting on this subject again?
I’m… skeptically amazed. And also skeptically appalled. Awesome.
Good job Apolo Ohno!
Are you begging for mythusmage to start commenting on this subject again? – Janine,MOFMA,OM
Come on! Surely you don’t believe in mythusmage? All we have is some blurry posts which obviously just show someone pretending to think!
That reminds me. I need to shave. A haircut would be splendid too.
Oh my, that’s hilarious :D. Great job guys.
On another note, can we get one of you skeptically pwning Jebus next? :)
/me patiently waiting for the footers to start clutching their pearls over fraud, lies and purposely trying to make them look foolish. In other words, the concern trolls of the bigfoot believers…
We like the ending. Very Deliverancy
Hunter: “You shore gat a purty mouf.”
Bigfoot: “Huh?”
I cannot believe they killed the only living proof of the Planet of the Apes Theory…This is appalling.
We were right on the verge of proving it! Grants were being applied for and everything.
Damn it.
Beautiful! Very neatly done – and technically difficult to do all in one take, like they did.
The anti-furry hate must end!!!!11!1
I think that was the Sexy Yeti… How tragic! I wonder how Dennis will take this?
Amateurs. You don’t hunt the ‘Foot’ with shotguns. Use a lever action big bore. I’m thinking .45-70, .45 Casull or .444 Marlin.
I don’t get it. Was there a point to all this? Perusing the comments on the original video, it appears to have fooled a grand total of one person.
lol I’m skeptically amused.
Nah, I don’t believe it. If you kick an entwife, all that happens is you break your foot. If you shoot an entwife, all that happens is you waste a bullet; and if it annoys the entwife enough, someone will have to scrape you off the forest floor and carry you home in a paper bag. Obviously a fake…
It appears to be a video trying to see how many people would be fooled by a shaky, blurry, short video of a fake bigfoot. Amusingly, it failed because it wasn’t shaky, blurry or short enough.
That looks fake, if you ask me. Bigfoot is not real anyway.
@15: Naw, real men use automatic weapons and grenade launchers !
Is that anyway to treat your Lord and Saviour. Sasquatch Jesus is about berries and peace, unless of course you don’t believe and then it’s straight to the Loch of Fire.
I think Bigfoot was supposed to be raising his middle finger but I’m not sure that it worked. Maybe he has poor muscle control
DLC @ 21
But you’ll waste meat and ruin the fur coat value with that kind of fire power. Nope. For me, it’s all about the shot placement.
finally, fucking rifles.
my argument for why i shouldn’t believe in bigfoot has been the same years: why should i believe in bigfoot when the people who claim to believe in bigfoot don’t actually believe in bigfoot?
if i were going out into the woods to look for an 8 foot tall wild primate that was probably capable of ripping me limb from limb, you know what i’d bring? a fucking rifle.
yet i see all these “search for bigfoot” shows, and nobody is ever armed. it’s like they don’t even expect to find bears, which tells me they’re not even looking.
These two videos do the opposite of their purported intention. They actually highlight the quality of the Patterson-Gimlin footage by showing what an obvious fake really looks like. By his failure to make what would obviously be the most effective criticism of the P-G film (i.e., reasonably duplicate the moving creature seen in that footage), John E. Walker pretty much admits that the Patterson-Gimlin film is beyond his ability to fake.
He has a lot of company. Nobody has ever made anything approaching a convincing re-creation of the P-G film. This fact might cause a thinking person to think.
The skeptical community’s treatment of Bigfoot researchers — who by and large maintain the position that the Bigfoot hypothesis is worthy of serious investigation, not that the matter has been settled with unequivocal proof — is an embarrassment and a scandal. There is enough compelling evidence to make the investigation at least worthy of attention.
Indeed. It is very hard to make a human in an ape suit — whether store-bought or custom-made — move substantially like the subject in the Patterson-Gimlin film, which shows the creature clearly for several seconds. There is only one class of people who think this feat is easy — those who haven’t tried it.
It appears the only option when attempting to show the P-G film to be a fake is to produce something so blurry and shaky that you can’t even tell what it’s supposed to be — and then falsely claim that the P-G film is equally poor in technical quality.
Or it just means he didn’t try very hard.
I’ve seen the footer criticisms of P-G replicas. They all boil down to “it’s not the P-G film”.
There is no credible evidence for bigfoot. Zoologists pretty much live for finding new species, yet none of them consider bigfoot seriously. This fact might cause a thinking person to think. There’s no “there” there. That’s why they aren’t looking.
OMS:
Anyone who’s been to the movies in the last 20 years might differ with you on the inability to recreate the Patterson-Gimlin footage. Special FX have come a long way.
Even half-assed attempts like the Bigfoot in this beef jerky commercial look just as “real” as the PG film.
Sure, there’s no harm in speculating, but so far the evidence is conclusive that there ain’t no Bigfoots out there. You’d have a better chance of finding an Ivory Billed Woodpecker in your backyard birdbath.
We’re including this additional link just because it’s funny.
Does this mean that the Yetis in ‘The Mighty Boosh’ weren’t real?
Regarding the Patterson film:
(a) A few years ago, a show featured a return to the actual location of the film, along with the same style of camera used. The most interesting thing they found was the distance involved. The “creature” would have been 10 feet or so from the photographer, which as you might recognize is ridiculously close if it were real.
(b) The style of camera had two speed settings. A person in a suit could easily duplicate the walk on one of those two settings. There is no reason to suspect it was on the other, more difficult, setting.
(c) A hair sample is all we would need to have definitive proof via DNA analysis for Bigfoot’s existence.
tsg,
No reasonable person would insist that minor elements such as the type of trees, etc., be re-created. The consistent demands are that the subject be seen as clearly, be shot from the same angle, and, most important, move in a similar manner.
These are reasonable demands that should be easy to meet if the P-G film is “an obvious fake,” to quote one common description.
Please provide a link to the P-G replica you consider to substantially meet these requirements. I’m excited to see it.
tsg,
I notice this statement is often made by those who have almost no familiarity with the evidence. It’s hard to read Jeff Meldrum’s book cover to cover and say with a straight face that the evidence it contains is not credible. Disputed, sure. “Didn’t convince me,” sure. “Not a complete case,” agreed.
But studies of footprints by an expert in the evolution of primate feet are not credible? Hair analyses with the result “unknown primate” are not credible? Do you have specific evidence of corruption at all the labs involved or something?
Where do you get off using the word credible in this context?
Here’s one overview of some of the evidence that people familiar with the evidence discuss and examine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_regarding_Bigfoot
You can say categorically that not a scrap of that evidence is credible?
Next up: Some genius makes the insightful statement, “But that’s not proof!”
Hahaha. Excellent. On an unrelated note, I was just surfing around the interwebz and came across this:
http://io9.com/5473891/atheists-will-take-care-of-your-pet-after-the-divine-rapture-for-a-price
Gave me a good laugh.
glenister,
Your comment is a fine example of the low standards many skeptics have when it comes to the North American ape question. I’ve consistently noticed a strange desire to avoid the actual evidence and substitute fallacious, vague, unsourced and often false statements.
I can’t tell whether you made this up, remembered it poorly, or there really was “a show” making this weird claim about the P-G film. Source?
“could easily duplicate the walk”? Then why hasn’t anyone done it? You may be referring to the speed of the subject in the P-G film, which would be likely be humanly impossible at one camera frame rate but humanly possible at the other. But the implicit claim made by the P-G film does not include “moved at superhuman speed.”
It’s hilarious that the evidence you seem to need to have “definitive proof” to your satisfaction already exists. Many hairs have been retrieved from various locations that when tested returned the result we would expect if the Bigfoot hypothesis is true: Primate; similar to human, chimpanzee and orang; but no match to any known animal in the database.
That’s not good enough for me to be 100% confident of the existence of Bigfoot, but maybe your standards are lower.
Open Minded:
It would seem simple to verify the validity of the claim by submitting the hair and feces samples to some reputable biologists. This, as opposed to the police science instructor who I would suspect is not a person with expertise in primate genetics.
In fact, the wiki article you cite lists two hoaxes just dealing with hair and a fingernail. There are also good questions raised about the hand and footprint evidence. In short, what you seem to be presenting are anecdotal accounts and possible or even likely frauds without one clear piece of verifiable evidence.
As I said, this could easily be resolved with some modern genetic work. “Tis a pity those who hold this evidence have not submitted it to researchers who could establish the veracity of their claims. Kinda like the Shroud.
Open:
If you would, please provide some manner of citation for the findings regarding the genetics of the hair samples. Who did it, when, what method, that sort of stuff.
This vid is amazingly well done.
The only flaw is that the real bigfoot never leaves his cave without a rolex strapped to his wrist. I don’t think he can tell time with it, but he likes the shiny.
Can anyone illuminate the Jane Goodall reference for me? I’m an admirer of her work, her writing, etc. Did she make a statement at some point supporting the existence of Bigfoot? She seems too smart for that…
Yes.
Thanks for the link. I think she redeems herself with the self awareness at the end of the interview:
“Well, I’m a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. (Chuckles.)
(SNIP)
“Of course, the big, the big criticism of all this is, “Where is the body?” You know, why isn’t there a body? I can’t answer that, and maybe they don’t exist, but I want them to.”
I want them to exist, too! I’m sure we all do. Wouldn’t that be something, to find out there is another species of great ape in the world? It’s hard to imagine what would be more exciting, short of finding extraterrestrial life.
Doesn’t make it true.
And I have to say, all this talk about the “gait” and the impossibility of recreating the P-G footage. I’m an animator by trade, not an anthropologist, but I don’t see anything so rare or unusual in the way it moves. It’s a unique walk, sure, but everyone has a unique walk. Wear shoes of two different sizes and your walk will change significantly. Put a sharp rock in your sock. I looked around at videos that have crude digital “recreations” of the P-G critter’s movement, but they are all poor representations of the walk in the footage, and it is ridiculous to base conclusions on the poor recreations, no matter how “motion captured” they are claimed to be (and what does that even mean?) I have spent years studying and reproducing walks– that’s part of my job– and I just don’t see anything so special or “inhuman” in this film. And all the talk about muscles and such, there is simply way too much by way of film artifacting to make any definitive assessments that it couldn’t possibly be human.
Addie, I read Goodall’s comments as far as seeing the confirmation that sasquatch exists. I have a minor problem with Goodall, she looks similar to my MIL. ;)
Eidolon,
First, if you’re interested in the scientific evidence, Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University has written a good overview in his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. In this book, he discusses results of lab tests on hair samples, among many other categories of evidence.
http://www.amazon.com/Sasquatch-Science-Dr-Jeff-Meldrum/dp/0765312166
If you can stomach the title of the program, this TV episode shows Meldrum and others doing research, including snagging a hair in a trap and then having it analyzed.
http://www.bfro.net/news/american_paranormal.asp
Thank you for illustrating my point: That skeptics are often embarrassingly irrational when it comes to the question of Bigfoot. The evidence is approached with the attitude How can I find an excuse to dismiss this? rather than What is the relative value of this piece of evidence? Here’s how it seems to work:
1. Footprint evidence. If I can find a faked footprint and some criticisms of other footprints, that means I don’t have to judge the value of any footprint evidence. Because it’s Bigfoot! Ha ha!
2. Eyewitness evidence. Eyewitnesses can lie or be mistaken. Olly olly oxen free! If it isn’t definitive proof, then it’s not evidence at all! If I can imagine how a witness could be mistaken, I don’t have to think about how likely that is — the witness could be mistaken, and therefore was! Work avoided, prejudice confirmed.
3. Anything else. Oh, please, I already know from the above that the footers are nuts.
Yawn, a troll who believes without conclusive evidence. Anything Dr. Meldrum has to say is considered trash by any reasonable skeptic, including Skepitcal Inquirer. We had this whole argument with Mythmagus several eternal threads ago. He decided to bail ship…
All,
Please express as percentages:
A. What probability do you place on the existence of a nonhuman, bipedal North American ape?
B. What probability would be required for Bigfoot researchers such as Jeff Meldrum to deserve your respect and encouragement?
My answers:
A. 50%
B. 1%
Bigfoot is real. Apolo Ohno is fake.
OMS,
A 0.2%,
B 0%
Fire bad.
“Believes”?
Do you have a word for that point in an investigative process where you’re not sure if the hypothesis is true but the evidence encourages you to keep doing science until you find out?
Can you make a case that Meldrum is not approaching the evidence with this mindset?
Are all scientists working on unproven hypotheses believers?
And thanks to you as well for further evidence that many skeptics abandon logic and reason when discussing Bigfoot. (I assume you would consider your statement fallacious — in fact, a textbook example — in any other context. Or do you make exceptions for other topics, too?)
I’ve been on top of the science since the ’70’s. There is no science, just pseudoscience by True Believers™. I’m not a true believer. Now, if you have some real evidence, like a body, skeleton, true hair sample, scat…
@25 Does the graininess and jerkiness of The Blair Witch project prove that it was real? Or not real? I’m still trying to unravel the logic underlying your post.
Yes, “move in a similar manner”. That’s the point. The footers take the P-G gait as the Holy Grail, and if you can’t duplicate it precisely, it doesn’t qualify. Meanwhile, the only thing that makes the gait of the “creature” in the P-G film is it doesn’t look human. It’s like picking a ten digit number at random and insisting that because no one else seems to be able to get that same ten digit number that there is something significant about it. There isn’t. That nobody’s been able to duplicate it to the satisfaction of those who want it to be real is also not significant. Sitting in front of a film you know to be a fake and declaring it a fake is trivial.
Sure, “reasonable”….
I’ve had this arguments before many times. I have no desire to refute each and every one of the endless insignificant details you feel disqualify any footage from being similar to the P-G footage.
The fact is the P-G footage is easily explainable without the need for a “cryptid” to anyone who isn’t trying to convince himself it’s not a hoax.
I don’t have to convince you, you have to convince me.
Just bring in that specimen, lets get a formal scientific description published, get that holotype specimen deposited in a museum and maybe a few genes sequenced and put in genBank and we’ll all buleive.
I’ve only described a few moth species- the specimens exist and can be viewed in the American Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian, Canadian National collection, etc. EVIDENCE is a wonderful thing!
(Open-minded are you not part of a famous Richard Dawkin’s quote?)
Sorry Arachnophilia that should have been @26
I’d love it if someone turned up with conclusive evidence of Bigfoot. Though, honestly, I’d be more willing to believe in the Yeti. The Himalayas are still pretty wild – The US Parks and Rec areas? Yeahhhh, not so much.
But, sadly, the other difficulty with Bigfoot (and lake monsters, UFOs, poltergeists, ghosts, ‘psychic phenomena’, and so forth) – other than the fact that they don’t actually exist – is that the moment any ‘Credible Scientist’ comes down on the side of the ‘Pro-Bigfoot’ crowd, they cease to be credible.
Consequently, even if there WERE any scientific rigor in cryptozoology (and there isn’t), no sensible scientist would touch their data with a ten-foot pole. It’s not worth getting your reputation destroyed to try and un-debunk something that’s been pretty thoroughly debunked previously. At this point, the Bigfoots would have to be peeing on the White House lawn twice a week before anyone would admit the possibility they exist.
tsg,
It’s been more than 40 years since the footage appeared, and still you can’t provide a link to a video showing where someone has faked a similar subject moving in a similar way.
And yet…it’s supposed to just be a guy in an ape suit running across a creek bed.
Camera, ape suit, creek bed. These materials are not hard to come by.
I notice statements like these are often made by people who think the only reason someone could possibly disagree with them is ignorance.
It’s clear you don’t know what “credible” means in this context.
Without knowing what evidence you are referring to, all I can really say is “unknown primate” != bigfoot.
Right here Definition #2: “worthy of belief or confidence; trustworthy”
Yes: “The neutrality of this article’s title and/or subject matter is disputed. This is a dispute over the neutrality of viewpoints implied by the title, or the subject matter within its scope, rather than the actual facts stated. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.(October 2009)”
It’s not even close.
Bigfoots (Bigfeets?) must be damn elusive as there has be a viable population- must have a terrific genetic bottleneck, so bad that the cheetah genome (that small part sequenced) looks diverse by comparison.
Open Minded:
I checked further and I find that there is no DNA evidence supporting any North American primate. One test found human for one sample and opossum for another. The findings by P Fuerst were withdrawn after it was decided there just wasn’t enough mDNA. Interestingly, there has been none recovered in the intervening 13 years.
Again, no biological evidence. No paper submitted to Nature with this stunning discovery. My pointing out the error in the mathematics of the foot size distribution does not support your contention that the footprints are genuine. What the existence of repeated hoaxes does do is to make only the best evidence persuasive. One good set of objective data and …poof! You have headline news. Otherwise, not so much.
That would satisfy you? No, but that isn’t at all significant.
I have a friend who is a professional mime. I can videotape him doing some bizarre, crazy, seemingly impossible type of movement and claim he is an alien. To paraphrase your argument, OMS:
Me: Look, it’s a video of an alien.
You: Nonsense. There is nothing in there that would be impossible for a human to do. Sure, its weird movement, and I don’t know exactly how he did it, but there is nothing completely outside the range of possibility there.
Me: Ok, then recreate it.
You: Well, I can’t recreate it exactly. I mean, I can make a video of me moving in a weird way, but I can’t do THAT exactly.
Me: So this could be an actual alien video.
You: Well, no. It’s implausible and there is nothing humanly impossible in that video.
Me: So recreate it. All you need is a camera.
You: Again, I can’t move exactly like him…
Etc.
Categorically?
No, I don’t have the relevant scientific background in those fields.
But yeah, I’ll stick my hand up and say I strongly doubt the credibility of that list of evidence.
Sure, if there was good consistent data turning up and it was widely agreed among the specialist community that the prints represent an unique but as-yet unidentified species, they’d go some way as supporting evidence.
But apparently there’s one guy who thought the footprint evidence is scientifically compelling.
And according to your linked source, most of the time there isn’t even a consistent toe count! Are they all distinct subspecies? Or is it just that the overwhelming majority are hoaxes, except for the ones that aren’t?
Really, which one was that?
In your list, I see hair samples listed that were:
* visually unidentifiable by a police science instructor in 1968
* hair mostly likely from a black bear
* an odd fingernail, probably human, from a group with a history of hoaxes
Perhaps you mean this analysis, revealing the Sasquatch to be an unknown variety of bison primate?
Yeah. I doubt the evidence to date.
And given the overwhelming weight of dubious evidence, I doubt the original hypothesis even more.
mothra,
And until then it’s silly to pursue the matter? If we’re not sure, it’s stupid to try to answer the question?
The Bigfoot research community generally asks nobody to simply believe based on the current state of the evidence. They do, however, contend that there is enough compelling, unexplained evidence to justify a continuing inquiry.
They’re right about that, and science-minded folk who hold them up to mockery and ridicule do a disservice to science.
Psychics and naturopaths deserve the ridicule they receive from the skeptical community. The evidence supports the correctness of a strong campaign against these frauds — it would actually be wrong to take them seriously.
But the evidence for Bigfoot is in a different category entirely, and skeptics who lump them together — especially if they do so without a reasonable familiarity with the evidence — deserve the contempt we’d throw at any hypocrite.
At what level? None, from the data so far. Given the amount of logging and hunting that occur in the Pacific Northwest, one could definitely think that if sasquatch really existed, a body/skeleton would be been discovered by now. So, no need to fund inquiries…
Kagato,
Congratulations, you used Google and found out that a LOT of crap is associated with Bigfoot.
If I find web pages that make ridiculous statements about bears, does that mean bears don’t exist?
The P-G footage is, at best, an argument from ignorance. The most you can say about it is, if it is a hoax, you don’t know how they did it. That’s not the same as “can’t be done”.
Meanwhile, a costume manufacturer name Philip Morris claims to have made the suit, and a man named Bob Heironimus claims to be the guy inside it. Is this evidence credible? Not necessarily, but it’s much, much more credible than the claim that there’s a hitherto unknown primate wandering North America that leaves little to no evidence of its existence.
Anybody want to take a shot at this?
Ah, yes. The footer battle cry. “We can’t find it because not enough people are looking. The evidence that not enough people are looking is that we haven’t found it yet!”
Why are there so many footers but nobody’s looking? Not one of them has found a body? Not one? Doesn’t that tell you something?
OpenMindedSkeptic, this is really easy: find a body. Alive or dead. Just one. It would prove us all wrong. If even a fraction of the encounters are true the landscape should be littered with them.
OMS- you realize your argument is much like the Shroud of Turin as evidence for Christ (or the Arkansas Ivory bill hunt). Good people believe the ’05 Ivory bill Science article- and forget the leucistic Pileated woodpecker found in The Big Woods that following March.
It would be spectacular if BF’s were real but we have no evidence that meets the minimum standards of taxonomy. Ditto for the continued existence of the Ivory-bill… but it once WAS real.
Exactly. And you’d think an inquiring mind would want to know.
Actually, the Philip Morris claim can be ruled out. Look at the suit he presents. It does not look like the P-G subject.
As far as these apes leaving evidence of their existence, what would you expect that we do not have? Before they were trapped, how much evidence did wolverines (a once-mythical animal until confirmed by a body) leave behind?
And since when are footprints and eyewitness sightings not evidence? They are not proof, but they are evidence that a thinking person should critically evaluate and use to determine a probability (not a certainty) that this ape exists.
Cue some genius bleating, “But many footprints are fake! And eyewitnesses can be mistaken or lying!”
OMS, once you have a body or skeleton, let me know. Until then, STFU. You sound like Mythusmage, and that isn’t a compliment…
tsg,
How confident are you that this statement you made is true? To what degree have you looked into this?
Are you aware of how many wolverine bodies are regularly found (excepting traps)?
Yawn, still no body/skeleton/DNA. Boring OMS.
How much energy do you expect the scientific community to expend looking for something there is no credible evidence for? How long do we have to look before you admit there might be nothing to find? Scientific resources are not unlimited. Give them a reason, any good reason, to look for it and they will. The fact that they aren’t ought to tell you something.
Bodies.
You answered your own question, genius.
Ah, the essence of scientific inquiry.
Yep, speaking as a 30+ year practitioner of science. Don’t waste valuable resources in unproductive areas. In this case, let the loggers and hunters find the carci.
In order for there to be a North American non-human primate there would have to be quite a bit more than just one in order for it to be a genetically viable species.
Significantly more than none. And why excepting traps? Trap a bigfoot.
Oh, fuck you, you sanctimonious twit. Jesus Christ I can’t stand the way footers are always whining about how nobody takes them seriously. There’s a reason for that, asshole.
Find a body or shut the fuck up.
About Anthropoid apes in the New World. Anthropoid apes made a number of forays into North America- via Beringia, across the Atlantic and just possibly island hopping by boat across the northern Pacific. Those anthropoid apes were all Homo sapiens. My anthropoid ape ancestors were wimps and did not arrive in the Western Hemisphere until around 1855 or so.
Under special conditions, species may leave a fossil history. La Brea tar pits contain an array of the NA Pleistocene megafauna- no BFs. There are California condor fossils from Florida and Texas, recorded history puts them in Washington and Oregon. Until restocking, their history could be traced as fossils and as living birds in one steady decline. Stellar’s sea cows were large artic dugongs. They were wiped out by ‘whalers’ (Oh the huge manatee of it all) within 60 years of their discovery. But they have a fossil history traceable up and down the Pacific coast of North America. BFs- nope.
No, I used the link you provided in #33 as an “overview of some of the evidence that people familiar with the evidence discuss and examine”.
Sure, it’s Wikipedia, so it’s hardly a definitive reference; but it is a good place as an overview when properly sourced.
If you think it’s missing any important and relevant information, you really should add it in yourself.
And if it’s currently inaccurate, why did you use it as a point of reference?
OpenMindedSkeptic is mythusmage. That much has been made clear.
Sorry, no, this does not support your pet cryptozoological hypothesis. This is like saying that you know that a UFO is an alien spaceship, neglecting to remember what the ‘U’ means.
OMS, we aren’t denying the possibility that sasquatch exists. We are saying that public money can be spent better elsewhere, where ROI is much more likely.
It’s crazy to say that blurry footage of a guy in a monkey suit walking funny isn’t proof of Bigfoot! That’s like saying crappy pictures of an old log, shadows, and reflections doesn’t prove there’s a dinosaur in Scotland twice as big as the lake it’s supposed to be in!
Next thing you’ll be telling me that Santa Claus doesn’t exist: Come on! Haven’t you seen him at the mall?!
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/bigfoot-4572/Overview#tab-Photos/8
Can’t find a copy of this segment of the show, so you’ll just have to watch when it runs again.
Of course, mimicking every aspect of what is shown in the Patterson film neither proves nor disproves the existence of bigfoot. Nor does any of the evidence found so far provide grounds for a large scientific search for a possible creature of this nature.
No one is saying you can’t go looking. But if you want to make claims, or demand someone other than the current bigfoot community look into it, you had better provide a good reason. A couple hair samples that cannot be independently verified as “unknown primate” by several respected labs is not enough.
Defending the crankier aspects of cryptozoology will get you nowhere, either.
No one is afraid of finding bigfoot. But people can be pretty dismissive of previously debunked claims, whether submitted as conclusive or as warranting particular research.
Tell you what – you submit grant papers to your favorite governments or rich patrons, get the funds, and I’ll personally find you reputable scientists to examine the evidence found, blind. That is, they won’t know what it is they are examining, nor the supposed source, so they cannot skew the test results.
Or, you can get whomever to cough up the evidence they already supposedly have for further testing by multiple independent scientists.
Cheers.
Alan Kellogg = Mythusmage = OpenMindedSkeptic. That makes sense. But not approved by PZ.
DNA-
We could solve this all with DNA.
Just one sample in the well array-
And we’ll extract some DNA.
DNA-
Whether fish or fowl or Yeti (pray),
We’ll sequence it’s genes anyway.
We just need some DNA.
How come no one brings in some hair from yonder hill?
Skulls, teeth, bones to keep, all of these would fit the biiiill.
DNA-
Shaky vids, but never DNA.
My Nature publication’s on the way!
I just need some DNA.
Anyone remember this?
If a person cannot answer at least the first question, is that person qualified to have an opinion on the evidence related to Bigfoot?
I already answered, so STFU.
Calling yourself a Bigfoot researcher when we have no reason to believe that Bigfoot actually exists is about as intelligent as calling yourself a phlogiston investigator.
Lots of fur trimmings in parkas, for instance (if you mean before they were trapped by scientists).
Here’s one that got hit by a truck.
Wolverines, and the large mammal species that were recently discovered (like the vu quang) were not mythical to the local hunters. Sure, the native populations also have stories of creatures like the bigfoot, but if they are real wouldn’t you also expect them to have some specific information on how to bag one, or at least where to find them?
And how would we find those reasons without investigation?
Does the probability stay at 0% (no body) until it is suddenly at 100% (body produced)?
If not…
What percentage would you give the probability that the apes exist, given the current state of the evidence?
What evidence, absent a body, would raise that probability?
Native Americans did not “bag” sasquatches. They did, however, consider them real animals, like deer and eagles. And they did keep away from areas they considered to be the Big Man’s territory, such as Skookum Meadow, where evidence related to Bigfoot has been collected.
(But not a body! Not a body!!!!!!11111!!! How come a corpse wasn’t just lying there ready to be bagged??!!!!)
That has been explained to you before. Read upthread. Get to work on EVIDENCE.
So investigate. Who’s fucking stopping you?
Clearly does not understand the concept of “evidence” or, for that matter, “probability”.
Good question. I notice you don’t actually answer it.
Why? Is “theoretically possible, but incredibly unlikely” not clear enough for you?
Your answer was 50%.
You really think it is just as likely that Bigfoot exists as doesn’t exist?
Are you going to show your work?
What probability do you then place on the existence of, for example, elves?
How probable to elves need to be before elf research earns your respect?
It matters not one whit how likely an outcome is as to the validity of a researcher’s work, so long as there is compelling evidence in his favour.
If what little evidence is available is highly circumstantial, and the vast majority clearly hoaxes, then a researcher is likely to find respect and encouragement lacking.
You mean there was a time when eyewitness accounts were the only evidence…and then it turned out the thing actually existed?
Fascinating. I wonder if the scientists investigating those animals listened carefully to eyewitness statements and evaluated their plausibility or just dismissed them sight unseen.
Oh yes, the conclusive evidence should be published in the peer reviewed scientific literature prior to a press announcement (the press announcement could coincide with the publication date). Sniff, sniff. Ah, scientific evidence, smell the of correct facts and things done properly…
<1%
If you believe the evidence for a North American ape is substantially similar in quality to the evidence for elves, then I can see why you are afraid to answer my questions. You are clearly unfamiliar with the evidence.
But why not just admit that, rather than staking out a position against the researchers in this field?
That’s how science works. And for every elusive, mythical animal that turns out to be real, there are dozens and dozens of others that turn out not to be. Should we all be out looking for leprechauns, unicorns, genies, griffins, pegasi, yeti, centaurs, minotaurs, dragons and the Jersey Devil just on some kooks say so?
Evidence. Get some.
Oh, and I answered the elf question directly, but the “less than” symbol apparently caused it not to appear. My answer is “less than one percent.”
Clearly an ironic use of the term “open-minded skeptic”.
We’ve told you what it would take to convince us. What would it take to convince you you’re wrong?
I don’t understand this. I’m not saying nobody should look. The researcher on his own pocket or private funds can suffice. It is such a low ROI shot that public monies could be spent studying something more promising. Try reading peoples posts…
If you believe the evidence for those entities rivals that for Bigfoot in quality, like Kagato you are clearly unfamiliar with the evidence.
Like Kagato, you should just admit that and not stake out a position against those who are familiar with the evidence. That would be the classy thing to do.
What you’re doing now is more of a dick move.
And I’m still waiting for the, I’m sure, entirely reasonable explanation why, if your evidence is so convincing, zoologists aren’t taking the time to investigate since finding new species is what they live for.
OMS, you are a credulous fool. You have no quality evidence, the type of evidence that would convince a skeptic, or even worse, a scientist like myself who is also a skeptic. Your only chance with me is to either produce the evidence I require, which I posted above, or shut the fuck up. You have nothing to offer in the way of good, solid scientific evidence. Those who can’t put up, or shut up, are liars and bullshitters. Welcome to science. Learn some, as this is a science blog.
No, the dick move is insisting those who disagree with you can only be doing so out of ignorance.
What would it take to convince you you’re wrong?
About your ignorance?
Here’s what it would take: Think of the books you would expect me to have read if I were to publicly express an opinion on the theory of evolution by natural selection.
Now, think about how much of a fucking idiot you would think I was if I hadn’t ready any of those books.
Now, think about the books you have read about the evidence for Bigfoot. Actually, name them.
No, about bigfoot.
Oh, my choice of elves as an example was quite deliberate.
If you weren’t aware, a significant percentage of the Icelandic populace believe in their existence, and even allow it to impact on construction projects. Who are you to judge them?
To be fair, I rate the possibility of Bigfoot existing a lot higher than elves. I rate the possibility of an isolated community of thylacine surviving in Australia much higher than Bigfoot existing. However, the possibility of any of these things actually being true is so small, given current evidence, that I feel safe in dismissing them.
You still didn’t explain how you arrived at your 50% probability. How can you expect others to provide numbers if you don’t explain how you come up with yours?
It may surprise you to learn that I do not pine for your approval.
Rather, I am accusing you of spouting off on a subject about which you haven’t studied nearly enough to possess a qualified opinion.
The issue is how unqualified you are to determine a probability that the ape species exists, and therefore express an opinion as to the wisdom of looking into the matter. And yet the only issue you want to discuss is whether that existence has been 100% demonstrated already.
Why do you keep turning to this (settled) issue? Because you know you are not qualified to express an opinion in that middle ground between 0% and 100%. And yet you do. Unequivocally, loudly, like a braying mule.
Drama Queen exit in 3..2..1..
Simple question, OpenMindedSkeptic: What would it take to convince you you’re wrong about bigfoot?
I admit that I cannot provide this explanation within a single comment. However, much of what pushed my current estimate to 50% (from probably a guess of 1% before I looked into the subject seriously) is summarized well in Jeff Meldrum’s book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, a book very few Bigfoot naysayers have actually read, even though it directly addresses many of their objections.
I do not take seriously anyone who claims a desire to understand the current state of the scientific evidence for a North American ape but refuses to read this book by a credentialed scientist. At that point, I know I’m just dealing with a blowhard who fears that facts will get in the way of his present opinion.
No, I said ‘hunters’. They don’t just provide eyewitness accounts, you know. Eyewitness accounts may have been the only evidence available to scientists but not to the local population.
Oh, and as I have said, I believe it is fine and honorable for someone to simply say they don’t know enough about the matter to make an informed guess at the probability that the ape hypothesis is true.
In fact, I will assume that anyone who has been asked to state a probability and does not to be implicitly saying just that.
OMS, what would it take to convince you you’re wrong about bigfoot?
In other words, you are going to believe whatever you want to believe. Got it.
From here:
Don’t let that stop you, though.
OpenMindedSkeptic,
I suppose your reasoning for not answering tsg’s repeated query:
…is that you see it as irrelevant. However, this is hardly the case. In order for your hypothesis to be scientific, as you so desperately want to impress upon all of us, it must be falsifiable.
It is plain to see that you value the presentation of arguments in a scientific manner by the way you dismiss claims that aren’t backed up by evidence, so please: in the interest of meeting your own standards, explain what would falsify your hypothesis.
I bet a dollar it’s because he can’t.
By “wrong,” do you mean lowering or raising my probability estimate?
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that there are 50 pieces of evidence supporting my present position (again, if you want to become familiar with the evidence, your library may have the book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, which summarizes much of the current scientific evidence for and against the existence of the ape). As those became undermined by new evidence, I would lower the percentage. As new evidence came in supporting the hypothesis, I would raise my estimate.
Some pieces are more important than others, however. If someone were to demonstrate how Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin managed to fake their footage (rather than merely asserting that they did), I’d probably lower my estimate to 25%.
A revelation that the eyewitness reports I consider to be the most plausible (including witnesses I have met and whose credibility I have personally judged) were in fact all part of a bizarre conspiracy to coordinate stories would also lower my estimate considerably.
This is how things work in that middle ground between 0% (those footers are all crazy because there’s no body!) and 100% (we have a body now so they just became sane). If you’re not going to maintain a dogmatic position against the possibility, you need to check out the evidence and think about it.
So if I offer you a probability of 0.01%, but don’t back it up with any methodology, you’re happy to take it at face value then?
(I have a truly marvelous proof of my estimate, which this comment is too small to contain!)
I didn’t offer a number not out of “fear” of the topic, as you like to suggest, but rather due to my limited knowledge of probability theory. I wouldn’t know if I was nominating a sensible number in theoretical terms… and I’ll wager you don’t either.
I mean so unlikely that there’s a North American ape wandering around that it’s not worth looking anymore. What would have to happen?
My hypothesis? That skeptics unfamiliar with the best evidence for the ape nonetheless express strong opinions about the matter? You could easily falsify this hypothesis, as it applies to you, by demonstrating familiarity with the evidence.
I won’t hold my breath.
Again, this is about your failure to recognize your own lack of qualification, not Bigfoot.
You might want to pay attention who you’re replying to. Just a thought….
I didn’t ask you to back it up. Just state it. If you are publicly claiming that you are familiar enough with the best evidence for the hypothesis to have an opinion on it, have the sack to put a number or a range to it.
But the full quiz that has utterly perplexed most people here was this:
Weaseling out of this is the same as admitting, “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Which, to anyone actually familiar with the evidence in this area, was already quite apparent.
The smart people stfu when it was clear that mindless bashing of ape researchers wasn’t going to be cost-free. The dumb people kept on blathering.
Guess which group you’re in.
Still insisting on ignorance because no sane person could possibly see footprints (even though some are known to be faked); some fur; some grainy, shaky, blurry video; and eye-witness testimony (even though some are known to be hoaxes and eye-witness testimony isn’t all that credible to begin with) and not conclude there’s a bipedal ape living in North America despite that there have been no fossils found, no bodies, would require a large enough breeding population to make encounters commonplace, and not enough food to support them, and the only known non-human apes aren’t on this continent.
Thank you, I have my answer. Bigfoot exists and nothing will convince you otherwise. Your hypothesis is unfalsifiable and can therefore be dismissed out of hand.
Good night.
Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Stats without methodology are worse than useless.
I’m happy to say “the chances are vanishingly small”. You can take that as 0.01% or 0.0001% if you really want to, but I don’t have the statistical knowledge to back up a specific number. And I’m now nearly certain you don’t either.
Oh sweet irony, what would we do without you?
Oops, you’re right. I thought I was replying to you, tsg. Apologies to dnbarabash for the error.
tsg, just take #123 as responding to your repeated requests that I state what it would take to prove me wrong.
My hypothesis is that you are not familiar enough with the best evidence to have an informed position on the probability that a North American ape exists. You could falsify this to varying degrees by demonstrating familiarity with the evidence, such as having read a relevant book on the subject.
OpenMindedSkeptic, What do you suppose bigfoot eats?
BS
I’m happy to take that as “less than 1%,” which is close enough to understand where you’re coming from. I’d be interested to see if your opinion changes after you become familiar with the evidence.
BS,
What do bears eat? The apparent range is similar.
Oh, and the answer to the bear question is berries, dandelions, grubs, meat from his own kills or others’, and pretty much anything the bear can fit in its mouth.
I already know: nothing. You will never give up. And you think that’s a good thing. It’s telling that you can’t give a single reason why asking for a body as evidence is unreasonable and instead resort to bullshit insinuations.
And my hypothesis is you are a credulous and pretentious twit with no concept of what science really is, and the unmitigated gall to assert that it is you who are being treated unfairly by the scientific community when you don’t make the slightest effort to even understand the rules, let alone play by them, and then wonder why no one will take you seriously. In other words, a typical footer. There are none so blind as those who won’t see.
And now I’m really going to bed.
And hibernating in the winter? Because they sure as hell aren’t walking around leaving tracks in the snow. Mighty odd behavior for a primate.
BS
I do not make this claim. I claim that you and self-described skeptics like you are an embarrassment to the skeptical community, as you cling to a dogmatic belief that ape researchers, if they are in North America, cannot possibly be justified in their efforts.
I think it is reasonably possible that “skeptics” like you will one day be studied the way that skeptics study religious people. I.e., what delusions or emotions drove you to be so irrational about this subject? What is it about Bigfoot in particular that caused you to throw out logic and reason, while claiming to be their champion?
On what grounds do you make this claim?
On the hibernation question, it seems unlikely, although bears don’t technically “hibernate,” either. There is a continuum of metabolic depression in mammals. However, large mammals such as deer do manage to eat their way through winter, often without leaving their home territory.
On the grounds that researchers cover vast areas doing animal census by airplane in the winter and have never seen the tracks of any primates. It approaches impossible that they would have missed any bigfoot tracks.
BS
By the way OMS, when you said that wolverines were considered mythical, what time period were you talking about?
#131
Careful about comparisons to bears. we actually have proof bears exist.
A. What probability do you place on the existence of a nonhuman, bipedal North American ape?
a charity 1% I give to all naturalistic hypotheses.
B. What probability would be required for Bigfoot researchers such as Jeff Meldrum to deserve your respect and encouragement?
2% ooh, so close!
Off the top of my head, veteran Yellowstone backcountry ranger Bob Jackson:
“One time I was skiing into to Heart Lake on the Thorofare. We were 5-6 miles east of the road, and myself and the e others. All at once we saw these footprints going across the trail. There wasn’t any path, and no one used to ski that far in back then. These were real real big footprints stretched out far apart. It was deep snow but it was a fairly distinct track. That was the first and only track I’ve seen.”
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=12302
There are MANY other descriptions of snow tracks, and photos as well. What you say doesn’t exist does. In spades. Did you even look for it?
I think the chances of there being a large primate in north America, leaving little evidence to be vanishingly small. More likely than alien invasions, supernatural beings, ghosts, homeopathy, or the loch ness monster, but that doesn’t say much. That being said, the p-g footage is pretty cool. Movement-wise it looks extremely human, but it’s a hell of a costume, if that’s what it is.
I think Brian Dunning at Skeptoid has a good take on this debate. I suspect he agrees that such a creature is highly unlikely for so many reasons, but I think he makes a good argument for proper logic.
http://skeptoid.com/mobile/4011
This looks real to me.
Fixed that for you. Hope that helps!
=====
A new species of living bovid from Vietnam
Wow, it’s just so fucking unusual that an animal with horns, skulls, teeth, and skin actually exists !!
AddiePray,
Yep, solid criticisms of both sides in that article.
To be fair, I think OMS was referring to a time before these remains were available for scientists.
I was pointing out that this lack of specimens was not because these animals were mystically not leaving any physical remains before that. As the abstract says, the first remains were found in hunters’ houses!
PS. I see I screwed up the name of the animal, I should have referred to ‘the Vu Quanq ox’, since Vu Quang is the name of the whole region.
…and now I screwed up the spelling. The Vu Quang ox.
@OMS
Re THE Gait. So the idea came from some person, male or female who whether through genetics, illness or surgery walked funny. Put that person in a suit and emphasise THE Gait and of course it is hard to replicate those, possibly unique, features. But that proves diddly squat. It proves that the figure in the film has a unique walk. That factoid in and of itself is not evidence that:
1. the figure is not human
2. The figure is Sasquatch or any other non human great ape.
3. It might be an alien.
4. It might be Nessie doing a bit of shape shifting while on holiday.
5. Insert favourite alternative here.
If you were truly a skeptic you would be down and hard on people drawing more from evidence than the evidence can support. I therefore out you as a non skeptic by your insistence on drawing more from THE Gait than can be logically sustained.
Back at my old Halls of Residence (sort of Dorm come Frat house) at Uni in New Zealand some years before my attendance the students cooked up a UFO hoax. On dispersing all across the country for the summer at pre arranged times they, or co-opted family members contacted the media, police, air force describing different aspects of the same UFO (they knew about eyewitness accounts you see) that proceeded the length of the country from South to North at fantastic speed.
There was a reunion of old boys during my tenure and they decided to come clean about what was hailed as ‘the best attested account of a UFO in NZ’. The reaction was most interesting. The UFO True Believers refused to believe that a bunch of university students could have thought up or effected such a scam. So to this day they trot it out as the best attested.
You remind me of those True Believers. Skeptic my arse.
OpenMindedSkeptic subscribes to the Spock School of Star Trek probabilities, wherein one can immediately pull odds out of their ass based on essentially no information. This is useful for him because, no matter how low a Star Trek Probability Estimate (STPE) is, the actual success rate will be 100% if one is the protagonist. That is why OMS does not need to answer questions about falsifiability: he cannot fail. That’s just science!
You sure as shit don’t START OFF by saying that you’re INVESTIGATING BIGFOOT. Rather, you say that you’re investigating THE ORIGIN OF AN UNKNOWN HAIR SAMPLE.
Saying you’re investigating Bigfoot just means you’ve picked the conclusion and you’re hunting for facts to fit it.
Are you shitting us? This is like saying you have to read dozens of books on elves to be able to argue that they don’t exist. What a pathetically lame excuse.
Dozens of books on an animal that is constantly described in different ways are not dozens of books on the same subject. This is an explanation in search of a phenomenon.
The credentialed scientist is being a crackpot. Even Nobel prize winners like Linus Pauling had their crackpot moments (vitamin C in his case). So, I see reviews of the book that prove the crackpot is a crackpot. So, I don’t need to read the book. That’s what Skeptical Inquirer does. And they have examined the lack of solid physical evidence, and the crackpots who claim evidence periodically. Show me some real scientific evidence from the peer reviewed literature, or shut the fuck up about sasquatch, as you have nothing. Welcome to science.
Open Minded Skeptic, do you think the following video is a hoax? Video of a bear walking upright.
Nerd, OMS must also believe in intelligent design, alien abductions, ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, and telekinesis as well. There are, after all, books written about the evidence for those as well, and there are sure a lot more grainy ghost and UFO videos than bigfoot videos, and it would very close-minded to demand proper evidence before drawing a conclusion.
Aratina: Speaking of video, why aren’t there more videos of bigfoot these days? The number of people with video cameras has skyrocketed, and there are more and more people visiting national parks. There has been an explosion in UFO videos, but no corresponding increase in bigfoot sightings. Funny, that.
P.S. I give that video a 50% chance of being legitimate based on an analysis of mumblemumblemumble.
Naked Bunny, it all depends on where OMS lets his brains fall out. (A good skeptic is open minded, but isn’t so open minded his brains fall out like OMS on sasquatch.) Some folks are big on one or two, or scoff at the rest.
Truly so. We aren’t even seeing digital photos of bigfoot yet and digital cameras are everywhere now. Maybe NASA should send Footer (sister to Spirit and Opportunity) out into the Smoky Hills in search of bigfoot.
Good analysis! :D SRSLY, though, if that is a human (or two) in a bear suit, it sure beats the hell out of the Patterson-Gilmin shaky handcam filming of Fred Flinstone in an ape suit.
My wife used to watch Animal Planet a lot, so I’ve seen three-legged dogs that walked on their hind feet for short distances. Well, they more hopped than walked. I hesitate to translate the behavior of a 10-pound dog to a bear, though, especially since the dog could have been trained to do that.
I always like how folks such as OMS ignore the simple questions such as the lack of DNA, any fossil or even current skeletal remains, population size issues, lack of sightings as technology improves and becomes more available and more. Instead, he dicks around with a probability he has no realistic way of estimating, other than his own wishes.
One good sample of DNA and the whole issue either becomes big news. A skull or even a jawbone would certainly force a rethink on the matter. Of course, the same could be said of miracles. One clear case of a healed amputee…
Naked Bunny with a Whip,
That’s a good point; it could have been a trained bear. I have trained my cat (four legs) to walk on two legs a very short distance for kitty treats. She loses her balance after about a meter but it is fun to watch. Good thing I don’t let her outside or someone might mistake her for a mini-sasquatch!
Oh, that’s easy.
The last bigfoot died in 1968.
@Kagato: Convenient!
You are likely working from “no information,” or, rather, information you pulled out of your ass. I am not. As a skeptic, I make an effort to understand the evidence related to a matter about which I am forming an opinion, rather than assume that the prevailing bias in my social group is correct.
Many dogmatic skeptics assume that the footprint evidence could be made by wooden feet, that the eyewitnesses are all crazy and that dead bodies of reclusive animals with small breeding populations are routinely discovered by hikers every year before the bodies decompose. They are wrong on all these counts, and many more. And they’d know this if they made a good-faith effort to understand the evidence.
Have you tested your RQ?
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/measure_your_rq.php
Or perhaps you denigrate this test, which demands that you estimate your own likelihood to be right or wrong, as the “Spock School of Star Trek probabilities”?
For the record, I scored a 79.
There is a remarkable consistency in the details of independent eyewitness accounts — a consistency that you would have noticed were you familiar with the evidence, and that would mean something to a skeptic.
You know how you feel about creationists who stake out a position against the theory of evolution, and while talking to them you can tell they haven’t read The Origin of Species, or even Evolution for Dummies?
That’s how I feel about you, and it’s justified. Pointing to a group of researchers and saying, “These people are idiots for even bothering to look into this” implies that you have made a sincere effort to examine the evidence that motivates these researchers. When PZ attacks ID, he does so from an understanding of the position of ID proponents as they describe it.
He doesn’t just guess that they’re idiots, he knows it, because he looked into it.
When it comes to Bigfoot, the approach of most dogmatic skeptics is to assume that the evidence for the ape is the same as the evidence for unicorns and just get straight to the ridicule. In other words, if the evidence for a North American ape were qualitatively different than that for unicorns, the dogmatic skeptic wouldn’t know it.
aratina,
No, I do not. However, does “a bear walking upright” seem to be a likely explanation for the best eyewitness accounts of a North American ape, from your direct examination of those accounts?
OMS, we aren’t dogmatic skeptics. You are a credulous fool though. Show us the evidence. Real scientific evidence, not things that not only be faked, but have been found to be fakes by skeptics actually finding the people making the footprints, and are shown how it is done. So, if you choose to believe in iffy evidence, you can do so. But keep your delusions to yourself. We are scientifically correct to wait for more conclusive evidence. Time to put up or shut up on that level of evidence.
Issues such as these are discussed at great length among Bigfoot researchers. They are hardly ignored. You could read a single book on the subject, such as Legend Meets Science, and see these questions confronted directly.
But I do always like how folks such as you ignore the fact that ape researchers do not ignore the issues that you claim they ignore.
Even though OMS says they have been adressed, they really haven’t. The data doesn’t exist at the scientific level. Just at the credulous fool level. Real science requires more than suggestion. It requires hard physical evidence. DNA, bones, skin, bodies. Short of that, only Credulous BelieverTM need apply.
Is bigfootbotting a dungeonable offence? Because if so,
Alan KelloggmythusmageOpenMindedSceptic qualifies for the dungeon on at least two grounds!Open Minded Skeptic, when the upright-walking bear gets behind the foliage, it looks like a freakish humanoid walking to me. It just shows that you should not jump to a conclusion of the existence of creatures that are imaginary such as Sasquatch which are creatures of folklore. Treat it the way we treat God: lots of people experience God talking to them, but you and I know that sans Bible they would not be communicating with the Christian god, God.
It is only because they have been taught that God is a likely possibility that they attribute these experiences to communication with God. Otherwise, they might attribute the experiences to a different god or perhaps something else like a demigod or spirit, but we know it would not be God without the God myth being taught.
In the same way, you only group all these sightings, footprints, and the rest together as being evidence of bigfoot because you know about bigfoot and believe in bigfoot’s existence (per the P-G film or what have you) while discounting the very real possibility that they are not related or only related by cultural knowledge of the tall bigfoot tale and the shared human experience. It’s an easy mistake to make, for a human.
I can live with the Bigfoot believers…while their claims are not credible, so far I have not run across any asertions of behaviors that Bigfoot demands of us more glabrous primates. If one sincerely believed that Bigfoot existed, the conservation implication is that we should preserve the native range of the bigfoot. I’m totally behind that. Stick up a sign that says Bigfoot lives here: No poaching, lumbering, dumping, or befouling by proclamation of [whatever agency governs these kinds of things]. Now if the sky-daddy were such a huckleberry as bigfoot, we may have little need for this blog. Except to discuss science. And Botany Wednesday.
OMS, there is one important thing you seem to be missing completely:
Anyone whatsoever can write and publish a book, especially on “hot topics” like Big Foot, the Loch Ness monster, elves,angels etc. Reading a book cover-to-cover and believing it is worth squat, so stop praising your oh-so-great book and get real. Have any peer-reviewed, non-refuted, professionally accepted research?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
And before you stomp up the argument that other people write accepted books instead of peer-reviewed research – yeah, I know. Some people write books to inform the public (or those who study a subject) because not everyone is willing or able to fight their way through the paper jungle of peer-reviewed literature for every topic – or they write about things that don’t exactly belong into science like that and so on. The bottom line is: books don’t count as scientific evidence and a smart author won’t claim they do. They can be persuasive, they can have interesting new thoughts and even valid arguments and ideas, but they do not count on their own. Not without the proper research to go with them.
Your “Big Foot exists”-claim needs scientific evidence – and before you can find THAT in a book, you need to find it in research. So please shove the “read this book”-argument up your ass. It’s really not worth a thing.
OMS, you do realise that before you can claim anything as evidence of a bigfoot you first have to (i) demonstrate that it’s not a bear and (ii) demonstrate that it’s not a hoax? This is because bears and hoaxers are both _known to exist_ and thus are prime suspects for anything involving large hairy creatures in the woods.
This is because bears and hoaxers are both _known to exist_ and thus are prime suspects for anything involving large hairy creatures in the woods. – Stephen Wells
Not to mention particularly rugged lumberjacks!
This is a good question, and one I definitely had on my mind when I started looking into this. However, most Bigfoot sighting reports (even before consumer video cameras existed) follow a similar theme: As soon as the witness saw the ape it ran away. Very few hikers are able to whip out a camera and get it focused and running in five seconds — especially when they are in shock.
Roger Patterson was an exception — he was actively looking for the apes, following a report of tracks in the Bluff Creek area, and he had specifically practiced drawing his camera from its ready position in his half-open saddlebag. (To my knowledge, none of the above facts about Patterson are in dispute.) Patterson was in a unique position to capture the image he got before the ape disappeared. Most people in the woods do not fit this profile — they are not going off-trail (in fact, from my experience in national parks and forests, I’d guess that 99% of visitors never venture beyond marked trails), and they are not prepared to get a camera operating in just a few seconds while under pressure.
Lest this seem like special pleading, note that this explanation — that the animal is rare, and it would be difficult to get the shot even if you were prepared for it, which most people are not — also applies to the question, “Why there are not more videos and photos of wolverines these days?” It is very unlikely that a hiker who encountered a wolverine would be able to get a shot of this rare and extremely human-shy animal in the few panicked seconds available. Most images we have of wolverines, in fact, are from captive animals on game farms. Most shots I’ve seen of wild wolverines are about as bad as your average blobsquatch picture.
The trailcam issue is thornier, however. There has been an explosion in the use of these devices by hunters. Hunters rarely venture far into the woods (they are planning to lug back a dead animal, after all), so they are not setting up their trailcams in prime territory for an extremely reclusive animal like a wolverine or an alleged North American ape, but still a trailcam recently got a picture of a wolverine:
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/SS/20080305/NEWS/183184947
Of course, this wasn’t a hunter’s trailcam. It was set up by a researcher trying to get images of martens. And the image defied a strong assumption by biologists — that the wolverine did not exist in this area.
Bigfoot researchers recognize the value of trailcams and are using them in areas with a high concentration of sighting reports:
http://www.bfro.net/news/olympic_project.asp
So, the short answer to your question, “Why aren’t there more videos of bigfoot these days?” is: We should not reasonably expect the average hiker to be able get such a video in the short time available, but we should reasonably expect a trailcam to be able to get a still image, given a high enough number of trailcams put in the correct places — and researchers are working on it.
I do not make this claim. Please read for comprehension.
OMS your rationalization for lack of evidence is bunk. Stop making excuses for the lack of hard evidence, and go find it. You won’t find it at this blog. Until then, you have nothing but your bad attitude. We keep saying “show us scientific evidence”. That is the sign of a properly open mind, receptive to new ideas that are properly evidenced. Your alleged evidence for sasquatch fails in quality. Why can’t you understand that? We don’t give a shit what you think. Because, since you believe without sufficient evidence, you appear delusional to us. Hence, you aren’t an authority on anything.
Open Minded Skeptic, you haven’t watched many nature documentaries, have you? The elusive wolverine has been captured hundreds if not thousands of times on film. The article you linked to was for a particular area in the USA where wolverines were thought to no longer reside; that bigfoot has been pushed out of a specific territory is not a claim put forth by bigfoot believers who will accept sighting and footprint claims from anywhere in North America. Besides that, such a clear image of a wolverine where it wasn’t expected to be shows the wide gulf you have to cross to get from current bigfoot photo/film hoaxes to credible imagery.
And might I add that the Olympic Project is unbelievably funny. Look at those “tracks”! How could you fall for such crap?
aratina,
Agreed. However, do you not feel it is necessary to look at specific eyewitness reports to see if the conditions present make the mistaken-identity conclusion likely?
What you’ve done is determine how an eyewitness report in your imagination could be the result of mistaken identity. And you’re right to an extent– there are eyewitness reports that cry out to be categorized as “likely bear sighting.” And researchers do categorize many sightings this way. Separating noise (lies, hoaxes mistakes) from signal is a high priority and a constant chore for researchers.
However, when a park ranger, an experienced hunting guide, a thru-hiker and dozens of other people familiar with bears (and also no apparent agenda and no history of mental illness) all describe a close, clear sighting with no obstructions in the way, “bear” becomes an unlikely explanation. (Not impossible, but unlikely.)
Yes, they all could be mistaken or hallucinating. But a smart researcher, I believe, would endeavor to determine how likely that is.
Exactly. And I have not. I do not claim 100% confidence that this ape exists. I claim that we are between 0% and 100%, with the available evidence at least making the unresolved questions worthy of attention. I further claim that dogmatic naysayers in this area have a strong tendency to be as unfamiliar with the evidence as creationists are with the evidence for Darwin’s theory.
The best sighting reports do not cry out for the conclusion “Sasquatch!” They remain a mystery — none of the available explanations comfortably fit, including the Sasquatch explanation.
Remember that the question is not, “Can we be certain that these things exist?” Dogmatic skeptics like to focus on that question, because it’s easy, and they can pretend that bigfoot researchers disagree with them on it (most do not).
The question is, “Does the evidence indicate a high enough probability of existence that searching for additional evidence is not a fool’s errand, as searching for unicorns would be?” I believe there should be a significantly lower standard applied for this question versus the other, but I’m happy to hear an argument that the standards should be the same.
And, having actually made a sincere effort to evaluate it, I believe that the evidence has met that lower standard — if you actually take a look at it (rather than assume that it is what you imagine it to be), there are clearly issues that cry out to be resolved, whether by discovery of the creature or with some other answer. There are questions that at present literally have no answer that is likely to be true.
A competent thinker, confronted with these questions, says, “We need more data.” A dogmatic thinker, whether committed to the pro or con camp, denies that the questions are unresolved. The pro-bigfoot camp resolves the question in favor of the ape. The anti-bigfoot camp points to a shaky explanation (even if it is less shaky than the ape explanation) and says that’s good enough: That “more likely” is synonymous with “likely.”
It isn’t.
Merely guessing that an eyewitness report, sight unseen, can reasonably be dismissed by saying “bear” is not good skepticism or good science.
True, but your analogy breaks down on the details. Eyewitness accounts of the ape often come with corroboration — in the form of other eyewitness accounts as well as physical evidence such as footprints. That doesn’t make an airtight case, but it does distinguish these accounts from those that depend entirely on someone’s description of the voices in their head.
You seem to imagine that all bigfoot researchers simply believe what people say, without examining their statements critically. If so, you are wrong about this. I’d recommend gaining some familiarity with eyewitness reports. Too much to ask?
Here you seem to imagine a bigfoot witness who entered the woods with a bias toward believing in the ape. But most witnesses do not fit this description. Most, in fact, had a bias in the other direction. A large number specifically say that they were at first thinking “bear,” but then it became impossible to sustain that impression as they continued observing.
It is not accurate to say that I “believe in bigfoot’s existence.” Given that I have taken pains to make clear my actual position, repeatedly, why do you think you have failed to comprehend it? Is there something more I could have done to help you?
So is adopting a condescending attitude toward those who actually take seriously those matters you are sure they don’t take seriously. In fact, sometimes people take this condescending attitude without having adequate familiarity with the people they condescend to.
It’s an easy mistake, for a human. But a skeptic should always be on the lookout for it.
Are you aware of how often these “nature documentaries” are shot on game farms and similar high-fence enclosed areas? As I mentioned in my comment?
It’s hilarious that you condescendingly try to lift bigfoot researchers out of their pit of ignorance while you labor under the naive delusion that the nature documentaries you see on cable are all shot where their producers want you to believe they were shot.
Sorry to break the spell, but ranches like Triple D offer photographers and videographers the best time:result ratio, and so that’s where they go to get those spectacular shots in the “wild” you love so much.
Read, and watch the scales fall from your eyes:
http://www.tripledgamefarm.com/
Yawn, OMS the delusional fool can’t put up the right evidence, but can’t shut up either. There goes his credibility.
OMS
Do you have the quality of evidence required to convince us?
Yes or No?
If No, why can’t you drop the subject, because then you have nothing.
Personally, while I disagree with OMS in some details, he’s made a much better case than his detractors. He’s right that some of the arguments being made are founded on uncertain assumptions and ignorance, and that credible people can work on fringe topics.
The PG film is either the real thing, or a really good hoax than no one has been able to replicate at anything close to the quality level.
There are footprints, hair samples, and eyewitnesses that are not clearly hoaxed or readily explainable by anything other than the bigfoot hypothesis. It could be possible to write off ever individual instance, out of many thousands, as hoax or mistake, I guess. But it’s also possible to admit that there’s a chance bigfoot is for real. Doesn’t make you crazy or a believer. Just means it’s worth looking into some more (and who was asking for public funding anyway? I think OMS was just asking for a lack of active ridicule).
Most scientists, including those in zoology, athropology, etc., are just as ignorant as those commenting here, and “bigfoot” has a tabloid stigma that keeps them from taking it seriously or considering any of the evidence.
Should anyone feel compelled to believe in bigfoot based on available evidence? No. Is there evidence? Yes.
And perhaps we can all agree that there’s more evidence for the existence of bigfoot than God, ok?
Why would you assume that I do? Again you may want to slow down and read for comprehension. I have stated that separating noise from signal is a constant chore in this area. And there is a lot of noise.
What I don’t do is point to the noise and use that to ridicule those who are trying to examine the signal.
Because that’s kind of a dick move.
No.
Because the subject is what an embarrassment you are to good skepticism, and the more we talk the more you prove my point.
Sorry, you are wrong. There is no evidence for either. You can believe what you want, but until good scientific evidence is presented through the proper scientific channels, sasquatch remains as much of a myth a god.
Bullshit. I represent good skepticism. Show me the solid scientific evidence, and I will believe. Until then, no. That is true skepticism. Mind open, but solid evidence is require. Your mind fell out.
Watch this and see why eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot are not very compelling.
Nerd, I don’t find your position credible. Sorry. And I am a scientist.
Scientific evidence is a high standard, and a good one, but many real phenomenon not only exist, but are believed to exist, in its absence. Lots of historical examples where skeptics ridiculed such people.
Meteors suddenly changed from myth to reality? No. They were real the whole time of course. There was evidence for them in the form of eyewitness accounts. Not scientific evidence, but evidence in the favor of reality. Believers, like witnesses, were ridiculed by scientists and by phony skeptics who “knew” rocks from the sky were myth.
There’s nothing wrong with simply saying the evidence is not compelling. Saying there is no evidence is factually incorrect. It’s like you don’t know the meaning of the word. The evidence can be poor, or misleading, but it exists.
There’s evidence for the existence of God, for instance. The people who claim God exists and so-called miracles. I think that’s poor evidence. No tracks, no hair, and only money-grubbing televangelists with motive claiming to be eyewitnesses.
But I think this word skeptic doesn’t mean what you think it means. And science rarely proves anything anyway. Do you believe in global warming? (You should, based on your statements.) Do you believe in human-caused global warming? (You should think it’s likely but not proven to 100%)
Being a skeptic means being questioning claims and their supporting evidence and pointing out flawed logic. It doesn’t mean only believing things published in scientific journals and disbelieving things not published in scientific journals. That’s crazy talk and a ridiculous and impossible way to live life.
I’m finding OMS much more credible and sympathetic here. You’re really coming across as dogmatic, Nerd, and overly defensive and not at all reasonable on this topic. Maybe it’s semantics.
KPOD42, you said “Watch this and see why eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot are not very compelling.”
I didn’t say they were compelling, did I? I said that some were not readily explained. You get experienced hunters, sober, awake, with no reasons to lie and who do not go public and only reluctantly talk to anyone, who get long clear looks at something they can’t identify.
Should anyone believe in bigfoot because of that? No. Is it possible to discount every sighting like this? Maybe, but I don’t find that so easy in every case. I do find it intellectually lazy and arrogant to simply assert that every single one is lying, hoaxed, or mistaken when the bigfoot hypothesis is physically plausible, if unlikely. It isn’t at all scientifically impossible like claims of perpetual motion machines or miracles.
Be skeptical? Sure. Ridicule the serious and thoughtful for looking into it? Arrogant, petty, and unworthy.
This is why tenure exists, too, by the way. Usually such things like bigfoot go bust, but not always. A scientist and an expert physical anthropologist like Meldrum gets to study what he wants at this stage of his career.
I’m all for humor though. I thought the video was funny!
Alien invader hypothesis is also physically plausible. There are far more sightings of aliens, UFOs and ghosts than of bigfoot. Until hard evidence comes to light, it is not helpful to believe in the existence of any of those. I’m not going to stop anybody from looking for evidence, but I (as the Nerd) will remain unconvinced until there is something far more compelling than eyewitnesses. A corpse, some DNA, something that can be tested. Until then, Bigfoot is just another forest fairy to me.
So am I.
First of all, I never said sasquatch can’t exist. But, until you show solid physical evidence with the proper scientific rigor, I simply will not believe. Now, my problem at the moment is that you are not allowing me my choice of what is required for evidence. You seem to want me to accept your lower level of evidence. That won’t happen. So save yourself the effort of trying to convince me otherwise.
I have subscribed to Skeptical Inquirer for 20+ years, so I am well aware fo the meaning of skeptic, and how rational inquiry is done. Again, do yourself a favor and stop trying to convince me to accept your low level of evidence.
So insults are okay if they’re funny, but consistent demands for scientific rigor are arrogant and petty.
P.S. As with all the tone trolls, I notice fliging insults is just dandy as long as you’re the one doing it. Hypocrite.
Uh-oh, OMS! I didn’t get your notion completely right! Oh noez! Shame on me for calling it a “Big Foot exists”-claim instead of “Big Foot may exist”-claim** because that of course totally and utterly renders my point about your precious book completely and utterly invalid. Except that it actually doesn’t. How tale-telling, then, that you had zero to say about anything else I wrote. I can only suppose that you may actually have learned to stop the blabber about your praised Big Foot printware – and maybe with some help from all the smart people here, you’ll eventually learn to stick your eyewitness accounts and video footage in the same place. Good luck.
**especially for you we can make it “Big Foot could exist so much that searching for it is totally worth wasting money on”-claim – how about that?
Some commenters bring up the “well, plenty of eyewitnesses once said such-and-such existed, and the experts brushed them off until later the eyewitnesses were found to be right” idea, as if this alone gives credence to eyewitness claims of having seen a Big Foot.
Yes, eyewitness testimony can be vindicated – when actual evidence is presented. Okapi in Africa, yes; plesiosaurs in Loch Ness , no. That standard still applies.
And speaking of evidence, while the standard remains, the ability to meet it has improved immeasurably over the centuries. Photographic equipment abounds; whereas taking a photo of the Loch Ness Monster in the 1930s required cumbersome equipment and some measure of skill (and the good luck to be the one person who might pass a given spot on a given night while the monster makes an appearance), almost everyone these days has a digital camera or cell phone, and there are many, many more opportunities for people to snap convincing photographs. That no one has done so of Big Foot (with the possible exception of the Patterson-Gimlin film) despite the passage of decades, improvements and ubiquity of photographic technology, and continued human encroachment into “Big Foot” territory makes each passing year without convincing Big Foot evidence another nail in the coffin of the possibility of the existence of a population of such creatures.
I am allergic to that, really.
It’s completely irrelevant whether you’re a scientist, a plumber or a teddy bear with a brain. That a person is a scientist because they’re working in a scientific profession doesn’t grant them any automatic authority in reason and inquiry over someone else. Anyone reading this blog with its constant examples of science gone wrong should actually be more than aware of that – it’s the exact claim that the dumbest of the creationists are prone to make – “BUT I AM A SCIENTIST”. You even get quickly screwed over with the appeal to your own authority when you find out you’re actually talking to another scientist and your perceived authority is worth absolutely nothing. For the record, I am one, too. So what?
Open Minded Skeptic,
Here’s the thing, I don’t want to deny people the exploration of nature and nature’s mysteries, including people who want to investigate gods or unicorns. Just don’t act like these things are real until there is evidence they are real; admit the cultural underpinnings of these mythical creatures. I suppose the best thing going for Sasquatch researchers is that Sasquatch are not said to be endowed with magical abilities AFAIK like so many other mythical creatures (except a few including Nessie).
This here proves that you have nothing.
Actually, to believe an imaginary (invented, fictional) creature as the explanation is less likely.
I’m not sure which instance of attributing some woodland mystery to a bear you are speaking of, but I doubt it is out of the question to guess that a bear’s presence could have been the explanation for evidence that was attributed to a mythical creature like the Sasquatch. You would need something very unlikely to be associated with a bear before you get to the point where saying “bear” becomes untenable.
Do bigfoot researchers gather information about the prior bigfoot knowledge of eyewitnesses? How critical are these bigfoot researchers? How do they analyze sighting reports? The National Geographic had a preview online of a recent bigfoot special and the researcher in Idaho who collects footprints made atrocious comments that were not critical as presented (see the Hairy Horde thread).
Changing stories are not credible in the first place, but what is causing these witnesses to shift from bear to Sasquatch?
So you don’t believe that bigfoot exist but you are pro-bigfoot? Alright. Some atheists believe Jesus existed.
Well, it is funny to me that people would rather attribute all these sightings to a “real” Sasquatch when Sasquatch are little more than tall tales. To me, pro-bigfoot people missed out on the joke aspect of the bigfoot legend. Part of the fun of bigfoot is perpetuating the myth. The ongoing hoaxes are all part of the game and if you fall for one, you have been gotten good.
First, I just have to thank you for the laugh at the thought of going to an enclosed nature reserve to photograph a bigfoot. Now remember, you provided us with a link to a wolverine in the wild. Along with that, I’m not sure I can take you seriously as an authority on all nature films with wolverines.
What signal? You only have noise. That is why it is funny to me.
Nerd, you can’t change definitions to suit your whim, or no communication is possible. Evidence means something more general than scientific evidence, and ridicule and humor are not the same thing either.
You’re being very defensive because you’ve talked yourself into an untenable corner, which I understand.
And the Skeptical Inquirer (SI) is hardly the standard for good skepticism in my opinion. I’ve been rather skeptical about the quality of many of its articles over the years (and I first read it at least 20 years in the past, too, for whatever that’s worth). Your skeptical hat has turned into something a bit more dogmatic and unpleasant than I think it should be, at least in this instance. I’m criticizing that, not you, or skeptics more generally.
This looks like a combination of ego, bias, and semantics, which I’ve been guilty of myself. You don’t get to redefine the word “evidence” and tell people they’re “wrong” for using it correctly.
If all you ever said here was what you said in that last post, I doubt OMS or I would have any problem with it. You want scientific evidence before you will believe in bigfoot. Fine. Good. I understand that, and I agree that it is a very reasonable and appropriate position to hold. This is not the position you’ve been always consistently portraying. You’ve been trying to tell people who have looked at the evidence much more closely than you that they’re total idiots for giving it any credence whatsoever, along with mischaracterizing their positions, devolving into the usual lower level of internet discourse too common. I just hate to see smart people do that when they should be able to agree on the facts, state their positions/philosophies/interpretations, and not fall prey to lies, insults, or worse.
KOPD42, you have the same position as Nerd, which I agree is not unreasonable (although forest fairies don’t leave tracks or hair, etc.), and I don’t know that I’m sure about your sighting statistics. I won’t ask for a citation, though!
Bobber, I agree that the probability of bigfoot decreases every year without compelling evidence emerging.
Namida, it can be helpful to recognize fellow scientists in a discussion not because of any appeal to authority, but it can become easier to know where they’re coming from and recognize they have training of a particular sort. It doesn’t have to be an appeal to authority, but it can be a convincing claim of “I’m not a total idiot, at least in my area or issues of scientific standards.”
I know scientists are usually worth talking with and are unlikely to be whackadoodles.
Certainly people abuse this authority claim.
Oh, but they do! Okay, not really. But I don’t believe sasquatch does either, any more than I believe UFOs leave tracks where they land.
In a corner? Free movement in every direction. Which shows you to be a liar and bullshitter like OMS. Attitude on your part will not change my mind. Conclusive scientific evidence will. What part of that statement are you having trouble with. Oh, the part where I don’t recognize your authority on anything.
Sorry, you are wrong again. In my (and more important to me than your) opinion they do a fine job. Not doing too well in the authority department today. And you have shot your credibility with me.
Now you are being illiterate. My position has been very consitent, both here and on a previous thread. Conclusive scientific evidence, such as a body, bones, skin/hair, or dung is required. Your continued lies undermine your inane and insane attempt to grab authority for your ideas. Take your attitude elsewhere.
This thread needs music!
I’d agree with that as well, especially if a significant number of trail cams get installed in areas with a high proportion of sighting reports. At some point, the odds should catch up.
However, I would disagree with the poorly thought-out notion that the prevalence of phone cameras and the like significantly increases realistic opportunities to capture images of this ape if it exists. A surprised hiker is highly unlikely even to attempt to capture images in the situation described in the average sighting report (ape sighted, then it quickly moves out of sight). Furthermore, a low-rez phonecam with a plastic wide-angle lens is highly unlikely to capture a worthwhile image unless the ape is close by with good lighting.
Next time you’re hiking in the woods, think about it — if an ape appeared thirty feet away, then immediately took off into the woods out of sight within ten seconds, would you realistically be able to capture a good image with the photographic equipment you commonly have with you? Realistically, would you even try within the few seconds you have?
Equipment carried by pro photographers who get the wildlife shots we’re used to seeing on TV is very heavy and cumbersome — extremely few people are carrying that equipment, at the ready, while they go for a hike (off-trail!) in the woods.
It may not be a coincidence that the best visual evidence to date was shot by two men who were specifically looking to capture images of the animal. Patterson and Gimlin were:
A) Traveling by horseback not just in a remote area, but also off-trail,
B) Mentally and physically rehearsed for a large-mammal encounter, with a prepared plan of action that they used in the moment, and
C) Following up on a recent discovery of footprints in the area.
If the mountains of North America were regularly filled with horsepackers going off-trail, cameras at the ready, right after footprints were discovered in the general area, I’d agree that we should expect more footage like the P-G film. But to my knowledge, this, or even something reasonably close to it, is a rare occurrence. Unfortunately, very few bigfoot researchers have closely imitated the Patterson-Gimlin method of searching, despite its purported success.
OK, so how can you believe the P-G film is credible but not believe in bigfoot? BTW, rehearsed was an apt description of P-G. Very well rehearsed. Yep.
Oh, that’s a GREAT start.
This is where your personal incredulity takes over. Have you seen what teenagers capture and post to Facebook and Youtube?
…or one image, even. In the modern era, how many people have entered the woods in question with cell phones/digital cameras? I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I will propose that:
(a) If the number of sitings have remained consistent over the period of, say, the last 30 years;
(b) And the number of hikers/travelers/nooner-in-the-woods enthusiasts has increased over the last 30 years;
(c) And the percentage of persons in possession of easily portable digital cameras and cell phones has increased over the last 30 years;
(d) Then the number of photographs of Bigfoot should probably increase.
(Yeah, it’s simplistic, but I’m a history guy, not a scientist. Still, I’m just sayin’… the odds should be going up every year that we will have a good photo image of Bigfoot, yet the Patterson film is STILL the best you’ve got – and that’s 43 years old.)
If I believed I was going into woods where Bigfoot sitings have occurred, and I had even the slightest inkling of wanting to capture the image of Bigfoot, you’re damn right I’d have the camera ready for just such an occurrence. I’ve done as much walking out of my house and walking through the woods and coming across some deer. Did I capture a National Geographic image? No, I got a lot of pics of white tails and white deer asses. But we don’t even have THAT of Bigfoot – a clear picture of Bigfoot’s big ass.
Poorly thought out, indeed.
Gee, hunters, loggers, miners, and hikers galore out in the mountains, and numbers increasing. Not one body or skeleton discovered. Do the math.
This has truly been a well-spent afternoon. I’ve been toggling between this thread and the Christopher Maloney thread. Read a couple of posts here, switch, read a couple there, switch back. It’s like a doubles tennis match, but with each side having one Sasquatch and one duck. Played with a ball made out of bacon and using flaming goats for racquets.
Fine times. . .
Bigfoot ain’t got nothing on wolverines:
aratina,
I take it by linking those youtube clips you were trying to support my point for me when I said this…
Imagine what you’d be saying if someone presented a supposed video of a bigfoot that was of the quality of any of those wolverine clips. I’m fairly sure you’d consider it of little value, and you’d be right.
It’s hilarious that you don’t know the answers to these important questions about bigfoot researchers, yet you still feel qualified to sit in judgment of them. Notice a problem there?
The answers are available. Go educate yourself — which you should have done before you formed an opinion on this matter.
I thought it was just simple parsimony to suggest that the lack of physical evidence for Bigfoot should lead us to think it doesn’t exist, but no, OpenMindedSkeptic (whose mind seems to be so far open, his brain’s fallen out) continues to tells us that “absence of evidence isn’t…” blah blah blah.
Let’s put these two ideas together. Just because no one has made a convincing fake of the Patterson-Gimlin film does not mean it can’t be done: absence of evidence not being evidence of absence. That a proposition is not easily falsifiable doesn’t earn it any extra credibility: even if no one comes up with a convincing fake, that does not provide any proof that the P-G film is not itself, a very clever fake; so in the lack of any form of other confirmatory evidence, the simplest and parsimonious explanation of the phenomena is still to regard the P-G film as faked footage of a non-existent creature.
In short, the extraordinary proposition you want to show has to be less unlikely than a parsimonious explanation of the evidence, which is why you’re being regarded as a poor caricature of an open-minded skeptic…
Regards, PML
We have an opinion. You are a duped fool. So shut the fuck up.
Three item for OMS.
First, we don’t have explain the movie. Period, end of story. The movie exists, but it is not sufficient evidence in its own right to be considered conclusive scientific proof. Ergo, it is worthless for your inane and utterly ridiculous argument.
Second, we keep telling you the level of evidence needed. You can’t supply that reasonable level, which is conclusive scientific evidence. That requires capturing the animal, a body, a skeleton, hair/hide for DNA, or scat for DNA. And the DNA must test to primate/ape, but not one of the known ones. Failure to supply that level of evidence means we will rightly ignore lesser evidence.
Third, you are trying to shove that inane piece of alleged evidence down our throats. Back off. It just doesn’t cut the mustard, and we don’t have to let you shove it down our throats. And I, for one, am getting tired of your inane blather about that insipid alleged evidence. Now, either put up the level of evidence that is required, or let the matter lie until further evidence is gathered. The conclusive physical evidence that scientifically demonstrates your claim. Until then, you are just a noisy menace to rational thought, with no rational thoughts of your own.
OpenMindedSkeptic #205 and #206,
Nope. I had this in mind at the time:
As you can see, you were wrong. Turns out that wolverines can be captured on film by hikers and snowmachiners in the few panicked seconds available.
Says the P-G film believer. When you say stuff like this, all I can do is shake my head. Nobody can show a video of bigfoot because it is a myth.
Is this an admission that the most significant sightings were by people who had heard of bigfoot, who knew the tale? I already told you that the most prominent researcher in Idaho was not critical of the facts. He had an uncanny ability to acknowledge some of the facts, such as the fact that bear populations coincide with areas of the highest bigfoot sighting density, but disregard them as the best answer.
I’ll leave that to the pushers of the myth as reality, thank you, and I’ll leave you with some more Bigfoot v. Wolverine videos:
My #209 post was slightly in error. I had already adressed the movie, on the
Hairy Horde thread. The summary:
While catching up on my reading, Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 32, No. 6 (2008), had an article by Michael Dennett (pages 47-51), looking at the Patterson BF video, and the alleged footprint evidence from that scene. The timeline for the taking, printing, and first showing of the film is dubious, being almost physically impossible in that time. The footprint data was interesting, in that the alleged BF print was deeper than a hoofprint of a 1,200-1300 pound horse. Given the difference in foot area, this require poor BF to be horribly overweight at about 2,200 lbs. The footprint is hoaxed, which brings the video itself into likely hoax status. Meaningless in any rational discussion, much less scientific discussion.
Nerd of Redhead, OM,
That footprint analysis is online here:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/science_and_footprints/
There sure is a lot you have to swallow to consider the P-G film authentic. It also gives me the idea to turn OpenMindedSkeptic’s idle speculation around:
Fixed.
I did not make this argument. Please read for comprehension.
I did not say it can’t. Please read for comprehension.
If serious attempts are made, and they fail, each failure raises the probability that the P-G film is not a fake. Are you familiar with the term “probability”? At this point, the notion that the P-G film is “an obvious fake” — a phrase many dogmatic skeptics use as they dismiss the film — can be safely ruled out, and any skeptic who uses that assumption as a basis for dismissing bigfoot can be justifiably criticized for engaging in sloppy work.
“less unlikely” != “likely”
The question at issue is whether there are enough unanswered questions that the bigfoot hypothesis is worth investigation. Please read for comprehension.
That is what we have been telling you for days.
1. The film is a probable fake. Take it off the table.
2. The other alleged evidence for BF falls apart with skeptical scrutiny. For example I have a paper of an alleged BF hair test on my desk I obtained via Google Scholar. Sample collected in British Columbia, and tested by the University of Alberta. Bison hair, 100% match by DNA.
3. There is no need to read any evidence that fails the criteria of being scientific. That is for crackpots and True BelieversTM, and excludes proper skeptics and scientists.
4. You don’t make the decision on what is required for us to accept the alleged evidence.
Further attempts to push your definitely unscientific data will reenforce your appearance as a crackpot. Time to fad back into the bandwidth.
I will concede this point, and I’ll rephrase to make the intent of my argument simpler for you to understand.
You: We should have lots of clear, undeniable footage of these apes, because there are lots cameras out there now.
Me: If that’s true, show me amateur footage of wolverines of the quality you would accept as good evidence for bigfoot if it showed a bigfoot. Otherwise, admit that when you say “Why aren’t there more videos of bigfoot?” you’re asking to be presented with bigfoot evidence that you would immediately reject.
Oh, I see that you already admitted that.
You get experienced hunters, sober, awake, with no reasons to lie and who do not go public and only reluctantly talk to anyone – prof-brotherton
You do? How do you hear about them if they don’t “go public”? How do you know their reluctance is real? How do you know they have “no reasons to lie”?
Reminds me one SI correspondent who chased after UFO reports in the southeast. After tracing them back to the source, which news media didn’t do, he said he invariably had a couple of “good old boys” with shit eating grins for pulling one over on the credulous media. Yes, they will deliberately lie to pull your leg. Which is why such testamony needs to be taken with a grain of salt, about the size of Mt. Hood.
Actually there is a lot you have to swallow to believe any of the tales by those who claim to have been “the man in the suit.” There are many who make this claim. Just pick one, and now you’re done.
It is true that Patterson and Gilmlin did not document a chain of custody for the film footage, or otherwise provide documentation that one scientist would expect of another scientist. But it would be rather suspicious if they had — they weren’t scientists! If they suddenly decided to act like they were just before going to Bluff Creek, that would no doubt be cited now as a change of behavior indicating premeditation for a hoax.
Roger Patterson was a rodeo rider and neophyte low-budget filmmaker. He also apparently had trouble managing money and left behind many debts when he died. He was motivated at least partly by profit when he went out looking for bigfoot with his camera.
But it is telling that attacks on Roger Patterson’s character are the best critics such as Greg Long can do. Greg Long should be demonstrating how the film was faked, and then showing that Patterson possessed the resources and skills to do it. Instead, he denigrates Patterson for drinking, managing his money poorly and being short.
Greg Long’s book is the worst kind of pseudo-skepticism. It does not make anything approaching a substantial case against the P-G film. But it does provide lazy, dogmatic skeptics who feel that bigfoot cannot exist something they can point to as “proof” for their position.
Kind of like how Christians can point to a book such as “The Case for Christ.”
What if the SI correspondent had discovered the men to be credible, and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find anything to contradict the details of their story, and much that corroborated it?
Would you then consider the probability that they were telling the truth to be higher?
Or do you just accept evidence that confirms your position and reject anything that doesn’t?
OMS, the P-G film is a hoax until your prove otherwise. Basically, until you provide the body, skeleton, dung (with DNA), hide/hair (with DNA), you have nothing but heresay. And that doesn’t cut the mustard. So, either you have the required level of evidence, and you need to present here and now. Or, if you don’t have it, you need to stop whining about nobody listening to you. You essentially have nothing but your belief in BF, which we don’t have to subscibe to.
OpenMindedSkeptic,
We know bigfoot is a myth, a thing of legends. You are pleading with skeptics to pull the mythical beast into reality without any evidence except your Holy Babble, the Patterson-Gimlin film copy (not the original film, which is lost). Even if you produced evidence clearly demonstrating that there is a species of non-human primate wandering the forests of North America, bigfoot would still have a place in our cultural mythos. Such a fascinating discovery would not wipe away the status of bigfoot in North American folklore, although it would give the fabled creature a solid basis in reality.
Well, you did make a big deal out of the camera shyness of wolverines as if it were comparable to the camera shyness of bigfoot. (How come Patty moved so slowly if she was as shy as the wolverines?) Maybe film footage shouldn’t be prized as highly as other kinds of evidence, like the kinds Nerd of Redhead listed in #209.
And you know why?
Because the sort of mentality that would want to fake a bigfoot sighting, is probably also likely to want to falsely claim credit for a famous film.
Some people just enjoy pulling the wool over other people’s eyes, and getting ettention for themselves (or their creations).
A claim to being the author of a hoax needs to be taken with as large a grain of salt as the potential hoax itself.
But just as being unable to exactly duplicate a video doesn’t make it true, having multiple claimants to a hoax doesn’t mean it’s not still a hoax.
Came back to see the end. Disappointed Nerd, et al., seem to continue to be both bad scientists and skeptics. For instance:
“First, we don’t have explain the movie. Period, end of story. The movie exists, but it is not sufficient evidence in its own right to be considered conclusive scientific proof. Ergo, it is worthless for your inane and utterly ridiculous argument.”
The first part is true, the second part is not. If something is not “conclusive scientific proof” that really means it is worthless? Boy, hard to believe this comes from a scientist. I’d like to see the scientist who only publishes based on having “conclusive scientific proof” and never pursues a line of inquiry based on something not conclusive. Actually, I’d suggest the latter is standard operating procedure. If something is already proven, it’s not interesting. If there’s zero suggestion, it is usually not interesting. It is only the subjects for which there is marginal support but no proof that are worth investigating.
I’m also interesting in seeing the critics claim bigfoot is a myth and only a myth. Dogmatic. Not an appropriate intellectual position. Dawkins is only 6 out of 7 on his disbelief in God. How can you all be 7 out of 7 — perfectly certain — about the nonexistence of bigfoot? Not intellectually reasonable.
I see another delusional True BelieverTM is back, trying wrongly to assert authority over where I draw my line for skepticism. What a waste of a post.
Here’s the thing. I don’t try to sort out the claims. No need to. That is for scientists working in the field to do. They will let me know through regular channels, the peer reviewed scientific literature, if something is found. Until then, because of the sheer number of known hoaxes with BF data, I’ll just take the parisomonious view that until the proper rigor is present, it is a hoax. Don’t like my attitude? I don’t like yours. Fade into the bandwidth like the credulous fool you are. You have nothing cogent to say to me, or to any reasonable skeptic.
Suppose you find a wild non-human humanoid living in the forests of North America, but its fur is white with black spots (for Spam’s sake, just look at Patty once again—her physical characteristics defy just about every Sasquatch description out there); or suppose the population is restricted to a very small geographical area for some reason. Would the existence of such a creature be sufficient enough to make Sasquatch a reality? Even if some wild North American ape were discovered, the chance of it explaining all the bigfoot tales, sightings, and footprints is exceedingly small. The most you could say after such a discovery would be that bigfoot has a solid basis in reality. Bears would probably still be the most likely culprits behind Sasquatch sightings.
You have got it all wrong. God (the Christian god) is a myth as much as Zeus is a myth. I’m at a level of belief of 6.999999999/7 that if you were to ask Dawkins about the existence of God compared to Zeus, he would say God has just as much possibility of being real as Zeus does. Why don’t we look at what Dawkins has actually said just to be sure:
In the same way, I would be very, very surprised if bigfoot turned out to be a real non-human humanoid.
Indeed. Something about the sasquatch hypothesis turns certain skeptics into all-or-nothing, black-and-white absolutists, even as they are introduced to evidence that satisfies their initial, off-the-cuff challenges to the hypothesis.
Note the deafening silence in response to my repeated requests for commenters to state a probability that a North American ape exists. To answer the question would be to admit a middle ground, and a religious nut can’t acknowledge any middle ground.
When it comes to sasquatch, the probability is apparently 0% until it is suddenly 100%. Because on this topic, there is no such thing as evidence that is suggestive — only evidence that absolutely confirms.
I answered your inane question #47 far above. You were too busy preaching your gospel according to credulous fools to listen.
Sorry, I never challenged your ability to be deluded by the data. I always said I wouldn’t be deluded by your flimsy data.
Do you have a peer reviewed scientific paper you wish to cite as conclusive evidence for sasquatch? If no, why can’t you shut the fuck up, since nobody is listening to your nonsense?
Thirty years ago I was more credulous. Due to the lack of solid conclusive evidence that has occurred since then, so since the ’90s I demand solid and conclusive scientific proof. Sasquatch had his chance to make me a believer, but due to continued lack of evidence, I kept raising the bar. The bar will be raised no higher. Unless, of course, you don’t shut the fuck up.
OpenMindedSkeptic, all you have to do is lay down credible evidence of an extant North American wild ape and you will have our attention. You have not produced evidence that demonstrates anything of the sort and neither has anyone else who believes in the possible existence of a North American wild ape.
Where is this middle ground? Would you have us believe that a mishmash of bear crap, moose hair, tall tales, and a plethora of hoaxes suffice middle ground? You might as well put it like this:
Wait a minute—just who is acting like a religious nut in this situation???
Wrong wrong wrong. The probability is too low to calculate without somewhere to start. At this point, all the evidence suggests mischievous deception and mistaken wildlife identity. And don’t forget, if evidence is ever presented that bears some weight, you will still have all the work ahead of you of showing (to the scientific and skeptical community at least) that that wild ape accounts for the bigfoot myth in a significant way and is not some fluke coincidence.
“Sasquatch hypothesis”? Seriously?