Simple Challenge For Bigfoot Supporters

[kitakaze]

Have you tried the North Gulf Coast?

The beachcombing is utterly fantastic. The flotsom from the entire North Pacific visits. You never know what you might find................

Have you ever been to the west coast of Vancouver Island? The beaches of Ucleulet/Tofino are gorgeous. Long Beach is beautiful.

 

[kitakaze]

LAL, please do let me know if anything comes of the claimed second print featuring matching dermatoglyphics of the OM cast. Indeed, anyone who has any evidence of matching dermatoglyphics in successive prints from a claimed BF trackway please do come forward. Any claimed BF track anywhere displaying a good example of primate friction skin in their so-called dermals would be great.

I can't say that I'm surprised at the relative quietness of the newer proponent members over the last few pages. The invitation to wait an unspecified amount of time for a display of Patty's apparently inhuman pinheadedness (you know where to post that) and a few more pokes at quibbling was a valiant try, though.

It's pretty telling how given the invitation to study some good hard experimental data showing the contrary of one of the oft-touted claims of bf evidence and participate in the discussion the semantics yapping goes silent and you guys get scarce. Way to show your true colours.

Praise to LAL for sticking it out without you guys even trying to offer any back up.

Again, to recap, there's no dermal evidence supporting bigfoot, Rick Noll claims he never suggested the SC was a BF imprint, Meldrum supports and doesn't dispute Matt Crowley's work, and 8 people took the challenge.

Cheer up though, if you find that your repeatedly getting your a$$ handed to you in other non-bf threads you be glad I just gave you something to quibble about.

 

[LAL]

Praise to LAL for sticking it out without you guys even trying to offer any back up.

Thanks, but I don't deserve that. Charchy was busy on another tread and SY is just busy. Huntster and I are both used to going it alone on this board.

Again, to recap, there's no dermal evidence supporting bigfoot, Rick Noll claims he never suggested the SC was a BF imprint, Meldrum supports and doesn't dispute Matt Crowley's work, and 8 people took the challenge.

The dermatoglyphics issue is far from settled. Note significant differences between the lines on the test cast and the lines on OM. The test lines don't have the continuity or the crisp little Vs where ridges join that appear on OM. OM soil is not volcanic ash; the lines haven't shown up using OM soil, so far.

Rick Noll has been reluctant to give definite conclusions in writing but he did list his reasons for thinking it is such an imprint in the debate with DY on BFF, Meldrum supported Matt's work at first, but he's strongly cautioned sceptics, such as Scott Herriot, about drawing conclusions beyond that one cast. Matt has done the same. I doubt Jeff would support some of the sweeping statements that have come about since. I'm certain he would dispute those.

I'd love to get a photo of that second cast. I'll see what I can do.

I admit I had some preconceived notions about the test. I assumed the ichnologist was going to show us his expertly faked prints; some of the statements seemed to point that way.

The experiment should be done cold on people who haven't been involved in these debates. I'd like to see it repeated on BFF. If 8 people took the challenge and only two proponents (the vocal ones) took it it shows sceptics can be wrong too, doesn't it?

 

[LAL]

Can you prove they are real? Or do we just take your word for it? Do you have footage of the track maker actually making the tracks??

Sounds like anecdotal evidence to me. Do you have this guy's name? Can he corroborate your story?

How do we know for sure when and where these pics were taken and how do we know they were made in the manner you claim they were?

Call me a scoftic on the subject.

Quite.

 

[kitakaze]

The dermatoglyphics issue is far from settled. Note significant differences between the lines on the test cast and the lines on OM. The test lines don't have the continuity or the crisp little Vs where ridges join that appear on OM. OM soil is not volcanic ash; the lines haven't shown up using OM soil, so far.

I would disagree with that assessment. I have no problem making the easy recognition that the features on the OM cast obviously in no way resemble dermatogyphics and the simple fact that some of those 'dermal' ridges approach 2mm in width make it all the more obvious. IMO interpreting anything in CA-19 as being dermal ridges is a clear example of a total lack of objectivity as is any attempt at implying bias in Matt Crowley or Dr. Wroblewski.

Again, let people see for themselves:

http://www.orgoneresearch.com/The%20Holy%20Grail;%20The%20Original%20Cast.htm

As has already been repeated, if anyone would like to make any meaningful counter to what is clearly shown let them show us even one example of a ridge flow pattern being repeated in a successive trackway. Simple request. Until then any appeal is a further show of inobjectivity.

 

[kitakaze]

Quite.

Lu, your contributions to the discussion are (at least by me) being taken seriously and addressed. Respectfully, may I suggest not detracting from that by adding to/encouraging the pathetic quibbling.

 

[SweatyYeti]

kitakaze wrote:

I can't say that I'm surprised at the relative quietness of the newer proponent members over the last few pages. The invitation to wait an unspecified amount of time for a display of Patty's apparently inhuman pinheadedness (you know where to post that) and a few more pokes at quibbling was a valiant try, though.

It's pretty telling how given the invitation to study some good hard experimental data showing the contrary of one of the oft-touted claims of bf evidence and participate in the discussion the semantics yapping goes silent and you guys get scarce. Way to show your true colours.

You don't know what you're talking about, kitakaze.
Like Lu said...I've been busy lately.
Between having a new girlfriend in my life, and visiting my mother in a rehab hospital...I haven't had much free time lately.
So before you declare some kind of "victory", because someone hasn't been posting a lot....you should stop and realize you don't know what's going on in other people's lives.
Maybe you shouldn't make judgements on other people's "true colors" when you're working in the dark.

As for your "waiting an unspecified amount of time for a display of Patty's apparantly inhuman pinheadedness"......be patient.

Patty's apparantly inhumanly-shaped head is VERY apparant. I'm surprised you can't see that.

 

[LAL]

Lu, your contributions to the discussion are (at least by me) being taken seriously and addressed. Respectfully, may I suggest not detracting from that by adding to/encouraging the pathetic quibbling.

You may suggest, but I happen to like charchy's sense of humor. He pointed out something important in that post. "Quite" is a quote from another thread.

Proponents can get affadavits, multiple witnesses, physical evidence, lab tests, investigations by qualified law enforcement, and it all gets dismissed as hoax, misidentification, mass hysteria and/or anecdotes, and it seems all the sceptics have to do is say so.

Back up the claims; show me the suit.

And since when did OM get to be "The Holy Grail" (doesn't that mocking phrase show some bias?)? John Green has said the cast wasn't considered important until someone noticed possible dermatoglyphics. Chilcutt's case doesn't rest on that cast.

 

[LAL]

You are missing a point here.

Don't I always?

Its an example of an animal whose geographical distribution is much more restricted than bigfoot's supposed habitat. Even within PNW, mountain goats distribution is smaller than bigfoot's (as inferred from sighting reports). Despite their relatively small geographicdistribution, prone to erosion and glaciers, they are present at the fossil register.

They are creatures of open mountain ranges, one of the habitats that is definitely not Bigfoot. There's an effort to remove them from the Olympics because they're eating rare plants, but this paper says it's unlikely their fossils will be found in the Olympics (for two reasons).

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0888-8892(199510)9:5<1324:OMGCC>2.0.CO;2-0&size=LARGE

The Sasquatch sighting maps show a correlation with areas with over 20" annual rainfall. The areas they do seem to inhabit are simply not conducive to fossilization. Extensive bogs like those in Europe aren't found in this country. The closest to that are in upper Minnesota and Michigan.

"Bogs are widely distributed in cold, temperate climes, mostly in the northern hemisphere (Boreal). The world's largest wetlands are the bogs of the Western Siberian Lowlands in Russia, which cover more than 600,000 square kilometres.

Sphagnum bogs were widespread in northern Europe. Ireland was more than 15% bog; Achill Island off Ireland is 87% bog. There are extensive bogs in Canada and Alaska (called muskeg), Scotland (called mosses), the Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Estonia, Finland (26% boglands), and northern Germany. There are also bogs in the Falkland Islands. Ombrotrophic wetlands - that is, bogs - are also found in the tropics, with notable areas documented in Kalimantan; these habitats are forested so would be better called swamps. Extensive bogs cover the northern areas of the U.S. states of Minnesota and Michigan, most notably on Isle Royale in Lake Superior. The Pocosin of the southeastern United States is like a bog in that it is an acidic wetland but it has its own unusual combination of features."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog

Here's a quote from the very article you linked (http://www.asa3.org/asa/resources/Miller.html):

See? Geographically widespread species have beter odds of preservation. You are talking about a species that -if real and if sighting reports are as reliable as investigators claim to be- lives at a huge chunk of North America, thus increasing remains preservation chances.

I can't think of a more widespread species than the Red Panda, from Washington and Tennessee 3-4 mya to the Himalayas today, but all that's been found in this country, so far, are a few teeth and a jawbone?

As for the odds on fossil preservation, you must note that the estimates include animals without hard parts, whose species and specimens number far outnumber vertebrates, but are much harder to preserve due to the very absence of resistent parts. Also, it takes in to account a time span that is by no means relevant to the case (thus increasing the number of species - we're talking about a time span roughly coincident with H. Sapiens' existence) in point and also factors such as metamorphism that has little impact on the preservation or not of remains dating from the Pliocene to the Holocene. Note that the very article shows examples of forest-dwelling vertebrates.

That's been pointed out before, but look just at the hominid fossil record. Just how complete is that? It took the Leakeys 30 years to uncover one and they were looking.

Note also that a bigfoot's femur has more odds of resisting transport than the femurs of mountain goats or small horse ancestors...

They'd still get eaten by mice and bacteria.

One more time, you may keep on presenting reasons on why there should not be preserved remains, and I can keep presenting examples of preserving remains. This will not change the fact that the fossil register provides no backing to the claim "bigfeet are real".

I didn't make that claim in the first place. I think Gigantopithecus is a good candidate for an ancestor. Even if it wasn't a biped, over 300,000 years a bipedal descendant could well have evolved. Oreopithecus evolved bipedalism independently; why not an Orangutan relative?

BTW, I was being sarcastic about Homo erectus folklore. We don't know that Giganto becam extinct 300,000 years ago. They may have overlapped with modern humans. Their descendants may be living today in Asia and NA. What we do know is there was once a giant ape, with reduced canines, living in China.

On a sidenote, I always found ironic to see a variant of an argument used by creationists (incomplete fossil record) being used to back the lack of support for bigfeet...

If the record were complete, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, would they? The irony has struck me too. I'm an atheist.

Again, you are missing a point.

And the point is: The fossil register does not provides backing for bigfeet/sasquatch as real creatures.

It doesn't provide much backing for modern apes descending from Miocene apes either.

To say "they were not found yet" or some other variant, is a logicall fallacy, an argument from ignorance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
http://skepdic.com/ignorance.html

And I think that's a non sequitur. Lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack, eh?

I don't know that there's anything to be found, but if there is, it may not have been found yet, or, perhaps, something has. Remains, if found, may have been misidentified (as extinct peccary teeth perhaps). There's a report of a primate, non-human skull being sent to sent for analysis and disappearing at USC. If true, that would point up the hazzards of finding something.

 

[kitakaze]

You may suggest, but I happen to like charchy's sense of humor. He pointed out something important in that post.

I'm not refering soley to carcharodon but I think he's (increasingly) funny too. He's pointed out a lot of important things, very little intentional

."Quite" is a quote from another thread.

So why not quote it.

Proponents can get affadavits,

Of what? That's a blatant appeal to authority.

multiple witnesses,

Of what? An example of human error?

lab tests,

Of what? The conclusions are?

investigations by qualified law enforcement,

Qualified in what? Enforcing law or validating casts?

and it all gets dismissed as hoax, misidentification, mass hysteria and/or anecdotes, and it seems all the sceptics have to do is say so.

Like it or not that's what happens with such paltry evidence. Are we going back to quibbling?

Back up the claims; show me the suit.

Wrong logic. Wrong Thread.

And since when did OM get to be "The Holy Grail" (doesn't that mocking phrase show some bias?)? John Green has said the cast wasn't considered important until someone noticed possible dermatoglyphics. Chilcutt's case doesn't rest on that cast.

Interpretting as 'mocking' only shows your bias. Someone didn't notice possible dermatoglyphics, someone was hoping for them. For Chilcutt, his case doesn't rest at all.

LAL, you're experts cases don't even rest with eachother.

 

[LAL]

I'm not refering soley to carcharodon but I think he's (increasingly) funny too. He's pointed out a lot of important things, very little intentionalSo why not quote it.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2248229&postcount=31

Of what? That's a blatant appeal to authority.

How so? John Green (newspaper publisher, BTW, not "editor" as DY said) had witnesses make sworn statments before magistrates. That's just the facts.

Of what? An example of human error?

And why does it have to be error?

Of what? The conclusions are?

"Unknown or" "primate" or with Asian parasites.

Qualified in what? Enforcing law or validating casts?

I was referring to on site investigations. Some made the casts. There have been sightings by officers too.

Like it or not that's what happens with such paltry evidence.

What makes it paltry? It would be good enough in case of a crime.

Are we going back to quibbling?Wrong logic. Wrong thread.

Geez.

Interpretting as 'mocking' only shows your bias.

Oh, really? If Matt had just said "Onion Mountain cast" I wouldn't have thought it mocking at all. All this "his holiness", "saint" etc., stuff seems to be an attempt to portray proponents as blind followers without a brain in our heads. It's mockery.

Someone didn't notice possible dermatoglyphics, someone was hoping for them.

Jimmy was sceptical, remember? And he is a trained, top, forensic fingerprint expert. He kept Elkins Creek for months. Does it look like that was a cursory investigation? The guy's not even into this. He just lent his expertise.

I wish he were here to speak from himself. He's already addressed some of these issues. To my knowlege, Matt has no training in fingerprinting at all.

For Chilcutt, his case doesn't rest at all.

In your opinion. See Wrinkle Foot.

LAL, you're experts cases don't even rest with eachother.

Explain that, please.

 

[kitakaze]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2248229&postcount=31[QUOTE/]It's a quote now or a link to a word you used twice?

How so? John Green (newspaper publisher, BTW, not "editor" as DY said) had witnesses make sworn statments before magistrates. That's just the facts.

Having someone claiming to be witness make a sworn statement may be a fact but how is that statement lending to the existence of bigfoot?

And why does it have to be error?

And why is it supporting evidence of BF

?"Unknown or" "primate" or with Asian parasites.

Shall we tug at this thread too?

I was referring to on site investigations. Some made the casts. There have been sightings by officers too.

Reported sightings by psychologists, soldiers, and mayors too.

What makes it paltry? It would be good enough in case of a crime.

Is this some kind of supporting argument that hasn't been beaten into the ground of it's worthlessness?

Geez.

LAL, let's debate.

Oh, really? If Matt had just said "Onion Mountain cast" I wouldn't have thought it mocking at all. All this "his holiness", "saint" etc., stuff seems to be an attempt to portray proponents as blind followers without a brain in our heads. It's mockery.

You are now referring to something beyond an article title which you said was mocking.

Jimmy was sceptical, remember? And he is a trained, top, forensic fingerprint expert. He kept Elkins Creek for months. Does it look like that was a cursory investigation? The guy's not even into this. He just lent his expertise.

Umm, no. As we've already seen in his interview he didn't say he was skeptical, he said he had no prior opinion.

I wish he were here to speak from himself. He's already addressed some of these issues. To my knowlege, Matt has no training in fingerprinting at all.

Yes, you're right. Chilcutt is doing very little to actively defend his claims. To my knowledge, Chilcutt has no training with casts.

In your opinion. See Wrinkle Foot.

In Chilcutt's opinion his case hasn't rested. See his reasoning when asked about doing a book by Meldrum.

Explain that, please.

Why don't you check you're citations more carefully before you post them? Chilcutt's findings didn't match the Krantz citation you gave. Check it properly.

 

[SweatyYeti]

kitakaze wrote:

LAL wrote:
Quote:
and it all gets dismissed as hoax, misidentification, mass hysteria and/or anecdotes, and it seems all the sceptics have to do is say so.

Like it or not that's what happens with such paltry evidence. Are we going back to quibbling?

Everybody's free to think and say whatever they want to when it comes to the evidence for Bigfoot.
The skeptics can dismiss it all as hoaxes, lies, and misidentifications...I personally don't care...it doesn't affect my view of the evidence.

Here is just one example of evidence that's not so paltry, though......

One fine day...while happily reading sighting reports on the Bfro website...I came across one in which the woman, Joyce, gave her full name and address in the report. She said she and her daughter were driving along...happily I might add...and after coming around a bend in the road, they saw a Bigfoot squatting beside the road, just a little ways ahead. She said it stood up and walked away into the woods, looking back at them as it did.
I called information and got her phone number, and called to talk to her directly about her sighting. Fortunately, she wasn't home ...her husband answered. I talked to him about the sighting, and he said he'd give Joyce my number, and she would call me back. I figured I'd probably never hear back from her...since it was a long-distance call, and I'm a total stranger to her.
But about a week and a half later, she did call, and she told me a little more about the sighting.
One interesting thing she said was that when they first saw it, her daughter shouted out "what the f--- is that?!".

The reason I said it was fortunate that she wasn't home when I called, is because the fact that she called me back, over a week later, gives her report much more credibility.
It's one thing if she had answered the phone when I called...maybe she wouldn't want to disappoint me, so she might just talk about her "made-up" story. But for her to bother picking-up the phone and making a long-distance call to a total stranger...there HAS to be a reason...and there are ONLY 2 possible reasons....
1) To share an amazing experience with someone who also believes Bigfoot exists...and who she would get a positive response from.
2) To lie through her teeth to a stranger, when she probably had better things to do.

Misidentification is not a possibility in her case...the sighting was in daylight, and at close range.

Some people I've told this to have said that she might just have psychological problems, and needs attention....but that explanation doesn't hold water, because she waited close to 2 weeks to even call me back. That's NOT a sign of someone who craves attention.

To me, it's STRONG evidence for Bigfoot's existence, because the most reasonable...most likely...explanation for why she called me is that she simply wanted to share the experience with someone she knew would respond positively to her sighting.

One other notable thing she said on the phone....while I was in the middle of telling her why I believe Bigfoot does exist, she interrupted and said...enthusiastically..."Oh yeah, they're real!". Sweet.

Paltry evidence...I don't think so.

 

[LAL]

Why don't you check you're citations more carefully before you post them? Chilcutt's findings didn't match the Krantz citation you gave. Check it properly.

If you had given me a clue as to which cases you were referring to, I might have known what you meant. I do check my citations, but I'm not a mind reader.

Chilcutt's findings on Onion Mountain didn't match Krantz' findings on three casts from southeastern Washington State? No kidding?

I still don't know what you're talking about. Krantz' noted the human dermals on one of the Washington casts, of course. Neither he nor Chilcutt took that to necessarily mean deliberate fakery, did they? That's a match.

 

[RayG]

Can you prove they are real? Or do we just take your word for it? Do you have footage of the track maker actually making the tracks??

That's exactly the same questions some skeptics have been asking about the tracks at the PGF site.

How do we know for sure when and where these pics were taken and how do we know they were made in the manner you claim they were?

Yup, same questions.

Call me a scoftic on the subject.

<Groucho Marx mode on>Ok, you're a scoftic.</Groucho Marx mode off.>

I'd say those are good skeptical questions.

RayG

 

[kitakaze]

SweatyYeti is having fundamental problems understanding the question at hand to the extent of lengthy exposition illustrating the fact.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

.............As has already been repeated, if anyone would like to make any meaningful counter to what is clearly shown let them show us even one example of a ridge flow pattern being repeated in a successive trackway. Simple request. Until then any appeal is a further show of inobjectivity.

Whoa !!!

This is an incredible observation that I haven't seen mentioned before ...

If we are truly looking at dermatogyphics, we should see a perfect match from at least two prints within a trackway ...

Otherwise, we are clearly looking at random casting artifacts...

 

[carcharodon]

That's exactly the same questions some skeptics have been asking about the tracks at the PGF site.

Yup, same questions.

<Groucho Marx mode on>Ok, you're a scoftic.</Groucho Marx mode off.>

I'd say those are good skeptical questions.

RayG

Ray, Ray, didn't you get it? I was handing back the same remarks made ad nauseum about Roger Patterson et al.

Sarcasm man.

 

[carcharodon]

Lu, your contributions to the discussion are (at least by me) being taken seriously and addressed. Respectfully, may I suggest not detracting from that by adding to/encouraging the pathetic quibbling.

You'd know all about 'pathetic quibbling' wouldn't you Kitakaze? After all, you are the beaut who STARTED it.

Oh the irony!

 

[kitakaze]

If you had given me a clue as to which cases you were referring to, I might have known what you meant. I do check my citations, but I'm not a mind reader.

Chilcutt's findings on Onion Mountain didn't match Krantz' findings on three casts from southeastern Washington State? No kidding?

I still don't know what you're talking about. Krantz' noted the human dermals on one of the Washington casts, of course. Neither he nor Chilcutt took that to necessarily mean deliberate fakery, did they? That's a match.

Chilcutt thought the irregular pits on the EC cast were from sweat pores.

"The possibility that air bubbles might have mimicked sweat pores was suggested by physical anthropologist Tim White, at the University of California, Berkeley, who otherwise thought the casts appeared to represent legitimate footprints. To settle this point, I made impressions of false ridges (with a fine comb) in similar soil, and cast them in plaster. I compared the results with the actual casts, and found that there are, in fact, occasional air bubbles from casting. These bubbles, however, are sharp-edged, and are not as small as the apparent sweat pores. They are rather few, and not regularly spaced or lined up. In some cases, they also bulge out the ridges around them, but only slightly, and with a much thinner wall between the hole and the ridge edge than with the presumed pores (Fig. 13)."

http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/dermal.html

Horses**t. Your experts do not agree.