Simple Challenge For Bigfoot Supporters

[Gbob]

There is a reason why eyewitness testimony is often pointless. Our memories are flawed, and we often see things which are not really there. Every bit of woo relies upon the notion that eyewitnesses who seem credible must therefore be reporting true events.

Here's an example from my childhood. When I was in grade school, there was an abandoned mill factory behind the school. As one could guess, rumors about what was in the building were rampant. The most popular rumor was of the "naked vampire". The story was that a vampire resided there, and....well...he was naked. I have no idea why, but that was the story.

One snowy day in December the kids were playing in the snow during recess. One little girl came running up in tears saying she had seen the vampire. Soon screams filled the yard as all the children went running inside in a state of terror. Over twelve eyewitnesses said they saw a naked man levitating off the ground and coming after them. I would imagine that if you were to interview them today, they would still hold to their story. I even know this for a fact. You see, I encountered the "vampire" soon after.

That summer I, and a few friends, armed ourselves with garlic, stakes and flashlights and broke into the mill. Imagine if you will a bunch of scared 6th graders, pushing each other on. We were scared. We were in a high state of anticipation. We made it halfway in when we heard a scuttling sound. I moved my flashlight over to the sound and in the light was a bat faced vampire, his eyes glowing red. I dropped the light and ran. The flashlight remained there until the mill was torn down.

Now, I remember this event with perfect clarity. I sometimes see that face in my nightmares every now and then. Did I see a vampire? Of course not. It was a figment of my imagination, or perhaps a homeless man who I superimposed an image of a vampire over in my mind. The human mind does incredible stuff.

If it had been a bigfoot rather than something as obviously ludicrous as a vampire, I may well have gone to the police and reported a bigfoot sighting. It may have been picked up by a paper, and who knows...perhaps years later I would be mentioned as "proof" that there is a 8 foot magic ape in the woods. I wouldn't have been lying or insane. I would just have been wrong.

You can't make a binary declaration that either the person is lying or they saw a bigfoot. There is the option that they saw something that has no explanation, and it was a byproduct of the brain sending wrong information to the person involved.

Either that or there are really naked vampires.

 

[LAL]

BTW, Kevin, I couldn't help but notice YOU changed your avatar....AND....sig so as to drop the pathetic aping of LAL's profile.

Hold it. He's changed his avatar a number of times on different boards. He was Gonzo when I first encountered him on BFF. My avatar there is a treelined road. He's used everything from birds to scenery to a famous ice hockey player I'd never heard of; there's no aping involved. He just likes to use different avatars. Is there something wrong with that?

 

[LAL]

I mean just in this thread alone we've buried some really lame bigfoot myths.

Such as?

Still waiting for your evidence regarding BFFers. Did I miss the post?

 

[William Parcher]

I would like to write an essay entitled 'Propagation of a Modern Myth: A Study of the Bigfoot Phenomenom and it's Believers'. Actually, I think that all of us regular BF skeptic posters in this thread should work as a team to put something like that together but maybe broader and more focused on being informative to new inductees into the self-perpetuating bigfoot belief machine. I'm thinking of it taking the form of a website that could serve to counter all the creduloid ones.

I'm kinda just thinking out loud but I'm interested in what the rest of you think about an organized effort to counter bigfoot credulity. I mean just in this thread alone we've buried some really lame bigfoot myths. I think we should make an effort to take what we've accomplished and go further and reach people who might not be particularily interested in a skeptics forum.

I've always thought that there is a missing website and/or forum specifically for Bigfoot skepticism. I mentioned that I'm not fully satisfied with the treatment it has been given in books either. The only way to keep up-to-date with BF skepticism is to regularly sift through hundreds of posts on various sites. The only way to get an overview of the whole of BF skepticism is to research/sift through many many thousands of posts on many sites, and document things as you go. Your proposal probably includes the idea that such a project would consolidate and present the status of modern Bigfoot skepticism.

Your idea is good. You can start by visualizing it and making a proposed model. For starters, we need proposed....

1) Mission Statement
2) Objectives
3) Content and its forms
4) Outreach plan to believers and other skeptics
5) Actions and outputs of individual contributors, and the project as a whole
6) Self-evaluation and peer evaluation by relevant stakeholders
7) Contingency plan (i.e. exit plan for contributors or the whole project)

 

[kitakaze]

Hold it. He's changed his avatar a number of times on different boards. He was Gonzo when I first encountered him on BFF. My avatar there is a treelined road. He's used everything from birds to scenery to a famous ice hockey player I'd never heard of; there's no aping involved. He just likes to use different avatars. Is there something wrong with that?

Mm hmm. That's sweet but odd that you're defending Kevin by mentioning your avatars on another board but I'm afraid that the avatar and sig that emulated yours was rather obvious. You have already shown a peculiar slant on the obvious though:

The idea that a specialist in primate foot anatomy can't spot fakes or that the only expert in ape fingerprints can't tell the difference between a dermal ridge and a pouring line is laughable.

 

[Correa Neto]

Two comments:

(1) Regarding the question "The forests where bigfeet are claimed to roam can or not sustain a viable population of this type of animals"? In other words, is there an avaliable niche or not? Some posters here suggest it may be, however, specialists at that recent documentary on bigfoot consider the opposite.
I suggest everyone interested on the subject to read the Yowie and Megalania articles on http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/beginning/book.pdf.

From The Evidence for the Yowie, by Ralph MoInar, page 27:

However just because a given type of animal is absent from an
apparently appropriate environment does not mean that the niche is actually vacant. There may well be reasons why that type of animal would not survive in that environment, such as inadequate carrying capacity (i.e. insufficient resources to support the animal), or even too small a geographic area. So niche theory doesn't seem to help much.

And at Megalania Resurrected?, by Gregory V. Czechura, we can find the following:

Certainly the structure of these types of vegetation9 seems suitable for hiding a large undiscovered animal, however, a serious flaw exists when we come to consider the capability of such areas for supporting populations of a very large predator (of any type). It has long been recognised that compared to other rainforests in the world and to other types of habitat within Australia, our rainforests support low numbers of vertebrate species. In addition, the population densities of these animals are often very low. This
pattern of low diversity/low density for vertebrates in rainforest contrasts strongly with the high diversity and density of drier, more and environments10

.

And

Significantly, large predators are not characteristic of dense forest habitats on the Americas or Africa.

Now the defender will say "we're talking about bigfoot and not a predator"! Well, they are supposed to have a diet similar to bear's, aren't they?
And the defender will then say "we are talking about Nort America's forests!"
Well, its an example, an analogy showing that a forest wich apparently has a niche by no means actually has an open niche and/or a creature occupying it.

(2) RayG once again touched the issue of the reliability of sighting reports- an issue poorly understood by defenders of the "bigfeet (or other cryptos, UFOs, ghosts, etc.) are real claim". Quite possibly because sighting reports constitute the main bulk of the "evidence" presented, defenders of fringe subjects tend to react on rather passionate or emotional ways to crictism on it. RayG presented an example of unreliability of eyewitnesses reports, and I will present another, the many Andrew Cunanan sightings reported some years ago.

In the end, in response to the massive coverage, people started reporting Cunanan all over the United States. He became a variation on our great myth - a UFO - spotted by reasonable, sincere people who were certain they saw something. As with UFOs, the more the media hyped the story, the more Cunanan seemed to manifest around the nation. He became Elvis at the convenience store, Bigfoot, and the mysterious face on Mars.

Source: http://www.transparencynow.com/cunanan.htm

A large number of sightings came in the Boston area, leading police to intensify their manhunt in the Massachusetts city. Cunanan had never been there.
One man in New Orleans said he'd spent the night with Cunanan and gave detailed information and a pinpoint description. Two FBI agents spent a full day with the man, and more than 50 agents questioned customers at gay bars in the Big Easy based on this tip. Authorities found out this man, too, was a liar....

Source: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/1985/tb_wcc.html

Callers flooded tip lines. Cunanan's face became ever-prominent on posters, television and the Internet. The reward money invitingly flapped in the Florida breeze. Cunanan sightings popped up everywhere.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/year.ender/us/05.cunanan.html

Pundits and investigative reporters treated us to a daily feast of imaginative intrigue, from Andrew Cunanan sightings in faraway places, to computer renderings of Andrew dressed as a woman, to rumors of other killings he was "responsible" for, to tales of his mesmerizing charm. When he left clues behind, it was because he wanted to. He was, after all, too smart to make these mistakes. Everywhere you looked, he was referred to as a genius, as brilliant; precisely what a book publisher would give a six-figure contract to a Vanity Fair author to write about.

Source: http://echo.forensicpanel.com/1997/8/1/seeingcunanan.html

The many paralells with current bigfoot myth are quite obvious, at least for me. We have the media feeding the public with a template and part of the public responding with widespread sighting reports and "explanations" for incoherencies. The media receives feedback (sighting reports) and "pass the word" again to the public, this time with "expert analisys", explanations for certain issues, idealization and glamourization. The public receives this new information and a new "wave" of updated sightings starts. And the cyle starts again.

A nice refference list on the flaws of eyewitness reports is provided by Ralph MoInar at The Evidence for the Yowie, http://www.skeptics.com.au/journal/beginning/book.pdf.

General information about problems of perception
and recognition:
G Reed, 1972. 'The Psychology of Anomalous
Experience' (Hutchinson).
HE Ross, 19174, 'Behaviour and perception in Strange
Environments" (George Allen & Unwin).
Information on the reliability and otherwise of
memory:
EF Loftus, 1979. *The malleability of human memory
American Scientist, 67, pp312-320.
JE Rodgers, 1982. ‘The malleable memory of
eyewitnesses’, Science 82, June, pp32-35.

An AFAIK, no defender of any fringe subject has managed to counter the above, proving sighting reports are reliable evidence for their claims. IMHO, they first should inform themselves and learn something (Something? Better make it a lot of things).

 

[RayG]

I would, and do say......"Therefore, there's a high probability that Bigfoot exists".

Ah, so your circular reasoning would be better stated as:

Sweaty wants bigfoot to be real...
Sweaty believes Joyce is telling him the truth about bigfoot...
Therefore, there's a high probability that bigfoot is real.

That sound better?

From my analysis of her report, and phone conversation....the only two explanations which I can see as plausible, or having something more than an extremely small chance of being the true explanation...are that she was either:
A) lying....or
B ) telling me the truth, and did see a Bigfoot.

Well sure, given that those are the only possiblities you're willing to entertain. When, and more importantly how, during your analysis of her report/phone conversation, did you eliminate all other possible explanations?

I don't see "faulty memory" as being a true possibility...
I don't see "misidentification" as a real possibility...
I don't see "nutcase" as a true possibility...

Ok, you've eliminated three possibilities, what about all the others?

Obviously you have not gone any further with your pointy-headed experiment, nor do you have a list of reliable evidence. Here are some additional questions regarding Joyce's report:

How did you eliminate any other possibility? Do you have any other supportive evidence for her report? You know... like footprints... etc. How can you be certain she's not another Mary Green or Janice Coy? You are familiar with those names aren't you?

You do answer questions, yes?

Unlike skeptics here, who time and time again refuse to answer questions (examples later), I'll never refuse to answer any questions....which are relevant to the subject of Bigfoot, that is. It's just a matter of me having the time to do so.

I'll respond to your definition of "reliable evidence" later, when I have time to.

Never refuse to answer any questions which are relevant to the subject of bigfoot? Sweaty my dear troll, mind if I raise the BS flag on this one?

Maybe, from your childish perspective, you think it's cute to take the time to bring up the same old tired baggage (bigfoot is a primate... Joyce was telling the truth... bigfoot is real... etc. etc.) while avoiding questions that have been tossed in your direction. Cute don't make bigfoot real Sweaty. Nor does wishful-thinking, hero-worship, or anecdotal belief.

Got time for some reliable evidence?

RayG

 

[kitakaze]

Such as?

The one concerning dead bears immediately comes to mind.

Still waiting for your evidence regarding BFFers. Did I miss the post?

I'm sure it's been a long wait. You see I couldn't help but notice a number of posters on the BFF with whom I've been familiar with over the last few years are now skeptical in regards to BF's existence. It tells me that unlike you quite a few people with a long term interest in the phenomenom finally get sick of the rain of excuses that the belief predicates itself on and get real. Maybe since you're a long-term member of the BFF you could tell me what percentage of long-term members (over two years) are now skeptical. In any event, sorry but trying to counter that observation by mentioning many new believer members is a complete joke IMO. The mill keeps humming away.

 

[RayG]

Still waiting for your evidence regarding BFFers. Did I miss the post?

And I'm still waiting for her evidence that I repeatedly posted comments from Dr. Krantz regarding the Skookum cast. Did I miss the post?

There wasn't one? Ah, well then, LAL is lying and I'm entitled to an apology.

RayG

 

[kitakaze]

Right then, speaking of waiting, LAL, since Ray is one of the several people you don't think are fit to be heard excuse me while I repost this:

And I'm still waiting for her evidence that I repeatedly posted comments from Dr. Krantz regarding the Skookum cast. Did I miss the post?

There wasn't one? Ah, well then, LAL is lying and I'm entitled to an apology.

RayG

 

[William Parcher]

There's been a study showing people who claim alien abduction suffered from sleep paralysis. Has anyone done a study showing this is the case with reasonable people who, with family and a friends, insist on seeing large hairy hominds that aren't there?

There's no need for that study. What is needed is for the BF believers to produce biological evidence that BF is a real creature. Hell, anybody would settle for that evidence, even if it came from a strong skeptic that smashed a biggie with their car. If for some reason everybody in the whole world woke up tomorrow and declared that they no longer believe in Bigfoot - it would not prevent a real one from being killed, found dead (or part including DNA sample alone) or filmed. It is inexplicable why that has not happened already.

Why is it serious researchers continue to find prints and other signs in their areas of interest with both Ray Wallace and Paul Freeman dead?

Because "serious researchers" can be mistaken or hoaxed.

The idea that a specialist in primate foot anatomy can't spot fakes or that the only expert in ape fingerprints can't tell the difference between a dermal ridge and a pouring line is laughable.

You betcha! That's why so many skeptics are laughing at Meldrum et al.

There's DNA. It was just too fragmented for proper sequencing. Tissue is needed. Most animals don't leave a lot of that lying around (unless they're dead.)

But "that" DNA is not Bigfoot DNA until it can be found to be such. You want it to be such, and use anecdotes as if they were incipient facts. You obfuscate when you say most animals don't leave DNA lying around, because the fact is that they do. It does not require a chunk of flesh.

There haven't been attempts to confirm this animal for centuries on end although reports go back that far.

WTF? Anyone who has ever gotten near a Bigfoot has had the opportunity to confirm it. Anyone who finds a BF nest (many are clsimed) ought to find DNA there or nearby.

There are reports of these animals beating a hasty retrreat, hanging around checking out the witness or witnesses, going on about their business in an unconcerned sort of way, and even a few reports of possible aggression, so where is this "very fearful of humans" coming from? Black bears exhibit the same sort of behavior.

In spite of all that, we still end up with clear photos and films of black bears aggressively charging the photographer. Lu, the BF fear thing is pervasive (but not exclusive) throughout the general reports of behavior.

Since we "know" an unidentified ape can't exist in North America, we "know" all the evidence must be concocted or misidentified and that's the end of that. Am I getting that straight?

No, you don't have it straight. Skeptics can't prove that Bigfoot doesn't exist. All they can do is take a critical look at what we have and develop a kind of confidence that this is a myth. So far it has not shown itself to be something other than a myth combined with active perpetuation of that myth.

 

[kitakaze]

Speaking of active myth perpetuation that reminds me that not only are those 'nests' not yielding any associated DNA but there seems a general paucity of track finds of any kind of late. This is odd given the increase of people actively searching for them and that we're supposed to be dealing with a living creature reported from Alaska to Iowa to Florida. Excuse please.

 

[SweatyYeti]

Gbob wrote:

The human mind does incredible stuff.

...when you're 11 years old.

Done.

 

[William Parcher]

Here are two postings from the Cryptomundo "Monolithic Margin" topic. They have relevance to Lu's citations of tracks found in very remote locations, a trackway going for 7 miles, and finding 1000+ tracks at a location:

joppa responds: I am not impressed with “too perfect” tracks especially if they are not connected with a credible sighting. However, if I am 40 miles into the Bob Marshall wilderness, then I’m very impressed if I come across tracks.

There are simply too many hoaxers out there, and I’m convinced that the real creature makes every effort to avoid leaving tracks if it can. So tracks to me are a curiosity and only serve to make me keep my eyes open a little wider.

Rillo777 responds: Joppa has a good point. As they say in real estate: “Location, location, location!” Tracks that are encountered where few people go are proportionately more likely to be real. That I think is good acid test. We never will know for sure if any track is real unless we see the creature making it.

Maybe I’ve just got a cynical nature, but one downside to all of this discussion is that, were I a hoaxer, I would pay a lot more attention to my cast now and have a better idea how to make it look real.

Two things immediately come to mind...

1) We can't know if anyone who finds "BF evidence" and then passes on the story of it is giving a completely accurate account of what they found.
2) We can't know that the claimant isn't the original hoaxer of what they claimed to "find", or have some form of an association with a hoaxer.

A good way to hoax BF is to create tracks that are 40 miles into the Bob Marshall wilderness, and then claim you found them or set up a situation where someone else finds them. Obviously, the more remote the location the more credible the hoax becomes for the believers. It's almost a no-brainer for a hoaxer when the advocates tell you what makes up an "unhoaxable" situation. Don't think for a moment that BF hoaxers could not possibly already be regular posting members of the BFF etc. They've already banned numerous posters who they felt entered the forum with an obviously fabricated BF encounter. Nobody really knows how many hoaxers slipped by this "filter" and are now (or were) cherished advocates on BFF.

Bigfootery has a serious crisis of both credibility and identity. It can't even really know if its token "experts" aren't hoaxers themselves. Often it just looks like a cultish confederation of "good ole boys" that assume trust in each other because they are cyber buddies engaged in a common battle against the dreaded and hated skeptics.

 

[drapier]

Over twelve eyewitnesses said they saw a naked man levitating off the ground and coming after them. I would imagine that if you were to interview them today, they would still hold to their story. I even know this for a fact. You see, I encountered the "vampire" soon after.

That summer I, and a few friends, armed ourselves with garlic, stakes and flashlights and broke into the mill. Imagine if you will a bunch of scared 6th graders, pushing each other on. We were scared. We were in a high state of anticipation. We made it halfway in when we heard a scuttling sound. I moved my flashlight over to the sound and in the light was a bat faced vampire, his eyes glowing red. I dropped the light and ran. The flashlight remained there until the mill was torn down.

Now, I remember this event with perfect clarity. I sometimes see that face in my nightmares every now and then. Did I see a vampire? Of course not.

Can you prove that you did not see a naked vampire?

How likely is it that 12, count them -- 12, eyewitnesses were lying or were nutcases? (These are the only two choices even remotely possible.)

On second thought, maybe it was big red eye himself.

 

[William Parcher]

You see I couldn't help but notice a number of posters on the BFF with whom I've been familiar with over the last few years are now skeptical in regards to BF's existence. It tells me that unlike you quite a few people with a long term interest in the phenomenom finally get sick of the rain of excuses that the belief predicates itself on and get real. Maybe since you're a long-term member of the BFF you could tell me what percentage of long-term members (over two years) are now skeptical. In any event, sorry but trying to counter that observation by mentioning many new believer members is a complete joke IMO. The mill keeps humming away.

This is only an accounting of believers-turned-skeptics that leave evidence of the switch in public fora. It can't account for those that leave no evidence that they switched. I've always been curious of what happened to "missing posters" on BFF. Legions of them maintained prolific posting and then suddenly vanished. Many BFF "all-stars" are now AWOL. I can imagine converted believers (now strong skeptics) that simply abandon the whole thing - including BF skepticism. That might be because they then realize that true believers cannot be talked into becoming skeptics, nor even coaxed into thinking critically. They decide to abandon the whole enchilada.

 

[SweatyYeti]

William Parcher wrote:

that point remains self-contradictory.

How is it contradictory?

Your primate-Bigfoot is just as hypothetical as my reptile-Bigfoot.

The question is NOT whether or not Bigfoot exists.
The question at hand is simply.....
IF Bigfoot does exist.....what are the ODDS, or the "degree of probability", or likelihood, that it's a Reptile?

Baed on the lack of a WHOLE LINE of fossilized remains....which would include many BRANCHES, with many, many, many, different species of reptiles.................the chances are........drum-roll please................

ZIPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

HOW MANY intermediate forms are there, that you know of, William....between any reptile and an upright walking, human-looking creature, in the area of 7-feet tall?

Since the reptile-Bigfoot and the primate-Bigfoot are purely hypothetical animals without any confirmation ... I get to play the same silly games that you do.

You get to play ALL the silly games you like, William....it's your perogative.

Can you answer a simple question, though?

 

[drapier]

This is only an accounting of believers-turned-skeptics that leave evidence of the switch in public fora. It can't account for those that leave no evidence that they switched. I've always been curious of what happened to "missing posters" on BFF. Legions of them maintained prolific posting and then suddenly vanished. Many BFF "all-stars" are now AWOL. I can imagine converted believers (now strong skeptics) that simply abandon the whole thing - including BF skepticism. That might be because they then realize that true believers cannot be talked into becoming skeptics, nor even coaxed into thinking critically. They decide to abandon the whole enchilada.

This is a good point. It leads me to wonder why do those who doubt the existence of bigfoot bother to follow internet discussion lists on the topic and cryptozoological websites at all. Why not move on to something that one thinks is real? For me, I think it's an underlying sense of wonder at the thought that maybe the stories might be true (the same thing I get from reading a good ghost story). What about the other skeptics on this board?

 

[William Parcher]

What about the other skeptics on this board?

See my signature.

 

[RayG]

...when you're 11 years old.

Don't worry, you'll grow up. Eventually.

RayG