NOTE: My original statements are
italicized; WGBH's replies are
bolded; my new responses are in standard text.
The burden of proof is on the claimant, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
So predictable a statement and a cop out.
It's "predictable" because this is what is required for the scientific method to work. Physical evidence, independent verification, and peer review are necessary before we can accept something as correctly explaining objective reality. Otherwise, anyone could claim anything -- t
here's a purple-and-green dragon living in my garage!, for example -- and we would all just nod our heads and accept it. I'm sorry, WGBH, but the world cannot work that way.
Skeptical and scientific standards may be inconvenient and troublesome to you, but we need them in order to protect ourselves against outrageous claims. Huxters, shills and snake-oil salesmen of every stripe could simply state a thing -- "Buy this special gun to protect yourself against the bigfoot menace!" -- and we'd line up to purchase what they're selling. I'm not accusing you of selling anything, but others certainly are, and your claims are as founded in the standards of evidence as theirs are. We cannot accept your story at face value.
The contention that no scientists are involved in the search for BF evidence is incorrect. Krantz (dec.) and Meldrum are two that spring most readily to mind; both have written several papers and books on various BF-related topics.
Meldrum rarely does FIELD RESEARCH. Krantz has passed on. Bindernagel is getting up there in age and after having a conversation with him, I think he sees Bigfoot behind every tree. Besides, all of these men are attacked on this forum as being incompetent. Now you want to use them as examples of scientists studying the phenomenon? I am talking about independent wild life biologists and scientists.
I've never said they're incompetent. Not once, nor anything resembling it. You are conflating the opinions of others with my own opinions, then pretending to dismiss my points after you've rejected theirs as derogatory and insulting. So let me be clear: Even if Meldrum and Krantz were/are gifted scientists, dedicated to the scientific method and shining examples of their profession, the fact remains that they haven't turned up any concrete evidence for this animal.
Moving on, given that you're "talking about independent wild life biologists and scientists", is it any wonder that the vast majority of these individuals have little to no interest in pursuing an animal for which no concrete, non-hoaxable evidence exists? Footprints are hoaxable. Anecdotes are hoaxable, possible midsidentifications or hallucinations. The few scant hair samples said to exist are inconclusive and arguable. Film and video is consistently blurry, shaky, inconclusive, hoaxable. All the evidence points to this being a psychological, mythological, folkloric phenomenon, and not a zoological one.
And there is still not a shred of evidence for BF that could not be easily hoaxed or imaginatively invented. This stands in direct opposition to every other species of animal in North America. What accounts for this discrepancy?
What stands for this discrepancy is that we think we know everything and we do not. As proven by the discovery of new species daily.
This "new species every day" argument is spurious and underinformed. The vast majority of new species discovered are plants and invertebrates: spiders, frogs, fish, etc. The new mammals that are occasionally discovered are not "cryptids" for which mysterious reports exist, and for which people have been searching for decades, as is the case with BF.
Generally new mammals are found in remote jungles -- South America, Asia, Africa -- where biologists are only penetrating for the first time in years; in North America, however, there is a vast cadre of botanists, zoologists, bird-watchers, hunters, park rangers, land managers, etc. etc. out combing through every square mile of supposedly uninhabited forest. Those small patches which do elude us are not enough to sustain a breeding population of massive bipeds, which must number in the thousands to fulfill the requirements of genetic viability.
Furthermore, sometimes a new species is an already known and studied animal, but classified as "new" in order to distinguish it from another species in the same genus, previously believed to be the same species. This skews the numbers and makes it seem as though a "new mammal!" has been discovered, when in fact it's an animal we've known about all along, and are only assigning a new taxonomic name to it.
Whether the area under discussion is human-frequented or not, it is studied by biologists, inc. botanists and zoologists, and I expect (though I do not know this for a fact) by archeologists and paleontologists, just as with nearly every other region of the earth. And yet no hair, stool, DNA, bones or fossilized remains attributable to a massive bipedal hominid have been discovered. Again, what accounts for this astonishing lack of concrete evidence?
Ever think that maybe they have seen something and just do not want to come forward with it? If you had a grant to study ferns in the PNW, would you want to ruin that by saying you saw a Bigfoot?
Hogwash. Utter lack of understanding about the scientific community and how it operates. Science thrives on new discoveries. Careers flourish under the aegis of novel ideas and information. Can you imagine the riches that would be attendant to the discoverer of a legendary animal of the order of worldwide fame as bigfoot? The book rights alone would likely secure the lifelong comfort and luxury of that individual. The notion that accredited scientists are not reporting sightings or evidence for the most well-known undiscovered animal in the world because of fear they might be poo-poohed by their university committe is, in a word, incorrect.
No one trained in the scientific method is holding onto information that could change the world because of some imagined anxiety that their funding will evaporate.
I suggest you read up on science, WGBH. Carl Sagan's
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a damn good place to begin to develop your critical thinking skills, and to learn a few things about the worldwide scientific community:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
