How to Analyze Cryptid Assertions

[The Shrike]

Not if there already existed a tradition of taxidermic fabrications at the time (there was) and if there is some reasonable historical provenance for how the illustrations originated (there is)…

I could produce a rather convincing sketch of a bigfoot without ever having seen one in the flesh.

We are able to gauge Belon’s skill and accuracy by examining his other illustrations –

Like these?

hippo and croc

giraffe

sea monk

swallow

The swallow might be regarded as the most lifelike, but Belon reproduced the tail and wing feathers uncritically. For example, there should be 12 feathers in the swallow's tail; 6 on a side. On Belon's illustration, there appear to be 8 on the right side and 9 on the left.

Belon was good, but he was fallible.

 

[jerrywayne]

Regardless of the proportion of alleged encounters that are fabricated or genuinely related, the heart of this thread concerns the "rigor" invested in addressing bigfooty claims. The linked paper is held up as an ideal of that rigor, but the analysis therein is actually quite superficial. The authors examined stylized illustrations of "dragons" and visually compared apparent features in the illustrations to known morphology of pterosaurs (to rule them out) and to pieces of several extant creatures (to rule them in, i.e., to speculate on the animals that were used to create the chimaeras apparently depicted in the illustrations).

The premise fails in comparison to what is actually greater rigor regularly on display here and from bigfoot skeptics elsewhere. For example, how would folks rate the rigor invested in the OP paper compared to that invested by folks here on items like the Skookum Cast, Jacobs' Creature, or PGF?

The best bigfoot analogy I can come up with for a direct comparison to the OP would be comparative anatomy speculation leveled against Myrtle Roe's sketch of the creature her dad William claimed to have seen in 1958. It's an illustration of something someone once claimed to have seen.

From my knowledge of comparative anatomy, I have rejected the hypothesis that Roe saw a pterosaur. But what did he see? Did he see anything at all? Was he hallucinating, yarn-spinning, misidentifying something else, or did he encounter a real bigfoot?

The best we can do to match the rigor we're supposed to be applying is propose parts of the image that might match known animals. Here's one. I find the thickness and shape of the neck on Roe's bigfoot to look a lot like that of a grizzly bear, and the way the bear in the photo is holding its wrists could be construed as the shape of big, pendulous breasts in profile. The dished face and odd "smile" on the bigfoot are kind of ursid, too.

So IF Roe saw anything at all, I think a decent case can be made that he saw a grizzly bear, misconstrued some things, and let his faulty memory fill in details of things he didn't actually witness.

How's that? Rigorous enough?

Kudos Shrike. A subdued, but brilliant satire.

 

[jerrywayne]

Jerry, please provide an example of a specific bigfooty claim that you feel hasn't been critically evaluated.

Be aware, as I'm sure you are, that some form of dishonesty associated with the claim is a valid hypothesis to be tested, and that it will be a vastly more likely explanation than "real bigfoot".

First, we often have other options to consider. The idea that our choices are narrowed to dishonesty or "real bigfoot" is not valid.

Second, you once wrote that you pondered the idea of writing a book exposing Meldrum's faulty reasoning in his case for Bigfoot. I have no doubt that you would succeed if you ever pursued it. But you know as well as I that if you used some of the tact you use here, such as implying Meldrum is commonly dishonest in his advocacy, your proposed book would never find a publisher (unless you could prove knowing dishonesty for Meldrum beyond what you've done here.)

Previously, I had asked anyone if they would like to tackle Meldrum's arguments, especially his early chapter in LMS where he addresses the Wallace tracks. To my surprise, some posters said they never read his book, nor will they.

While I seriously doubt the existence of Bigfoot, there are parts of the story that puzzle me more than other parts. The so-called stick structures are one such mystery. I'm assuming they are explainable by appealing to natural caprice, and some were built as hunters' blinds or some sort of Scouting exercise in camping, or even put together by field researchers dishonestly . But the fact is that no one has, to my knowledge, definitively explained this plank in the modern Bigfoot myth.

 

[jerrywayne]

^ Yes, you have. I think it is generally believed that the person responsible for discovering bigfoot would reap a hefty amount of fame and fortune. You have expressed financial obligation such as paying for a childs college tuition. You also claim bigfoot contact on more than one occasion in a certain area within several hours drive. Yet you make no serious attempt to reap the rewards of being the person who brings proof of bigfoot. You also claim to perceive no threat to public safety posed by a population of 9 foot carnivorous primates. You alert no authorities to this potential danger.

Sorry, but I cannot help but doubt your sincerity.

You may be correct dmaker. NW might very well be putting us on.

Generally though, I think True Believers in every vein often act inconsistently.
How many True Believers in literalist religions, which carry belief in such things as guardian angels, helping saints, a protective, loving Deity, and everlasting life, buy assault rifles, shotguns, or high powered hand guns for protection?

If you truly believe in Bigfoot, one of your articles of faith is that the damn thing is just too elusive to really get a bead on it.

 

[Resume]

I've been away from BFF for a while so I can't address your specific questions. From the SweetSuziQ I saw at BFF and elsewhere, I would say she believes every bit of what she says she does.

Then you appear to be making an uninformed assessment.

I would agree that belief, delusion, and dishonesty can co-exist in the same individual. I had thought you were making distinctions between individuals who claim sightings, such as some are delusional and some are dishonest and a few are sincere, but mistaken, true believers. I thought you were overloading sightings in the dishonest/delusional category.

There is no reliable metric by which to measure such a thing; we have to go by what the proponents are claiming, and in examining those claims, make a judgement. My judgement is there are an awful lot of ******** stories in addition to some flat out craziness, both behaviors which can be attributed to true believers. Also, claiming a shadow or flash of furriness in the woods to be a bigfoot sighting is dishonest as well. So is a refusal to consider other phenomenon when attempting to assess an alleged sighting; refusal to recognize biases, memory fallibility, conditions like hypnagogia and other sleep-related anomalies is intellectually dishonest.

Unless I'm misunderstanding comments made over threads and time . . .

I think you are.

If I'm right about the overuse of the "lie meme" here (or am I just LYING about the "lie meme), I think what is happening here is reflective of a cyber short cut to argumentation as well as a mirror of larger society. It seems that everywhere you look nowadays, people are calling other people liars. This is especially true in the sphere of politics. Remember when Pres. Obama was giving a state of the union address early on in his first term and a Republican congressman yelled out "You lie"? Facebook memes abound with this sort of thing from all political points of view.

I don't think every proponent is lying, but I think there's a component of dishonesty in many bigfoot claims. Remember this: every single smart guy that sent a rube off on a snipe hunt was lying. Bigfoot is just one big, convoluted snipe hunt, a legend that got so out of hand it's impossible to tell its true origins and its true believers.

 

[Resume]

While I seriously doubt the existence of Bigfoot, there are parts of the story that puzzle me more than other parts. The so-called stick structures are one such mystery. I'm assuming they are explainable by appealing to natural caprice, and some were built as hunters' blinds or some sort of Scouting exercise in camping, or even put together by field researchers dishonestly . But the fact is that no one has, to my knowledge, definitively explained this plank in the modern Bigfoot myth.

Human beings have thoroughly inhabited NA for eons; it should not be surprising to see rudimentary shelters anywhere you might set foot. The romantic notion of Europeans finding a sparsely populated, howling wilderness has lately been debunked. I can show you tin shelters peppering the shoreline and islands of Nueltin and Windy lakes in Nunavut, miles from any "road" or settlement. Was footie doing some smelting?

 

[Drewbot]

While I seriously doubt the existence of Bigfoot, there are parts of the story that puzzle me more than other parts. The so-called stick structures are one such mystery. I'm assuming they are explainable by appealing to natural caprice, and some were built as hunters' blinds or some sort of Scouting exercise in camping, or even put together by field researchers dishonestly . But the fact is that no one has, to my knowledge, definitively explained this plank in the modern Bigfoot myth.

Stick structures? Oh you mean Bigfoot Houses? I think they imitate structures built by Boy Scouts messing around in the woods.

Perhaps the Bigfoots have reasoned that the structures would provide a good place to stash an infant Bigfoot, so they have built numbers of them in the Woods all over the country. Then if they happen to have a Baby Squatch with them, and if the adult needs to sneak up quietly on some unsuspecting humans, and then howl, or chuck rocks, slam an Oak branch against a tree, or maybe chuck a pinecone at them, then he doesn't have to worry about the baby inadvertently giving up his position.

Of course, Bigfoots used to just try and take over human built structures, that is, until the Squachommich Proclamation of 1935, when The King of the Sasquatches, Kee-Rog, declared that they could no longer take over the human structures, because; 'Gok broling con tok-tok nee-yai' and 'Ki-rond oof mah dy-ro pon-poh skilk' or translated: "The Ceilings Am Too Low" and "No Enough Room for stretch Legs"

 

[The Shrike]

First, we often have other options to consider. The idea that our choices are narrowed to dishonesty or "real bigfoot" is not valid.

Who, other than folks trying to refute the "BLARRG hypothesis" has argued to the contrary?

Second, you once wrote that you pondered the idea of writing a book exposing Meldrum's faulty reasoning in his case for Bigfoot.

I have evolved on Meldrum over the years, mostly extending him extraordinary benefit of the doubt as a deluded incompetent. There are old chestnuts of bigfootery to which he clings, however, and they give me pause. How does one reconcile his current association with Todd Standing, for example? Meldrum is a smart guy, and he's very well educated. You reach a point with him at which it makes more sense that he's actively orchestrating bigfootery than that he's a deluded bumpkin victim of it. Given his celebrity and the very real material benefits he derives from bigfoot, there's certainly motive for him to keep it going.

Previously, I had asked anyone if they would like to tackle Meldrum's arguments, especially his early chapter in LMS where he addresses the Wallace tracks. To my surprise, some posters said they never read his book, nor will they.

Count me among them. If Meldrum's got any kind of analysis to suggest that any bigfoot prints are other than what we think they are, then the onus is on him to make that case in the peer-reviewed literature.

I have, of course, read his ichnotaxon paper which presents the same analysis he likely used in LMS. It's subtle, but his case ultimately rests on the premise that Patty was a real bigfoot, ergo we can know x, y, and z about her from the prints she left at the aptly named Bluff Creek . . .

But the fact is that no one has, to my knowledge, definitively explained this plank in the modern Bigfoot myth.

You already acknowledge that humans make such structures and that sometimes branches just fall together in odd ways. What would make an explanation definitive to you?

 

[jerrywayne]

Then you appear to be making an uninformed assessment.


There is no reliable metric by which to measure such a thing; we have to go by what the proponents are claiming, and in examining those claims, make a judgement. My judgement is there are an awful lot of ******** stories in addition to some flat out craziness, both behaviors which can be attributed to true believers. Also, claiming a shadow or flash of furriness in the woods to be a bigfoot sighting is dishonest as well. So is a refusal to consider other phenomenon when attempting to assess an alleged sighting; refusal to recognize biases, memory fallibility, conditions like hypnagogia and other sleep-related anomalies is intellectually dishonest.


I think you are.


I don't think every proponent is lying, but I think there's a component of dishonesty in many bigfoot claims. Remember this: every single smart guy that sent a rube off on a snipe hunt was lying. Bigfoot is just one big, convoluted snipe hunt, a legend that got so out of hand it's impossible to tell its true origins and its true believers.

While I agree with some of what you are saying, the mistake I think you are making is this: You want True Believers to be just as rational as you are. If they are not, then they are crazy, or bs'ers, or just plain dishonest.

Your view seems Spockian to me, pure applied logic and reason, uncomprehending the fact that others may sincerely hold beliefs that are motivated by emotional need, even if reasonably unsupportable. True Belief happens all the time, all over the world.

Take the blurry, hairy thing glimpsed in the woods. We know that imagination and memory may conspire to fill in the blanks of an otherwise ambiguous experience. The "eyewitness" may have buried or emotional reasons to embrace this type of experience and to emotionally resist an attempt to rationally convert it to the mundane. You overlook this and insist the eyewitness subvert his own experience/belief because you think his experience is extremely unlikely or impossible.

While you are right in viewing the eyewitness account as erroneous for the reasons you suggest, imho, you are committing to an erroneous position yourself when you insist the believer act as if he is a non-believer, or else he is dishonest.

Let me add this. I know that there is a large part of Bigfootery that is just as you describe it. Part of the problem is that it is too easy nowadays to snipe hunt, given the anonymous nature of the medium of the Internet. And I agree we cannot really tell who's who sometimes.

And yes I am making a judgment call on SweetSue. She is a True Believer, and just because she is a wide-open believer doesn't mean she is dishonest.

 

[Resume]

While I agree with some of what you are saying, the mistake I think you are making is this: You want True Believers to be just as rational as you are. If they are not, then they are crazy, or bs'ers, or just plain dishonest.

Your view seems Spockian to me, pure applied logic and reason, uncomprehending the fact that others may sincerely hold beliefs that are motivated by emotional need, even if reasonably unsupportable. True Belief happens all the time, all over the world.

I was all of 7 when I made my first confession. I had to make up a sin to confess, but I knew I was lying; at the time I sincerely believed, but knew I was lying. The next confession however, I had the lie to confess. It was this sort of thing that lead me to disbelief.

Take the blurry, hairy thing glimpsed in the woods. We know that imagination and memory may conspire to fill in the blanks of an otherwise ambiguous experience. The "eyewitness" may have buried or emotional reasons to embrace this type of experience and to emotionally resist an attempt to rationally convert it to the mundane. You overlook this and insist the eyewitness subvert his own experience/belief because you insist his experience is extremely unlikely or impossible.

An unidentified blur in the woods is just that. When I go steelhead angling or fishing for any sort of anadromous fish, there's every possiblity that the run has not begun. My fly ticks the gravel and I lift to feel . . . a snag, or nothing at all. I can believe the run is on, but the only time I hook a fish is when I hook a fish. Believing I did (and asserting it) when I hadn't sort of confirms the general public's view that anglers are . . . liars.

While you are right in viewing the eyewitness account as erroneous for the reasons you suggest, imho, you are committing to an erroneous position yourself when you insist the believer act as if he is a non-believer, or else he is dishonest.

You can be a believer and not turn an amorphous nothing into footie.

Let me add this. I know that there is a large part of Bigfootery that is just as you describe it. Part of the problem is that it is too easy nowadays to snipe hunt, given the anonymous nature of the medium of the Internet. And I agree we cannot really tell who's who sometimes.

And yes I am making a judgment call on SweetSue. She is a True Believer, and just because she is a wide-open believer doesn't mean she is dishonest.

I think if you had the chance to read the Bigfoot v Dogman thread, your judgement would be opposite.

ETA: Here's a good example. Just today, your blogging buddy DWA claimed that "Patty is a pristine capture." Now, that there is lying for footie, as the PGF, no matter how "stabilized" is hardly pristine. Sort of the whole point.

 

[jerrywayne]

Who, other than folks trying to refute the "BLARRG hypothesis" has argued to the contrary?


I have evolved on Meldrum over the years, mostly extending him extraordinary benefit of the doubt as a deluded incompetent. There are old chestnuts of bigfootery to which he clings, however, and they give me pause. How does one reconcile his current association with Todd Standing, for example? Meldrum is a smart guy, and he's very well educated. You reach a point with him at which it makes more sense that he's actively orchestrating bigfootery than that he's a deluded bumpkin victim of it. Given his celebrity and the very real material benefits he derives from bigfoot, there's certainly motive for him to keep it going.


Count me among them. If Meldrum's got any kind of analysis to suggest that any bigfoot prints are other than what we think they are, then the onus is on him to make that case in the peer-reviewed literature.

I have, of course, read his ichnotaxon paper which presents the same analysis he likely used in LMS. It's subtle, but his case ultimately rests on the premise that Patty was a real bigfoot, ergo we can know x, y, and z about her from the prints she left at the aptly named Bluff Creek . . .



You already acknowledge that humans make such structures and that sometimes branches just fall together in odd ways. What would make an explanation definitive to you?

If you reread the post of yours that I was replying to, you will see that you offered only two options - dishonesty or real deal Bigfoot. Of coarse, I may have misunderstood you or you may have been unclear.

Your "deluded bumpkin" is the kind of comment that I think any editor would delete from your proposed expose of Meldrum.

I agree that Meldrum's association with an obvious fraud like Standing is problematic. He seems to be losing fans in Bigfoot World because of it. Now do we attribute this association of Meldrum's to Jeff being dumb enough to partner up with Todd, even though he is smart enough to be orchestrating Bigfootery to his benefit otherwise? Does that make sense?

In my view, Meldrum is a True Believer doing True Believer stuff. Standing is nothing if not glib. He appears to have hoaxed Meldrum, to reel in the Big Fish. Meldrum has a habit of falling for hoaxers.

Yes, I have off-handedly given explanations for the "stick structures" phenomena. That doesn't mean I've done anything more than offered tentative ideas. I'm asking for evidence that such ideas are the answer to this particular issue.

 

[Resume]

deleted

 

[The Shrike]

If you reread the post of yours that I was replying to, you will see that you offered only two options . . .

I offered no limit to the number of options, only that dishonesty is more likely than real bigfoot.

Your "deluded bumpkin" is the kind of comment that I think any editor would delete from your proposed expose of Meldrum.

And?

Now do we attribute this association of Meldrum's to Jeff being dumb enough to partner up with Todd, even though he is smart enough to be orchestrating Bigfootery to his benefit otherwise?

What's worse, someone cunningly taking advantage of a phenomenon for personal gain or someone so bereft of critical thought that he seriously falls for Standing's "Fuzzface-foot", the 9'-tall snow-walker, Snelgrove Lake, Freeman's "Jimmy Dean sausage toes", the Skookum butt-print, and the PGF?

. . . "stick structures" . . . I'm asking for evidence that such ideas are the answer to this particular issue.

Then go for a walk in the woods. You will find things that 'footers would call stick structures. You might even find a very well constructed lean-to built by a hunter, survivalist, boy scout, etc.

 

[jerrywayne]

Stick structures? Oh you mean Bigfoot Houses? I think they imitate structures built by Boy Scouts messing around in the woods.

Perhaps the Bigfoots have reasoned that the structures would provide a good place to stash an infant Bigfoot, so they have built numbers of them in the Woods all over the country. Then if they happen to have a Baby Squatch with them, and if the adult needs to sneak up quietly on some unsuspecting humans, and then howl, or chuck rocks, slam an Oak branch against a tree, or maybe chuck a pinecone at them, then he doesn't have to worry about the baby inadvertently giving up his position.

Of course, Bigfoots used to just try and take over human built structures, that is, until the Squachommich Proclamation of 1935, when The King of the Sasquatches, Kee-Rog, declared that they could no longer take over the human structures, because; 'Gok broling con tok-tok nee-yai' and 'Ki-rond oof mah dy-ro pon-poh skilk' or translated: "The Ceilings Am Too Low" and "No Enough Room for stretch Legs"

Very funny stuff. Too bad Bigfoot didn't exist back in Lewis Carroll's day. He would have had a field day with it.

 

[jerrywayne]

I offered no limit to the number of options, only that dishonesty is more likely than real bigfoot.


And?


What's worse, someone cunningly taking advantage of a phenomenon for personal gain or someone so bereft of critical thought that he seriously falls for Standing's "Fuzzface-foot", the 9'-tall snow-walker, Snelgrove Lake, Freeman's "Jimmy Dean sausage toes", the Skookum butt-print, and the PGF?


Then go for a walk in the woods. You will find things that 'footers would call stick structures. You might even find a very well constructed lean-to built by a hunter, survivalist, boy scout, etc.

I'm not so sure Meldrum is quite all in with Standing just yet. But even if he is, I still think you are short-changing the True Believer aspect of it. True Believers believe all kinds of things not cogent to non-True Believers. Even scientists (see Duane Gish).

I have gone to the woods on many occasions. I've looked around, if I remembered to, to see if I could find dead or detached tree limbs in odd, apparently placed positions. And old deer blinds. No luck. I've looked up Scouting sites on the web and have found photos of makeshift shelters, but nothing like the things Bigfooters claim are Bigfoot related. We are assuming the answers are there. I just haven't seen anything definitive.

 

[Resume]

I'm not so sure Meldrum is quite all in with Standing just yet. But even if he is, I still think you are short-changing the True Believer aspect of it. True Believers believe all kinds of things not cogent to non-True Believers. Even scientists (see Duane Gish).

Duane Gish has a supernatural fall-back that bigfoot proponents advocating a biological entity do not.

 

[The Shrike]

I'll be in the field all day on Saturday, jerrywayne. I'll try to get some stick structure photos you.

 

[Night Walker]

Like these?

hippo and croc

giraffe

sea monk

swallow

The swallow might be regarded as the most lifelike, but Belon reproduced the tail and wing feathers uncritically. For example, there should be 12 feathers in the swallow's tail; 6 on a side. On Belon's illustration, there appear to be 8 on the right side and 9 on the left.

Belon was good, but he was fallible.

Did Belon claim that any of those images listed above are drawn from live or stuffed specimens? If not, then they provide a good contrast of his imaginative illustrations (drawn from descriptions or from memory) with his very accurate depictions of real subjects...

You may be correct dmaker. NW might very well be putting us on.

What did I do? I haven't seen a giant monkey-man. You meant, NL, right?

 

[RayG]

Previously, I had asked anyone if they would like to tackle Meldrum's arguments, especially his early chapter in LMS where he addresses the Wallace tracks. To my surprise, some posters said they never read his book, nor will they.

I read it. It's a classic example of bigfoot science.

I also commented on some of that bigfoot science in a post here.

RayG

 

[The Shrike]

Did Belon claim that any of those images listed above are drawn from live or stuffed specimens?

He seems to have been a stickler for only illustrating things he examined personally. That, of course, makes it more likely that he observed the dragon directly but it doesn't give me any more confidence in how accurately he rendered its anatomy.