What counts as that evidence, jerrywayne? Do you need to see live video feeds of every so-called stick structure falling into place in a windstorm or set up as a lean-to from a hiker?
The 'footers have it backwards: It's not incumbent on skeptics to demonstrate that every weird-looking pile of sticks in the woods was left by something that wasn't bigfoot, it's up to 'footers to demonstrate that just one was.
Of coarse not. The skeptic need not. indeed cannot, explain each and every piece of evidence put forward by enthusiasts. That would be impossible.
What is required, I think, is a general scenario, with evidence, that theoretically could explain a host of similar claims. For instance, if we can show or deduce that bears, misidentified humans, expectant anticipation, hoaxes, etc., can cause sighting reports, this body of examples can be used to explain various sighting reports reasonably, with probability, if not with certainty.
Your point is well taken. But as long as skeptics think Bigfooters need to come to them with definitive evidence and the skeptic need do nothing more, then Bigfootery will continue to gain adherents.
The "stick structure" thing is a good example. I think such structures are probably natural caprice or human artifact. In your book, my armchair explanations are perfectly fine and dispense with the issue (because, of coarse, there is no Bigfoot). Yet, I've done nothing to verify my explanations, and have nothing to show as a counter-argument to the Bigfooter's claim.
I think Bigfooters are right about one aspect of skepticism. If Patterson's film was just a mockup taken from an ape suit and filmed fortuitously by a talented Patterson, then skeptics ought to produce the approximate results. If trackways are created by stompers and other fakery, then we should be able to produce the approximate results. If stick structures are just man made artifacts, made by hunters and scouts, we should produce hunters and scouts who put together such things. Etc., etc.
And before skeptics here get all bent out of shape, huffy, and tell me all about where the burden of proof lies, let me remind one and all of the past nonsense of spiritualism. Spiritualism once was all the rage. It even had its own scientists and intellectuals who supported it. It largely died out because it was exposed as a fraud. It was exposed by magicians like Houdini who got down and dirty and explained by weight of replication what was happening in the séance darkness. They didn't just set back and say "prove it" or "the burden of proof rests with the practitioners of spiritualism." They showed how it was done.
I think this is what is required, in some form, of Bigfoot skeptics. That is, if the goal is to influence non-skeptics concerning the issue of Bigfoot.
