Loch Ness real! says Scottish police chief -- 80+ years ago

[Vortigern99]

From http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Glob...-monster-is-real-former-Scottish-police-chief -- among other sites reporting this so-called "news". (As of this post, "Loch Ness" is trending #3 on yahoo's front page.)

Newly publicized documents reveal that a former Scottish police chief believed that the existence of the Loch Ness monster was “beyond doubt” but its protection could not be ensured.

Loren Coleman is being quoted as "a leading experts [sic] on mythic animals" by claiming that:

“The Scottish government has long been interested in protecting Nessie,” says Loren Coleman, who is co-author of The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. “This just reinforces this whole notion (that) the officials in Scotland take this creature very seriously.”

...

“There’s always been the sense that quietly…they were taking the reports more validly. There was a serious acknowledgment that the Loch Ness monster exists,” says Coleman.

There are so many logical fallacies here I'm uncertain where to begin. The first that springs to mind is appeal to authority. "A policeman in the 1930s believed Nessie was a real animal = evidence that Nessie is a real animal." What other baloney can we detect in this breathless, credulous journalism?

 

[Marduk]

Oh dear, Nessie again
hasn't anyone actually read Vita Columbae

 

[Big Les]

Thread merge required?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174298

I note that the Nessie fans are soiling themselves with vindication over this, claiming that the 'government' now acknowledges the existence of the monster. No, as the thread starters here have noted, ONE policeman, 80 years ago, did - because he failed to understand the fallibility of eyewitnesses. It's just that one letter that they're clinging to from this latest release of National Archives info, so far as I can tell.

 

[carlitos]

I can vouch that Loch Ness is real.

 

[Vortigern99]

I was wondering when the smartasses would start showing up.

 

[TraneWreck]

Did they give it its tree-fiddy?

 

[godofpie]

Did they give it its tree-fiddy?

Do NOT buy any girl scout cookies from the LNM.

 

[Gribble]

Big Les - The Chief Constable's letter simply states "That there is some strange fish ( fish scored out and replaced by creature) now seems beyond doubt, but that the Police have any power to protect it is very doubtful."

If one can be slightly magnanimous and accept that many people had by 1938 seen "strange creatures", - things they couldn't identify - the Chief's letter is perfectly reasonable for its day.

I don't think it is fair to blame the recent crazy claims by cryptoconspiraciologists on a private letter written in 1938, made public in 1988 and included in a public exhibition which opened last September at the Scottish Archive Centre in Edinburgh. For once, I'd shoot the messenger.