RayG said:
This? I was planning to post it last night but opted for bed instead.
"Happy Labor Day folks.
I'd just like to add a few comments about us lazy, ignorant, dogmatic, scared of getting a bug bite scientists who are obivously dropping the ball on the whole sasquatch search thing:
If any of you guys would have liked to come here and take over my classes, planned the field seasons for my funded research projects, taken over my committee obligations, cleaned up that manuscript I was writing, mowed my lawn, and watched my kids all on short notice, I would have gladly trekked up to Manitoba last spring so a "real scientist" could have been on the scene to investigate.
(I hope this sounds as silly to you as it does to me. And I don't mean to pick on Hunster - he just provided a great example to illustrate my point.)
The notion that we so-called scientists - the ones who apparently declare things like whether or not the mainstream should believe in the existence of an organism - are sitting at the helipad ready to be airdropped at the most recent blobsquatch filming location is complete nonsense. If by "scientists" you mean trained wildlife professionals working at universities, then I submit to you that I am pretty typical: We do funded research that supports the work of graduate students, we have teaching obligations, and we provide service to professional societies to promote education and conservation. That's what we do. Maybe there is a tiny handful of us who break that mold and go afield for weeks or months at a time just to look for stuff, but it's invariably for funded research projects, and really a tiny percentage of us who do that kind of work. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Ivory-billed Woodpecker searches are an excellent example - and look at the media coverage they get! They get that coverage because their work is an extraordinary departure from the way the rest of us do research on wildlife these days.
I also want to clue you guys into another fallacy expressed in this thread - namely that no scientists are looking for sasquatch. I disagree. YOU GUYS are looking for sasquatch! We mainstream scientists don't know a $%^& thing about tracking North American Wood Apes, so why sit around grousing that none of US are in the field looking for it? Clearly it's the people writing in to forums such as this who are in a much better position to unravel this mystery, because you are the ones who apparently know what to look for in the field. So do it - don't wait around for us. Why not organize yourselves, write up some grant proposals, and get going on your own? You don't need a PhD to be a scientist, you just have to apply the scientific method to your work.
Finally, on the idea that we need these weeks-to-months long expeditions in the field to find sasquatch because they only occur in these rugged, remote wilderness areas, blah, blah . . . I say hogwash. Check out the BFRO's database on sightings by region - you'll find multiple reports from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island - Rhode $%^&^! Island - expeditions to the remotest parts of these states would not take weeks, yet sasquatch is apparently alive and well here. So either the squatch isn't nearly as dependent on unbroken wilderness as we like to think, or these reports are bogus. And if these reports are bogus, why should we put any stock in any of the others posted on a site like the BFRO?
I'm not trying to get y'all riled up - just point out that believers can't have it both ways. You can't say that we haven't brought back one of these creatures for scientific study because scientists aren't willing to trek back into the remotest wilderness areas where they live, and then expect us to accept sighting reports from the most densely populated areas of the US. You can't expect scientists to go on bigfoot expeditions when we don't know the first thing about tracking such creatures in the field. Finally, you can't expect that we scientists can drop everything to go apply our feeble sasquatch identification skills every time you guys get wind of a report that sounds convincing. So you're going to have to do it yourselves, and by "it" I mean bring back a body or part thereof. When you get it, don't call Fox News, call your friendly neighborhood Museum of Comparative Anatomy.
Peace,
~Saskeptic"
http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=11553&st=120&#entry259658
I guess that explains why I never saw teams of wildlife biologists looking for wolves in the Southern Cascades. Take note, Correa.
