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MonsterTalk.org - Word!

Loren Coleman reviews The Plesiosaur Hypothesis episode.


Be forewarned, it isn't (Adam Stuart) Smith's fault that his hosts use a complete disregard for most of the evidence, including critical dates, found within the Nessies dossier to make their debunking points. MonsterTalk, the cleverly misnamed, new site for this podcast series, is a stalking horse for CSICOP.org, the Skeptical Inquirer, and a variety of other debunking alliances. It is produced, clearly, with a point of view in place, and must be realized for that bias. I counted too many factual errors and spiteful comments to detail or reply to here, within their painfully long intro section. Skip the first 20 minutes and go straight to Smith's down-to-earth presentation.

Most American cryptozoologists, from the beginning, and, indeed, most critical thinking cryptozoologists today reject The Plesiosaur Hypothesis. The mammalian focus and other schools of thought have won out long ago. We realize that these extinct marine reptiles are extinct, and to promote or use them as candidates for Loch Monsters is done mostly by "true believers" (on both sides of the aisle, whether they are pro- or anti-Nessites).
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Coleman's statement could be altered a bit to cover another case:

Most American cryptozoologists biologists, from the beginning, and, indeed, most critical thinking cryptozoologists biologists today reject The Plesiosaur Unknown Primate Hypothesis. The mammalian hoax and misidentification focus and other schools of thought have won out long ago. We realize that these extinct marine reptiles are extinct hypothesized giant primates called Sasquatch or bigfoot are not real, and to promote or use them as candidates for Loch forest Monsters is done mostly by "true believers" (on both sides of the aisle, whether they are pro- or anti-Nessites).
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As I predicted, Coleman used the "they are mammals" line.

Where do I get my million dollars?
 
Correa Neto said:
As I predicted, Coleman used the "they are mammals" line.

Where do I get my million dollars?
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Oh that's easy, Donald Trump's office. But since your main concern was where and not when, there's the bad news. It won't be available for another 65 million years. Humanity still needs to destroy itself and then collide with an asteroid and then have a re-birth and...and yada yada yada 65 million years from now, that world's Donald Trump™ will again inexplicably have riches beyond belief, but will posses something the present day Donald doesn't, fully mature genes. Ones which will allow him the ability to get a better hairdresser and to actually pay his bills. And wa-la, you'll get paid. ;)

So anyway...

Nessie (Champ, Ogopogo et al) being long extinct prehistoric reptiles just never made a lot of sense, mostly because being extinct for like 65 million years (65 with 6 zeros) should pretty much on it's face be enough contradictory evidence for anyone seriously considering they could actually still exist. Now, present day reptiles such as a monster snake, or some kind of monster amphibian etc. do make some sense. Otters notwithstanding, the plausibility there are actual creatures causing all the commotion in these lakes has to be pegged at at least 'fair to middlin'. IMO, more than that of the existence of Bigfoot. I would not be shocked to find out Nessie and Friends™ really are otters.
 
Guess I'll have to make a thread with a probability study about the events you described at the first paragraph of the above post. Don't worry, I'll take numbers out of my digestive system's rear end which will create a favorable result.

Many things can account for lake & sea monsters sightings. Otters, seals, sturgeons, boat/ship wakes, even seagulls (an alleged San Francisco sea serpent video shows seagulls), etc.

When it comes down to lakes (and especially lakes with lots of people around), such a small areas are unlikely to hold unknown large animals. Now, if I were to build a plausible lake monster, I would use one of those japanese giant salamanders as a model. No need to surface every now and then to breath, thus decreasing odds of being sighted, and can live at cold waters. Their relatively low metabolism would also be another help on the few sightings problem- they would not be very active. However, this brings little if any relief to the fact that a viable, breeding population would not fail to leave reliable evidence of its presence. Remember- we're taking about 50 to 500 breeding specimens of large predatory animals living at a lake.
 
Here's something I made a few months ago- my own blobby blurry sea monster pics, taken at Guanabara bay, Rio de Janeiro. Lets call her Bessie. I took these pics of Bessie while at a cab, using a cell phone camera; her size was estimated as 3 meters or so. Typical sea/lake monster sighting. Red circles, über zoomed cropped areas and fantasy interpretation as courtesy. Note that the very picture was already cropped.
guessie1.jpg

guessie2.jpg

guessie3.jpg

I could have created a more detailed standard "sighting report", but my point is that ordinary objects can be and are being sold as sea monsters. If the pic were not blurry...

Ordinary objects are also being misidentificated; this very object gave me that split-second impression of a nessie. Its not hard to imagine that many sightings, especially the short ones may be misidentifications of common stuff.
 
Correa Neto, you are part of the plot to spread disinformation about the living dinosaurs! ;)

Well-done photos! They look exactly like the pics offered as "evidence" in so many sightings.
 
In truth, I'm totally willing to concede there's absolutely no way anything other than 'ordinary explanations' can account for Nessie et al. Coincidentally, curiously, whateverly, Correa Neto's photos are an example of why. As BSM says, those pics are no worse than anything offered up so far, from ANYWHERE for ANYTHING. And of course we'll never get more confirmation, clearer pictures or even body parts of any one of these 'things' because...there's nothing there to be had. In my post above I was trying more to attribute plausibility than any kind of cosmic truth. Certain things just are what they are i.e. there is no Bigfoot, there is no Loch Ness Monster and there is no funny Dane Cook joke. :p
 
Loren Coleman via William Parcher said:
Be forewarned, it isn't (Adam Stuart) Smith's fault that his hosts use a complete disregard for most of the evidence, including critical dates, found within the Nessies dossier to make their debunking points.
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Mr. Coleman seems to be forgetting that, no matter how "critical" a date is, evidence overwhelming points to the Loch Ness Monster not existing.

Most recently, there's the BBC's 2003 investigation using sonar that found no evidence of any large, unidentified animals in the loch. I think Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

In 2003, the BBC sponsored a full search of the Loch using 600 separate sonar beams and satellite tracking. The search had enough resolution to pick up a small buoy. No animal of any substantial size was found whatsoever and despite high hopes, the scientists involved in the expedition admitted that this essentially proved the Loch Ness monster was only a myth.
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What many don't know is that there was a similar search done by Cambridge University in 1962. Here's a snippet of what page 83 of Steuart Campbell's The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence has to say on the matter:

It was decided to sweep the lake from end to end using a fleet of boats equipped with echo-sounders. This would either force [Nessie] to one end of the lake, where it must finally appear in the shallows, or catch it as it passed through the sonar 'net'. Four boats, so equipped, made six sweeps both by day and by night. It was found that the sonar could be detected at distances greater than 1.5km. Consequently the net must have covered the entire width of Loch Ness."

What happened? Well, Campbell noted that the "net" didn't drive anything before it and that only a single echo was detected during the six sweeps (In other words, 5 sweeps of nothing and 1 with an echo). Said echo occurred just before a, quote, "...pole-like object was spotted in the area". Now, seeing as how no echo was detected after the pole-like object was sighted, as we would expect from a moving animal, this makes me think the object was a rotting log pushed up to the surface by gases created from internal decomposition (as discussed here).

Page 84 notes a later incident where two other sonar contacts were detected when the boat engines were turned off. Campbell notes (with a citation) that it has been suggested that the contacts were actually groups of salmon and that, six years later, the expedition's leader claimed that nothing was detected by said expedition. The salmon explanation does have merit, seeing as how large schools of salmon might scatter upon hearing the engine of a boat (and be too small separately to turn up anything significant on sonar), whereas they would most likely regroup after the noise that scared them went away. If we are to think that the contacts were Nessies, then why weren't the detected before? A stationary "Nessie" would certainly be large enough to have been detected by the net.

I should also note a 1958 echo-sounder expedition by the BBC that turned up nothing on the live TV broadcast. This is discussed on page 82, where it is also noted that there was a report of something being detected an hour before the broadcast. This begs the question, why wasn't anything detected during the broadcast if there truly are a population of large unknown animals in Loch Ness?

I would expect proponents to demand that I explain the times sonar contacts were made on other expeditions. The following can generate sonar contacts: schools of fish, otters, seals, and seiches. Dick Raynor has much to say about seals in Loch Ness at his site, and here is one of his several pages on the matter. Furthermore, Campbell notes the various problems with the scans that supposedly detected Nessie(s) in his book (75-97, 113-114).

Some might argue that Nessie would hide in caves or exit the loch (either by going on land or going out to sea). However, page 87 notes that the supposed ridges or caves reported by the Academy of Applied Science in 1970 were most likely the result of how sidescan sonar can fail to produce an echo when directed at a sloping surface (such as the bottom of the Loch). This was noted by Dr. Roy P. Mackal and campbell notes on the same page that later expeditions failed to find any sign of caves or ridges.

As for going on land, the most likely explanation to be given by proponents is that the scans occurred (or drove out) when the breeding population had left the water for land. The problem with this is that we're expected to believe that a large group of equally large creatures would be able to go on land without being seen or without leaving any evidence of having been there. Seeing as how such things should have been visible to expeditions like the one in 1962 (which went up and down the loch multiple times), this explanation is highly unlikely.

What about secret underwater tunnels that lead to the sea? Well, as page 17 notes, Loch Ness is 16 meters above sea level and "any tunnel large enough to take [Nessie] would drain the lake down to sea level." This page (and page 87) note that glaciers smoothed out the lake during its creation, making the likelihood of tunnels unlikely.

The last refuge of proponents seeking to give Nessie (at least, a biological, non-paranormal Nessie) an "out" for the negative sonar scans, assuming they don't plug their ears and go on about the scans that did yield something, is that the population of Nessies traveled to the sea through one of the two ways the Loch is connected to the sea.

Page 132 of William Knowlton's Sea Monsters discusses these two connections. First is the River Ness, which is known for its shallow waters and the large fishing nets that, quote, "...stretch from bank to bank at two places, but each has a gap through which fish can pass." Presumably the gaps are their to prevent catching all of the fish and negatively effecting the Loch's ecosystem. In any case, it is highly unlikely that large group of creatures of Nessis' reported size would be able to get through that undetected.

The only other connection from the loch to the sea is the Caledonian Canal. but, as Knowlton points out, "In order for a sea monster to enter the loch by the way of the canal, it would have to perform the unlikely feat os passing undiscovered through the ship-lifting locks of the canal." In sort, there is no good escape route for which Nessie and its kin could pass through undetected if they existed. Whether you think Nessie is a plesiosaur, mammal, amphibian, or giant invertebrate (all of which are real theories, BTW), all these explanations can't face up to the facts pointing towards the extremely unlikelihood of any undiscovered large animals existing in Loch Ness.

I should note that I posted much of this information as a comment on Cryptomundo ages ago. Oh, and this recent comment by Coleman makes his swiping DoctorAtlantis' "Bigfoot reading porn" gag image and reposting it on Cryptomundo (minus the DoctorAtlantis watermark) quite humorous.

MonsterTalk, the cleverly misnamed,
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I know Coleman's implication is that the name is supposed to suggest it's a pro-cryptid podcast, but the name is accurate as monsters are discussed. I wonder if he'd have the same sort of hissy fit if a horror movie podcast used the name.

new site for this podcast series, is a stalking horse for CSICOP.org, the Skeptical Inquirer, and a variety of other debunking alliances.
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OH NOES, TEH SKEPTICAL CONSPIRACY!1!!ONE

It is produced, clearly, with a point of view in place, and must be realized for that bias.
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Like Cryptomundo?

I counted too many factual errors and spiteful comments to detail or reply to here, within their painfully long intro section.
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Wow, that sounds an awful lot like a description of a typical Cryptomundo entry. Besides, implying about the existence of errors without ever noting them is classic Colemonster behavior. Remember that bit about how all skeptical explanations for the Myakka ape had fallen to the wayside (or something to that effect)?

But, that said, MonsterTalk has made some mistakes, such as the use of the
"many have stepped forward claiming to have played Patty" claim. It probably would've been better to say that several cryptoenthusiasts support the idea of living plesiosaurs as well.

Most American cryptozoologists, from the beginning, and, indeed, most critical thinking cryptozoologists today reject The Plesiosaur Hypothesis.
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Notice the focus on American cryptozoologists. If wonder if this means that there were enough cryptozoologists from other countries that promoted the plesiosaur explanation enough to make Coleman back off saying "most cryptozoologists" rejected that explanation.

Furthermore, knowing how elastic crytozoology can be (such as how biologists finding a new species somehow becomes a "victory" for cryptozoology), I would like to see a comprehensive list of cryptozoologists in order to evaluate his claim.

The mammalian focus and other schools of thought have won out long ago.
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Now Loren, whatever happened to that "We must keep an open mind" attitude you expressed during your TV appearance (with Joe Nickell) discussing the Holmes footage? ;)

We realize that these extinct marine reptiles are extinct,
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Then how come you promote the claims of other extinct animals. Oh, and i couldn't help but think of this.

and to promote or use them as candidates for Loch Monsters is done mostly by "true believers" (on both sides of the aisle, whether they are pro- or anti-Nessites).
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Oh look, a variation of the "No True Scotsman..." defense!

Oh, and here's a bunch of stuff I dug up for the original, much longer version of this post I had planned (but eventually abandoned due to time constraints):

Pages 300-301, 311, 313-318, and 321-323 of The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved By Colin and Damon Wilson are all of interest, but I'm only linking to page 321. I found this while trying to verify if the rumors I had heard about Tim Dinsdale secretly supporting the paranormal explanation for Nessie were true. The involvement of Beckjord does cast doubt on the matter and I suspect that the rumors might be based on people mixing up details over a letter sent to Dinsdale by one Tim Holiday.

Speaking of Dinsdale, here's page 157 from his book, Loch Ness Monster. More material from that appears on pages 28-30 of Dinsdale's The Leviathans.

Pages 273-275 of Unexplained phenomena: a rough guide special by John Michell, Bob Rickard, Robert J. M. Rickard are also worth a look.

Check out this little tidbit from the bottom of page 287 of Loren Coleman's Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, which I found while trying to find a list of Coleman-endorsed cryptozoologists. It goes quite well with page 301 of the above book.

Oh, and here are two Wiki entries that might be of interest.
 
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AtomicMysteryMonster said:
As for going on land, the most likely explanation to be given by proponents is that the scans occurred (or drove out) when the breeding population had left the water for land. The problem with this is that we're expected to believe that a large group of equally large creatures would be able to go on land without being seen or without leaving any evidence of having been there. Seeing as how such things should have been visible to expeditions like the one in 1962 (which went up and down the loch multiple times), this explanation is highly unlikely
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Bigfoot does it every day- why cant Nessie
 
LONGTABBER PE said:
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Bigfoot does it every day- why cant Nessie
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Well, the Loch Ness Monster is supposed to be far larger than Bigf...oh wait, I forgot the 15 foot tall Bigfoot report. Nevermind!

All kidding aside, I found some Google Books "limited previews" of Joshua Blu Buhs' Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend and Michael McLeod's Anatomy of a Beast: Obsession and Myth on the Trail of Bigfoot. I highly recommend checking them out. Come to think of it, it'd be great if the authors could make an appearance on MonsterTalk.

Here's a page from Ivan Sanderson's Abominable Snowmen, Legend Come to Life that I found interesting.

Getting back to the Loch Ness Monster, I found pages 23-34 of Richard Ellis' Monsters of the Sea to fit in quite nicely with the recent discussion about Loch Ness.
 
I broke down and have both. I got Bigfoot: Life and Times... from the library. Made it through the first chapter and thought, "Gotta have". I had already purchased Anatomy... Oh well, better get reading instead of posting.

That's good you got Joshua. May I suggest Darren Naish too?

And, actually, to throw a curve, you really should bring on LC himself (he needs an ego boost when not on the lecture circuit :rolleyes:)
 
LONGTABBER PE said:
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Bigfoot does it every day- why cant Nessie
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Hmm...lets see

A small population of 6-8ft tall primates living undetected in the furthest regions of the world

vs

A "small" population (Minimum 50) of 30 plus feet reptiles living in the Loch undetected, being seen once every few months, evading sonar sweeps. etc.

Tough one :rolleyes:
 
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