Kotatsu said:
The Code does not evaluate whether or not an organism actually exists; that is up to the community of taxonomists working with that particular group to reach a consensus on.
With the exception that they have provide a type specimen.
I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but as virtually no serious publication that publishes taxonomic acts would accept a manuscript with a new genus description for a purported taxon for which no holotype has been presented, I am inclined to guess that the answer is "no".
I know of one--a marine organism thought to have existed by scientists, but which was later found to not exist. There is (or at least was) a specific rule put into the Code to deal with it. That said, Bigfoot doesn't fall under that rule. No body, no fossil, no name.
The Shrike said:
I'm sorry that I don't understand the point you're trying to make, Dinwar.
That's depressing.
My point, as I have said explicitely and repeatedly, is that BECAUSE the notion of Giganto migrating into North America isn't inherently unscientific, AND people want to address this scientifically, THEREFORE it is incumbant upon us to actually evaluate the claim. If someone can prove that the claim is, in itself, unscientific, this argument doesn't hold. If you don't want to address this scientifically, that's fine--I even gave you a few options for valid ways to evaluate it other than scientifically. If you want to claim that you're approaching this from a scientific angle, there's only one way to proceed: you have to determine whether Giganto fossils appear along the known migration patheways into North America from Asia at the appropriate times. This is a paleontological question.
It reads to me like "Unless you have personally done the relevant field work and published on the Quaternary fauna of North America then your argument against bigfoot may be rhetorical but it cannot be scientific."
If you want to make a scientific claim, you are obliged to be able to support it with data. That means that while you don't need to publish in the field you certainly do need to do the requisite literature review. Start here:
http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Tertiary-Mammals-North-America/dp/0521619688. And yeah, this is going to take a while. You're trying to determine if the fossil exists; this requires a tremendous effort. It's taken me 12 years, from the start of my undergrad work, to grad school, to years of experience in the field. I'm still hesitant to make the claim, though my work in specific formations that would hold Giganto fossils if they existed in North America lets me make that claim with some confidence.
Let's put this in another context. How would you go about finding a planet outside the orbit of Neptune? Certain scientifically valid proposals (ie, those having valid data supporting them) have been proposed recently. Would you accept MY opinion on it? I've no telescope, and while I have a few more books than the average person on astronomy and physics available to me I'm not a physicist or astronomer. Determining if Giganto fossils exist in the appropriate places for it to be bigfoot is the equivalent of that effort. We have a target, we know what formations to look at, we know what we're looking for, but only a rare few have all that knowledge at hand and are working in the relevant areas. Someone saying that these fossils don't exist without doing the requisite background reading at minimum is unscientific, just as much as it would be for me to say that planets beyond Neptune don't exist with no more knowledge than I have on the topic.
Plus, a lot of people are reversing the process. Some people in this thread are starting from the conclusion that bigfoot doesn't exist, and are looking for data to support that conclusion. The problem should be obvious, but this is one of the topics where skeptics tend to forget that.
By extension, it would imply that it is not possible to represent the scientific consensus of any phenomenon without being one of the people who does the work to build that consensus.
Personally, I think consensus science is a load of crap that's not worth anything past a very, very preliminary attempt to understand a concept. If one does wish to use the scientific consensus, as opposed to actually looking at the evidence (and let's be clear here--consensus science is
by definition substituting the number of scientists who agree with a stance for actual research on that topic), it is incumbant upon you to make sure it IS a consensus. Which means that you should be able to provide what the majority opinion is, what the disenting opinions are, and what criteria you use to determine which researchers are looking into relevant fields (not always an easy topic; look into ichnofossils for an example of those complications).
I think it's a waste of effort, myself. If you want to have an informed opinion on a topic, you can and should look at the data. It's a lot harder, but you come out ahead in the end. NO ONE, EVER becomes an expert on a topic by determining the consensus. The idea of doing so doesn't even make sense. I'm not even convinced anyone becomes knowledgeable on the topic via examining the consensus, though I'll be happy to admit that most of the examples I've seen haven't actually explored the topic in enough detail to understand what the consensus is.
I find that "reading" does a rather good job to help me understand the scientific consensus behind all manner of things for which I have no firsthand research experience.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Patterns_and_Processes_of_Vertebrate_Evo.html?id=wx5hQgAACAAJ
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library.html
Here's why that fails. To get to the meat of the issue, the two provide contrasting views of Punctuated Equilibrium, one from a "pro" side (the second, obviously) and one from the "con" side. Examining the consensus is incapable of providing any inforamtion on controversial topics, nor provide enough of an understanding of the issues to understand much of the controversy.
No, I don't expect everyone to be an expert on everything. I'm just saying that I have no respect fo rsubstituting consensus for actual research, because that method for learning has very specific and very dangerous flaws. And in the case of Giganto, the consensus is completely inadequate.
