Pretending to be even-handed is not the same as being even-handed - especially while pretending to be a skeptic at the same time like MikeG was/is.
This.
Every one of them pretends to be "balanced" by generating straw men positions skeptics do not have, playing dumb, selective attention, begging the question, etc: using logical fallacies at the same time they are pretending to "show" skeptics how to be TRULY skeptical. You can see the smirk on their faces as they're typing.
It would be one thing were it reasonable differences people have, but one of the gifts in this kind of acting is staking out a completely absurd position with a straight face and pretending people disagreeing with it are unreasonable. What, who me? No, honestly I really think two plus two can be five, for sufficiently large values of two.
The default position of the wildest bigfoot proponent is that he is the balanced, open-minded skeptic and the people following the scientific method are closed-minded, biased jerks. Every new phony skeptic here thinks he's come up with the "new idea" of posing himself as the fair-and-balanced skeptic saying a thousand years of history is not enough to determine whether elephants are roaming wild in Central Park.
For a lot of them that come here discussion is not about science and truth. It's just a fun game they're playing, and faking a position is way more fun than honest discussion. Chain-yanking. That is what I react to most strongly - that kind of deceit. I've tried to do it by going on their forums and faking a position but it bothers me too much to maintain a lie.
But boy, they sure can. They know exactly how deceitful they are being while they are doing it, which is where the fun is for them: everyone else being so stupid as to buy into their deception. Not their false argument - but making you believe that they are sincere in that argument.
You can see it being turned on and off like a light switch. Day and night. One minute looking up sources and sounding reasonable and the next minute saying the moon is made of green cheese.