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It IS a moral question no doubt about it. But where I think people get it wrong is by not examining the macro view for the solution. Is it moral for mankind to simply ignore a species and do as we please? What is it going to take for mankind to be forced to acknowledge this? More foot casts? More photos? More hair samples? We have these..... They fall short, we know this, and yet in some sort of sad cycle this is what most researchers gear up for in order to solve the mystery. I have no problem with someone who cannot pull the trigger personally. Brian himself admits that he isn't the guy for the job.....nothing wrong with that at all. But because he is very committed to solving the mystery? He supports the mission in ways in which he can contribute. I applaud that and wish I could clone him a 1000 times over. I don't think the rifle is the enemy of the squatch. I think the ultimate enemy is condos and golf courses. People who are anti kill have kind hearts for a species that is probably a distant cousin of ours, and I think that's noble and a important stance in this mystery, but only after we have proven it to science. Until then the only moral high ground belongs to the person who can get their hands on real tangible evidence the quickest. If that's a jawbone found in a cave......fine. But a bullet works as well, and reaching for a camera instead, does nothing to further our cause. It's a lost opportunity that postpones real conservation for years or maybe decades. That to me is sadder than anyone calling me blood thirsty or a killer. I'm firmly entrenched in my belief that what is truly best for the species is official recognition. And I would challenge anyone to prove to me that a unknown species is better off staying that way. If the mountain gorilla was unknown to science, their habitat would have already have been devoured by mankind, and most likely they would slip off to extinction in silence..... Surely that is much more immoral than killing one, proving they exist and bringing pressure to bear on the threats they face as a species. Ill get off my soap box now.

All of whom donated their body to science or by their families. You simply won't have that with a squatch. If human, it will be a dead one you can't do anything for science with. I wouldn't mind being wrong, but would not want the backlash from killing a human for people that just wouldn't believe. There should be non-human ape DNA from the samples in the mitochondria that is often used for species ID. The human result here is beyond just contamination.

Well yes that is a possibility, but are they that thinned skinned? A clear picture is what it is. A video of a group walking is what it is. If I had the encounters and sightings she had. I would invest in the best camera and video camera money could buy. I can totally understand why people see the habs as all hoaxers. The habs are in complete control, they have the power to shut all the skeptics up for good.

Jerry, if you don't get it, you don't get it. That doesn't bother me. The point of engaging subjective skeptics is not to convince them of anything. That's a lost cause. It is a matter of preserving the undiscouraged use of this forum by those who have an objective interest in the subject.

There are more than one set of disciplines in science, in political analysis, and in business that routinely use data collected from people to glean useful information upon which to determine courses of action and answers to key questions. The statistical analyses used are designed to isolate consistent trends from massive amounts of data containing many variables. These analyses start with the understanding that useful information is embedded within raw data containing significant amounts of "noise", or useless information. The analyses isolate the useful information, and often multiple analyses are applied to the same raw data set. When the analyses identify a consistent trend (useful information), they automatically assign a degree of confidence to the trend. When examining the results of the analyses, both the answers and the degrees of confidence associated with the answers are considered together. This is done in radio astronomy (how do they really know there's a new planet out there a thousand light years away instead of just cosmic static?), it is done in DNA analyses such as the subject of this thread (the isolation of useful information from massive amounts of relatively poorly understood genetic code), it is done in politics when leaders are trying to select the best course of action to achieve a future goal, and it is done in sales and marketing to identify what products to develop, how to sell them, and where to sell them, among other things. So to say that anecdotal information has no scientific, political, or economic value is a fallacy. It is used all the time for valuable reasons. Even paleoanthropology is subject to anecdotal information, because that is exactly what the contextual interpretation of the circumstances surrounding each find amounts to. If anecdotal information were never used in science, there would only be hard science. It would all be 2 + 2 = 4. There could never be multiple hypotheses (essentially multiple interpretations, of which only one can be true) applied to any raw data set in any science. And a scientific "fact", once determined, would never be replaced by a subsequent "fact". All scientists would be right all the time if anecdotal information were not part of science. Because science itself uses anecdotal information, science has determined how to manage it to maximize its value. Science does not, however, casually dismiss anecdotal information with the wave of a hand and a smirk. This isn't the first, or even the fifth, debate over anecdotal information on this forum, just the most recent, and I've got to say the least inspiring, after discussing exactly this issue with skeptical icons over the years like Saskeptic, whom I consider to be both a professional and a gentleman. These debates are cyclic, and at this point are nothing more than obfuscating noise as defined above. Understanding this will not tone down the less mature skeptics, however. One has to conclude, after watching the repeated cycles of new skeptics, that there will always be some who are not interested in informed debate, but in simply heckling the forum.

Well, I'm a "true skeptic", and I realize BF might exist. BUT, it has nothing to do with beliefs. It is all about FACTS. Again, you focus on beliefs, which are subjective and a "true skeptic" does not deal in perceived truths, we evaluate FACTS and reach an educated conclusion from them. So, I would say your analysis of "skeptics" is a hasty generalization of our intellectual stand, which omits many valid points. I'm sure many of us would be willing to engage in a detailed discussion of your perceived points of truth. p.s. I'm gonna have the guys over and we'll be watching football all day Sunday, so I wont respond 'til monday....

I can tell you when the farmers put fertilizer on these fields around us, that the smell is large I light an incense stick if I have one. Country smells abound. I wouldn't think twice about smelling things around me. One last comment as I continue to read the posts.... I hope that the "Sasquatch Soup" thread does not become a recipe to bring them in for a kill shot. I'll clam up and not share anything on these forums if I think it would bring in a BF killer. Not happening at my place. And we own plenty of guns in these parts.