What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?

[Guest MikeG]

Sadly, the okapi hasn't been seen in the wild for about 25 years, although bushmeat hunters have produced some skins etc in that time, and some footprints and trail-cam vids have confirmed that it still survives. They are a mightily impressive beast, and one of only two mammals on the planet with the ability to lick their own ears.

There, you didn't know that, did you?

Mike

[kitakaze]

MikeG, I have been this week enjoying every episode of David Attenborough's Life of Mammals 2002 BBC series, and the number of mammals that can lick their own ears and that I in fact watched do just that simply floored me. Particularly, I found that the number of mammals evolved to eat ant and termite colonies, as well as high-sprouting folivores, that can do just hilarious things with there tongues was a singular sort of entertainment.

[Guest]

The Okapi is a great example of failed expeditions to find a cryptid no more elusive, just more rare then your average gazelle or deer. They weren't "batting 1000" there.

Saskeptic

You need to stop trying to pick apart the examples i've chosen. Start paying more attention to the points i'm attempting to make. I was attempting to use the Okapi as an example of a failed expedition, i was not trying to use the Okapi as a gauge to how many years it should take for an animal to be discovered, from the time it's discussed as possibly existing, to the time it's proven to exist. If you were to study this data, and i have briefly, you would find there is no clear pattern. Thus you can't determine how many years it should take for BF to be found, from the time it was discussed as possibly existing, to the time it's proven to exist. The gorilla was talked about as far back as i can remember, as wild men in the forests of africa. Though natives knew these creatures were real, the world did not believe until 1902, when the body that everyone wanted was produced. So how many years was that Sas? At the end of the day the Okapi proved to be no more elusive, nor harder to track then your average deer, it's just a heck of a lot more rare, and in a much more remote less populated area of the world. Deer aren't as hard to track as an ape, BF seems to be harder to track then even an ape specifically mountain gorillas. The terrain the Okapi inhabits is not as dense or hard to traverse as the mountainous forests and swamp land that BF is said to dwell in. The date you provided as your starting point for interest in the Okapi can also be argued, the creature dubbed "the african unicorn" was spoken of well before 1887, but that's besides the point i'm attempting to make.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Caesar

[Guest]

Back to the original question. I find the distribution maps to be very interesting " evidence" (please let's not argue about that word). All the kooks and hallucinators can't live in the same places. I think there's a very small chance that all sightings are false.

[kitakaze]

Saskeptic

You need to stop trying to pick apart the examples i've chosen. Start paying more attention to the points i'm attempting to make. I was attempting to use the Okapi as an example of a failed expedition, i was not trying to use the Okapi as a gauge to how many years it should take for an animal to be discovered, from the time it's discussed as possibly existing, to the time it's proven to exist. If you were to study this data, and i have briefly, you would find there is no clear pattern. Thus you can't determine how many years it should take for BF to be found, from the time it was discussed as possibly existing, to the time it's proven to exist. The gorilla was talked about as far back as i can remember, as wild men in the forests of africa. Though natives knew these creatures were real, the world did not believe until 1902, when the body that everyone wanted was produced. So how many years was that Sas? At the end of the day the Okapi proved to be no more elusive, nor harder to track then your average deer, it's just a heck of a lot more rare, and in a much more remote less populated area of the world. Deer aren't as hard to track as an ape, BF seems to be harder to track then even an ape specifically mountain gorillas. The terrain the Okapi inhabits is not as dense or hard to traverse as the mountainous forests and swamp land that BF is said to dwell in. The date you provided as your starting point for interest in the Okapi can also be argued, the creature dubbed "the african unicorn" was spoken of well before 1887, but that's besides the point i'm attempting to make.

Okapi...

Bigfoot...

Are we prepared to sincerely face and address the nature of this problem?

Back to the original question. I find the distribution maps to be very interesting " evidence" (please let's not argue about that word). All the kooks and hallucinators can't live in the same places. I think there's a very small chance that all sightings are false.

What size of chance does this give you for alien visitation in spacecraft to the Planet Earth?...

[Guest]

You have. of course, just ignored a report of 15 multiple witnesses watching A not only interact with B, but A to actually fire upon B...

I have ignored nothing. I have stated (correctly) that they are irrelevant. There is no requirement that a BF proponent accept and/or use ALL reports of BF on an equal basis as part of their argumentation.

To attemtpt to insist that I do so is a logical fallacy on your part as I have stated. To wit: it is 'kitchen sink" argumentation, and presumes that all claims must be considered of equal value. The only reason you wish us to do so is so that the BF case is tainted with the scorn reserved for UFO proponents.

It's nothing more than a debating trick. I'm not falling for it, no matter how many times you try it.

The formal statement of the fallacy is in response to arguments from authority (terms substituted by me):

While the authority witness is an expert has made a claim, his opinion claim is unrepresentative of expert opinion body of claims on the subject. The fact is that if one looks hard enough, it is possible to find an expert a witness who supports virtually any position has made any claim that one wishes to take. "Such is human perversity", to quote Lewis Carroll. This is a great boon for debaters, who can easily find expert opinion on their side of a question a witness who has made a certain claim, whatever that side claim is, but it is confusing for those of us listening to debates and trying to form an opinion.

http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

Put another way: if you were to show me a claim about BF made by a person with a long documented history of mental illness who was on drugs who said that he saw a dozen BF in pink tutus dancing Swan Lake, I would be well within my rights to exclude that claim from the body of claims I use to bolster my argument without affecting the validity of my argument one single iota.

You want it both ways, Kita. You ask for BF proponents to be more discerning when it comes to excluding evidence you don't like, but now you're asking us to blindly include ALL claims made about BF.

Why?

Simple: it makes our case look bad by contaminating the argument with loaded and controversial and irrelevant side-issues, in this case UFOs.

Too bad for you I ain't falling for it, nor I suspect is anyone else around here except for your supporters.

UFO Digest's Regan Lee sums up the close-minded Bigfooter intolerance...

And a nice little ad hom (accusation of "intolerance").

You don't have a single confirmed Bigfoot hair or even one that is confirmed as coming from an uncatalogued species [emphasis added]

We have the Pinker results as well as the results from Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Ellis R. Kerley and Physical Anthropologist Dr. Stephen Rosen of the University of Maryland, as well as Tom Moore, the Supervisor of the Wyoming Game and Fish Laboratory.

We also have DNA derived from a hair sample in 2001 that was analyzed by professor Malcolm Sykes of Oxford University, who

was not able to match the DNA to any known animal. "We have never encountered any DNA that we couldn't recognize before," said Sykes, a pioneer of DNA identification as the first genetist to extract DNA from archaeological bone specimens.

http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/other_forms_of_bigfoot_evidenc.html (under "Hairs")

Sweet Tony Danza, what a whopper. We only had the man hours to build three highly industrialized nations here.

Just wow.

And there are still 100s and 100s of 1000s of square miles of undeveloped and in many cases virtually unvisited wilderness.

The simple fact is (as is shown by Census data) that the overwhelming majority of the US is NOT developed by man.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/07/01/census-bureau-946-percent-us-rural-open-space

More than two out of three Americans live in urbanized areas. These areas collectively cover 2 percent of the nation’s land area. Counting urbanized areas and urban clusters together, nearly four out of five Americans live in an urban setting. Urbanized areas and urban clusters cover 2.6 percent of the nation’s land.

Remaining “places†account for just 4.4 percent of the U.S. population, but they cover 2.8 percent of the land. Their density is far lower than the density of urbanized areas and urban clusters. The average urbanized area has nearly 2,700 people per square mile, and the average urban cluster has close to 1,500 people per square mile. But the average place (outside of urban areas) has just 133 people per square mile.

In many cases, this is because small towns have large corporate boundaries, only portions of which are occupied. This is most noticeable in Alaska, where many cities have legal boundaries that include thousands of square miles of unoccupied land. As a result, the density of Alaska’s non-urban places averages just 7 people per square mile.

Non-urban place densities in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, and Wyoming average between 30 and 100 people per square mile. In all other states except Nebraska, non-urban place densities range from 100 to 500 people per square mile. Nebraska is the only state whose non-urban places approach urban densities: 805 people per square mile.

So are places “developed� The Census Bureau counts them as “rural.†Only people living in urbanized areas or urban clusters are counted as “urban.†At the same time, a town of 1,000 people is obviously not “rural open space.†Conservatively, only those areas outside of any “place†can be considered rural open space. But it is clear that large portions of the rural places are also rural open space.

Together, urbanized areas, urban clusters, and rural places occupy 5.4 percent of the nation’s land, while urban areas alone cover just 2.6 percent. Rural open space thus covers between 94.6 and 97.4 percent of the land in the United States.

US average population density is ~84 people/square mile ( http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934666.html ), clustered in just 5.4% of the landmass as noted above.

Canada occupies 41% of the N American continent's landmass ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Canada ).It's average population density is just 9 people/square mile (same source as US average), most of which live within 100 miles of the US border ( http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Americas/Canada.html ).

So much for that argument.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Mulder

[Cotter]

@Kit

I do understand the point you are trying to make, also the counter-point Ceasar is trying to make. 2 sides to the coin for sure.

However, there is one exception to the maps that I was hoping you could provide an explanation of.

If BF and UFO sightings correllate b/c of the reasons you suggest. Then why no BF sightings in Hawaii? It has always been the one state where no sightings have occurred. This portion doesn't fit into the model you describe. Any suggestions as to why that is?

Thanks.

[Drew]

Please note regarding the OKAPI

The Okapi lives in the wild, and is not considered endangered. The game cam photo we saw a couple years ago, was the first time a WILD OKAPI HAD BEEN SEEN IN VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK since 1959. It is not the first wild Okapi in the world seen since 1959. The news outlets misinterpreted the information and said that it was the first OKAPI seen since 1959.

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Okapia_johnstoni.html

The okapi was not recognized by western scientists until 1900, when Harry Johnston sent two pecies of "zebra-like" skin to London (Kingdon 1979). More recently, the okapi has been extirpated from Uganda and, since 1933, protected by law in Zaire. Despite its patchy distribution, the okapi is common in much of its current range and is therefore not listed as a threatened species by international agreement. However, habitat loss due to deforestation as well as poaching continue to restrict the range of the species and take their toll on the population. Another great danger to the okapi is lack of knowledge about it outside of zoos. Little field research has been done on the species due to its inaccessible habitat and reclusive nature (Bodmer 1992).

Okapis are found only in the tropical forests of northeastern Zaire. They prefer altitudes between 500 and 1,000 m, although they may venture above 1,000 m in the eastern montane rainforests. One sighting occurred at 1,450 m on Mt. Hoyo, in the upper Ituri. The range of the okapi is limited by high montane forests to the east, swamp forests below 500 m to the west, savannas of the Sahel/Soudan to the north, and open woodlands to the south. Okapis are most common in the Wamba and Epulu areas (Bodmer 1992).

[indiefoot]

Kitakaze,

The op is "What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are False?" yet you continue to turn it around to "What Is The Statistical Probability That All Sightings Are True?" by pointing out the most fringe of sightings reports. You ignore the more straight forward descriptions of an unknown animal and build a case for the monsters that inhabit your "social construct". The only real evidence that you have that BF is a social construct is your opinion and your attempts to compare it to another phenomenon that is, in your opinion, also a social construct. Repeating your opinion often, loudly, or with lots of pictures does not magically turn it to fact.

You have stated your opinion on the original question.

I think 99% based on the evidence showing the manner in which Bigfoot acts like a social construct.

[Guest]

If BF and UFO sightings correllate b/c of the reasons you suggest. Then why no BF sightings in Hawaii? It has always been the one state where no sightings have occurred. This portion doesn't fit into the model you describe. Any suggestions as to why that is?

Nice point. I'm guessing Hawaiian culture isn't all that different from the mainland for the relevant issues, and I assume they have roughly the same proportions of liars, hallucinators and too-credulous types.

Given the mile wide (and, yeah, some would argue "and an inch deep") evidence out there, all I know is, is that if Sasquatch doesn't exist, then something truly weird is going on.

[JDL]

Skeptics are believers too. They just believe something different.

They demand proof of your position, but cannot prove their own.

Objectively, their position is no more valid than the opposing position.

Using one element of questionable evidence to cast doubt on all evidence is a lawyer's tactic. Establish reasonable doubt. It proves nothing, but does serve to obstruct progress.

[Guest]

You need to stop trying to pick apart the examples i've chosen.

You're kidding, right? I'm not allowed to do any fact-checking on things you post? Are you running for office or something?

I was attempting to use the Okapi as an example of a failed expedition, . . .

Right, and when I did a little digging on the subject, I found three sources describing just one expedition between Stanley's original reports and the scientific description. That one expedition was Johnson's, and he confirmed the existence of the okapi and provided material for its description on the first try.

The gorilla was talked about as far back as i can remember, as wild men in the forests of africa.

Wow, you must be pretty old. Maybe you are that Caesar!

BTW, you'll find a similar pattern for gorillas too: Robert von Beringe bagged mountain gorillas on his first trek through the Virungas, and he wasn't even looking for them. So again, 1 for 1; batting 1000. Same goes for lowland gorillas: Reverend Thomas Savage was traveling in Gabon (Wiki says Liberia) when he stopped to rest from an illness in the home of another missionary, J. L. Wilson. Wilson showed Savage a strange skull that Savage recognized as something new and different. Savage published a description of the new species in 1847. Again: 1 for 1; batting 1000.

Incidentally, crypto folks love to write about du Chaillu's accounts of gorillas being pooh-poohed by the establishment in Europe. Wiki says that du Chaillu's travels in Africa occurred 1856-1859; basically 10 years AFTER gorillas had already been described by Savage!

The terrain the Okapi inhabits is not as dense or hard to traverse as the mountainous forests and swamp land that BF is said to dwell in.

Do you mean like the parking lot of the Lucky Star Casino in Concho, OK, that kind of more dense and mountainous forest than where those wimpy okapis live?

[Drew]

@Kit

I do understand the point you are trying to make, also the counter-point Ceasar is trying to make. 2 sides to the coin for sure.

However, there is one exception to the maps that I was hoping you could provide an explanation of.

If BF and UFO sightings correllate b/c of the reasons you suggest. Then why no BF sightings in Hawaii? It has always been the one state where no sightings have occurred. This portion doesn't fit into the model you describe. Any suggestions as to why that is?

Thanks.

http://www.bigfootha...om/aboutus.html

Bam! Bigfoot in Hawaii.

Seriously though

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/aikanaka.htm

Edited March 6, 2012 by Drew

[Guest]

I'm going to try very hard to work "wimpy okapis" into my conversations, context be damned. Funny. Thanks Saskeptic.

Bam! Bigfoot in Hawaii.

Drat. I suppose we'll have to add those to the Bigfoot they see in Scotland.

[Guest]

I don't think that that the statistical probability is 100% that all bigfoot sightings are real, I don't think there is a accurate way to find out how many reports are real. We are still trying to prove that one report is real.("If you establish at any point that even one report is accurate then you have an animal. And if you have an animal then you have literally thousands of animals." - John Green)

"Either the most complex and sophisticated hoax in the history of anthropology has continued for centuries without being exposed, or the most manlike and largest non-human primate on earth has managed to survive in parts of North America and remains undiscovered by modern science."

- G.W. Gill - President of the American Boared of Forensic Anthropology

Edited March 6, 2012 by Jeff Albertson