Debunk The Debunking

[Sasfooty]

Plus, and more importantly, I do not want the casual reader, who is new or unfamiliar with the BFF, to assume those representing/claiming these extraordinary attributes in any way represent the general belief/intent of the forum.

They don't.

How about if my posts come with a warning label?

Note addition to my signature.

[Guest]

At some point doesn't it mean something that this postulated bigfoot is in so many ways unlike any animal that ever lived in North America? How paranormal does bigfoot have to behave in order to be considered paranormal?

Straw man and argumentum ad ridicule.

oh by the way, we drive a lot of miles on US highways and still manage to avoid bagging a bigfoot.

Given that figure, and positing a population of 10,000 bf (for purpose of demonstration) AND assuming that all bf spent 100% of their time on roads to be available to hit for 1 year, the probability of a roadkill would be 1 in 300,000 (an entirely impossible expectation). Things just get worse from there for your arguement.

[Guest RayG]

A reasonable inquirer would look at the drop of coffee left on the table from the last cup, the coffeepot on the counter, the used filter and grounds in the trash and the empty cup in the sink and conclude that coffee does indeed exist, presence of an extant cup notwithstanding.

I'd argue that this reasonable person doesn't need to look at the drop of coffee left on the table from the last cup, or the coffeepot on the counter, or the used filter and grounds in the trash and the empty cup in the sink to conclude that coffee does indeed exist. I already know coffee exists. I buy one every morning on my way to work.

I can purchase cups, cans, bags, or bottles of the stuff. I can go to my local grocery store and choose my own coffee beans from a variety of choices, grind my own coffee, smell the coffee, touch the coffee, and when I get home I can taste the coffee. We have no such physical manifestation of bigfoot, so your coffee/bigfoot analogy is logically unsound.

RayG

[Guest]

OK, Let me rephrase this in a way that doesn't even insinuate paranormal. To me, bigfoot's reported ability to climb over terrain that humans need mountain climbing equipment to accomplish is not paranormal. That is a difference in physical ability that you find among individual primates as a whole. So let's define what is paranormal for the forum, that might be helpful.

Now getting to my point. The simplest explanation is usually the most reasonable when we having missing information.

We are simply putting game cams in the wrong places because we don't know enough about bigfoot's patterns to anticipate his movements.

[xspider1]

Consider for a second that Bigfoot are likely "much smarter than your average Bear". If there are just a "few thousand" of them in the US (seems reasonable to me) then the likelihood that one of those "relatively few", smart, very isolated, very elusive, very cautious, very strong animals would be: on a motor-vehicle road, hit by a motor vehicle, rendered immobile by that motor vehicle, recovered by a human and "presented to science" seems like the sort of thing that, as we see, is not unlikely to have never happened. If that has happened who's to say that we would all know about it?

The logical fallacy, straw man, special pleading or whatever, to me is the prevailing notion that to believe in Bigfoot means that one has to believe a majority of the reports. And since, Bigfoot have been reported many times to be on roads, in Urban areas etc., it is impossible that they could exist and never have been recovered as road-kill and given to the media.

On the game cam issue: I wonder how many of those game cams 'go missing' (i.e., smashed and/or thrown about 1 mile into the woods).

[Guest]

Can someone please clarify what a straw man fallacy is versus a reasonable hypothesis? What appears to be reasonable based on experience to me seems to be considered pleading to others who do not have the experience. So how is this resolved in any kind of research?

Here is an example:

I did a research study on amnioinfusions during graduate school. My hypothesis was that introducing any foreign body in the uterus during labor would increase the risk of post partum intrauterine infection ( is this a straw man fallacy?). Me and my research group did about 500 chart reviews of patients who had amnioinfusions and another 500 who had minimal vaginal exams, all were vaginal deliveries, those with other complications such as retained placenta, meconium stained fluid, etc....that could increase the risk of infection were not included in our chart review. The results were that the group with amnioinfusions were less likely to have an elevated temperature of greater than 104 degrees which is an indication of post partum infection. This was not the result we were expecting to get so does that make the original hypothesis a straw man fallacy or just a result that needs further research?

[Sunflower]

I'll just say this because I think I've made a reference before this thread somewhere else on the forum.

Any place you hang a game cam is the wrong place where the shadowfolk are concerned.

One, they probably watched you or heard you set it up. Two, they don't have a handle about cameras, but they obviously know that it makes a noise whenever an animal walks near it. And, three, it won't take them long to figure all this out. A friend of mine put one out and got 862 pics of a pencil moving in and out of the brush.

[Guest]

Can someone please clarify what a straw man fallacy is versus a reasonable hypothesis? What appears to be reasonable based on experience to me seems to be considered pleading to others who do not have the experience. So how is this resolved in any kind of research?

Here is an example:

I did a research study on amnioinfusions during graduate school. My hypothesis was that introducing any foreign body in the uterus during labor would increase the risk of post partum intrauterine infection ( is this a straw man fallacy?). Me and my research group did about 500 chart reviews of patients who had amnioinfusions and another 500 who had minimal vaginal exams, all were vaginal deliveries, those with other complications such as retained placenta, meconium stained fluid, etc....that could increase the risk of infection were not included in our chart review. The results were that the group with amnioinfusions were less likely to have an elevated temperature of greater than 104 degrees which is an indication of post partum infection. This was not the result we were expecting to get so does that make the original hypothesis a straw man fallacy or just a result that needs further research?

[Guest RayG]

A straw man fallacy and special pleading are not the same.

From wikipedia: A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument:

1. Person A has position X.

2. Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:

• 1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.
  2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context — i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).
  3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.[1]
  4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
  5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.

3. Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious, because attacking a distorted version of a position fails to constitute an attack on the actual position.

Special pleading is a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need to apply additional considerations without proper criticism of these considerations themselves. Essentially, this involves someone attempting to cite something as an exemption to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exemption.

So, when the lack of bigfoot road kill is questioned, and the reasons being given for why there isn't, include things like physics, gymnastic abilities, superior intelligence, low population densities, etc., those would be examples of engaging in special pleading.

If, on the other hand, someone questioned the lack of bigfoot road kill, and someone replied with something about hunters recognizing their prey before they shoot, or implying Smart Cars should be mowing down bigfoot as easily as logging trucks, those are straw men arguments.

RayG

[indiefoot]

I believe the Logical Fallacy involved in the argument about "roadkill" would be;

Appeal to probability: assumes that because something could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen. This is flawed logic, regardless of the likelihood of the event in question. The fallacy is often used to exploit paranoia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_probability

Example; If Bigfoot were real it could be hit and killed by a car. It follows that if Bigfoot were real it would have been hit by a car and we would know the details.

[Guest]

What I am getting at with my research example is that we ended up with a null hypothesis because we didn't consider the fact that the IV fluid used in amniocentesis was sterile.

Bigfoot in and of itself is improbable but despite that, I know he exists, how do you ignore a bias like that? So taking information gleaned from personal experience, literature review from anthropology, archaeology, history, primate psychology and physiology, human psychology and physiology, genetics, and anecdotal reports, along with the review by certain learned people of the collection of evidence just to name a few things that go into forming a tentative hypothesis means ABSOLUTELY nothing? What I consider to be a hypothesis is a so called "straw man fallacy" and "pleading" ?

How unrealistic those conclusions may be depends on your perspective. If you do not believe bigfoot exists then anything said about bigfoot is a "straw man fallacy" or "pleading" due to the skeptic's personal bias. The true skeptic is more than likely, not always, missing the personal experience aspect. If you chose to ignore certain data because you didn't personally see it this leads to stymied inquiry and a lack of insight for possible further research. I am not personally a fan of the paranormal aspect, I can find a possible biological explanation for most of it, but if you can't, you are left with a variable that is not taken into consideration in solving this puzzle. The most a believer can come up with at this point is a potential null hypothesis, not pleading or fallacies. Even if the null hypothesis is not refuted, should seriously funded research ever happen in my life time, you learn something new. Denial is not productive in any process of inquiry.

That in essence debunks the debunking from my point of view.

[Guest RayG]

I believe the Logical Fallacy involved in the argument about "roadkill" would be;

Appeal to probability: assumes that because something could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen. This is flawed logic, regardless of the likelihood of the event in question. The fallacy is often used to exploit paranoia.

I start from the argument that road kill DOES happen to other large North American animals. That's not an assumption, those road kill reports are backed up with pictures of road kill. Except for bigfoot, that is.

Example; If Bigfoot were real it could be hit and killed by a car. It follows that if Bigfoot were real it would have been hit by a car and we would know the details.

Yes, I find it puzzling that bigfoot seems to be the only critter in NA that doesn't end up on the short end of the stick, so to speak, where vehicles and trains are involved. (yes, even cows). We don't need to make excuses for any other animal, only bigfoot. Bigfoot is the all encompassing animal -- big like a bear/moose, smart as a human, more agile than a deer/cougar, and as rare and elusive as a wolverine. It just doesn't make any sense.

RayG

[Guest]

No,it doesn't make sense Ray but what other explanation besides "bigfoot doesn't exist" would be probable?

[xspider1]

It doesn't make sense that Bigfoot are big, smart, agile, rare and elusive? I don't follow... That's exactly what does (or, could) make perfect sense.

Edited December 19, 2010 by xspider1

[Guest RayG]

No,it doesn't make sense Ray but what other explanation besides "bigfoot doesn't exist" would be probable?

I don't know, and that's why I keep following this mystery.

Jodie, I found another example of special pleading that seems applicable. It's from Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, and it goes like this:

• "A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage" Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!
  "Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
  "Where's the dragon?" you ask.
  "Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."
  You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
  "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
  Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
  "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
  You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.
  "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.
  Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

If we substitute bigfoot for dragon, we can draw similar parallels to the 'why no bigfoot road kill' question. Instead of being invisible, floating, heatless, and incorporeal, bigfoot is too big, too elusive, a genetic gymnast, too intelligent, etc. etc.

It doesn't make sense that Bigfoot are big, smart, agile, rare and elusive? I don't follow... That's exactly what does (or, could) make perfect sense.

No, it doesn't make sense. Being big, smart, agile, rare, and elusive doesn't guarantee your safety when crossing the road. Other big, smart, agile, rare, and elusive animals end up as road kill, but never bigfoot. Are young bigfoot big, smart, agile, and elusive as well? I truly don't see how bigfoot could avoid getting smucked lifeless by every fast moving vehicle/train in the last 100+ years.

It's a major stumbling block for me.

RayG