Bigfoot Research – Still No Evidence, But Plenty Of Excuses To Explain Why There’S No Evidence

[Guest DWA]

I read it. I still don't see the connection.

This isn't just looking in a garage and saying I don't see something that someone tells you is right there. It's not looking at all, and pronouncing judgment on what one has not looked at.

You obviously haven't assessed the evidence in significant depth. I have. I never believe what I want to. I believe what the evidence tells me it makes sense to believe.

Sagan clearly believes we're dealing with nothing but woo-woos here. I know better.

[Guest]

It's not looking at all, . . .

But this is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong wrong, as has been pointed out to you numerous times in this thread. Why don't you "know better" than to keep making this claim?

[Guest DWA]

You have already told me what you do with the anecdotal accounts. You show me with the Sagan example that you're doing it.

You aren't giving me any reason for what you're doing other than "they aren't proof."

That's not a good reason. The vast majority of evidence in the history of science was not proof. That we got proof was due to that evidence being followed up.

The TBRC?

That is looking.

Edited December 20, 2012 by DWA

[Guest Hoosiersasquatch]

Sort of an antagonistic way to start a post, isn't it?

[Guest DWA]

Sort of an antagonistic way to start a post, isn't it?

Well, if you mean "But this is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong wrong"

I'd go with you, particularly since "as has been pointed out to you numerous times in this thread" doesn't seem to include any evidence that any "looking" is actually being done.

[Guest]

The point is. As in the the dragon, bigfoot always has excuses with which its proponents can use to explain away why it hasn't come up.

Why doesn't saquatch show up on wildlife cams? They know where the cams are and can avoid them.

Why don't hunters shoot them? They sent out an infrasonic signals that make the hunters freeze in their tracks.

Why no bigfoot roadkill? They stand at an angle which allows then to survive an impact.

The list goes on and on.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Jerrymanderer

[Guest DWA]

Well, if you like to listen to that crap.

No excuses necessary. The sasquatch has two infallible protective shields:

Our ignorance and our denial.

[Guest]

I would argue that BF is the result of the former.

[Guest DWA]

And as that is most decidedly not supported by the evidence: non-starter.

[Oonjerah]

I think they would all be marvelling at the teleportation organ in the abdomen of the creature.

I watched a lot of Western movies as a kid. I even read some pulp novels.

Therein, Indians (no NA back then) had the perfectly uncanny, ninja ability

to sneak up on or elude the White men (not many AA western characters

back then).

Indians no longer have to use their teleportation organs. So why does

Bigfoot feel the need to use his?

Edited December 20, 2012 by Oonjerah

[Guest]

And as that is most decidedly not supported by the evidence: non-starter.

It isn't disproven by the "evidence" either.

[Guest Crowlogic]

The lack of solid proof is a gargantuan problem with giving acceptance to the existence of Bigfoot.

[Guest DWA]

Um, er, the lack of solid proof is a gargantuan problem with giving acceptance to the existence of ANYTHING.

In other words:

We don't accept anything that isn't proven.

That's no excuse to sit on one's hands in front of a massive pile of evidence and whine that it's inconclusive, and make fun of anyone who tries to make sense of it.

Edited December 21, 2012 by DWA

[Guest BFSleuth]

Drew, I'll respond within your quote in boldface italics:

You don't see the similarity between Bigfoot and Sagan's Dragon in the Garage?

Edited for Bigfoot to show the parralels.

"A Giant Hairy Apeman lives in my woods" Suppose 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 Apemen 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 Apeman. a fleeting glimpse of a dark hairy form.

"Where's the What was that? That can't be an Apeman! It must be a large dog" you ask say.

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she is extremely difficult for most humans to see fast and likes to hide."

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the Apeman's footprints.

"Good idea," I say, "but this Apeman knows how to avoid leaving tracks I've already done that, see those tracks over there?"

"But, those can't possibly be Apeman footprints because Apeman doesn't exist!"

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the Body heat.

"Good idea, but the invisible fur is highly insulated, you can't see the heat signature it is difficult to get a clear angle when the Apeman hides behind the boxes, don't just stand in the middle of the floor and... oh nevermind...."

You'll spray-paint the Apeman and make her visible.

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal Bigfoot and the paint won't stick." And so on. I You counter every physical test you propose evidence I produce with a special explanation of why it won't work can't be from Apeman because Apeman doesn't exist.

Perhaps this is a more accurate depiction of how the Dragon in the Garage story applies to the world of bigfoot.

The point is. As in the the dragon, bigfoot always has excuses with which its proponents can use to explain away why it hasn't come up.

I wasn't aware that bigfoot was a member of this or any other forum. Please provide a link to where I can read "bigfoot's personal excuses".

[Guest]

The vast majority of evidence in the history of science was not proof. That we got proof was due to that evidence being followed up.

There are at least three different ways that a new, extant species can be discovered by Western Science:

1) Surveyors, military, scientists, etc. explore a new place that had never before been subjected to biological inventory. Species limited in distribution to that place are encountered (e.g., Mountain Gorilla)

2) Aboriginal peoples share knowledge and/or pieces of a species (wittingly or not) that leads scientist to the species (e.g., Vu Quang ox). This category includes any people living in a frontier that has been little explored, e.g., miners, trappers, and European settlers in North America.

3) Taxonomic revision based on new information, e.g., Pacific Wren split from Winter Wren.

So how do these three categories apply to bigfoot?

1) It would take some extraordinary mental gymnastics to make the case that we had any sizable tracts fitting this description in North America. We have nothing so remote and unexplored as the Virungas in the 19th Century. The bigger problem, of course, is that the putative distribution of bigfoot in North America is not at all restricted to our most remote wilderness areas. (I learned that from studying the pattern in anecdotal accounts, btw.) Where are the places that have received no biological inventory in North America? Where should we send a scientific team to look for bigfoot? Ohio? Virginia? Oklahoma? Washington?

2) The history of European settlement in North America includes centuries of logging, hunting, trapping, clearing, and farming, culminating in a period about 100 years ago of dramatic loss of native vegetation and widespread extirpation of large mammals. Deer, elk, bison, cougar, bear, wolves, otters, beavers, etc.: All are with us today but were extirpated or hanging by a thread across much of their native range in the early 20th Century. That range includes states today from the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast where - according to my reading of the anecdotal bigfoot accounts - bigfoots are encountered rather frequently. So after a good 200 years of shooting everything in sight and clearing almost all of the native vegetation in eastern North America, not a single bigfoot was collected. (This, of course, includes the Golden Age of scientific collecting from about 1750–1950, when museums would've paid quite handsomely for a bigfoot carcass, and a period of history in which people were much less squeamish than they are today about shooting other people.)

3) This appears to be what Ketchum is up to - parsing out DNA information from Homo sapiens samples to identify a genetically distinct "bigfoot" therein. I'm not optimistic she'll be successful in that endeavor. Might there be some bigfoot molars kicking around in a drawer somewhere? Sure, but I doubt it, and there's no reason to suspect that we'd be unable to find any more of them that could be described before getting lost in a museum today.

So . . . what sort of "following up" needs to be done that hasn't already been done? Byrne, Hillary, Perkins, Dahinden, Krantz, Bindernagel, Fahrenbach, Meldrum - these and many others have followed up bigfoot/yeti evidence and come up short. The purported range of bigfoot has been settled, people think they've found samples and have sent them to Ketchum - and several others - for identification. So far, those efforts haven't panned out either. To deny they're happening, however, is highly disingenuous. Scientists have looked at the evidence, scientists are looking at the evidence, and scientists will continue to consider new evidence.

Science is not the reason bigfoot has not been described by science. The problem is that those many scientists who have engaged the evidence - who have "followed up" - have so far not been able to demonstrate one scrap of putative evidence that can be confirmed to come from a bigfoot.