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

[Guest Kerchak]

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.

Some people snigger and laugh silently to themselves...... while posting here 'pretending' they are interested in the phenomenon.

We are gullible and naive if we think they don't.

[Guest DWA]

Some people snigger and laugh silently to themselves...... while posting here 'pretending' they are interested in the phenomenon.

We are gullible and naive if we think they don't.

My now-famous lawyer buddy who hasn't gotten on here yet and I were just chatting about how the anti-bigfoot thing could be a whole special edition of Psychology Today. Why wouldn't you just want to keep your mouth shut and see what happens if you really care, rather than snarking up every chance you get to discourage it?

_{As he puts it:}

_{I’ve always read accounts of gigantic schisms in the scientific community, and I’d always wondered if they were hyperbolic. No more. I understand completely how these kinds of things take hold. Almost always, as now, one faction pushes the boundaries of interpreting new evidence, and the other faction resists the idea of changing the paradigm with everything they can throw at it. The interwebs just make it easier for each side to entrench, and to do it quicker.}

Edited December 21, 2012 by DWA

[Cotter]

@Sas - Quick question. Is there anyone in your life you would trust that, if he/she came up to you and said "I saw a BF 20 feet away, and I observed it for 3 minutes", you would consider that as 'worthy' evidence?

I guess the same question can go for Drew and Jerry as well.

Thx.

[Guest DWA]

Given that people have been fired and lost friends and spouses over that very issue, I hazard a prediction.

saskeptic:

"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 bigfoote"

To that - and to the whole post that comes from, all of which I've seen several times in other posts on this thread alone - I just say:

Operation Persistence (because science IS the reason)...and let's see.

I like Ye Olde English "bigfoote," however.

Edited December 21, 2012 by DWA

[Guest BFSleuth]

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

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.

So how do these three categories apply to bigfoot?

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.)

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.

Saskeptic, did you inadvertently fail to address your point two "way that new, extant species can be discovered by Western Science", or were you avoiding the question altogether?

In your method you note "Aboriginal peoples share knowledge and/or pieces of a species". Then in your example you make no mention of Native American or First Nations sharing of their knowledge of bigfoot. Instead you describe how the Great White Hunter failed to bag a bigfoot. At least answer your posited method of how to find a new and extant species.

It seems by your very example your conclusion is fundamentally flawed. You say you are a scientist that would be "delighted" to have bigfoot confirmed as a new species and holding up the science community as a shining beacon of how things should be done, then clearly demonstrate that you as a scientist are failing to address the evidence you say you will look at. Instead you wander off on some discourse that might conclude that European hunters are the be all and end all of confirmation and if they can't kill it it must not exist?

Wow.

[Guest]

@Sas - Quick question. Is there anyone in your life you would trust that, if he/she came up to you and said "I saw a BF 20 feet away, and I observed it for 3 minutes", you would consider that as 'worthy' evidence?

As proof of bigfoot, no. As another interesting datum, sure.

Operation Persistence (because science IS the reason)...and let's see.

Let's see, indeed. They're doing the kind of thing I've been saying bigfooters should be doing: trying to bag a bigfoot. It makes me a bit nervous to hear about shots fired with other people nearby whom the shooter didn't know about, but the basic strategy of trying to collect that bigfoot you're sure you're seeing is fine with me. I don't think they'll ever collect one but I'd be thrilled if they did.

Wow.

Wow, indeed. Why did you bold the first clause of my statement:

"2) Aboriginal peoples share knowledge and/or pieces of a species (wittingly or not) that leads scientist to the species"

but not the second?

2) Aboriginal peoples share knowledge and/or pieces of a species (wittingly or not) that leads scientist to the species"

If I didn't know better, it almost looks like you were cherry picking my statement so you could score some rhetorical points, and in your rush to do that you overlooked the most important part of that statement.

Unless I've missed a rather important memo at Ivory Tower U., no pieces of bigfoot have been supplied by aboriginal peoples in North America, and the collective wisdom of their "knowledge" has not led any scientist to the collection of one.

[Cotter]

Thx Sas, I agree it wouldn't prove anything.

You said 'another interesting datum' or something of the like. Do you have other datums in mind that you find interesting?

Can you share?

Thx!

[Guest]

^Sure, every anecdotal account adds to the data on the phenomenon that could tell us something about a potential new species. Other than the whacked-out stuff like bigfoots chill out with me at the local VFW, I really do consider all of it. That's where DWA has been so far off the mark in his statements in this thread. It is flat-out wrong to think that skeptics like me simply dismiss all the anecdotal information about bigfoot. It is very carefully considered and use to develop hypotheses about what bigfoots could be, what their distribution might be, what habitats they might use, etc.

What anecdotal accounts cannot do, however, is provide definitive data with which such hypotheses could be evaluated. If someone - anyone - says to me "I saw a bigfoot", there will always be multiple interpretations of that person's experience. Thus, I cannot take that one account to be proof of bigfoot. I also cannot take 1000 similar reports and regard them as proof of bigfoot because there are multiple competing explanations for every one of those accounts.

The only way to critically evaluate the authenticity of someone's claim would be if that person produced physical evidence of the bigfoot they claim to have seen. I can never prove that there is no bigfoot but anyone who encounters a piece of bigfoot can prove that there is.

[Guest BFSleuth]

If I didn't know better, it almost looks like you were cherry picking my statement so you could score some rhetorical points, and in your rush to do that you overlooked the most important part of that statement.

Unless I've missed a rather important memo at Ivory Tower U., no pieces of bigfoot have been supplied by aboriginal peoples in North America, and the collective wisdom of their "knowledge" has not led any scientist to the collection of one.

Perhaps I was indeed trying to score some rhetorical point. However, after carefully reading back through your premises and activity it is very clear that you did not address aboriginal peoples information. Thank you for clarifying that you think that aboriginal people have failed to note their experience with bigfoot sufficiently for Western scientists to get their act together.

[Guest DWA]

^Sure, every anecdotal account adds to the data on the phenomenon that could tell us something about a potential new species. Other than the whacked-out stuff like bigfoots chill out with me at the local VFW, I really do consider all of it. That's where DWA has been so far off the mark in his statements in this thread. It is flat-out wrong to think that skeptics like me simply dismiss all the anecdotal information about bigfoot. It is very carefully considered and use to develop hypotheses about what bigfoots could be, what their distribution might be, what habitats they might use, etc.

Then...what one does with this information...is....?

Where many "bigfoot skeptics" are WAY off base - and I have never seen a more off-base presumption in any subject on which I have had any discussion - is that the proponent side automatically thinks any of the evidence supplied suffices for proof. (I should note that Krantz considered footprints - in the PNW alone - tantamount to proof, and that he is better qualified to say such a thing than most are. But he made several over-steps, likely out of frustration at the scientific inattention to the matter. This was about the mildest one.)

Proof is subjective. It is what the scientific community thinks. I - no one - can tell them what to think.

Edited December 22, 2012 by DWA

[Guest]

Then...what one does with this information...is....?

. . . Go look for some bigfoots, which several scientists and many many amateurs have been doing for decades (and I maintain in a general sense for centuries).

The collective effort to find a bigfoot has been vastly greater than that of any individual expedition to find some rare creature, such as the expedition that discovered the Vu Quang ox. Either you fail to recognize this or you intentionally ignore it because it doesn't fit your "bigfoot-must-be-real-'cause-lots-of people-said-they-saw-one" world view.

[Guest DWA]

. . . Go look for some bigfoots, which several scientists and many many amateurs have been doing for decades (and I maintain in a general sense for centuries).

The collective effort to find a bigfoot has been vastly greater than that of any individual expedition to find some rare creature, such as the expedition that discovered the Vu Quang ox. Either you fail to recognize this or you intentionally ignore it because it doesn't fit your "bigfoot-must-be-real-'cause-lots-of people-said-they-saw-one" world view.

I ignore it because it's not true.

The Vu Quang ox search alone dwarfs the historical search for sasquatch (and was mounted on much less evidence, most of it - wait for it - the eyewitness testimony of locals). Several wars were fought on the animal's territory without anything coming to scientific light. By contrast, I can list the sasquatch expeditions - in history - on the fingers of one hand and not use them all. Patterson; Operation Endurance; Operation Persistence.

Just did it.

Each one of them came back with something significant.

1. Patterson - whose sole intent was getting film - got film. And cast numerous tracks which have conformed to numerous trackways across the continent to be classified as an ichnotype.
   
2. Endurance had numerous sightings; confirmed to every person on the team that sasquatch use wood-knocking to communicate (most didn't think that was true before Endurance); and yielded a blood sample from a gunshot wound. If that sample had come from a person, all news outlets would have carried the lawsuit as a top story months ago.
   
3. Persistence has...well, go read the thread.
   

It's not proof? Duh? What it is is more than anyone will get with the typical "bigfoot hunt": three days in the woods. Be lucky to find a fox with that.

If there is no apparent reason to believe they are cooking this all up...then the presumption has to be that they likely aren't. Just as it has to be for the thousands of people (count on it, a fraction of actual encounters) who are reporting an animal that it risks their reputations to acknowledge they saw. The burden of proof falls on the people alleging lying, misperception and fraud. Period.

And here is where "bigfoot skeptics" show fundamental misunderstanding of the discussion.

Logic, and millions of years of human experience, say that one presumes they are telling the absolute truth.

And THAT'S NOT PROOF!

What it is - and a true scientist understands this - is prima facie evidence that the phenomenon has merit; that sniggering about it should stop posthaste; and that the paltry number of expeditions I list up there needs an uptick, by professionals, pronto.

[Guest Cervelo]

DWA,

So your basic point is it was so easy in the examples above just a little effort would easily end this mystery?

[Guest DWA]

"A little effort" like, say, Jane Goodall's effort with chimpanzees (something similar to which is the point of Operation Persistence).

If you don't spend time in country, all you get is - if you're lucky - a sighting. Maybe some footprints. But no proof, ergo, here we are.

[Guest Cervelo]

So basically..... your poistion is there's enough anecdotal evidence and science is ignoring perhaps the greatest single discovery in modern times.....on purpose?

Your Vietnam analogy is a little weak.....