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

[dmaker]

There are lots of persuasively consistent unicorn and mermaid and flying pig eyewitness reports by reliable people happening regularly are there?

I didn't know that.

In all likelihood it probably DOESN'T have that distribution. But just because not all of the eye witness sightings are true it doesn't mean none of them are true.

It's not hard to be consistent when there are various public databases that document BF sightings, never mind the strong oral tradition as well. Doesn't make it real however. It does allow for the mind to be conscious or subconsciously consistent when reporting. And no, there is not a constant slew of reports that reflect the cryptid soup that I described above. I was more trying to use humour to illustrate that you can't believe everything you hear.There are, however, alpha cryptids ( at least from a number of consistent eyewitness reports point of view). BF, Loch Ness monster, etc. In fact, according to a quick search, the top ten cryptids currently under investigation reveal BF ( and variations such as Sasquatch, Yeti, etc), Loch Ness and other lake monsters, and Chupacabra in the top three spots. The rest being filled in by things like The Jersey Devil, The Mothman, Merfolk, etc. I wonder if there is any consistency in the tales around these mythical beings? I would have to guess yes. How can you really avoid it? I don't really find persuasive consistency to be very persuasive. How could you avoid consistency when the legends are told and retold, the hoaxes are done and redone, the same TV documentaries broadcasted repeatedly, added to the numerous books and web sites injecting the same stories back into the public psyche endlessly?</p>EDIT: I really do know when to use paragraphs, but I am suspecting this forum is not Firefox friendly? It seems to be ignoring my paragraphs. Maybe I'll try Chrome.</p>

Edited January 2, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest Kerchak]

It's not hard to be consistent when there are various public databases that document BF sightings, never mind the strong oral tradition as well.

What about before the internet and before easily accessible databases happened? Even books weren't easy enough to come by.

Doesn't make it real however.

Doesn't make it false either.

And no, there is not a constant slew of reports that reflect the cryptid soup that I described above.

I know. That's why you can't really compare them to sasquatch.

I was more trying to use humour to illustrate that you can't believe everything you hear.

True, but sasquatch has a lot more going for it in it's favour than those others you mentioned, even if you were jesting.

There are, however, alpha cryptids ( at least from a number of consistent eyewitness reports point of view). BF, Loch Ness monster, etc. In fact, according to a quick search, the top ten cryptids currently under investigation reveal BF ( and variations such as Sasquatch, Yeti, etc), Loch Ness and other lake monsters, and Chupacabra in the top three spots.

To be honest I don't see much persuasive consistency with Nessie. Descriptions are all over the place.

The rest being filled in by things like The Jersey Devil, The Mothman, Merfolk, etc. I wonder if there is any consistency in the tales around these mythical beings? I would have to guess yes.

On the same level as sasquatch? Going back a long time and continuing up to the present day?

How could you avoid consistency when the legends are told and retold, the hoaxes are done and redone, the same TV documentaries broadcasted repeatedly, and there are numerous books and web sites injecting the same stories back into the public psyche endlessly?

I would have thought many people think of something like Harry Henderson when they think of bigfoot.......yet the reports don't go in that direction.

[WSA]

Hairy Man...Saskeptic was repeating my facetious description of Operation Persistence. Something I wrote to make a rhetorical point to challenge him on the way he is discounting all eyewitness reports, apparently yours included. To the best I'm able to determine (and Sas, please correct me if I'm mistaken) he feels y'all are either perpetrating a hoax by your reports, are seriously deluded, or otherwise imagining things..anything but encountering a real live animal. I of course do not share his appraisal of your activities. Still, I think it is incumbent on him to clarify his views for us about what is being posted on that thread.

[dmaker]

I never think of Harry and The Hendersons when I think of Sasquatch. Maybe others do, not sure. I would have guessed that most people think of Patty as that seems to me to be the most widely used icon to represent BF. Particularly the backward glance, mid-stride silhouette.

I do have to concede to you that my PERSONAL opinion is that if any of the popular cryptids today has a chance in hell of existing, it's Bigfoot. I do not find the evidence convincing enough to say "Yes, I'm a believer", but at least I can imagine a scenario where it's remotely possible, if not very bloody likely. And like a lot of skeptics here, I really want BF to be real. I really do, but I am not going to truly believe that until I see convincing enough evidence and right now, I'm sorry, but tracks, eye witness reports, hoax videos and bloblsquatch photos are just not going to do it for me. It needs to be either proven with DNA or found, captured, and catalogued.

[Guest]

How exactly is that a "scam"? Scammers are cheaters and liars - is that what you and Saskeptic suggesting I am?

You could be, I don't know. It strikes me as more likely, however, that you are a target of some kind of scam.

[Guest]

I've been the jury foreman on a criminal trial and have sat through 6 hours of expert testimony on the unreliability of eye witness testimony. And, it's true eye witnesses can have faulty memories. For example a guy robs a quick mart and the three witnesses conflicted on details on what exactly he guy was wearing. But, what he lectured about wasn't that witnesses didn't see a guy rob a store but rather the details about the robbery.

So, yes eye witnesses can be wrong. But we still use them in a criminal cases where jurors often have to decide a persons fate based on them. Why then do we use eye witnesses in court? Because despite the faults in the minor details in their memory of the experience we value what peolple say they saw as testimony towards to truth. It is still one of the best ways to convict, period.

Granted courts have gotten it wrong and the level of exactitude in the courts should not be compared to the exactitude of scientific rigor, but this does demonstrate that because an eye witnesses can be wrong in one part if their memory doesn't mean they didn't see what they saw, and the court system acknowledges this by still use eyewitnesss testimomony to prosecute because more often than not, eye witness testimony is accurate.

So to dismiss all BF sightings based on eye witness inaccuracy is logical. It's just bad logic.

Now if only someone would bag one.......

[Drew]

Not having any evidence to put forward as yet is a 'scam'? How do you work that out? If a person is sure she/he has seen something incredible yet can't quite prove it or support it, why does it make it a 'scam'?

If he/she is wrong about what he/she thinks they saw then it might be nothing more than being mistaken or hoaxed. It doesn't have to be a 'scam'.

First of all, I was just answering her question she asked of Saskeptic. I think it is very likely they are being tricked, but that doesn't make them scammers. One or more of the people involved may be involved in the hoax, so that person would be a scammer. The fact that they are too sure of themselves to accept hoaxing as a more possible outcome than to accept that a giant hairy bipedal primate is living in the at-one-time decimated Oklahoma woodlands is not scamming, it is just mind-numbingly wrong for a scientist to do that.

A scientist, using their credentials to make it seem like they are certain they saw a monkey, and there is no way it could be a trick, even though they have no evidence of such a creature's existence, might seem scammy to some people.

[WSA]

I always get a chuckle when I hear somebody say they "really want" Sasquatch to be real. In response, I'd just offer up the idea that chosing between wanting, or not wanting, is to misunderstand what is on offer here. Better to spend your time considering what is, or not, I'd say. If you are "wanting", but not stretching the boundaries of your comprehension of what is possible in this world, you are only a spectator, at best . The "wanting" skeptic risks nothing worth having, I believe. It is safe to want, if that is all you are doing. To say you "want" proof is to be completely passive and accepting of the status quo, and allows you to find refuge in a pseudo-quest. The chance of your dissapointment is so intellectually remote as to be of no inducement at all towards finding the true boundary between truth and fiction. Want without rigor is a trope.

[Guest]

Hairy Man...Saskeptic was repeating my facetious description of Operation Persistence. Something I wrote to make a rhetorical point to challenge him on the way he is discounting all eyewitness reports, apparently yours included. To the best I'm able to determine (and Sas, please correct me if I'm mistaken) he feels y'all are either perpetrating a hoax by your reports, are seriously deluded, or otherwise imagining things..anything but encountering a real live animal. I of course do not share his appraisal of your activities. Still, I think it is incumbent on him to clarify his views for us about what is being posted on that thread.

I have no idea what is being posted in that thread as I do not follow it, but I am familiar with several of the key claims of Operation Persistence. I know that folks like Hairy Man have claimed completely unambiguous encounters with bigfoots at the study site. I know that there was a months-long effort this past summer to collect physical evidence of a bigfoot there, and that bigfoot researchers have focused efforts on this site for several years.

I also know that when I logged on this morning, there was no link to a breaking news story with photographs of a bigfoot from the mountains of southeastern Oklahoma (or anywhere else for that matter). Ergo, Operation Persistence is, so far, yet another in a long list of claims about some site where bigfoot researchers were sure to get evidence this time, and never did. If that changes, great! I'm not optimistic that it will, however.

[dmaker]

I've been the jury foreman on a criminal trial and have sat through 6 hours of expert testimony on the unreliability of eye witness testimony. And, it's true eye witnesses can have faulty memories. For example a guy robs a quick mart and the three witnesses conflicted on details on what exactly he guy was wearing. But, what he lectured about wasn't that witnesses didn't see a guy rob a store but rather the details about the robbery.

So, yes eye witnesses can be wrong. But we still use them in a criminal cases where jurors often have to decide a persons fate based on them. Why then do we use eye witnesses in court? Because despite the faults in the minor details in their memory of the experience we value what peolple say they saw as testimony towards to truth. It is still one of the best ways to convict, period.

Granted courts have gotten it wrong and the level of exactitude in the courts should not be compared to the exactitude of scientific rigor, but this does demonstrate that because an eye witnesses can be wrong in one part if their memory doesn't mean they didn't see what they saw, and the court system acknowledges this by still use eyewitnesss testimomony to prosecute because more often than not, eye witness testimony is accurate.

So to dismiss all BF sightings based on eye witness inaccuracy is logical. It's just bad logic.

Now if only someone would bag one.......

However, we're not talking about litigation. We are talking about a scientific pursuit to prove the existence of a species with an absence of physical evidence. I would argue that those contexts are entirely different.

[Guest]

I've been the jury foreman on a criminal trial and have sat through 6 hours of expert testimony on the unreliability of eye witness testimony. And, it's true eye witnesses can have faulty memories. For example a guy robs a quick mart and the three witnesses conflicted on details on what exactly he guy was wearing. But, what he lectured about wasn't that witnesses didn't see a guy rob a store but rather the details about the robbery.

So, yes eye witnesses can be wrong. But we still use them in a criminal cases where jurors often have to decide a persons fate based on them. Why then do we use eye witnesses in court? Because despite the faults in the minor details in their memory of the experience we value what peolple say they saw as testimony towards to truth. It is still one of the best ways to convict, period.

Granted courts have gotten it wrong and the level of exactitude in the courts should not be compared to the exactitude of scientific rigor, but this does demonstrate that because an eye witnesses can be wrong in one part if their memory doesn't mean they didn't see what they saw, and the court system acknowledges this by still use eyewitnesss testimomony to prosecute because more often than not, eye witness testimony is accurate.

So to dismiss all BF sightings based on eye witness inaccuracy is logical. It's just bad logic.

Now if only someone would bag one.......

Its actually more complex than not remembering minor details or about getting a few minor details wrong. When memory is reconstructed, eyewitnesses don't just use their "original memory" but also information they received after the incident. A witness to a crime can read other reports of the crime and these can influence their own memories. This same problem exists for bigfoot and eyewitnesses. I wouldn't doubt that someone had an experience something in the woods but given that many of these reports are given months, years or even decades after the fact. Its not hard to imagine how distorted they can get.

Edited January 2, 2013 by Jerrymanderer

[dmaker]

I always get a chuckle when I hear somebody say they "really want" Sasquatch to be real. In response, I'd just offer up the idea that chosing between wanting, or not wanting, is to misunderstand what is on offer here. Better to spend your time considering what is, or not, I'd say. If you are "wanting", but not stretching the boundaries of your comprehension of what is possible in this world, you are only a spectator, at best . The "wanting" skeptic risks nothing worth having, I believe. It is safe to want, if that is all you are doing. To say you "want" proof is to be completely passive and accepting of the status quo, and allows you to find refuge in a pseudo-quest. The chance of your dissapointment is so intellectually remote as to be of no inducement at all towards finding the true boundary between truth and fiction. Want without rigor is a trope.

I would not call waiting for actual, real physical evidence to be taking a back seat and not risking anything. I don't have to drink the Kool-Aid and join you in your group delusion, or as you put it " stretch the boundaries of your comprehension of what is possible in this world..." The staus quo ( where you so accusingly put me) is based on what is KNOWN to science. It is not some safe haven for skeptics to scurry to because we lack the balls to run around the woods at night yelling into empty air and banging sticks on trees.

[Guest]

On the same level as sasquatch? Going back a long time and continuing up to the present day?

I would think ghosts and gray aliens are.

[Guest]

All that RED splashed all over that map and not a single TRAIL CAM pic that can be readily ID'ed as a SASSY. NOT ONE. How does that happen? One would expect that just by accident or chance that someone would catch one. There are hundreds of thousands of trail cams out there, probably more, much more during hunting seasons and nothing. Every other animal on this planet has been captured on a trail camera or by other photographic techniques, but not SASSY. I'm talking the GIANT SQUID, Snow Leopard, Wolverine, and even a Coelacanth, but no SASSY.

I am growing pretty weary of the "SASSY is smarter than humans" stuff too. Aren't you? You know that isn't the case. If it were, we'd KNOW it.

If someone would've asked me 10 years ago whether I believed in SASSY, I would've answered probably 95% YES. Now, it is the other way, 95% NO. What done it for me was when I seen the pics the Japanese scientist was able to capture of the Giant Squid. In an environment that is a MILLION times more difficult to explore than earth and this guy is able to get a pic of the Giant Squid with relative ease and no one can get a decent pic or video or any other indisputable evidence in over 40 years for SASSY?

Even if SASSY was SUPER INTELLIGENT and HYPER AWARE of their surroundings, they have to eat and drink and that means traveling and spending a great deal of each day finding and consuming food and water. It stands to reason that one would be captured on a trail camera at some point. Even if they were ultra intelligent you'd expect to run across a retarded one at some point that is too dumb to follow the rest of the clan to avoid the cameras.

Now that the MK "study" has relied on BEAR and HUMAN DNA as the centerpiece of their work, I hope for the team in Great Britain to prove something is out there, but I don't hold out much hope for them as well.

Nalajr

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Edited January 2, 2013 by ronn1

[Guest]

Excellent post Nalajr.

I would think ghosts and gray aliens are.

In fact ghosts and aliens have a much larger number of sightings, and many more videos and photos than bigfoot. There is much more evidence in favor of either, than for bigfoot. (because what has been claimed to date as bigfoot evidence is easily faked by men or simply misidentified)