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

[Guest DWA]

Thinking you see a Bigfoot, and seeing a Bigfoot are two totally different things that get confused around here.

So stop confusing them.

WSA gets this. I get this. We aren't scientists; but we know from our life experience that scientists get this.

(When they want to. And apparently only then. And apparently only some of them.)

And after all this talking of all these "mainstream" scientists who have been slaving over this for years Saskeptic says this:

"...that's what we scientists think already."

(Meldrum's a scientist. Bindernagel; Schaller; Swindler; Hadj-Chikh; Krantz et al: scientists. No they don't, suh. Somebody's doing a Saturn V imitation on his own petard.)

Animal. Have a movie of one. Leaving tracks all over the place. Thousands of sighting reports, showing population concentrations. That all of this amounts to false positives is a demonstrably - no, it is - naive presumption.

How to find it, Sherlock?

(He's not a scientist. And he'd know.)

[Cotter]

Right on Drew.

Most certainly that is the case in some/(most?) instances.

[Guest DWA]

Just remember Saskeptic:Sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. Your unwillingness to consider proponent evidence as compelling will be/is the same standard that will be applied to your theories of fakery and delusion. Personally, I’m willing to be subjected to both ends of that spectrum.

Truly though, the whole yes/no, does/doesn't, is/isn't exercise bores the tar out of me. It may not be boring for you, and if so, fine and dandy, and we can drop this discussion right here. If it bores you as well, I'd be much more interested in discussing the ground that lies between, and what all of us will do to arrive at a much more considered analysis. You (or any BF proponent for that matter) saying repeatedly "but I HAVE considered it" leaves that middle ground up for grabs, and in that space, reason and true knowledge lives. Unless you are one of the few who claim to have seen the Big Man up close, we/you/me should be reminded of this unassailable fact: We don't know for certain. How to get from not knowing to knowing for certain? (And please don't say you know for certain....you don't) A: With LOTS more work, money, doubt, analysis, testable theories and all the grunt work that goes into acquiring knowledge. If you devote your time and energies towards strangling that idea in its crib, well then, the most I can say is you've picked a very safe course.

The first point I wanted to address is the idea you raised about how a deeper look into the evidence would not/could not yield useful results if they were not Sasquatch confirmations. Really? Is science really so tied to predicting a return on investment that there lives no ambition to just follow an evidence trail to see where it goes? I mean, to just plain dog it for all it is worth. Forget we are talking about Sasquatch for a minute. Any evidence trail?

If Sasquatch is the sole exception in the field of zoology, would it be useful to examine why we think that is? Have we as a people just convinced ourselves we've catalogued all the important species, and the rest hold no potential for meaningful return on investment? Have we all just reached a level of world weariness through repeated information enemas that our ability to consider what history shows us repeatedly to be true has withered away. Namely: We are not half as smart as we think we are, ever. Have we any reason to believe this questions is somehow exempt from our innate inability to just get things right (usually) the first time?

Like I said, I really want to know.

And I forgot to plus the absolute bejabbers out of this entire post.

[WSA]

"Thinking you see a Bigfoot, and seeing a Bigfoot are two totally different things that get confused around here."- Drew

I'm not smart enough to tell you for certain if any oral account happens to be true. If somebody does tell you they are able to tell that with a high degree of certainty, ask them why they aren't at the racetrack, or at least ask them to pick your next Lotto # for you.

That said, we can talk about probabilities based on experience and human nature. Knowing how people typically fabricate false reports... be they witnesses in a court of law, or just your Uncle Billy spinning a whopper at the dinner table... is a useful skill to apply to the question. Short answer is: Most people are really, really bad and obvious liars. Speaks well of us as a species, I think. Some are better adapted for that kind of analysis than others, and some hone the skill in their work. Some are just plain gullible, and some are just overly and unnecessarily wary of evaluating anything they can't see or hold in their hands. Between the two extremes lie those with a genuine aptitude for judging the veracity of narrative accounts, and which improves with practice. Really, it is well within the range of human skill. It can't be taught except through experience and practice, lots of it. Ask a cop, judge, clergyman, bartender or a courtroom lawyer like myself as to whether this is true or not. If they've done the job long enough, they'll be able to confirm that for you. It takes obsessive attention to detail and extensive memory to do it really well. I've seen some in action who genuinely seem clairvoyant, but it is not that. Many think of it as "street smarts", but it is much more than that. Here in the South many describe it as "walking around sense", but even that doesn't capture it entirely either. Many other lines of work require it, some performed by some other frequenters here, I'm sure.

[Guest]

Again, it is not I who is best placed to say whether any tracks are 'evidence' or not. I merely stated that those who are best placed (i.e. Meldrum, Krantz etc) repeatedly argue that there are numerous sets of prints which they, being experts, cannot explain away. Just read any of Krantz's books, Meldrums book or his recent footprint paper. Examples (some of many) which they cite are e.g. Bluff Creek casts taken by Bob Titmus after the PGF; Blue Creek Mountain road, September 1967 (John Green), Bluff Creek casts from Al Hodgson, October 1963 and, the ones that got Meldrum thinking, Walla Walla tracks (1994?). There you go. These are the best ones in the opinion of those, unlike myself, who have actually seen them and studied them. I find that compelling.

@ Stan Norton

I see you deflect to others opinions often when I've asked for yours. I googled the footprints you mentioned and found a website that has some of them mentioned. Here is a website that features Jeffery Meldrum and bigfoot prints hosted on a isu.edu website so I'm guessing it may be one of his actual websites. (though I cannot verify that personally)

http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html

I'm curious which of those examples look very convincing to you? (can you point out three please?)

You must put this into context. Jeffery Meldrum is the same scientist that called an elk lay an alleged unidentified primate impression.

[Guest DWA]

@ Stan Norton

I see you deflect to others opinions often when I've asked for yours.

I'm curious which of those examples look very convincing to you? (can you point out three please?)

You must put this into context. Jeffery Meldrum is the same scientist that called an elk lay an alleged unidentified primate impression.

Well, let me put this into context. THAT AIN'T AN ELK LAY. Elk don't levitate. Where are the prints that would have to be dead center of the impression, hmmm? Have you ever watched an elk get up? Another primatologist - one of the more prominent of the past century - converted to sasquatch proponent on the basis of the 'elk lay' alone.

Them over you, every time.

Deflect to others' opinions!!?!?!?!?!?! He is deflecting to the opinions of people with directly relevant expertise who have studied the prints! That's what any scientist worth his Hydrocal would do.

I don't know what the argumentative fallacy is that keeps pushing people to make irrelevant statements that one can then point to as wrong. But you are practicing it.

[Drew]

"Thinking you see a Bigfoot, and seeing a Bigfoot are two totally different things that get confused around here."- Drew

I'm not smart enough to tell you for certain if any oral account happens to be true. If somebody does tell you they are able to tell that with a high degree of certainty, ask them why they aren't at the racetrack, or at least ask them to pick your next Lotto # for you.

That said, we can talk about probabilities based on experience and human nature. Knowing how people typically fabricate false reports... be they witnesses in a court of law, or just your Uncle Billy spinning a whopper at the dinner table... is a useful skill to apply to the question. Short answer is: Most people are really, really bad and obvious liars. Speaks well of us as a species, I think. Some are better adapted for that kind of analysis than others, and some hone the skill in their work. Some are just plain gullible, and some are just overly and unnecessarily wary of evaluating anything they can't see or hold in their hands. Between the two extremes lie those with a genuine aptitude for judging the veracity of narrative accounts, and which improves with practice. Really, it is well within the range of human skill. It can't be taught except through experience and practice, lots of it. Ask a cop, judge, clergyman, bartender or a courtroom lawyer like myself as to whether this is true or not. If they've done the job long enough, they'll be able to confirm that for you. It takes obsessive attention to detail and extensive memory to do it really well. I've seen some in action who genuinely seem clairvoyant, but it is not that. Many think of it as "street smarts", but it is much more than that. Here in the South many describe it as "walking around sense", but even that doesn't capture it entirely either. Many other lines of work require it, some performed by some other frequenters here, I'm sure.

Throw out the lies, the made up stories, the hoaxes.

My point is, that someone can think they saw a Bigfoot, tell a wonderful story about the sighting, and be telling the absolute truth. The story sounds credible. The problem lies with the human mind. We have a little thing in there that make us fill in blanks in our senses' signals. I have had two sightings that I would have thought were Bigfoot. If I had stopped at the sighting and not investigated, I could have told a whopper of a story and have been telling the truth. That old man in a black parka and hood 1/4 mile down the road would have made a fine fine bigfoot sighting, but I drove down there and discovered it was indeed an old man getting his mail, and not a Bigfoot. Same goes for the burned out stump way out in the field on opening morning a couple years ago. That would have made a dandy of a sighting, until I got down from my stand around noon, and walked over to it, and realized it wasn't swaying back and forth looking at me in the post-dawn hours. If you stop and tell your story at the moment you think it is a Bigfoot, you are not lying.

[Guest Cervelo]

Where are the Bigfoot prints?

[dmaker]

"Thinking you see a Bigfoot, and seeing a Bigfoot are two totally different things that get confused around here."- Drew

I'm not smart enough to tell you for certain if any oral account happens to be true. If somebody does tell you they are able to tell that with a high degree of certainty, ask them why they aren't at the racetrack, or at least ask them to pick your next Lotto # for you.

That said, we can talk about probabilities based on experience and human nature. Knowing how people typically fabricate false reports... be they witnesses in a court of law, or just your Uncle Billy spinning a whopper at the dinner table... is a useful skill to apply to the question. Short answer is: Most people are really, really bad and obvious liars. Speaks well of us as a species, I think. Some are better adapted for that kind of analysis than others, and some hone the skill in their work. Some are just plain gullible, and some are just overly and unnecessarily wary of evaluating anything they can't see or hold in their hands. Between the two extremes lie those with a genuine aptitude for judging the veracity of narrative accounts, and which improves with practice. Really, it is well within the range of human skill. It can't be taught except through experience and practice, lots of it. Ask a cop, judge, clergyman, bartender or a courtroom lawyer like myself as to whether this is true or not. If they've done the job long enough, they'll be able to confirm that for you. It takes obsessive attention to detail and extensive memory to do it really well. I've seen some in action who genuinely seem clairvoyant, but it is not that. Many think of it as "street smarts", but it is much more than that. Here in the South many describe it as "walking around sense", but even that doesn't capture it entirely either. Many other lines of work require it, some performed by some other frequenters here, I'm sure.

I understand what you are saying, but there is no room for a built in BS detector when the person that is telling you the story is mistaken, but fully believes what they saw was a BF. I am willing to bet there are quite a few of those out there as well. ( If not all, depending on which side of the "does/doesn't" fence you find yourself on.

Edited January 7, 2013 by dmaker

[Guest]

Well, let me put this into context. THAT AIN'T AN ELK LAY. Elk don't levitate. Where are the prints that would have to be dead center of the impression, hmmm? Have you ever watched an elk get up? Another primatologist - one of the more prominent of the past century - converted to sasquatch proponent on the basis of the 'elk lay' alone.

Them over you, every time.

Deflect to others' opinions!!?!?!?!?!?! He is deflecting to the opinions of people with directly relevant expertise who have studied the prints! That's what any scientist worth his Hydrocal would do.

I don't know what the argumentative fallacy is that keeps pushing people to make irrelevant statements that one can then point to as wrong. But you are practicing it.

I'm not trying to win your opinion. I'm reviewing the claimed evidence to date. If you'd like to point out your best three pieces of evidence that scientists refuse to look at, I'll be happy to entertain your speculative theories. Until then, you come across as overzealous and a tad fanatical.

You're more than welcome to give an opinion about my posts, and about these footprints. Which do you feel represent authentic sasquatch tracks?

http://www.isu.edu/~.../fxnlmorph.html

You claimed there is something leaving tracks everywhere. Where are those tracks today? Do they only show up a few at a time? Where do all the bigfoot go during the daytime? While out hunting, wouldnt bigfoot leave extensive trackways? We should be finding a lot more footprints if there was a breeding population where bigfoot is claimed to be. (everywhere?)

Anyhow... I find your views to be on the extreme side of belief. We will have to disagree that there is a real animal leaving evidence. I'm of the opinion that most of the evidence can, and has been explained. The source is men, and sometimes men misidentifying normal animal sign. (such as the mentioned elk lay)

By the way, since you said elk don't levitate... do bigfoots?

Edited January 7, 2013 by LWD

[Guest]

Your unwillingness to consider proponent evidence as compelling . . .

I do consider it compelling. That's why I'm here. That evidence compels me to come here and learn more about the evidence proffered for the existence of bigfoot. Thusfar, none of it has convinced me that there's a real bigfoot.

. . . "but I HAVE considered it" leaves that middle ground up for grabs, and in that space, reason and true knowledge lives.

I'm not sure what this reason and true knowledge leads us to find in the middle ground: bigfoot is kind of true?

Of course I don't know there's no bigfoot in an absolute sense and I couldn't prove that negative. We accept that premise on the provisional information available to us all the time. We have lots of ridiculous examples, like how do we know there are no unicorns? Are we sure Tyrannosaurs are extinct? We also have far more practical, real world examples: At what point do we stop looking for Thylacines or Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? People are still reporting Ivorybills, but the Cornell Lab of O' has closed the door on that research program because they looked and the birds weren't there. Should they keep looking? At what point should they stop?

The first point I wanted to address is the idea you raised about how a deeper look into the evidence would not/could not yield useful results if they were not Sasquatch confirmations. Really? Is science really so tied to predicting a return on investment that there lives no ambition to just follow an evidence trail to see where it goes?

If what we would do to find bigfoots would be to explore some unexplored Eden then I'd be with you 100%. Where is that Eden though, and on what basis should we assume that the bigfoots are there and not at the hundreds of other places where people say they are? Take Operation Persistence for example. What new and exciting species are being discovered there because we've got people taking part in an expedition there? Bears? Raccoons? Scarlet Tanagers? I'm sure there are undiscovered species in the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, but unless someone is conducting an in-depth arthropod inventory while scouring the place for bigfoots, it ain't gonna happen.

[Guest DWA]

I'm not trying to win your opinion. I'm reviewing the claimed evidence to date. If you'd like to point out your best three pieces of evidence that scientists refuse to look at, I'll be happy to entertain your speculative theories. Until then, you come across as overzealous and a tad fanatical.

You come across as not paying attention. And acting like I don't. When that's clear to me, I tend not to be nice.

I deflect your wind to Jeff Meldrum and Daris Swindler. Argue with them.

I do consider it compelling. That's why I'm here. That evidence compels me to come here and learn more about the evidence proffered for the existence of bigfoot. Thusfar, none of it has convinced me that there's a real bigfoot.

OK, way to be interesting.

And all of it, in toto, convinces you that all we can do is sit on our hands?

(I'm simply outlining where we part ways. This evidence is eminently followable. The TBRC is doing it.)

At what point do we stop looking for Thylacines or Ivory-billed Woodpeckers? People are still reporting Ivorybills, but the Cornell Lab of O' has closed the door on that research program because they looked and the birds weren't there. Should they keep looking? At what point should they stop?

NEVER. You've heard of "re-discovery," right? Happens every year.

One does not have to be in the bush every day or at all. One simply remains open. The Cornell Lab of O' may not be running around the swamps anymore; but that's more because no woodpeckers showed up than because they know, for all time, the case is closed. I'm sure they'd be among the first to gear up for another go if they saw something that said they should. Re-discovery shows that even "extinct" ain't final.

(I need to add: one hell of a lot more evidence for sasquatch in the past ten years than for ivorybill in the past 50.)

If what we would do to find bigfoots would be to explore some unexplored Eden then I'd be with you 100%. Where is that Eden though, and on what basis should we assume that the bigfoots are there and not at the hundreds of other places where people say they are? Take Operation Persistence for example. What new and exciting species are being discovered there because we've got people taking part in an expedition there? Bears? Raccoons? Scarlet Tanagers? I'm sure there are undiscovered species in the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma, but unless someone is conducting an in-depth arthropod inventory while scouring the place for bigfoots, it ain't gonna happen.

Why search Edens when the evidence says, loud and clear, where we should look, i.e., where they are being seen? Why look nowhere for where nothing is?

If Persistence comes across a new crayfish in the Ouachitas, good on 'em. But that is emphatically not what they are there to do, any more than the two biologists who reported sasquatch sightings on the ivorybill stakeout were there to document sasquatch.

Edited January 7, 2013 by DWA

[Guest]

If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times, and that's just here:

Nothing else with this much evidence remains unproven. That that is true should be all I need to say; that it gets this much resistance...well, makes it obvious that it's a taboo topic.

Here we go AGAIN..ad Nauseum. I'l keep on saying this over and over>>>insufficient evidence (all evidence PROFFERED so far is insufficient) will remain insuffcient and you can't *add it up* to make it *proof*! No amount of insuffcient *evidence* (it's really not evidence at all) adds up to make it true evidence.

[Guest DWA]

Here we go AGAIN..ad Nauseum. I'l keep on saying this over and over>>>insufficient evidence (all evidence PROFFERED so far is insufficient) will remain insuffcient and you can't *add it up* to make it *proof*! No amount of insuffcient *evidence* (it's really not evidence at all) adds up to make it true evidence.

And I'll keep on saying it, over and over and over and over and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over and..over and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over andover and over and over and

(and have...)

PROOF AND COMPELLING EVIDENCE ARE VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

Separated by only one thing:

The society accepts the former.

Which - every scientist who is truly a scientist, and not just a technician, knows - is no reason to avoid pursuing the latter.

Is this really that difficult a concept?

No.

And it's not a difference of opinion between you and me. It is a fact, which I grasp, and you don't.

Anecdotal evidence is evidence. I didn't ask whether you liked that. The truth hurts, some people, sometimes.

Edited January 7, 2013 by DWA

[Guest Stan Norton]

@ Stan Norton

I see you deflect to others opinions often when I've asked for yours. I googled the footprints you mentioned and found a website that has some of them mentioned. Here is a website that features Jeffery Meldrum and bigfoot prints hosted on a isu.edu website so I'm guessing it may be one of his actual websites. (though I cannot verify that personally)

http://www.isu.edu/~.../fxnlmorph.html

I'm curious which of those examples look very convincing to you? (can you point out three please?)

You must put this into context. Jeffery Meldrum is the same scientist that called an elk lay an alleged unidentified primate impression.

Man, come on. Do I really need to explain? As I have repeatedly said: I have no idea/proof/evidence that any of the prints are real or not. I have never seen one or looked at any casts. I am however, through the process which I like to call 'thinking', allowed to express an opinion which is, shock horror, based upon things I have read written by people who I have decided, again by 'thinking', are intelligent and know about stuff better than me. I find this approach serves me well in everyday life when building opinions about things of which I have no firsthand experience. And for the record, I actually do consider many of those prints compelling.