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

[dmaker]

I don't approve or condone if that's what you are asking.

[norseman]

I saw the thread started today, so I guess that's what you mean? The allegation that Tontar faked them? Not really sure where a stance is required or how it would be significant. If it he did, the fine he did it. Not sure what bearing that has on this discussion other than to show that BF tracks are hoaxed some times, maybe even more than some times along with being mistaken for other animal tracks.

Am I missing something else?

Well, it would seem that a skeptic among us has attempted to "test" the bigfoot community with hoaxed tracks. In other words he is "probing" us for a weakness.

I'm just curious if this is something that skeptics talk about with themselves, and if this sort of behavior is encouraged in skeptical circles?

Is it an attempt to create some sort of test case for a baseline or?

I'm not suggesting there is some secret organization here, but skeptic obviously talk over on the JREF and other forums, so I have to ask the question.

I don't approve or condone if that's what you are asking.

Thank you, but I was curious about the broader community

[dmaker]

To be honest I know of no skeptic community. If there is one then I am not privy to a single private conversation.

I don't really belong to other forums. I read JREF for the first time a few weeks ago and only out or curiousity to see what it was since it is mentioned here frequently.

[Guest DWA]

You know DWA I like to be right as much as the next guy...and we all do. But being wrong on this subject won't mean diddly-squat to me, if that happens, and I know you feel the same way. THE point is to pursue knowledge and evidence where it leads. I'm going to always carry the water for the team that is brave enough to endure ridicule for this greater objective.

Exactly. I cannot count the number of times I have been labeled a 'true believer' and treated like I actually have skin in this game. I have been skeptical since day one (at age 10 and a fraction, reading about the just-released P/G film in National Wildlife Magazine). It's just that when it comes to this topic, people don't understand what 'skeptical' really means. You judge every claim on its merits, and all claims against evidence presented, and withhold pronouncements until info is in.

(Info long in: this is a legitimate scientific quest on which science is about a half-century behind the eight ball, unless one counts Meldrum Krantz Bindernagel et al as science's leading edge. Appropriate, that, if one means by 'science' the thing scientists are supposed to practice and too often do not. It's well past time for more minds to consolidate at that edge.)

Gotsta tell you: if all of this - every scrap - is somehow determined to be a concoction, I will be about as amazed and delighted at man's incredibl[y misguided] ingenuity as you, the President or anybody. It will be such a story that I ...well, I'll miss Patty, but there'll be books and books to read about history's greatest mass deception (oh, that's what it would be) to occupy my time. The only stake I have in this is:

One way or the other, I want to know. And of course, WSA, I know you do too.

Don't the rest of you? Isn't encouraging the mainstream to finally get cracking the best way for all of us to know?

In the field of natural science, here's just a short list of things that have gone from the "highly improbable/impossible" to "probable/confirmed" in my short life:

-Punctuated evolution of planetary life via extra-terrestrial body

-Reptilian ancestry of extant avian species

-Global climate warming (Though I should add...this was covered in my Earth Science class c. 1977)

-Gastric ulcers caused by bacterial agency

-Pete Townshend and Neil Young retaining ANY of their hearing.

Well, I'd say that birds-are-dinosaurs (hey WSA, for another contender, you missed "tool users are all over the animal kingdom") makes bigfoot-is-real look about as improbable as candy-canes-are-sweet. (Anyone who doubts that forgets, or never saw, how dinosaurs were depicted and discussed in the 1960s.) But then again, I saw the Who from the second row one night, and I don't think my hearing ever totally recovered from that alone. So there's that too. Next to those? Bigfoot's a gorilla. Whoo-hoo. Next Amazing Factoid? Tires Are Cool, When You Think About It!

If a list like that is possible (and I could add a dozen more entries, without much effort), what can we possibly say for certain? Only that we don't know half as much as we tell ourselves we do.

(And I did add one, and you're right...)

There is nothing more certain in science than this: scoffers are fooling themselves.

[Sunflower]

DWA,

Do you regularly go to the woods and just walk or hike? I'm not a hiker but I do enjoy walking leisurely with hubby and not alone. Our phones don't always work out there but we enjoy the area a lot.

Sometimes when you least expect it you might hear a twig snap or hear a grunt, or a strange owl sound in the daytime. I used to be a skeptic even though things across the road from my house were quite strange. I'm the type that needs a brick wall to fall on my head to convince me. I've got my own pics, my own experiences and I know.

Edited February 26, 2013 by Sunflower

[Guest DWA]

^^^I am outdoors loads. And loads.

My experience hiking, paddling, skiing, backpacking and just plain outdooring (including all the requisite driving) in North America tells me that there is more than enough unpeopled terrain to support a population of undocumented large omnivores such as the one being postulated here.

Haven't seen one, or evidence that I found more than intriguing. Immaterial. With all the deer running around everywhere I've been, the carcasses I've found are but a handful.

[Guest]

I think Keith Richards still being alive is much more incredible than anything I've seen posted on here.

[Guest Roberty-Bob]

I'm not a lone rambo uber killing machine, just a regular joe that wants to get to the bottom of this, The chances of me scoring "the shot" is very slim, and I suppose this makes some skeptics snicker, and that's cool.

I suppose some skeptics might snicker. I never do. You claim to have seen something you can't explain, and that intrigues me. You also seem able to admit you might be wrong in your assessment of what you saw, just as I can admit it's possible my disbelief in BF could be wrong as well. Right now, you have the advantage over me in that you have something to to compel your belief. The cynical skeptic in me wishes and hopes that compulsion doesn't ultimately drive you to bitter disappointment, the optimist side wants to see the beastie in the flesh someday. Both sides wish you the best of luck, truly.

[norseman]

I suppose some skeptics might snicker. I never do. You claim to have seen something you can't explain, and that intrigues me. You also seem able to admit you might be wrong in your assessment of what you saw, just as I can admit it's possible my disbelief in BF could be wrong as well. Right now, you have the advantage over me in that you have something to to compel your belief. The cynical skeptic in me wishes and hopes that compulsion doesn't ultimately drive you to bitter disappointment, the optimist side wants to see the beastie in the flesh someday. Both sides wish you the best of luck, truly.

Every day that I get out into dark timber is a blessing for me, I cannot fathom that ever changing. Where the bitter disappointment comes for me, is watching some of those in the community around me.

I appreciate very much the well wishes.

[Guest]

I'll offer a brief reply to the various posters concerning werewolves v. Bigfoot. Again, and I'll say it -again-, we are talking about sightings. SIGHTINGS. The argument used, over and over, is that people are seeing Bigfoot because they claim to see Bigfoot. Why would they lie? How can they mistake what they saw? People see what they say they see. In a court of law......etc.

Now apply that to werewolf sightings and the game changes, apparently. Now we have to consider other things in conjunction. Tracks, hair, etc.

The game changes because of belief. People believe in Bigfoot and don't believe in werewolves. So, they accept Bigfoot sightings and do not accept werewolf sightings based on reasons that have nothing to do with the simple experience of the eyewitness.

Also, the idea that there are colonies (or single representatives) of humongous apes living in the areas all across the country where sightings accrue is much, much more problematic than folks here are wont to acknowledge or understand.

Bigfoot is Chewbaccas! It's CHEWBACCAS!!

-Charleton Heston

Wookiees are too ugly to kiss.

Edited February 27, 2013 by jerrywayne

[Guest]

Well, it would seem that a skeptic among us has attempted to "test" the bigfoot community with hoaxed tracks. In other words he is "probing" us for a weakness.

I'm just curious if this is something that skeptics talk about with themselves, and if this sort of behavior is encouraged in skeptical circles?

Is it an attempt to create some sort of test case for a baseline or?

I'm not suggesting there is some secret organization here, but skeptic obviously talk over on the JREF and other forums, so I have to ask the question.

Thank you, but I was curious about the broader community

As far as I know, no one on the skeptic side was let in on some kind of planned hoax. Most comments after the fact had to do with how the proponents backtracked (pardon the pun) on their endorsements and in a less than forthright manner.

I don't know the entire issue, but from some of what I know, I'm not sure a hoax was attempted. It looked to me like someone was testing out some stompers to see how a realistic track could be made. The person involved did not bother to space out the tracks, ala Bigfoot, and in one area it was said you could see where the perp first put on the stompers and was trying to get comfortable with them. Also, the area was within a stones throw from a busy road. But, my impression may be without merit.

Edit to add: I did not examine the tracks personally. I am refering to things that I read.

I'll offer a brief reply to the various posters concerning werewolves v. Bigfoot. Again, and I'll say it -again-, we are talking about sightings. SIGHTINGS. The argument used, over and over, is that people are seeing Bigfoot because they claim to see Bigfoot. Why would they lie? How can they mistake what they saw? People see what they say they see. In a court of law......etc.

Now apply that to werewolf sightings and the game changes, apparently. Now we have to consider other things in conjunction. Tracks, hair, etc.

The game changes because of belief. People believe in Bigfoot and don't believe in werewolves. So, they accept Bigfoot sightings and do not accept werewolf sightings based on reasons that have nothing to do with the simple experience of the eyewitness.

Also, the idea that there are colonies (or single representatives) of humongous apes living in the areas all across the country where sightings accrue is much, much more problematic than folks here are wont to acknowledge or understand.

Wookiees are too dang ugly to kiss.

Edited February 27, 2013 by jerrywayne

[Guest DWA]

I'll offer a brief reply to the various posters concerning werewolves v. Bigfoot. Again, and I'll say it -again-, we are talking about sightings. SIGHTINGS. The argument used, over and over, is that people are seeing Bigfoot because they claim to see Bigfoot. Why would they lie? How can they mistake what they saw? People see what they say they see. In a court of law......etc.

In a court of law, people regularly misrepresent what they see...because of multiple significant incentives to do so. There is no greater disincentive to do anything - even commit murder - in this society than there is to come out publicly and say one saw something "that doesn't exist." (And the evidence on that one could not be clearer.) Yet the reports continue to come in.

Now apply that to werewolf sightings and the game changes, apparently. Now we have to consider other things in conjunction. Tracks, hair, etc.

Which sasquatch leave. And werewolves - which don't exist - don't. You have to consider them - as any naturalist will tell you, and on which scientists are unanimous - because they are evidence that something passed this way.

The game changes because of belief. People believe in Bigfoot and don't believe in werewolves. So, they accept Bigfoot sightings and do not accept werewolf sightings based on reasons that have nothing to do with the simple experience of the eyewitness.

People believe in Bigfoot? I can't go further.

But I'll try.

Most of the society couldn't be further away from belief in anything than from belief in bigfoot. You've mistaken where the game changes; because this isn't about belief. It is about evidence.

The game changes because of evidence. Of which sasquatch leave every kind that any animal does...and werewolves don't.

Also, the idea that there are colonies (or single representatives) of humongous apes living in the areas all across the country where sightings accrue is much, much more problematic than folks here are wont to acknowledge or understand.

Not those of us who think seriously about this. We know it's not nearly as problematic as those unfamiliar with wildlife and wild country - and the wildness of the vast majority of our continental landscape - might think.

(Rememeber: incredulity is better than any other camouflage nature has devised.)

1) Thousands of people report sightings - and this is undoubtedly a mere fraction of actual encounters, as pondering this for a minute will make obvious. That speaks to something that isn't exactly the Hope Diamond in rarity, and spread over a large range - which any biologist worth a corner of his sheepskin would consider logical for a smart omnivore that can move quickly. Look at the black bear and coyote. One went from all-over to much-reduced...and is coming back practically everywhere. The other went from west-of-Mississippi-only to every-county-in-MD-and-VA-has-a-breeding-population. And rising. Fast. In like 50 years. Bigfoot is smarter than both. (And yes. Coyotes are far from strictly carnivorous.) And unlike bigfoot, we've been hunting coyotes with a viciousness we have reserved for few other things. And still its range has expanded. Actually the harder we've hunted it the faster it's expanded - they produce bigger litters when persecuted. A higher primate that's getting no hunting pressure (for reasons game laws and encounter reports make obvious)? Do the math.

2) The sighting reports indicate that one is lucky just to see one; one won't get much more than a glimpse most of the time; and tracking one without any accumulated knowledge of how they move is, well, good luck. In short: like any wild animal unaccultured to humans. (We're successful hunters - sometimes - because we accept other people's tales about most animals, and knowledge of their movements accumulates.)

3) Spend time traveling - driving; flying; walking; and just looking - and one will realize that civilization is much more the exception than our on-wheels-or-at-home-rarely-in-between "wired" society can possibly appreciate.

Edited February 27, 2013 by DWA

[Guest]

Trackways like these have been found in places where a vehicle would have been impossible (at least any we know about), and in places where a person would have had difficulty (1) getting there; (2) believing that any human would ever find the track (some random guy no one could have predicted being there did); or (3) sustaining the required activity on his own without assistance, if the almost-inconceivable vehicle assist in fact was as impossible as it looked.

If it seems to fit the profile, you have to prove a hoax to me. Otherwise, toss it on the pile of stuff that needs an explanation we don't have yet.

If a person finds a track, then the difficulty of a person "getting there" is not as problematic as you make it out to be.

I do not think trackways in out of the way places are as mystery laden as Bigfoot proponents do. Sure, why would a guy or guys go out of their way to lay tracks that probably no one will find? The answer: they wouldn't.

What if the hoaxer is not going out of the way? Here is a scenario: the phony track maker is in the area for other reasons, like hunting, fishing, back country hiking, surveying, etc. He and/or his buddies, for a little mischief or to prove some point, lay tracks as a secondary activity. Nothing but a little time lost if the tracks are never found.

I guess the fundamental difference between how a skeptic and a proponent looks at the issue is related to your "you have to prove a hoax" comment. No, you have to prove Bigfoot. We know hoaxes occur in reality. We do not know the same about Bigfoot. The edge goes to hoax, based on what we know about the world. You have to suspend that understanding and knowledge, even if just a bit, in order to prefer Bigfoot as a more valid answer.

[Guest DWA]

Actually, nope, the edge - as always in science - goes to evidence.

In science, no position has special privilege. One has to prove that the person not only got there but was capable of producing the tracks found. On many of those trackways, the only reason we don't put sasquatch at the head of the possibilities is sheer incredulity. But consider the actual plausibility of a person actually making them and leaving no other trace of his presence, and the game changes.

One can't assume hoax. One has to prove one happened. If the tracks look as if a person making them is unlikely, then something else making them is at least equally likely.

[Guest]

In a court of law, people regularly misrepresent what they see...because of multiple significant incentives to do so. There is no greater disincentive to do anything - even commit murder - in this society than there is to come out publicly and say one saw something "that doesn't exist." (And the evidence on that one could not be clearer.) Yet the reports continue to come in.

Which sasquatch leave. And werewolves - which don't exist - don't. You have to consider them - as any naturalist will tell you, and on which scientists are unanimous - because they are evidence that something passed this way.

People believe in Bigfoot? I can't go further.

But I'll try.

Most of the society couldn't be further away from belief in anything than from belief in bigfoot. You've mistaken where the game changes; because this isn't about belief. It is about evidence.

The game changes because of evidence. Of which sasquatch leave every kind that any animal does...and werewolves don't.

Not those of us who think seriously about this. We know it's not nearly as problematic as those unfamiliar with wildlife and wild country - and the wildness of the vast majority of our continental landscape - might think.

(Rememeber: incredulity is better than any other camouflage nature has devised.)

1) Thousands of people report sightings - and this is undoubtedly a mere fraction of actual encounters, as pondering this for a minute will make obvious. That speaks to something that isn't exactly the Hope Diamond in rarity, and spread over a large range - which any biologist worth a corner of his sheepskin would consider logical for a smart omnivore that can move quickly. Look at the black bear and coyote. One went from all-over to much-reduced...and is coming back practically everywhere. The other went from west-of-Mississippi-only to every-county-in-MD-and-VA-has-a-breeding-population. And rising. Fast. In like 50 years. Bigfoot is smarter than both. (And yes. Coyotes are far from strictly carnivorous.)

2) The sighting reports indicate that one is lucky just to see one; one won't get much more than a glimpse most of the time; and tracking one without any accumulated knowledge of how they move is, well, good luck. In short: like any wild animal unaccultured to humans. (We're successful hunters - sometimes - because we accept other people's tales about most animals, and knowledge of their movements accumulates.)

3) Spend time traveling - driving; walking; and just looking - and one will realize that civilization is much more the exception than our on-wheels-or-at-home-rarely-in-between "wired" society can possibly appreciate.

So, you are saying that people who claim to see werewolves are not seeing werewolves because werewolves "don't exist."

On the one hand, you want to claim the consistency and numbers of Bigfoot sightings are stand alone verifiers of Bigfoot. Then, you want to claim that physical traces of said beast are what give validity to the eyewitness reports and distinguish such reports from those made in behalf of werewolves.

Yet, the overwhelming majority of Bigfoot eyewitness accounts are absent such physical traces, which leaves them in same boat as werewolf sightings, i.e., just comments made without evidence.

Do you find the following contradictory?: "Thousands of people report sightings - and this is undoubtedly a mere fraction of actual encounters, as pondering this for a minute will make obvious" and "The sighting reports indicate that one is lucky just to see one; one won't get much more than a glimpse most of the time; and tracking one without any accumulated knowledge of how they move is, well, good luck."

Yes, there are vast areas off road in North America. The problem is: Bigfoot is often an on the road kind of ape. A back yard ape. A bean patch ape. A Hooverville ape. Do you discount many, many of those sightings that place the ape in trailer parks, national parks, right outside a suburb, outside your window, etc., etc?

What criteria do you use in determining which sightings you accept as meaningful?

Good night, amigo.

Edited February 27, 2013 by jerrywayne