Does Bigfoot Exist?

[MIB]

The casting you boast of means nothing if no one can point to the animal that allegedly left the original track. Meldrum has been known, I believe, to sell casts that come from known hoaxes. Enjoy your paperweight.

 

It means nothing to you.  It means plenty to me.  Thanks, yes, I do indeed enjoy it very much.  

 

MIB

 

PS : A hoax, once it is known to be a hoax, can be as educational, though in a different way, as the real thing.  

[Guest Urkelbot]

No case against the existence of sasquatch has ever been offered, for one reason:  no evidence supports the comprehensive false positive that would be required to give the case any traction at all.

 

Let me head off any "you can't prove a negative" responses right here.  You can prove a comprehensive false positive.  Let me head off any "you want me to do all that work?" responses right here:  you're right.  There's so much work to do it would be easier to just prove the animal.

 

And if you insist:  isn't it a bit woo-woo to believe in something there is no way to prove...?

Well.  Hasn't somebody highlighted the problem here?

 

Science doesn't explore the unknown, at all.  All science is plowing plowed ground, combining one thing you know with another thing you know to get another thing you  now know.

.

Science can't handle a large, consistent volume of anecdotal evidence because scientists' brains aren't trained that way.

 

That's most of them.  The ones that win the Nobels?  They are trained that way.

I don't think you really understand how science works.

To go from leeuwenhoeck seeing and describing the first cell to uncovering the human genome took thousands of experiments and scientists. Or the first experiments with electricity to the computer you use.

The guys working in their little speciality, which you mock, are the reason we have the wonders of today.

Much of the time the person/persons who gets the noble was just the first out of the group who got the answer first. Other times their discoveries came by accident when they were looking for something else. Like taq polymerase the nucleotide replication machine which is the enzyme that makes PCR work. A scientist was just studying thermophilic archaea found taq and changed the world.

The guy who discovered penicillin was a bit of a moron who didn't even realize what he had for a few years until another scientist pointed it put to him.

Why read large volumes of anecdotal evidence when you could read large volumes of real proven evidence, evidence which leads to direct changes and improvements around you.

[the parkie]

The guy who discovered penicillin was a bit of a moron

:-D

I was trying to read up on the 'Bigfoot toenail' and what became of it? From what I can gather it was handed over to Ketchum. Has it been returned for anyone else to analyse, or has it already been analysed by others?

Does anyone know?

[AaronD]

Doesn't Meldrum, still or used to, sell Freeman casts at like $50 a pop?

 

Doubt it, he was only asking $40 for ones he believed to be real. He offered me 2 broken ones for $20 OBO.....neither of them was Freeman casts. He just didn't want to have to transport them back on the plane.....understandable.

[Guest DWA]

I don't think you really understand how science works.

 

Oh yeah?  Watch.

To go from leeuwenhoeck seeing and describing the first cell to uncovering the human genome took thousands of experiments and scientists. Or the first experiments with electricity to the computer you use.

 

Great.  Here's to the grinders.  Grinding.  Imagine how much more we might know - indeed how many more people might have taken up science as a career - were the mainstream more focused on encouraging research into unknowns rather than actively discouraging it (and if you don't think mainstream pronouncements are doing that here, you don't know how the world operates.)

The guys working in their little speciality, which you mock, are the reason we have the wonders of today.

 

^^^And read that, again.  And I'm not mocking the good they do; I'm tut-tutting the negatives of being so narrowly focused on the proven that one forgets what evidence means.

Much of the time the person/persons who gets the noble was just the first out of the group who got the answer first. Other times their discoveries came by accident when they were looking for something else. Like taq polymerase the nucleotide replication machine which is the enzyme that makes PCR work. A scientist was just studying thermophilic archaea found taq and changed the world.

 

Right.  And I'm sure everybody jumped right on that and rooted him on.  Not.Too.Likely.   And of course you reinforced my point.  Scientists who "stumble" on stuff tend to ignore it and press on...like all the knee doctors who were wondering what that thing was that just got confirmed as a ligament "new" to science.  The ones who don't...win the Nobels.

 

The guy who discovered penicillin was a bit of a moron who didn't even realize what he had for a few years until another scientist pointed it put to him.

 

Easy for you to say.  Huh.

Why read large volumes of anecdotal evidence when you could read large volumes of real proven evidence, evidence which leads to direct changes and improvements around you.

 

Because we wouldn't know about ...well, for only one thing we wouldn't know about most of the animals we know about were it not for people following anecdotal information far less and far less consistent than what exists for sasquatch.  Never mind that scientists vouch for sasquatch and their vouchers remain unaddressed.

Oh no, I get it quite well.  See?  Almost all those wonderful miracles you're talking about are plowing plowed ground.  And energy-saving tech - to name only one thing - has made virtually zero progress since 1970 because money routinely kills good science.

 

Oh.  Believe me.  You aren't gettin' how I get it.

[Drew]

Doesn't Meldrum, still or used to, sell Freeman casts at like $50 a pop?

 

I don't know if that is a Freeman, but I sure see a Marx Cripplefoot on the left. LOLZ

[Guest DWA]

Way to ingnore several scientists with relevant qualifications who vouch for 'Cripplefoot.'

 

But haven't we gotten used to that.

[dmaker]

Yes, we get it DWA, science is mean to Bigfoot. But haven't we gotten used to hearing that from you.

[Guest]

 

 

I don't know if that is a Freeman, but I sure see a Marx Cripplefoot on the left. LOLZ

 

Don't forget, several others also independently discovered Cripplefoot's tracks in and around Bossburg in late 1969.

The tracks on the right are likely Freeman's (seeing as though one of his knuckle prints is there).

Edited December 19, 2013 by AaronD
removed reposted image

[Guest DWA]

Why read large volumes of anecdotal evidence when you could read large volumes of real proven evidence, evidence which leads to direct changes and improvements around you.

And to show even more clearly who knows how science (doesn't) work.

 

Read the proven and only the proven.  What is not proven, isn't real.  If it isn't proven, ignore it.  If it cannot be referred directly back to something proven, ignore it.  You are only allowed to take one thing you know, combine it with another thing you know, and get another thing you now know. To apply science to anything but the proven ist verboten.

 

I just said that sentence I quoted there, using slightly different words.

[dmaker]

Science examines evidence, correct? I think we can all agree that that is the primary role or task of science. Science examines evidence and reports the findings. These can either support or falsify an hypothesis. People bring alleged Bigfoot evidence to science for examination and each and every time the analysis does not support the claim. That is an objective analysis.  Anecdotes cannot be objectively verified or repeated. As such, they have no role to play in the scientific process of examining evidence. They may serve as an indicator if one is inclined to believe them and follow-up on them looking for physical evidence to support the original anecdote. But since anecdotes are tales told by human beings they are subject to all sorts of factors that can question the veracity of the tale. All human beings are subject to the same problems of perception. These are well documented elsewhere. People believe that they see things that are not there often. People do, also, lie about things. All of these are true and are simple, objective facts. To think it does not apply to Bigfoot witness stories is to think that Bigfoot witnesses are not subject to the same foibles as the rest of humanity.  Since it cannot be proven whether or not a witness is lying, mistaken, or hallucinating this makes anecdotes the poorest form of evidence for proving the existence of anything. What is needed is hard evidence. Evidence that can be objectively examined and confirmed. 

 

I don't know what more you expect from science DWA. You constantly condemn scientists for not getting involved with Bigfoot while at the same time mocking them as a whole and calling them incompetent. So which is it? How can your beloved cryptid be kept at bay by a bunch of incompetent, company line toting scientists? You seem to be arguing that if only they would abandon their labs and white coats and start combing the woods looking for Bigfoot evidence that something significant would be accomplished. That notion seems rather unrealistic to me. There are plenty of amateurs out there looking for Bigfoot. They have recently provided the best of their evidence to date and science examined it and found it to be something other than an undocumented primate. This has happened other times in the past and will, no doubt, continue to happen in the future. But you think an expedition of bumbling, status-quo scientists is what is needed? What is needed is for someone to come up with some actual, bona-fide, verifiable evidence for Bigfoot. No more of this emphasis on anecdotes, no more dog hair or bear hair, or hoaxes, or mistaken tracks, etc, etc, etc.  It is time for Bigfoot to be more than a campfire tale and a collection of circumstantial evidence. Real creatures leave evidence behind. Real creatures leave hair,scat, bodies, fossils, etc. Anecdotes do not. And not surprisingly we have plenty of anecdotes and not one single piece of verifiable Bigfoot evidence anywhere. 

[Guest]

mainstream more focused on encouraging research into unknowns rather than actively discouraging it

 

Define "unknowns". Scientists look for the answers to unanswered questions all the time, but you dismiss them if its not sexy enough.  

Edited December 19, 2013 by Jerrymanderer

[Guest DWA]

Define unknowns?  Um, WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ONE.

 

What are you talking about?

[Guest]

Nope. By your logic, Bigfoot is just another branch on the tree of life.

[Guest DWA]

By mine, which is based on cold evidence and nothing else, it is.  But ask most scientists - whose minds are influenced by things other than evidence when it comes to topics like this, like money, tenure, tenure, money, cash, dough, career, tenure and money - about it. 

 

So.  If I'm right....what's science's problem?