Misidentification

[dmaker]

Speaking of being "biased". That's a very disingenuous and blanket statement in light of the fact that there are a lot of different people who do the follow up investigations for BFRO.

 

Can you provide data from the BFRO to back that up?

The bias is demonstrated over and over again on national television. And when you read the blurbs about the investigators on the BFRO it is not hard to see the potential for bias. From the report I linked earlier:

 

About BFRO Investigator Larry Sidwell:

Larry became interested in Bigfoot at an early age after viewing the Patterson - Gimlin footage. Spent a lot of time in his youth hiking and exploring his families' farms in Clark County, Kentucky. Avid hunter and fisherman living on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, he especially enjoys offshore and surf fishing. BFRO public expeditions Larry has attended: 2012 West Virginia, 2013 Kentucky, 2013 West Virginia, 2013 Western North Carolina. Private expeditions Larry has attended: 2013 SEBFRO Nantahalla National Forest, 2014 Uwharrie National Forest.

 

[indiefoot]

dmaker, did you read the follow-up report before you posted the link?

[Guest]

Ant

could you tell me where you got your "nearly half" statistic? I'd at least like to see what source you are quoting. And I disagree with your "forensic" theory. Every trial involves human beings sitting on a witness stand testifying. Weather they are testifying to what they saw at the scene of the crime or the tests that they ran in a lab, they are still telling the story of their involvement with the case.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/10/war-on-drugs-prisons-infographic_n_4914884.html

 

"Over 50 percent of inmates currently in federal prison are there for drug offenses, according to an infographic recently released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (see chart below). That percentage has risen fairly consistently over decades, all the way from 16 percent in 1970."

 

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/11/06/2895301/federal-prison-population-spiked-average-drug-sentences-doubled-report-finds/

 

"The federal prison population has ballooned 790 percent since 1980, and almost half of those now imprisoned are there for drugs."

 

Having actual pot on the victim, er ahem, perpetrator is physical evidence which makes it forensic.

I'm just saying what it looks like to me. The limb proportions seem kind of odd for a bear, it looks like a person on their hands and feet.

Then again, it could simply be a bear with wet fur. Animals with wet fur do look different from what they normally would, after all.

The limb proportions are good for a bear. The poor thing looks like it has mange. With the fur and body fat gone a bear looks like an entirely different animal.

Misidentification is a far more likely explanation than hallucination.

 

But due to the sheer number and commonalities of Class A sighting reports it is still completely ridiculous to try to write them ALL off as not being an actual sighting of a BF. 

 

Statistically that's an impossibility.

Properly a skeptic should only make a comment on a single case at a time. Not all cases are the same and need to be looked at that way. A good explanation for one report will not necessarily work for another one. I for one do not write many reports off even when they describe things I find bizarre or unreasonable. Of course, I mostly think bigfoot is a social phenomenon and all reports are part of that. I can suspend my disbelief while reading reports. Not many can do that. That does not mean that I accept the story as evidence for bigfoot. Evidence for the concept in the mind of the witness.

Of course there is "NO WAY around that".

 

Which was why he made the very valid point that a huge amount of people are convicted every year solely based on eyewitness testimony.

 

The witnesses weren't hallucinating, guilty of misidentification,  or lying. 

 

So that alone blows your contention that ALL BF Class A sighting reports can be attributed to something other than the witnesses saw a BF out of the water completely.

Many are convicted on eye witness testimony alone and that is true. That does not make eye witness testimony fool proof. How many criminals got off because the witnesses were unable to identify them correctly? And still a disturbing number of convicted inmates are found to be innocent of the crimes alleged to be perpetrated by them due to DNA testing. Those people were sentenced to prison on eye witness testimony alone.

[dmaker]

dmaker, did you read the follow-up report before you posted the link?

No, as I mentioned already, I find follow-up reports to be laughable. So many of them are done by people already deeply invested in bigfoot and do not display any sort of genuine vetting of the witness statements.

 

But ultimately a witness report, followed up or not by the worlds most enthusiast bigfoot proponent, will never rise above the level of anecdotal evidence. Again,another reason why I don't dwell very much on the follow up report. 

Edited April 22, 2014 by dmaker

[Guest LarryP]

Many are convicted on eye witness testimony alone and that is true. That does not make eye witness testimony fool proof. How many criminals got off because the witnesses were unable to identify them correctly? And still a disturbing number of convicted inmates are found to be innocent of the crimes alleged to be perpetrated by them due to DNA testing. Those people were sentenced to prison on eye witness testimony alone.

 

You keep trying to ignore statistics.

 

That's a fools game.

[Guest]

What am I missing about statistics that is so relevant here?

[Guest]

http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/13/wonkbook-11-facts-about-americas-prison-population/nt

Thanks for providing those links, just one problem:

Your numbers are incredibly skewed. The reports you link are for FEDERAL prisons. More accurate numbers can be found in the link above. The numbers are more like 20 % not 50. But still, that doesn't change the fact that those people were put in jail on the testimony of police officers and laboratory technicians that told a judge and jury what they experienced (sometimes more than a year later). They successfully identify the culprit and relay the facts of the case. How could they possibly do this if humans are as fallible as you make them out to be?

I'm not here to fight with you or to change your mind, but you can't lump all sighting reports into neat little categories of misidentification or hallucination. Problem for you is, if one, just one, of these reports are true your entire position crumbles.

[Guest]

Speaking of being "biased". That's a very disingenuous and blanket statement in light of the fact that there are a lot of different people who do the follow up investigations for BFRO.

 

Can you provide data from the BFRO to back that up?

 

Have you even watched Finding Bigfoot?!?  They're so obviously leading the witnesses that they've become the but of the joke on the Internet.

[Guest DWA]

No, dmaker did not read the follow-up report before he posted the link.

 

So he's trying to pretend follow-up reports are some kind of insidious destruction of information ...which invalidates 99.9% of what we call "detective work."

 

If dmaker were the chief of police...you wouldn't be able to arrest anybody!

[Guest]

I don't think you understand what we're saying, DWA.  The law enforcement community have to account for the very same flaws in eye witnesses we are trying to point out to you.

 

Do you remember those men I told about that were falsely imprissioned and latter exonerated?  Situations just like those costs millions of dollars in compensation as well as several years of those men's lives (decades in some cases) and the jobs and careers of quite a few people.

 

The stakes aren't nearly so high with the subject matter we are specifically talking about (Bigfoot), I admit.  But would you rather try controlling for simple human error or chasing after unknown noise in the bush that someone heard while half asleep thinking it was Bigfoot?

[dmaker]

No, dmaker did not read the follow-up report before he posted the link.

 

So he's trying to pretend follow-up reports are some kind of insidious destruction of information ...which invalidates 99.9% of what we call "detective work."

 

If dmaker were the chief of police...you wouldn't be able to arrest anybody!

There is no impartiality with BFRO investigators. Nor do all of them even have relevant training. I remember one "investigator" who was a professional drum player and had a keen interest in bigfoot infrasound. That was the best they could put on his about so and so section.  To take your analogy, that would be like sending someone to do "detective work" who had already formed a conclusion before ever arriving and had zero history as a professional investigator.

 

I see very little value in BFRO follow-ups other than to help maintain that consistency and volume that DWA loves to mention in every other post.

 

I'd be curious to see what the number of follow-ups that come back with " I don't think the person saw a bigfoot"

[Guest]

I dont doubt that misidentifications do happen, but you gotta be pretty out there to see a bear and think it's a huge ape...

[dmaker]

^^ I actually agree with that to a certain point. For the claimed up close and personal, broad daylight, type sighting, that would apply. Personally, in those cases I do not think they are seeing anything physical, but that's my opinion. For the fleeting, night time, etc type encounters, surely some of them must have been bear. There is one in Alaska that was most likely the rear end of a moose, so other large, dark colored mammals probably do get confused for bigfoot to some degree. 

 

For visual encounters, I don't think this misidentification would account for a large percentage of the reports. For audio reports, I would expect that percentage to be much higher. There are plenty of people out there that think every noise they hear in the woods is a bigfoot, or every missing food item, or every broken branch, or ...well you get the picture.  

 

If a tree fell in the forest and no one was there to see it, did bigfoot push it over? Absolutely!

[Guest LarryP]

What am I missing about statistics that is so relevant here?

 

Everything about statistics.

 

 

[MIB]

Right.  And chi-square value suggests the repeatability of findings.  

 

Fantasies do not follow bell curves but variations in real biological populations do.   When you have a curve suggesting a biological population, not imagination, and the chi-square value suggests high repeatability, it is highly probable you are looking at data describing a real live F&B species.  

 

The statistical predictability of evidence is itself evidence, perhaps the best evidence of all, short of a personal sighting, IF you understand statistics.   And if you don't, you're not qualified to question the statistics. 

 

MIB