dmaker Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 "Bears are most likely to be mistaken for a man-like creature, he said. But very rarely, perhaps one in 10,000 sightings is a Sasquatch." Dr.Meldrum I saw this quote from Dr.Meldrum from the recent Honobia Bigfoot Conference. (http://okwnews.com/news/whatzup/106158-honobia-bigfoot-conference.html ) It is interesting, obviously, due to the shockingly high rate of false reports predicted by Dr.Meldrum. There are many on this forum who believe that the sighting reports are to believed as true until proven wrong. How would one account for the 9,999 that Dr.Meldrum predicts are incorrect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NathanFooter Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 In all honesty, I think that number is really high unless he is speaking about ever single event that includes a person seeing a black mass take off into the dark or every distant figure in the forest. It is much more difficult to argue with cases like clear daylight sightings. This being said, I certainly do not buy all the reports or take them as legit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Divergent1 Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 I think that's Dr. Meldrum's educated guess. I don't know what criteria he is using to make that guess, so even though it's an interesting observation, I can't make a guess as to how he came up with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonehead74 Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Without hearing the statement in it's full context, it's hard to tell if he means that 1 in every 10,000 bear sightings is a bigfoot, or that 9,999 of every 10,000 bigfoot sightings are bears. A subtle, yet very important distinction. Either way, it sounds an awful lot like a "Jeff Meldrum Ballpark Fact". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JiggyPotamus Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 I believe it is utterly ridiculous to assume that the majority of individuals who saw a bear, even if it were on two legs, would attribute it to a sasquatch. I have determined from sighting reports that many individuals actually attribute their legitimate sasquatch sighting to a bear, at least initially, followed by them revising their assessment upon further examination. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has read time and time again a statement in a sighting report that is along the lines of "at first I thought it was a bear." So it seems to me that the majority of witnesses are actually seeking a natural explanation for what they're seeing, especially if they have never entertained the idea of bigfoot. I have concluded that the reason people like Dr. Meldrum make these statements is to account for the elusiveness of sasquatch. People believe, mistakenly in my opinion, that for bigfoot to be so elusive there must be an extremely limited number of them, when intelligence alone could make up for the lack of sightings. Seeing as how we do not know how intelligent they are, it seems to me that we cannot really get an accurate picture of how many sasquatch there are. If they were not intelligent and did not possess the ability to basically use some sort of reasoning to evade humans, then perhaps a very small population would make more sense, but I maintain that their population is much larger than most have postulated. There is no direct evidence for this, except perhaps for the widespread distribution of sightings, yet I believe that because there are so many sightings, despite my belief that sasquatch are relatively intelligent, then this is the result of probability. What I mean is that if there were very few of them, and they were smart enough to evade us, we should not see them as often as we do. Therefore I think the number of sighting reports is indicative of a larger population, because even if they are intelligent enough to evade us most of the time, the more of them there are, the more they should fail in staying away from us. It is not foolproof logic by any means, I completely understand that, but I am just presenting what I feel is likely going on with bigfoot. Didn't Meldrum say that he believed there were 10,000 or so? I assume that is in North America, rather than worldwide? In the past I have estimated the population to be at least 50,000 individuals, but it could be even larger. One should not underestimate the sheer amount of forestland in North America that people never set foot on. I think there is plenty of room to support that many individuals. If you look at the projected numbers for black bears alone, there are probably about 700,000 of them, give or take a few. And there is plenty of room for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hiflier Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Hello All, I have wondered myself how Dr. Meldrum produces these kinds of numbers. A person in his position does have to be somewhat diplomatic in such things no doubt but also a person in his position may know more than your average Squatcher. I once read where he estimated the Sasquatch population in Idaho as being around 60 individuals. I think his study of Sasquatch demographics is fairly intense- again moreso than the average "enthusiast". It's difficult to say what exactly he knows and it's probably better that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roguefooter Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 It could mean that he's more skeptical than most people think. Of course in his position he's probably just playing it safe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hiflier Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 (edited) Hello roguefooter, I do think that he is skeptical. I also think that folks give him things, and data, as a result of his position that we never get. As a scientist there must be times when he really scratches his head. To think that he just blindly believes in existence is a mistake. Edited October 9, 2014 by hiflier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobbyO Posted October 9, 2014 SSR Team Share Posted October 9, 2014 It is interesting, obviously, due to the shockingly high rate of false reports predicted by Dr.Meldrum. There are many on this forum who believe that the sighting reports are to believed as true until proven wrong. How would one account for the 9,999 that Dr.Meldrum predicts are incorrect? I personally think it's a ridiculous thing to say as, for example, by the same calculation, if you had 10,000 sightings of Dolphins in the PNW and one was a mis-id'd as an Orca, the high probability is that others were also mis-id'd as Orca's too, because that one mis-id would mean that Orca's are living and breeding in that part of the world and people are mis identifying them, and if people are mis identifying one in 10,000 then it's highly likely they've mis identified two in 10,000 and on and on it goes. Quite a naive thing to say by Meldrum to be honest IMO, especially if we are to take what he said literally and he wasn't just using an off the cuff number and it wasn't just a flippant comment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1980squatch Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Without hearing the statement in it's full context, it's hard to tell if he means that 1 in every 10,000 bear sightings is a bigfoot, or that 9,999 of every 10,000 bigfoot sightings are bears. A subtle, yet very important distinction. Either way, it sounds an awful lot like a "Jeff Meldrum Ballpark Fact". It has got to be the first one, and if not, I hereby boldly claim that that my BFRO entry is one of the four that is legit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Seems like Meldrum wants his cake and to eat it too. Wants to be in the forefront, yet doesn't want to be thought of as a fool....and says something like this....to be safe. I'm curious why he chose the supposed possible ratio of 10k to 1...why not perhaps 50k to 1? I wonder if he has an estimation of the total number of reports of sightings just in N. America....so I can ...perhaps,....get a Meldrum-based estimation of the total number of BF creatures in N. America? - not really Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bonehead74 Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 (edited) It has got to be the first one, and if not, I hereby boldly claim that that my BFRO entry is one of the four that is legit Oh, I'm sure it is the former. If so, the question then becomes, not how many bears are mistaken for bigfoot, but how many bigfoot sightings are written off as bears? This seems to support the idea that bigfoot are (at least sometimes) mistaken for bears, and might make dmaker want to rephrase his question. Edited October 9, 2014 by Bonehead74 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1980squatch Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Related to that, I'm sure that at times BF sighting are written off as hunters/hikers wearing Ghille suits or hoodies, especially at distance... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WSA Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 My impression is we are all just guessing at this point. His guess might be more informed than most, but still a guess. I would also presume he has access to a far, far greater number of BF sighting reports than your average guy. So, the question I would need to know the answer to is not this one, it would be: Dr. Meldrum, how many valid Sasquatch sightings do you estimate there are in a typical year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 I believe it is utterly ridiculous to assume that the majority of individuals who saw a bear, even if it were on two legs, would attribute it to a sasquatch. I have determined from sighting reports that many individuals actually attribute their legitimate sasquatch sighting to a bear, at least initially, followed by them revising their assessment upon further examination. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has read time and time again a statement in a sighting report that is along the lines of "at first I thought it was a bear." So it seems to me that the majority of witnesses are actually seeking a natural explanation for what they're seeing, especially if they have never entertained the idea of bigfoot. Well, I'm pretty sure he understands that not all "mistaken" Sasquatch sightings shouldn't be just contributed to miss-identified bears. Actually, from what I have researched and seen, one of the most common explanations of Sasquatch sightings are Stump-Squatch's (I hope that most people here know what a Stump-Squatch is). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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