Has Bigfoot Science Stalled?

[WSA]

4 hours ago, Cryptic Megafauna said:

WSA, I thought I was being sarcastic, but more ironic as I don't care that much for sarcasm, per se.

An existential comment on the nature of outlandish beliefs and the internet.

Well, at least thanks for being my proxy straw-man Cryptic!   Sorry to have misread you.  It is not always easy to recall everyone's philosophical alignment on this topic. 

[Guest WesT]

On 8/10/2016 at 10:55 AM, FarArcher said:

Well, the question raised was why a national defense department may be interested in these things.

 

 

 

The word I got was they're interested in the eyes.

[SWWASAS]

On 8/24/2016 at 7:01 AM, WSA said:

Hardly CM. Where you wind up is a pretty ordinary series of events and predictable outcome. You see. Well, maybe not, so let me take it slow:

 

1. Excavator finds anomalous fossilized bones, or skeletal remains, disarticulated and not readily identifiable. 

2. Find is given a catalog number and a vague (possibly wrong) cursory description and placed in a collection  for later examination and curating.

3. (Pick one) Funding evaporates, collection is moved to deep storage to make room, grad student/intern labor earns degrees and moves on, fire, flood, laziness, disinterest, lack of curiosity, theft, mislabeling... I could probably list a dozen more, but I think you get the point.

 

Deliberate suppression is only one possibility, and I'd say the least likely reason. Do you think somebody had an agenda for making sure this dolphin skull didn't ever see the light of day? I'm guessing "no." If you think otherwise, your life must be much more interesting than mine has ever been, I expect.

We have to realize that pre-Columbian remains are not really the best thing for a graduate student in North America to get interested in.     Mayan or Aztec maybe but not bones found in what is now the US.     Immediately you have the Native American repatriation act to fight and the US Government is very interested in following that to the letter.    To hang onto a skeleton you probably have to get a court order as was required with the Kennewick man.     Primarily because the Government knows that the Manifest Destiny doctrine was a ruse to steal NA lands and promote Westward expansion,  and they do not want it to be common knowledge that large civilizations with permanent settlements existed in NA.    The big lie is that Native Americans were primarily hunter gatherers.    So some researcher who wants grants,  looks for more fertile fields of study that do not fight the source of most funding for research,    the US Government.     I am really surprised that some young ambitious Native American lawyer has not taken the Native American case to UN and argued to get their land back.   These giant NA skeletons hidden in the bowels of the Smithsonian are not something you even want to look at if you are looking for research grants.      The US Government does not have much a case outside their own Federal Courts.     If the UN was not primarily funded by the US Government,  I suspect that some sort of World Court finding would be a fairly easy thing to get.     

Edited August 30, 2016 by SWWASAS

[JDL]

To get the research you want, you've got to fund it yourself (or raise it yourself), and specify the research objectives tied to the funding.

 

There's still research going on out there, but funding has been curtailed following the Ketchum fiasco, and those making any real progress are keeping things close to the vest.  The Ketchum lesson is that everything has to be 100% indisputable and fully backed up with irrefutable evidence before going public.  Also, there is incentive to protect one's financial interests associated with "proof of existence".

[bipedalist]

On 8/28/2016 at 0:58 PM, WesT said:

 

The word I got was they're interested in the eyes.

 

Of course, if you saw what those eyes did at close range as I did, it is the next best thing to sliced bread from a military perspective. 

 

My feeling is that if Sasquatch were biological or extrabiological we would know something more about it if the military got ahold of it, if it is a cyborg, perhaps we never will know what they are and maybe the military won't either. 

 

Operation Sea Monkey in the BC Sunshine Coast area was launched just the other day on a gofundme site and they are plying the waters soon.  With Todd Neiss, Ron Morehead and others.....

 

Was there a thread on the BFF about it?  Been awhile away for a while. 

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by bipedalist
added expedition

[Guest WesT]

1 hour ago, bipedalist said:

 

Of course, if you saw what those eyes did at close range as I did, it is the next best thing to sliced bread from a military perspective. 

 

My feeling is that if Sasquatch were biological or extrabiological we would know something more about it if the military got ahold of it, if it is a cyborg, perhaps we never will know what they are and maybe the military won't either. 

 

 

Maybe not if it involved national security which most reverse engineering projects would fall under. Can they reverse engineer the eyes if they got a hold of one? You betcha they can.

 

[Guest Cryptic Megafauna]

On 9/24/2016 at 2:00 PM, WesT said:

 

Maybe not if it involved national security which most reverse engineering projects would fall under. Can they reverse engineer the eyes if they got a hold of one? You betcha they can.

 

If the military wants one they probably already have one.

With all the surveillance platforms targeted at finding human size hominids under cover, and the weaponry and vehicles I don;t see how they wouldn't.

Unless not interested or conflicted as to what family of man the individual may belong, or lack of belief in such things.

If Bigfoot does exist you can probably bet that they already know the answer to that question.

I'm sure some operational areas of bases overlap areas of Bigfoot habitation, air bases, marine training bases, etc.

Likely would not become public knowledge, though, since outside the military mission.

If they had an interest it would be classified and if not they are not in the business of biological research for non military purposes and the media attention would be unwanted and interfere with operations and classified communications. 

Bottom line is it would not help the career of anyone in the command structure.

You might find out 30 years later when the individual retired, however.

[SWWASAS]

The skeptics are going to have fun with this post but this thread a

has been nibbling about the edges of one possibility about BF.    

 

First I will pose some questions.    

1.    Why has the Smithsonian lost the giant skeletons newspapers have reported them boxing up and shipped off?    

2.    What has the military done with the numerous reports of BF sightings on military installations?   They would not be ignored.   If covered up, why?   If it was treated like some unknown tree frog science would be brought in to investigate.   And we would hear the results.   This has not happened.   One can only presume the results of any investigation are classified.   Why?   

3. A certain percentage of BF reports are remarkable to the point of being unbelievable.   While some may be explainable some are not.   Fading in and out of view.   Footprints just stopping and going nowhere.    Mind speak.    Paralyzed witnesses.   UFO and Orb sightings along with BF activity.   This stuff is paranormal to say the least but not uncommon.    

4.  Several reports exist where humans shot at BF with little or no effect.   Usually no blood is found.   Why no blood?     Deer hunters use blood trails to find kills.   Are BF that are shot hauled off to BF trauma centers and their blood trails removed?   If so why?    We have reports of BF being shot in the 1800's and bodies being examined.    Now bodies, according to reports,  are collected by government agencies.    The same government that denies BF existence.   Why?   What has changed?   Did Smeja really shoot a BF and someone else put a black bear in its place?   He seemed honestly shocked when Sykes told him his sample was black bear.  Was his big mistake being so public?    Why did California not go after him for poaching bear?   

 

As uncomfortable for me as it is, this points to government coverup and classification.   Some big relic hominid would not warrant that.   The only thing that makes sense points to some extra terrestrial connection.   While a dead ape man in the 1800's could just be explained as as just that without scientific examination, an examination might reveal something quite different.  And now a blood trail or body and DNA might show something not of this world.   Cyborg, alien DNA,  robot, or some off world biological entity would be difficult for our government to explain.   Is that what is going on?    I really wonder.  

[MIB]

1 hour ago, SWWASAS said:

Did Smeja really shoot a BF and someone else put a black bear in its place?   He seemed honestly shocked when Sykes told him his sample was black bear.  

 

Not accurate.  

 

You seem to be forgetting the timeline and getting creative with the facts.   Smeja went to Bart Cutino and Tyler Huggins, had the "steak" tested at Trent University, and it came back bear.   It was done in response, according to Justin, to Melba Ketchum asking him to use bleach, etc to destroy the portion of the sample that he'd kept rather than sending the whole thing to her.    He'd said at the time of the sample's recovery that he was not sure what they retrieved was what he shot ... something less than 50/50 probability.   This was announced / discussed in painful detail here on BFF, inteviews, etc well before Sykes was involved.   

 

Smeja's reaction was to there being no testable DNA in the "bloody boots."    Remember that those had been worn considerably after the Sierra shooting including being exposed to salt water. 

 

MIB

[Mendoza]

I would agree that Bigfoot science has stalled.  Part of the reason, I think, is that many Bigfoot researchers with academic credentials have died, and their replacements as leaders in Bigfoot research have been more of the "entertainer" variety.  Reality TV just doesn't produce the same quality research as having a Grover Krantz on the case.

 

More and more data is coming in every day, so I don't agree that it's a lack of funding keeping us from getting new data.  The problem is not the data, but what Bigfoot researchers are (or more accurately, aren't) doing with it.  The data is just not very often or very consistently subjected to the tools of scientific analysis any more.

 

My own personal goal with my research, besides contributing to the resolution of the question of Bigfoot's existence, is to model the kind of scientific rigor I think this field sorely needs.

 

On another note, I think scientific progress in most areas of paranormal research, including cryptozoology, has stalled for at least a decade, for various reasons.

 

Nessie researchers have been largely unable to get away from the plesiosaur hypothesis, and put serious effort into other avenues of investigation.  I think it's likely that the "Nessie" individual itself is now dead.

 

The core source of El Chupacabra reports, if there ever was one, has been almost hopelessly drowned out by reports of ugly canines.

 

Escamilla's "rods" have languished for lack of effort on the part of their primary proponent.  (I'm aware of the explanation that the rods are merely the effect of frame rates on the recording of insects passing in front of the camera, but Escamilla claims this is not the cause behind all rods footage, and claims he can prove it.  But, no effort has been made by him to do so.)

 

Various other cryptids, such as Mothman, etc., have not been seen beyond their initial rash of reports, the data gathered during that time was not sufficient for a conclusion, and these are likely to be intractable problems at this point.

 

Even Ufology has seen no significant progress since the early 2000s.  There has been no wave of UFO sightings comparable to the historical "UFO flaps.". The public and the media seem to have mostly moved on to other brands of conspiracism, as exemplified by the recent retconning of the X-Files mythology to minimize the "interstellar conflict" aspect and focus on more human, geopolitically centered conspiracy theories, reflecting the shape of the paranoias of the day.

[Lake County Bigfooot]

Things do not look good on the science end of this subject, failed efforts are littering the landscape. A younger breed is coming though, fueled by enthusiasm to go and research the hidden places, but all in all we keep running over the same old ground till we found the same old thing...it is sad but true we find ourselves asking these same old questions and throw out the same old explanations. Now in abandonment of science we turn to hypothesis even less likely than a relic hominid that is simply been capable of remaining hidden. The old adage, "the simplest answer is often the best", is now being replaced with an opposite perspective. It is understood that the years will lead one toward frustration, skepticism, and in some cases eventual denial of the former belief. This subject is certainly able to do that to a once enthusiastic proponent of the creatures existence, ask Rene. For the science of this creature to move forward we need to stick to the simplest explanation, and until we can prove that is not the explanation we should not move on to another, but maybe for some of us that has already seemed to happen. I for one have not finished answering the simplest explanation being the truth.

Edited December 29, 2016 by Lake County Bigfooot

[MIB]

Quote

I for one have not finished answering the simplest explanation being the truth.

 

Agreed!

 

We should probably note that the scoftic would say we're omitting the simplest explanation by considering bigfoot to be anything but myth.   In other words, even in agreeing that simplest is first consideration for being correct, there is great disagreement over which of the many explanations is simplest.

 

Patience or stubbornness, whichever it truly is, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing 'til I think it has been given at least a fair chance to succeed by someone truly competent to give it that chance ... me!     Along the way, I may well find some unexpected way to succeed.   I often lean more towards pessimism ("there are 2 kinds of people in this world, optimists and realists" :)) but I simply can't manage pessimism when I'm in the woods.   It's not in me.

 

MIB

 

 

 

 

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Properly trying to match one's understanding of reality with reality is a matter of striving for the most logical explanation, not the "simplest". There's no guarantee that the explanation you go with will be easy for others to understand or that it'll have a certain level of accuracy. 

 

Due to the potential for human error, practicing skepticism and remaining unbiased can be critical to success. Accepting incorrect explanations because there doesn't appear to be anything better is one of the biggest mistakes that people often make in this field of research. 

[jayjeti]

Its good to have healthy skepticism with certain things and certain people, and be less skeptical of things or people you've come to trust.

On 9/26/2016 at 11:56 AM, MIB said:

 

Not accurate.  

 

You seem to be forgetting the timeline and getting creative with the facts.   Smeja went to Bart Cutino and Tyler Huggins, had the "steak" tested at Trent University, and it came back bear.   It was done in response, according to Justin, to Melba Ketchum asking him to use bleach, etc to destroy the portion of the sample that he'd kept rather than sending the whole thing to her.    He'd said at the time of the sample's recovery that he was not sure what they retrieved was what he shot ... something less than 50/50 probability.   This was announced / discussed in painful detail here on BFF, inteviews, etc well before Sykes was involved.   

 

Smeja's reaction was to there being no testable DNA in the "bloody boots."    Remember that those had been worn considerably after the Sierra shooting including being exposed to salt water. 

 

MIB

 

It gets a bit difficult in following all that and the conspiracies around it, like MIBs may have got to Justin with threats of prosecution if it turned up human, which Dr. Ketchum claimed to have found human and novel DNA.  As the conspiracy goes Justin sabotaged it with the bear sample and made up other stuff out of fear of being prosecuted.  Not saying I know that's involved, just relaying it.  Another thing is the bear sample was collected on a return visit well after the incident, and bear hunters in that area dress animals in the field, and that sample has no chain of evidence from the original event.

[SWWASAS]

For all we know Smeja shot another human wearing camo and made up the BF shooting as an excuse.   I do not know what happened to him but something does not ring true about his account of what happened.   I have seen him relate slightly  different accounts of what happened just a few months apart.    Whether that indicates fabrication, cover up, or obfuscation because of guilt,   I don't know.     There are just too many loose ends to give it much credibility to me.    If you take the account at his word, it is a case study on what to do wrong, if you are pro kill.