Has Bigfoot Science Stalled? (2)

[ShadowBorn]

22 hours ago, dmaker said:

Too often that objective approach is abused by those who want their unproven ideas to appear as credible as any other idea. Often these are ideas lacking in sufficient supporting evidence.  

Dmaker

What are those unproven ideas that you talk about? I would like to know. For myself and many others who have seen theses creatures have way more sufficient support of evidence that they exist.  As far as fossil record of their existence we might not be looking in the right places. There are still places on this world that have not been explored yet. The ocean may exist that fossil evidence that we seek. If at one time the gene pool was contaminated but only certain species were selected to survive what ever out come that came to them. Then some how that species survived what should have been destroyed.

 

But who is willing to travel deep in to areas of North America that have not been explored. So what is hidden remains hidden. I have ideas , but to you they might not be realistic. To you this creature is not realistic at all. I can sit in denial  all I want about these creatures but what good will that do for me. I can also deny the evidence that people bring forth but what good will that do for them since I am in their shoes too. At some point we have to sit back and to grips that there is more to these creatures then we tend to believe.

 

Some times denial is hard to handle. I deny their existence all the time just to be proven wrong. Am I wrong to deny their existence? But this thread is not about denial or their existence . It is about how science has stalled and what should be done to move forward. After all encounters are not a dime a dozen and those who have had them were extremely lucky to have them. ( including myself) I know that science does not work with an open mind . Maybe science needs to make an exception to it's rules to better understand these creatures.

 

I am not trying to be critical but trying to be helpful. Maybe one day we will meet and you may see how sincere I am about my encounters. Yes, I would like to write a book but I won't. Money, notoriety I do not look for at all like I did at one time. None of that means nothing to me. This forum means a lot to me though. Since it gives me a place to share with my other cake eaters. I always look forward to your answers. It keeps me grounded. Thank you

[norseman]

2 hours ago, dmaker said:

I don't understand why you are so eager to suggest extinct creatures may still be around. Why must the question become "..are they still around"? There is really no decent evidence to support the notion that they are still around, so why do you insist that there is a question at all? I see no real reason to be asking it. 

 

I understand YOUR sentiment, because you have never experienced something odd yourself. But Sometimes I think the empathy switch has been turned off in your brain, because you seem either incapable or unwilling to consider standing in someone else's shoes?

 

And it's all about time frame. I don't think too many people are looking for a extant T Rex.....the KT boundary is 65 million years old. But what about the Hobbit? How can you say definitively that the fossils they found are extinct, when they are only thousands of years old vs millions?

 

Look at the coelacanth....extinct right? Maybe we should be looking for T. rex

[dmaker]

Norse and Shadow, you both speak of  personal experiences. But personal experiences are not evidence. Nor are they a guarantee to a common reaction. One persons inexplicable and odd event may be another persons interesting, or even possibly mundane, event. Human perception is not a single spectrum. It is highly personal and subjective. It is shaped by things like individual life experiences and bias, faulty memories, and, in some cases, agendas. Without supporting evidence a story cannot be examined or investigated for truth or accuracy. This is why anecdotes are the least useful type of evidence, at least insofar as a scientific investigation or examination is concerned. 

 

Examples of animals once thought to be extinct do not really improve the case for bigfoot. If anything, they lessen it in my opinion. We can discover a species of fish once thought to be extinct, but we cannot produce on single shred of scientifically verifiable evidence for a giant ape spread out across all of North America and supposedly seen by thousands of people? That does not compute. Adding thousands and thousands more anecdotes will not make any difference whatsoever. 

Edited May 6, 2017 by dmaker

[norseman]

Trace evidence is indeed a form of "evidence". Trackways are evidence, photos and film are forms of evidence. Not proof mind you but evidence.... Which is why I keep an open mind from the evidence I saw. Is that so hard to understand?

 

Ive already addressed your second paragraph numerous times. But the bottom line is, is that the scientific community had deemed something extinct until decades later some uneducated fishermen with a net proved them very very wrong.

 

You may not understand it, but it's hope for us.

 

Dmaker I cannot help but notice that you come back time and time again, as if you are somehow begging us to convince you Bigfoot is real. This forum is not the place for it, if you truly seek to examine the evidence first hand you have to get out there and find it.

 

Years and years of you typing on this forum could be shattered in an instant in the bush.

 

Besides, this field needs skeptical analytical minds like yours anyhow.

 

 

[dmaker]

37 minutes ago, norseman said:

 

Trace evidence is indeed a form of "evidence". Trackways are evidence, photos and film are forms of evidence

 

Indeed, but evidence of what? That is the question. Time, and the absence of more concrete evidence where there should be an abundance, seems to indicate that those types of evidence you proffer are evidence of, not a bigfoot, but more likely to be evidence of mistakes and fabrication. The more time passes, and the witness reports and the "trace" evidence you mention, pile up, the less likely bigfoot becomes. For me, that tipping point was met a very long time ago. For you, not so much. Such is your prerogative. 

 

I should get out there and mistakenly interpret common events as evidence of bigfoot? Again, you seem to assume a shared perception. I may not see something the same way that you do.

 

Please tell me how more ambiguous evidence piled on is going to help anything? I cannot examine an anecdote first hand, no one can. Please tell me you understand that, at least. Me, or anyone, continuing to confuse common signs as evidence of bigfoot is going to, likewise, contribute nothing to the discussion. And again, you continue to assume that what you perceive to be evidence of bigfoot, means that I, or anyone else, would so so as well. That is likely not going to be the case. 

 

Years and years of me typing on this forum is going to accomplish exactly the same things you spending years and years typing on this forum. To whit, nothing at all.  So, why do I do it? Why do you do it? For me, it's an interesting way to employ critical thinking skills into a live discussion. And if, at the end of it, bigfoot proves to be real? Awesome! That would be a win for both parties, as far as I am concerned. I doubt very much, however, there will ever be an end to it. This discussion will go on with the same back and forth forever probably. That does not mean there is nothing to be learned from it, or nothing to be gained by participating. Such is my opinion.

 

 

Edited May 6, 2017 by dmaker

[SWWASAS]

Which person is relying more on a belief system?     A previously skeptical witness that has had a close visual sighting of BF and knows they exist or a skeptic scientist who declares them not there because science does not accept them for lack of proof.     One is relying on personal observation and the other is spouting scientific dogma of "mistakes and fabrication" to justify their beliefs.          Which is science and which is dogma?    

[dmaker]

The point I have been trying to make, SWWASA, is what good is your "personal observation" to me? I can't share it. I cannot know if it is true or accurate. Until some evidence is offered that is not merely anecdotal, or is something that really can only have one explanation, I am going to consider bigfoot a myth. How is that dogmatic? 

Edited May 6, 2017 by dmaker

[SWWASAS]

My personal observation is indeed no good to you.   However someone that considers something a myth is hardly going to spend any time looking at evidence or time in the field.       That attitude pervades the scientific community with respect to BF.    I hope I am still alive when someone does get that body on a lab table.      The excuses from the scientific community as to why they did not look into it before will be a joy to read.     "Why didn't anyone tell us?" will probably be common.      Most will not admit their prejudice.   Or perhaps they will blame each other for ignoring the signs.    Meldrum and Bindernagel will just sit and laugh at their colleagues.    Anyway you younger people in the forum at least can enjoy the event when it happens.    It will happen.   

[dmaker]

SWWASA, you have mentioned that you have regular contact with a group of sasquatches. Now, if anyone is in a favorable position to collect evidence, it is you. Yet all you have to share is your "personal observations". That strikes me as pretty odd. Here you are virtually sitting on the scientific find of the century, one that you state you wish would happen in your lifetime for all the crow eating reasons, and yet you are incapable of collecting any evidence? At least, beyond your personal observations?

 

Forgive me if I question your ardour when it comes to "looking at the evidence". If you have nothing to offer, what is one to look at? You love to bemoan skeptics for not looking at the evidence, yet here you are, surrounded by sasquatches, and all you have to offer is stories? I don't think it's my commitment that needs examining. 

 

[SWWASAS]

That frequent contact ended over three years ago now when the last of their habitat was clear cut and that group of BF left.        I cannot gather evidence from BF that are not present.    Funny how that works.     If I fabricated anything the evidence and encounters would still be happening.   They are not.      I have posted several footprint pictures and infra sound graphics over the years and have been told by the enlightened and all knowing skeptics that they must have been hoaxed because since BF does not exist, they cannot leave footprints or make sounds.     I have not been able to get a BF to surrender it's body for the lab table or give me tissue or blood samples.   They seem to have other ideas.     And as far as anecdotal information, it makes no difference to you that the government of the United States used to trust me to command an aircraft loaded with hydrogen bombs.    People with that level of security clearance are not delusional and you can normally believe what they say.     But that is not evidence.        You know full well if I had proof that would hold up to science,   I would have presented a paper that you probably would not believe either.      But at least I do field work looking for that proof.     Do you?   

[Guest DWA]

I'd just ignore dmaker, as I long since stopped taking seriously anyone posting here who can't be bothered to do the faintest bit of research.  The total ignorance by alleged skeptics of the most compelling body of evidence existing for anything science has not proven - far more evidence of more kinds and a more compelling nature, by a lot, than there is for many things we accept - is profoundly unscientific, profoundly UN-skeptical, and amounts to irrational denial, combined with childlike acceptance, a combination deadly to the intellect..

 

 

[dmaker]

Your problem is two fold:

 

1) You refuse to acknowledge that "bigfoot exists" is not the only conclusion possible given the current state of evidence. It does not matter that I have spent plenty of time in allegedly squatchy areas from north Vancouver island camping in a remote area accessible only by a 5 hour boat ride from Campbell River, to the Desolation Wilderness in the Sierras, and a childhood and adulthood spent in Ontario during which I have spent much time in the outdoors including some remote portaging trips in the interior of Algonquin Park. Nevermind the fact that I have read the same "scientific" examinations of bigfoot ( Meldrum, Bindernagel, etc) as you have read. I have seen countless documentaries and read a similar amount of bigfoot stories--I believe you call them reports. You know all of this, have been told this by me many times. That you persist in spouting this lie that I have never examined any evidence questions your integrity as it relates to this discussion. 

 

Also, we all saw how discerning your eye is when it comes to evidence a couple of Aprils ago. Remember that? Does Rugman ring a bell?

 

2) You vastly exaggerate the value of anecdotal evidence. You think that if you constantly wave your hands and say where there is smoke, there must be fire, that people will begin to ignore the lack of fire, or worse, will believe that they can see some flames. 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by dmaker

[Guest DWA]

On ‎5‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 9:44 PM, norseman said:

Trace evidence is indeed a form of "evidence". Trackways are evidence, photos and film are forms of evidence. Not proof mind you but evidence.... Which is why I keep an open mind from the evidence I saw. Is that so hard to understand?

Shouldn't be.  That evidence satisfies every scientific need...except convincing the ignorant.  Which is anyone unfamiliar with the breadth and depth of the evidence, and demonstrably uninterested in pursuing it.  And yet insisting on coming here over and over and over, showing us that, nope, the stonewall is strong with this one.

 

Ive already addressed your second paragraph numerous times. But the bottom line is, is that the scientific community had deemed something extinct until decades later some uneducated fishermen with a net proved them very very wrong.

Any pronouncement of extinction is, at best, an educated guess. As that example shows, and it is far from the only one.

 

You may not understand it, but it's hope for us.

More than hope for some of us.  There is no way that anything has ever happened, in any period of our species' occupancy of this planet, anything like what would *have to be true* for all the evidence for these animals to be false positive.  No way.  Nothing even remotely close to remotely distant.  Everything for which this pattern and volume of evidence exists is real and so confirmed, except for this.  And every 'explanation' why this is the exception clearly shows ignorance and denial and inability to do the most basic homework.

 

Besides, this field needs skeptical analytical minds like yours anyhow.

Not sure we need "I'm back!  And I am picking up *right* where I left off in terms of knowledge."  Zero homework = zero analytical.

 

The only skeptics in this field are the scientific proponents, who relentlessly question assumptions backed by zero evidence.  That is skepticism.

 

 

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[ShadowBorn]

2 hours ago, dmaker said:

You think that if you constantly wave your hands and say where there is smoke, there must be fire, that people will begin to ignore the lack of fire, or worse, will believe that they can see some flames. 

Dmaker

Smoke does not mean fire at all ! but means that there is amber burning. This means that there is hope that there is a living entity roaming our wilderness.

an·ec·do·tal

ˌanəkˈdōdl/

adjective

adjective: anecdotal

(of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research.

 

Some of us have done the research and have found for ourselves the facts of what it is that is out there. What you have done is placed your self in a single place and called it a fact that they do not exist. This is not research. Now getting to an area where a freshly reported encounter and being there to intercept the encounter your self . Well this would better your chances of knowing the truth of what is out there. It would no longer be anecdotal to you but a fact. You my friend would no longer be sitting in the skeptical chair.  

[Guest DWA]

Personally I'd expect them to see the smoke, and then follow the smoke.  But they're like the fire department that goes, I heard there's smoke.  Hey, whose deal is it?