Shortcoming of The Scientific Community

[norseman]

Nice first post! Plussed and welcome!

[Guest DWA]

Glad you're on here, Cricket, and I look forward to unrestricted posting from you.

 

A lot to read there, for sure.  I will get around to it, but as one who has been pretty caustic about the mainstream here, I should get specific what I am caustic about.  In my opinion, when confronted with something for which he has not examined the evidence, the true scientist is pretty much limited to these legitimate responses:

 

1) Interesting.  What is your evidence?

2) I wish the searchers luck and await the results.

3) AFTER PERUSAL OF PROFFERED EVIDENCE:
       - I am inclined to agree>>>>I am convinced [a spectrum there, depending on breadth and depth of evidence and examination]
       - Intriguing.  Good luck and I look forward to further information.

       - Interesting.  I am not sure that this would sway anyone, however. My issues can be summed up as follows [and this should be based upon evidence, not assumptions like "we'd
         have bones/a specimen by now"]

 

A scientist shouldn't deny the existence of something or say that it "probably" doesn't exist. This is the heart of the issue about 'proving a negative;' as one cannot prove that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, it doesn't really make sense to assert something that one has no way of backing up.  If you told me unicorns were real and you'd seen one, I'd tell you first, that one report is just that, and can be other than what it appears for any number of reasons; second, that you should find a unicorn database and put your experience up there, and third, if the database doesn't exist, that you are going to have to garner better evidence than a story to convince anyone, including me.  But "unicorns aren't real" is not something anyone can even back up, much less prove.  Same with ghosts; alien abductions; or any paranormal topic, among the most obvious other things. 

 

I've seen scientists apply a percentage, don't think I've seen more than 5 to 10 percent, to the probability of sasquatch.  Well, first, if you put up a number you have to say where it came from, and second, it either exists or it doesn't, so I am not even sure the assigned number makes sense.  I've seen scientists deny the animal's existence for numerous reasons, none of which would scan should I apply them to subjects of that scientist's own expertise. (There is, or was until recently, no fossil evidence for your critter; there are no records of your critter ever getting hit by a vehicle; etc.)  In short, when I see a scientist pronounce negatively on sasquatch he doesn't use science to get there.  I like to say that if you tell me it isn't real you will make four fatal errors, from a scientific standpoint, in the first 30 seconds of your explanation, if of course you offer one.

 

It is also of course demonstrably true that many mainstreamers hold out the possibility and comment intelligently on the subject, with George Schaller and Jane Goodall the most prominent current examples. It is also worth noting that a number of sasquatch proponents are indisputably "mainstream."  They just differ with peers on this.
 

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Cricket, I agree that there are a lot of great criticisms coming from the scientific community towards the main hypothesis put forward by so many proponents. The idea of there being a large undiscovered species of primate in North America can be seen as being incredibly flawed when put under careful and unbiased assessment, as it is at odds with much of the information we have on the evolution of primates, the Earth's environments, and aspects of the phenomenon itself. 

 

[Guest DWA]

I guess my problem with this is using "the information we have" as ammunition against a primate that really doesn't disturb or contradict that information.

 

Sasquatch (as Cricket points out) doesn't really muss the hair of primate evolution, provided that it's not an extremely close relative of humans, closer by far than any living ape.  For one thing, it is presumed that if we have a fossil primate, we don't have anything like it now (mainly because, for fossils so far found, that is significantly the case).  Well, sasquatch could contradict that assumption by simply drawing an 'extinct' primate line into the present, something that might be mind-boggling from a how'd-we-miss-that standpoint, but doesn't do much to our understanding of primate history at all. Even were it found to be very closely related to us, co-migration over the Bering land bridge doesn't seem to upset the textbooks that much, other than that they didn't include something they would have to now. If for some reason the suspicion arises that sasquatch *evolved* in North America, I think that's where the big potential for disrupting our understanding would lie.  But even that would probably point to how truly little fossil information we have, and how much more complex the story is than the information available.**  I see a big problem in anthropology that there's this tendency to go all-caps with STORY REWRITTEN and SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS when really neither of those things would ever happen, or even be possible, were it not for the all-too-human tendency to rewrite the already-written story ourselves with each new find.

 

Not sure what you mean by "the Earth's environments," although for sure the intense geological activity of North America, particularly the more recent activity in its western half, makes primate fossilization a dodgy proposition and could conceivably be significantly obscuring the primate record. (Including that of modern humans' colonization of the continent.)

 

As to "aspects of the phenomenon itself," I have no problem accepting the animal based on evidence while rejecting things like paranormal explanations, dimensional shifting, humans-only-smarter and many other activities of the fringe, and I don't think any scientist should have any more problem than I do with that.  Although whatever clarification you can offer is welcome.

 

 

**I tend to think that we have no idea how incredibly complex the book of primate evolution has been, partly because rather than having the whole book available, we are building the index, at random. And that is all we can read.

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2017 by DWA

[scottv]

Norseman, agreed, bigfoot should have high caloric intake which should necessitate large home ranges or large daily movements. Just pointing out that the lack of trail cam data says otherwise. One of the many contradictions with bigfoot.

[Guest DWA]

Lack of trailcam data is the "I have never seen one" argument.  It doesn't really mean anything.

 

Grover Krantz once said that if no sightings had ever happened, the tracks alone would be sufficient to prove sasquatch.  He is, of course, right; nobody could construct (and look, nobody has) an alternative thesis for all those tracks that could make sense.  No, "SuperTrackStomper" doesn't make sense unless you can produce one; logic dictates that a person could not produce most of the trackways found without technology not a trace of which has ever surfaced. But you'd have to read up a bit on this to understand why.

 

There could be any number of reasons the public doesn't have trailcam photos.  Here's one:  a number of people have stuff they aren't sharing.  See how easy that was.

 

Trailcams mean nothing until something they take goes public or otherwise leads to confirmation.  Period.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2017 by DWA

[dmaker]

16 minutes ago, DWA said:

logic dictates that a person could not produce most of the trackways found without technology

Yeah, it takes a lot of tech to create a wooden foot.

 

16 minutes ago, DWA said:

a number of people have stuff they aren't sharing.

That is quite assumptive, Mr. Never Assume.

 

You are a walking pile of logical fallacies and contradictions. 

18 minutes ago, DWA said:

See how easy that was.

Making stuff up and never needing to support it is quite easy, I'm sure.

[Rockape]

6 minutes ago, dmaker said:

24 minutes ago, DWA said:

a number of people have stuff they aren't sharing.

That is quite assumptive, Mr. Never Assume.

 

I've had people share things with me that they don't share publicly, so it's not uncommon. Many are reluctant to be subject to ridicule.

[dmaker]

And how impressive was that stuff, Rock? I get the impression most of it still does not rise above blobsquatch level. I'm glad I don't have friends showing me pictures of shrubbery and asking me if I see the bigfoots in them.

 

[Rockape]

Some pretty impressive, most "meh", but none proof.

[hiflier]

4 minutes ago, dmaker said:

And how impressive was that stuff, Rock?

 

So you want other folks to find the proof and then give to you. And if they don't you cajole them? Some things never change.

 

7 minutes ago, dmaker said:

I'm glad I don't have friends showing me pictures of shrubbery and asking me if I see the bigfoots in them.

 

 

And for good measure why not dump on Rockape's friends too. Rockape, you're being pretty gracious about it so kudos to you. Don't think it will change any habitual demeanors though.

[Rockape]

1 minute ago, hiflier said:

And for good measure why not dump on Rockape's friends too.

 

Because he knows what he'll get from me.

 

Quote

 Rockape, you're being pretty gracious about it so kudos to you. Don't think it will change any habitual demeanors though.

 

Don't care if I change anyone's demeanor. Dmaker has a right to his. I have no problem with it.

[hiflier]

OK.

[7.62]

28 minutes ago, Rockape said:

 

I've had people share things with me that they don't share publicly, so it's not uncommon. Many are reluctant to be subject to ridicule.

Yup

 

Same here

[Rockape]

While we are on this subject, this is the reason the researcher area was created here on the BFF.  It gives researchers an area to share and discuss their work and also allows them to control who views it and who is allowed in their section. I wish more took advantage of it.