Where should professional scientists review bigfoot evidence?

[MIB]

31 minutes ago, dmaker said:

My question is, why does that scientist choose to write a book rather than a scientific paper submitted for peer review?

 

My answers would be as speculative as your pejorative insinuations are.    If you really cared to know, you could ask them.  

 

MIB

[dmaker]

And if you really cared to know, you would ask them rather than hold on to your speculative and pejorative taboo explanation. 

 

 

In the absence of any such queries or answers, I am inclined to believe it is due to a lack of real evidence, rather than an undocumented bias held by the entire scientific community.  We know, after all, that the scientists in question are no strangers to peer review and have participated many times in the past. And we also know that at least one bigfoot paper was submitted to Nature and accepted for review. 

 

You are free, of course, to believe the world is out to get bigfoot research. 

Edited June 19, 2017 by dmaker

[MIB]

dmaker -

 

Where scientists should look was YOUR question, not mine.   I gave you the answer about where they should look.   Take it or leave it.

 

MIB

[Guest Sasdave]

This creature has been around for a while. With all the sittings etc, there are many who still don't believe. So why is there a problem when a bunch of so called scientist don't believe. People tend to not believe ; because of the fear inside themselves and scientist if you can call them that are no different . The ground burrowers ARE alive and WELL.

[WSA]

"Offered where? What you propose already exists--it's called peer review."  

 

The problem as I see it, as I stated above, is one of equal access to forensic evidence.  Without solving that, science will continue to spin its wheels.

[dmaker]

The tracks are quite accessible. Or at least, plaster replicas are. Hairs should be quite accessible once sent to a lab. Ditto for saliva, feces, etc. Sound recordings are simple enough to share. 

 

Not sure, other than maybe stick structures (which are easily photographed in great detail up close) where there is a physical access to evidence issue at all, really.

Edited June 19, 2017 by dmaker

[Guest DWA]

1 hour ago, MIB said:

 

My answers [public book vs. peer review - DWA] would be as speculative as your pejorative insinuations are.    If you really cared to know, you could ask them.  

 

MIB

I can answer that question, though:  the scientist is *smart.*

 

I'd do it too.  When I know that peer review is a loser right off the bat, I get things started in the court of public opinion.

 

That is true open science.  Even though most of the public's grasp of science is loose at best, a majority of the public believes this animal to be real.  Many people have seen one that haven't come forward (no, that is simple logic).  Meldrum's book gets *much* better reviews - and surprisingly, to me, astute ones - on Amazon than that paper would get from a bunch of proven professional numskulls-when-it-suits-them. 

 

The internet has the potential to make science truly open.  Public opinion *should* count; after all, the public pays for scientists.  And the public learning more about how science is conducted would have to be better for the society at large.  It's really time for the cutting edge to recognize that end runs around one's peers may be the way to go now.  When you know you're right and they aren't...why the hell not?

[dmaker]

24 minutes ago, DWA said:

I'd do it too.  When I know that peer review is a loser right off the bat, I get things started in the court of public opinion

Yet all your bigfoot heroes use peer review for everything but their bigfoot work. They do not seem to be a stranger to, nor an enemy of, the peer review process. 

24 minutes ago, DWA said:

a majority of the public believes this animal to be real

Say what? Since when? The number usually shown in polls varies between 15 - 30% usually. That is hardly a majority. Do you just make stuff up as you go along?

 

24 minutes ago, DWA said:

I'd do it too. 

You are about the most credulous person I have ever met. What you would do in any given situation is hardly a road sign to success. 

 

24 minutes ago, DWA said:

Public opinion *should* count; after all, the public pays for scientists

Absolutely not. Public opinion has nothing at all to do with scientific fact or scientific discovery.  There are plenty of private sector scientists as well. This has got to be the single most daft thing you have ever said.

 

 Holy crap.

 

Seriously.

 

Wow.

 

Edited June 19, 2017 by dmaker

[JDL]

There's no one-stop shop.   

 

The first thing a sincere scientific effort will have to do is identify sources of information and of evidence.  

 

The second is to identify any biases associated with each source.  For example, does any group that collects reports discard those that do not agree with its own perception, such as those revealing Bigfoot aggression.  Also, the influence of anticipated profit on the source has to be considered as a bias.  Expectation of profit by a group may also determine which reports they put forward and which they do not.  

 

Third, the likelihood of hoaxed and mistaken information needs to be determined.   The sincere investigation will need to develop an objective protocol to evaluate each source and each item.  

 

Fourth, the statistical consistency of the information collected needs to be evaluated and cross-referenced.  

 

The goal is to separate the baby from the bath water.  

 

I'll also point out that the one hoax that has most damaged sincere scientific investigation of Bigfoot was not Bigfoot related.   It was Piltdown Man.  This had a dramatic impact on the scientific community.    

[WSA]

Dmaker, as I stated, for all the reasons I stated in support of it, I don't believe the nature of the evidence lends itself to ease of sharing.  Most reproducible tests in science are either of things readily observed by anyone with the right tools (i.e., a telescope, a microscope, a particle accelerator, etc.) or concern an object readily obtainable (a cadaver, a mineral, a tree, an ecosystem...etc.).  Here, not so much.

 

I do think the plaster casts are one of the more accessible things on my list, viewable with permission of the owner and some money for travel expenses....although the original track way is far more valuable to a scientist, and tracks are ephemeral things.  You can of course make a cast-of-a-cast as well, and FedEx would be glad to oblige.

 

Dr. Meldrum has an extensive collection of those, some of which are known hoaxes, but as far as I know, nobody with his level of credentials has rebutted his conclusions about others.  His casts might be a prime candidate for publication and peer review. I have read at least one monograph by him on the subject, but I'm not able to say if this was submitted for publication, or just self-published.  His thesis, accept it or not, is that track casts can serve as objective proof of the anatomical characteristics of the animal that made it. I would just say if anybody should know that, he would. I've never read any serious challenges to his qualifications as an expert on primate locomotion, and I'd presume he wouldn't have the position he holds if it were otherwise. 

[dmaker]

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

nobody with his level of credentials has rebutted his conclusions about others.

This is what I am talking about. This type of claim made constantly by you and DWA, and others. Where is one supposed to rebut his conclusions? They are not presented in the accepted scientific channel--peer review. You cannot hold up a lack of rebuttal to something as somehow a strength, when that something has never been presented to the proper channel for rebuttal in the first place.  You are claiming a victory in a game you never played.

 

That is precisely my point. 

Edited June 19, 2017 by dmaker

[FarArcher]

18 hours ago, dmaker said:

I hear quite often from proponents that the evidence for bigfoot goes unaddressed, or uncontested, etc, by mainstream science. I find this a bit puzzling as there are no bigfoot papers in respected peer reviewed journals. So, where then, should bigfoot claims be addressed, if they are not presented to mainstream science in the first place? There are plenty of books by scientific proponents such as Meldrum and Bindernagle. But there are no peer reviewed papers. There are also well meaning books by proponents who are not professional scientists, such as Bill Munns. There are also many presentations done at many bigfoot conventions across the land. 

 

But where is mainstream science supposed to contest, or address, bigfoot evidence if it is not presented in the currently accepted method? And, also, as a secondary question, why do people suppose that the scientific proponents have zero history of publishing peer reviewed bigfoot articles? 

 

I ask this question from time to time in various threads, and the proponents usually just choose not to answer it, and then a few threads later proclaim how the evidence stands as long as it remains uncontested.  So, where, exactly, should it be contested when it has never been properly presented?

 

Maybe there are published papers.

 

But they may be under a different heading.  Like Neanderthals, or Erectus.  Just because some folks say these things are extinct - like the same folks said the Coelecanth went extinct - are just mistaken.

 

Like the fun made of little people like Leprechauns, but then find the real-life Hobbit.  Maybe the Hobbit group was more widespread than that one island, and maybe the others didn't go extinct, either.

 

Just because one hasn't had a recent body - it's a stretch as not - that they no longer exist.  Maybe they just hide better now.

[dmaker]

Let me see if I got this right. A paper describing an extinct species may actually be a bigfoot paper because bigfoot might be that extinct species, extant?  

 

er...

[Guest DWA]

20 minutes ago, JDL said:

  I'll also point out that the one hoax that has most damaged sincere scientific investigation of Bigfoot was not Bigfoot related.   It was Piltdown Man.  This had a dramatic impact on the scientific community.    

 

It should be pointed out though that Piltdown was debunked pretty much as soon as the science was available to do so.  That was a hoax that long predated the ability to sniff it out, crude as it was.

21 minutes ago, WSA said:

I've never read any serious challenges to his qualifications as an expert on primate locomotion, and I'd presume he wouldn't have the position he holds if it were otherwise. 

One of the simplest deductions one might think it possible for a scientist to make is credentials + research in wheelhouse = credibility.  Um, guess not.

[Guest DWA]

21 minutes ago, DWA said:

 

It should be pointed out though that Piltdown was debunked pretty much as soon as the science was available to do so.  That was a hoax that long predated the ability to sniff it out, crude as it was.

 

I should note here that this isn't what bigfoot skeptics might think: a loophole for PGF.  Piltdown was tossing together in a pseudo-sophisticated fashion a mishmash of artifacts, a feat well within the reach of a sophisticated hoaxer.  PGF would have to have been done with technology conclusively demonstrated not to exist at the time.  (It should have been debunked, were it a fake, in 1968, because all tools available to do it were on hand.)

 

Edited June 19, 2017 by DWA