Where should professional scientists review bigfoot evidence?

[Incorrigible1]

12 minutes ago, DWA said:

If you're only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.  You never learn anything..

Bull caca, Foghorn.

[WSA]

Dmaker, no special dispensation requested or required here. Look around you. Count how many traditional processes have been disrupted by technology. Do you honestly think the traditional peer review process is immune to that?  You want to see a real life example?  Read Lee Berger's book on the discovery of H. naledi. He'll walk you through it. Being a very hidebound and traditional field, this is still in the early stages of evolution, but crowdsourcing scientific conclusions is already happening. I consider the BF Forum to be a nascent exercise in this new way of looking at it.  What I mean to emphasize is that there are Scientists who already are sidestepping the gate-keeper approach to advancing scientific knowledge. Discoveries in some fields get out ahead of the mainstream's  ability to process them in a timely way. Berger's are just one example of that.  I am of the opinion there is no grand conspiracy or failing of "mainstream" science, well, there might be that too, but I also believe the old workflows are failing us, or at least they are not as efficient as what Berger devised. Expect more of that.  

[Guest DWA]

Berger's approach is indeed a clinic.  I could feel wings growing out of my back just reading it.  Archaeopteryx, but still.

 

Murder boards for truth are not science.  FORWARD is science.

[hiflier]

3 minutes ago, DWA said:

FORWARD is science.

 

Good to hear you say that. You claim your a scientist- so then FORWARD. Doubt you'll follow you own advice though.

[dmaker]

29 minutes ago, hiflier said:

I've neer seen anyone so hell bent on stifling progress. Is there something you're not telling us?

Now, you just might be getting somewhere. Any rigorous scientific examination of the evidence will undoubtedly expose the circumstantial and ambiguous nature of that evidence and thus undermine, somewhat, the foundation of the claim itself. 

19 minutes ago, WSA said:

Dmaker, no special dispensation requested or required here. Look around you. Count how many traditional processes have been disrupted by technology. Do you honestly think the traditional peer review process is immune to that?  You want to see a real life example?  Read Lee Berger's book on the discovery of H. naledi. He'll walk you through it. Being a very hidebound and traditional field, this is still in the early stages of evolution, but crowdsourcing scientific conclusions is already happening. I consider the BF Forum to be a nascent exercise in this new way of looking at it.  What I mean to emphasize is that there are Scientists who already are sidestepping the gate-keeper approach to advancing scientific knowledge. Discoveries in some fields get out ahead of the mainstream's  ability to process them in a timely way. Berger's are just one example of that.  I am of the opinion there is no grand conspiracy or failing of "mainstream" science, well, there might be that too, but I also believe the old workflows are failing us, or at least they are not as efficient as what Berger devised. Expect more of that.  

Understood. I don't think the peer review process is immune to anything. I do, however, hear a lot of peer review bashing from proponents with no alternative offering. If not peer review, then where should one show his/her work and have it checked? You are suggesting Internet forums? Book reviews? 

 

Technology could enhance peer review. At the very least, it makes it more accessible to a larger number of peers. But that speaks to telecommunications in general application, not just specifically peer review. I think peer review, at it's core, will remain largely unchanged. The chief complaints I hear with peer review are not about the process, but about the people. And I am sure there is something to that, but that does not mean we circumvent a necessary step and adopt a non-expert, public opinion process instead.  That idea is lunacy and would bring scientific advancement to a sudden stop. 

Edited June 20, 2017 by dmaker

[hiflier]

3 minutes ago, dmaker said:

Now, you just might be getting somewhere. Any rigorous scientific examination of the evidence will undoubtedly expose the circumstantial and ambiguous nature of that evidence and thus undermine, somewhat, the foundation of the claim itself. 

 

Agreed. But again it depends on the type and strength of the evidence and, when presented, whether or not it lines up, and is relevant to a current field of study. The bolded is a point that gets overlooked. Sure, Dr. Meldrum has his foot morphology stuff and a pile of casts but there are things that are far stronger that footprint castings. I'm being ambiguous until everyone finally figures it out. When they do then the road will become clear. Yes, ambiguous is a good word.

[WSA]

Dmaker, agreed. But as far as I can tell, being an outsider to the whole process, is the people ARE the process to hear some tell it.  Gone are the days (thankfully) when some holder of a significant discovery can horde that knowledge for years until they are good and ready to publish. Traditionalists would of course bemoan what they perceive to be a move towards a lack of rigor, and there certainly is some truth to that. What you do gain, I think, is an almost immediate sharing across disciplines. This was Berger's "Ah-Hah!", when he realized he needed experts in multiple fields to look at his evidence before he felt comfortable making any conclusions. 

 

Back to my original point though. Those in the BF field are going to have to devise a better way of making physical evidence accessible to more people. The very nature of the stuff makes that difficult. I'm realizing more and more this might be the field's #1 stumbling block to progress. That, and greed. Not just greed for money, but greed for notoriety, fame and credit. What Berger had going for him is a lack of lust for being "The Man". Put that to the side and a whole universe of possibilities open up. It is a rare quality in any field, but especially in this one.   

[Guest DWA]

...and Berger's the man anyway, a lesson to us all.

 

Ernest Hook talks about "interdisciplinary dissonance," in which what is found in one field creates problems in another.  Maybe Berger was a bit acquainted with that.

 

Going public with findings as policy, rather than grinding through peers, has pitfalls.  Some truly ignorant stuff has been published by bigfoot skeptics over the past decade, to list only one of the most egregious...HEY LOOK AT THAT.  Wonder why numnutz like Greg Long, David Daegling, Joshua Buhs and Michael McLeod didn't have any skeptics trying to drive those piles of tinder to the murder board they badly needed.

 

21st Century.  Fight the new fire the new way.

[hiflier]

21 minutes ago, WSA said:

Those in the BF field are going to have to devise a better way of making physical evidence accessible to more people.

 

That's been done.

 

21 minutes ago, WSA said:

The very nature of the stuff makes that difficult. I'm realizing more and more this might be the field's #1 stumbling block to progress

 

Not necessarily.

 

21 minutes ago, WSA said:

What Berger had going for him is a lack of lust for being "The Man". Put that to the side and a whole universe of possibilities open up. It is a rare quality in any field, but especially in this one.

 

You're getting warmer WSA. We already have one of those rare qualities right under our noses. How soon we forget. I came back this time around because I already KNOW that. Decided to present a plan to move the subject forward. Well, we all know how that went. But what and how that went down has nothing to do with what is. Again I'm being ambiguous because I like presenting an exercise on how people miss the obvious. The game is for everyone to figure this puzzle out. Once accomplished then folks will understand where I've been going on this for this past few weeks. Hopefully when the light goes on the way FORWARD will be clear as glass.

 

44 minutes ago, DWA said:

FORWARD is science.

 

Yep, sounds good

 

39 minutes ago, hiflier said:

Good to hear you say that. You claim your a scientist- so then FORWARD

 

Practicing what you preach is an art form. It also requires guts.

 

12 minutes ago, DWA said:

21st Century.  Fight the new fire the new way.

 

But you're still waiting for someone else to do that.

Edited June 20, 2017 by hiflier

[hiflier]

<Crickets>

[WSA]

Completely clueless as to what you are driving at Hiflier. Please feel free to clue me in if you can. 

[hiflier]

6 minutes ago, WSA said:

Completely clueless as to what you are driving at Hiflier. Please feel free to clue me in if you can. 

 

You are a very smart and intelligent guy, WSA. Knowing that, you can run this down yourself. Oh wait. you can't because you're not a Premium member, too bad. I'm therefore no allowed to direct you. I mean I COULD direct you but you wouldn't be allowed to view anything. In fact I don't think I'm even allowed to say anything about what's there. Not a surprise then that you are clueless and I don't mean that in a disparaging way at all.

 

What I can say though is that there IS a way forward in this subject. A way to get past just opinion posting and really sink one's teeth in. I apologize for being nebulous but I think the back of my mind didn't allow me to be up front right away- it's apparently smarter than I am in that respect. Probably a good thing now that I think about it.

 

DWA is in the same boat and so is clueless. But he doesn't talk to me anyway fortunately.

[WSA]

Thanks....I'll consider it.

[hiflier]

Please do consider it, WSA. This is not a pitch for Premium membership believe me. It is a pitch for the value of what we already have. And more importantly what can be done with it. I take no credit for that value BTW just to be clear. But do, and have, recognize the potential of the data. As far as I'm concerned it's the only thing in the pipe worth a damn. 

[Squatchy McSquatch]

On 6/18/2017 at 8:57 PM, 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?

 

Self-publication is the coziest of niches for those involved.

 

Such publications are obscure enough to exclude proper criticism and cater to the [minority] proponents who espouse them with on the face value of being about Sasquatch.

 

Don Jeffery Meldrum with this RHI; Bill Munns with When Roger Met Patty -- ranked  #497,339 in Amazon Book -- are both examples of individuals who enjoy the adulation of a small audience, while remaining insulated from criticism of the academic and scientific community.

 

It's rather easy to remain uncontested when you pick and choose your audience and revel in obscurity.