Some Thoughts On Reliable Eyewitness Testimony

[Guest]

There was a case being discussed on the old forum about an Indian Reservation cop that got chased by one after responding to a prowler call. He had the presence of mind to hang is mike out the window of his patrol car as he drove away with the creature pacing him screaming.

Yep. One of the more chilling encounters I recall of late. A definite change of underwear would have been in order for me. And, I'm not easily frightened.

[Guest]

See, for me, a high-quality case like that, with a LEO witness, official report, a supporting recording on official police equipment, etc should be 100% dispositive proof barring any showing that the police were involved in some sort of hoax. Same with the White Mountain Apache case, again involving LEO witnesses, recovered trace evidence and an official report.

But the "skeptics" still turn their noses up at it...

[Guest]

See, for me, a high-quality case like that, with a LEO witness, official report, a supporting recording on official police equipment, etc should be 100% dispositive proof barring any showing that the police were involved in some sort of hoax. Same with the White Mountain Apache case, again involving LEO witnesses, recovered trace evidence and an official report.

But the "skeptics" still turn their noses up at it...

Not to argue the merits of these reports, but where I live, 80 convictions are being overturned due to a cop lieing on his reports. So LEO aren't perfect.

[Guest UPs]

See, for me, a high-quality case like that, with a LEO witness, official report, a supporting recording on official police equipment, etc should be 100% dispositive proof barring any showing that the police were involved in some sort of hoax. Same with the White Mountain Apache case, again involving LEO witnesses, recovered trace evidence and an official report.

But the "skeptics" still turn their noses up at it...

I agree Mulder. These types of reports should be valued by the true skeptic (as opposed to the pseudo skeptic) as it addresses many of their concerns regarding many other witness sightings. I think these seemingly very credible reports reinforce the reason why we are interested in bf. UPs

[Guest]

Wasn't Matt Whitton a LEO?

[Guest UPs]

If you point is all LEO,s are not infallible, you will get no argument from me. Personally, seasoned outdoors men and LEO,s sighting reports hold more credibility, especially when supported by an in depth investigation. For example, a LEO will go through much more scrutiny if he/she reports a sighting. It is more likely that an investigation into a LEO,s report will uncover inconsistencies and outright lies as what has happened in your 2 references above. I am always willing to accept proof of these from the investigation details and if there is any proof that the Whitehall LEO was lying, hoaxing or mistook the identity of what he saw, please post a link. Absent of that, I consider this report quite credible.

I have asked this in another post but would like to repeat it here. If bf is proven to exist (scientifically), would the skeptics accept any of the prior sighting reports such as above to be true? It is important because it may indicate that some people may be coming to conclusions that are not based on facts. If we use only facts, there are a percentage of reports that simply cannot be discarded. UPs

[Guest]

For everyone who thinks cops are infallable, what was the Georgia boys' occupation?

[Guest]

^No one is claiming that they are. UPs beat me to the more detailed answer. It's not just that they are LEOs, but the cases are documented with good supporting evidence entered into their official records that makes their cases so strong evidentiarily speaking.

[Guest Ambermae]

^You're in luck...it was on the old forum, so I thought it was lost for good but I just found a new source:

http://www.cryptozoology.com/forum/topic_view_thread.php?tid=2&pid=529765

I have a copy of the "scream" that another poster slowed down for analysis somewhere on my hard drive I think.

Thanks for the link, its an interesting story

[Guest]

Okay, it was just some cautionary advice. Though it sounds as though y'all have researched what your talking about so you don't need it. Always try to help.

[Guest]

UP

"I have asked this in another post but would like to repeat it here. If bf is proven to exist (scientifically), would the skeptics accept any of the prior sighting reports such as above to be true? It is important because it may indicate that some people may be coming to conclusions that are not based on facts. If we use only facts, there are a percentage of reports that simply cannot be discarded. UPs"

Sure

Not sure I consider them all true, but it would give them more reason to check out.

Edited September 23, 2010 by wickie

[Guest ajciani]

IMO, polygraph tests are the most reliable thing we have right now, for determining if someone is telling the truth or not.

Actually, a polygraph is the most reliable thing we have right now, for determining if someone THINKS they are telling the truth.

The problem is that some (maybe many) people do fill-in-the-blanks. There is a considerable difference between a brief glimpse and filling in, and a good hard look. Also, the "ability" to unconsciously fill in the blanks varies considerably, just like the "ability" to be hypnotized. It's about 50/50 that a person will either fill in a blank, or tell you they didn't see enough to know, just as it's about 50/50 that a person might be hypnotized.

If a person did fill in a blank, then when pressed for how they know what they filled in, their little delusion usually collapses. For example, if they say the bigfoot had a very human-like nose, you ask, "you were able to make out the nose from 100 feet away in the twilight?" "How long did you look at its face?" What happens is the person realizes they really couldn't see the nose at all, and they only saw the object for a couple seconds. Their "Class A" bigfoot sighting breaks down into a "Class B".

On the converse, when someone comes face to face with a bigfoot, and stares at its face from 20 feet away for 5 seconds in broad daylight before IT moves away, then they probably aren't filling in anything at all, except for their description of the feet, assuming they provided one.

[Guest alex]

Debunker's tend to misuse eyewitnesses are unreliable too much. Sure, they can be unreliable, and they can also be **** good witnesses too, do not underestimate the resourcefulness of the human eye and brain

[Guest]

Just to throw this out there. For what its worth.

A few years ago I was watching a show on tv.

It was some type of crime show. Dont recall the name or the network.

They showed a short clip of a college professor giving a lecture on peoples perception.

Right in the middle of the lecture, he had someone run in the room yelling and then run out.

He then asked the students to describe what had happened.

Basically, some got the details completely wrong. But some got them completely right.

If there has been 1000 sighting reports (yeah I know, theres been alot more) say you throw out 75 percent of them.

What about those 250?

[Guest ajciani]

Yes, the "eye witnesses are unreliable" bit is used far too much.

Let's say that 50% of reports are out right lies, tricks of the mind, or misidentification, then 50% are accurate, and there are bigfoots (or lots of guys in good costumes) running around out there.

Let's say that 75% of reports are bad, then 25% are accurate, and there are bigfoots (or a bunch of guys in good costumes) running around out there.

Let's say that 95% of reports are bad, then 5% are accurate, and there are bigfoots (or some guys in good costumes) running around out there.

Let's say that 99.99% of reports are bad, then 0.01% are accurate, and there are bigfoots (or a few guys in good costumes) running around out there.

So in order to maintain that bigfoots don't exist, the skeptic would require an extremely high fraction of reports to be lies, tricks of the mind, and misidentification; a much higher portion than could be reasonably accounted for by psychology. At that point, one has to ask whether the skeptic might actually be a scoffer.

As for the breakdown of reports, I have no idea how many are complete bull. There have certainly been reports made in timely manners, which people have been able to follow up on, and they have found possible evidence that it was not bull. On the other hand, there are jokers out there who would just love to pull the chains of those crazy bigfooters. I just have no idea how many are bogus, but of the ones investigated and posted on the BFRO site, I should think very few are totally bogus.

The issue of accuracy doesn't necessarily result in a misidentified / correctly identified split. It is rarely all-or-nothing. Usually, it would be a 7 foot tall vs 9 foot tall or female vs male difference, not bear vs BF. The accumulated witness reports might not be reliable enough to determine diet and behavior, but they certainly indicate the presence of a creature.