10 Reasons Why Bigfoot's A Bust

[BobZenor]

#2

Bigfoot believers argue that the soil in areas where the creatures live -- such as the region surrounding Bellingham, Wash., seen here -- is acidic and quickly breaks down the bones. Nonsense, says Radford: "There's nothing to that, because Bigfoot has been reported in every state but Hawaii."

That might sound like special pleading that only applies to bigfoot but it happens to be true if the animal lives in certain environments. If you die in thick vegetation or certain soils your bones aren't going to last. That is apparently why chimp and gorilla fossils are so rare. Their bones didn't last.

The part about bigfoot living everywhere is a straw man argument. It is about the same as saying that there are frauds so that proves bigfoot can't exist. It is not a logical argument.

#3

For that population to be big enough to account for even a fraction of the sightings, there would need to be tens of thousands of the creatures in North America alone.

That is nonsense. North America alone? Again he doesn't seem to get the concept that all of the sightings don't have to be real for it to be a real creature. It seems like a serious logical fallacy for someone claiming to be scientific. He is talking about species size needed to maintain a population so he seems to be implying that tens of thousands are needed for a viable population. That is just complete nonsense. He must have read something about passenger pigeons needing large flocks to breed and got confused. A few hundred is certainly a viable population which isn't a requirement for them existing if they happen to be less than viable. There were supposedly only a few hundred that left Africa and started all the non African populations of modern humans. They certainly have an out there if they can breed with modern humans. No matter how you look at it, it isn't much of an argument against the creature existing.

[BobZenor]

#7

Consider this league of biologists scouting for the elusive ivory-billed woodbecker in Arkansas' White River National Wildlife Refuge, an area where Bigfoot sightings have been made.

...

They didn't find Bigfoot.

If one of those biologists had a sighting, it would be just one of thousands and that is assuming they actually reported it. Are biologists supposed to be some special class that hasn't seen bigfoot. I seriously doubt that. If they saw one with their binoculars, it would just mean that they were hoaxed or confused or it was just anecdotal. So the logic seems to be that few people see them and no biologists so they don't exist. That is wild speculation and assumptions there. He apparently feels safe in his circular reasoning.

[Guest RedRatSnake]

I agree that was a pretty high number, i thought it was kinda around 3000 as a minimum according to most of the old school BF researches, the article is obviously written as a put down.

Tim

[BobbyO]

10 Reasons Bigfoots a Bust

Good one Sarah..

Sarah done really well to manage to use " Bellingham, WA " twice in the article, it shows that she's aware of " wild places ", clearly i guess..

Benjamin Radford should stick to investigating Witches, UFO's & the effects of watching Pokemon.

[Guest ajciani]

So Benjamin Radford blabs his mouth off again, demonstrating his ignorance about a great many scientific fields and the scientific method in general. You would think that an editor of the Skeptical Inquirer would at least keep himself reasonably up-to-date on the topics he dismisses, but low, he brings up the same 10 tired bits of defective reasoning, yet again. Of course, Radford is not a scientist; he is a film critic and writer.

The lack of scientific credentials and experienced researchers among its writers has been Skeptical Inquirer's greatest problem. Even on some of the topics I think are utter bunk, I have found sufficient deficiencies and fallacies among the Skeptical Inquirer's arguments, that I have long since dismissed the publication. It may be skeptical, but it is certainly not inquiring.

I shall pick the article apart, point-by-point.

1. The empty fossil record: Fossils are bones, and bones do not provide the entire morphology of an animal. We cannot tell from bones, when humans lost their coat of body hair, for example. Fossils are bones that are preserved, and then unearthed, both of which take a mix of environment and time. Given that we do not even know what a bigfoot is, or where and when it existed, we cannot state that it does not appear in the fossil record. Bigfoots could be G. blacki, in which case they do exist in the fossil record, spanning several million years, up to a few hundred thousand years ago, but there might still be fresh bones of this animal, waiting for erosion to wash them out of sediments in another million years. Bigfoots could be gigantic, hairy humans, with a bunch of inbred defects (like double rows of teeth), and for those, there certainly are bones, but not fossils (maybe bigfoots are too recent for fossils). Gigantism itself might be recent. The Maine **** breed of cat doubled its mass in only a hundred years, and morphological defects can spread like wildfire through a small, closed population. That IS how evolution happens, BTW, rapidly.
   
2. Where are the bodies: Rotting away in the woods, where else would they be? Assuming 5000 adult bigfoot in CONUS, and an adult lifespan of about 20 years, that's 250 dying every year. Given the length of time it takes a naked body to vanish (about a month), you would only need to thoroughly search about 15,200 square miles of deep woods in a month, to have a 1:12 chance of finding the rotting flesh or bones. Considering the very, very small number of people who are thoroughly searching any woods, well, tough chance. This assumes that bigfoots don't dispose of their dead in some way, in which case, I think you would have better chances going to Vegas, plopping your card counting device on top of the blackjack table, winning $100,000, and NOT being escorted into the back room, let alone being allowed to play.
   
3. Where do bigfoot babies come from: Yes, Radford asked it. Need I say more? Oh wait, he was trying to say that a breeding population would need to be large, and there is no way that a bigfoot family could hide in 1,000 square miles... well, that really isn't any better.
   
4. Your lying eyes: Obviously, people confuse bears and deer all the time, so when they see a giant, hairy, human-shaped animal with an ape-man face, staring in the living room window, it was clearly a gazelle. Mistaken scale is a rather common event, but only when the observer lacks a point of reference. The fact that a bigfoot has to duck under the eve of a house is a rather difficult thing to misjudge. Mistaken identity is even rarer, as it relies on only catching a brief glimpse, or an obscured view, with the mind filling in the missing info. A bigfoot standing 50 feet away, in the open, for 30 seconds, is neither brief or obscured. The only explanations are a very clear sighting, or an outright lie.
   
5. Blobsquatches: suck. Wish I could say more, but at least they do exist. That is, I would fully expect a bunch of bad photographs, taken in haste, of an animal that typically flees as soon as it is seen. I can recall at least 5 separate incidents where I totally missed photographing something very neat, with the camera on my hip, and a few times with it in my hand (focus took too long). Blobsquatches are quite normal and expected, until bigfoots decide to not care enough, to let us get a good photo, or get taken completely by surprise.
   
6. No published, peer-reviewed articles: Contrary to what Bradford might think, not everything gets to go through the process of peer review. This is usually reserved for when a scientist decides that he has something conclusive enough to publish, which is worth publishing, and he wants to publish. Contrary to what Bradford has said, there are some peer reviewed articles concerning bigfoot, although they are not in particularly renowned publications. There are books and such, but most evidence has been reserved in private collections and presented at conferences. There have been expeditions, of scientists, that have searched for bigfoot evidence, and most of those expeditions have turned up enough to justify additional expeditions. The biggest problem is that there is no one piece of evidence which is absolutely conclusive. For some strange reason, almost every piece of bigfoot evidence out there could have come from a giant, hairy human, which makes things difficult in calling it definitive.
   
7. The ivory billed woodpecker: The coelacanth! There, I countered an animal which someone thought they saw, and then people couldn't find again, with an animal science was sure didn't exist, until it was fished up.
   
8. The katydid (and other new animals): Actually, the last large mammal to have been discovered was probably the Bili Ape. Before that, it was the bonobo. Oh wait, the pygmy three-toed sloth is rather large and noticeable. The snub finned dolphin and Perrin's beaked whale are pretty large, but they live in the sea. There is the giant peccary, which is noisy, not shy, and weighs a good 100 lbs. Except for the bonobo, all of these were discovered since 2000. The cat-fox has not yet been officially discovered, but it appears to be a cross between a cat and a fox, then again, the photo might be of something which is known, but from a weird angle. Darn it, why do blobsquatches keep appearing, even when they aren't of bigfoots!? Then there is the Roosevelt's Muntjac, of which a single specimen exists, and scientists have been unable to track down the population from which it came. There are more, BTW, including some large African animals discovered in the 1990's, some of them being kept as livestock.
   
9. If it walks like a hoax: Well, more like, pieces of possible physical evidence people collected, but in the end turned out to be nothing. Plenty of that happens even with the best scientists in the most controlled laboratories. You think you have something great, you look at it with another technique, and it turns into a bust. There are also plenty of hair samples, blood samples, feces, and other pieces of physical evidence which are either bigfoot, or a giant, hairy human. Too bad bigfoots aren't giant, hairy humans (or close to humans), because that would make all of that evidence pretty definitive.
   
10. Physical evidence is meaningless: Umm.... if Radford says so, I guess it must be true. I just can't believe that scientists have been wrong all of this time. I was taught that analyzing physical evidence and comparing it to theories or developing theories to explain it was what science was all about. Guess I was lied to for all those years by the so-called "real" scientists. I guess we need to throw all of our computers and cell phones away because they are based on meaningless physical evidence. Oh, and forget about ever convicting anyone of anything, because the only "evidence" the prosecution will have is meaningless physical evidence, and a bunch of lying eyes.
    

[Guest parnassus]

His statement on DNA was surprisingly ignorant for someone that claims to be scientific. He has a BS in physiology but apparently didn't understand the genetics class or he never took it. Most of the rest of the arguments really weren't much better.

Several of your statements in this thread are incorrect. Surprisingly...

(Not to mention those that are just misleading.)

Edited October 18, 2011 by parnassus

[Guest parnassus]

Well I can't argue with most of the ten points. However, if people are seeing these creatures, even if some are mis-identifications or tall tales, then even that one report that is genuine makes what he said null and void. I know it exists so the only other logical conclusion would be that we are making basic assumptions about a creature that are incorrect therefore we are looking in the wrong places.

I thought infallibility was the province of that all male dynasty in the Vatican.

[Guest parnassus]

So Benjamin Radford blabs his mouth off again, demonstrating his ignorance about a great many scientific fields and the scientific method in general. You would think that an editor of the Skeptical Inquirer would at least keep himself reasonably up-to-date on the topics he dismisses, but low, he brings up the same 10 tired bits of defective reasoning, yet again. Of course, Radford is not a scientist; he is a film critic and writer.

The lack of scientific credentials and experienced researchers among its writers has been Skeptical Inquirer's greatest problem. Even on some of the topics I think are utter bunk, I have found sufficient deficiencies and fallacies among the Skeptical Inquirer's arguments, that I have long since dismissed the publication. It may be skeptical, but it is certainly not inquiring.

I shall pick the article apart, point-by-point.

1. The empty fossil record: Fossils are bones, and bones do not provide the entire morphology of an animal. We cannot tell from bones, when humans lost their coat of body hair, for example. Fossils are bones that are preserved, and then unearthed, both of which take a mix of environment and time. Given that we do not even know what a bigfoot is, or where and when it existed, we cannot state that it does not appear in the fossil record. Bigfoots could be G. blacki, in which case they do exist in the fossil record, spanning several million years, up to a few hundred thousand years ago, but there might still be fresh bones of this animal, waiting for erosion to wash them out of sediments in another million years. Bigfoots could be gigantic, hairy humans, with a bunch of inbred defects (like double rows of teeth), and for those, there certainly are bones, but not fossils (maybe bigfoots are too recent for fossils). Gigantism itself might be recent. The Maine **** breed of cat doubled its mass in only a hundred years, and morphological defects can spread like wildfire through a small, closed population. That IS how evolution happens, BTW, rapidly.
   
2. Where are the bodies: Rotting away in the woods, where else would they be? Assuming 5000 adult bigfoot in CONUS, and an adult lifespan of about 20 years, that's 250 dying every year. Given the length of time it takes a naked body to vanish (about a month), you would only need to thoroughly search about 15,200 square miles of deep woods in a month, to have a 1:12 chance of finding the rotting flesh or bones. Considering the very, very small number of people who are thoroughly searching any woods, well, tough chance. This assumes that bigfoots don't dispose of their dead in some way, in which case, I think you would have better chances going to Vegas, plopping your card counting device on top of the blackjack table, winning $100,000, and NOT being escorted into the back room, let alone being allowed to play.
   
3. Where do bigfoot babies come from: Yes, Radford asked it. Need I say more? Oh wait, he was trying to say that a breeding population would need to be large, and there is no way that a bigfoot family could hide in 1,000 square miles... well, that really isn't any better.
   
4. Your lying eyes: Obviously, people confuse bears and deer all the time, so when they see a giant, hairy, human-shaped animal with an ape-man face, staring in the living room window, it was clearly a gazelle. Mistaken scale is a rather common event, but only when the observer lacks a point of reference. The fact that a bigfoot has to duck under the eve of a house is a rather difficult thing to misjudge. Mistaken identity is even rarer, as it relies on only catching a brief glimpse, or an obscured view, with the mind filling in the missing info. A bigfoot standing 50 feet away, in the open, for 30 seconds, is neither brief or obscured. The only explanations are a very clear sighting, or an outright lie.
   
5. Blobsquatches: suck. Wish I could say more, but at least they do exist. That is, I would fully expect a bunch of bad photographs, taken in haste, of an animal that typically flees as soon as it is seen. I can recall at least 5 separate incidents where I totally missed photographing something very neat, with the camera on my hip, and a few times with it in my hand (focus took too long). Blobsquatches are quite normal and expected, until bigfoots decide to not care enough, to let us get a good photo, or get taken completely by surprise.
   
6. No published, peer-reviewed articles: Contrary to what Bradford might think, not everything gets to go through the process of peer review. This is usually reserved for when a scientist decides that he has something conclusive enough to publish, which is worth publishing, and he wants to publish. Contrary to what Bradford has said, there are some peer reviewed articles concerning bigfoot, although they are not in particularly renowned publications. There are books and such, but most evidence has been reserved in private collections and presented at conferences. There have been expeditions, of scientists, that have searched for bigfoot evidence, and most of those expeditions have turned up enough to justify additional expeditions. The biggest problem is that there is no one piece of evidence which is absolutely conclusive. For some strange reason, almost every piece of bigfoot evidence out there could have come from a giant, hairy human, which makes things difficult in calling it definitive.
   
7. The ivory billed woodpecker: The coelacanth! There, I countered an animal which someone thought they saw, and then people couldn't find again, with an animal science was sure didn't exist, until it was fished up.
   
8. The katydid (and other new animals): Actually, the last large mammal to have been discovered was probably the Bili Ape. Before that, it was the bonobo. Oh wait, the pygmy three-toed sloth is rather large and noticeable. The snub finned dolphin and Perrin's beaked whale are pretty large, but they live in the sea. There is the giant peccary, which is noisy, not shy, and weighs a good 100 lbs. Except for the bonobo, all of these were discovered since 2000. The cat-fox has not yet been officially discovered, but it appears to be a cross between a cat and a fox, then again, the photo might be of something which is known, but from a weird angle. Darn it, why do blobsquatches keep appearing, even when they aren't of bigfoots!? Then there is the Roosevelt's Muntjac, of which a single specimen exists, and scientists have been unable to track down the population from which it came. There are more, BTW, including some large African animals discovered in the 1990's, some of them being kept as livestock.
   
9. If it walks like a hoax: Well, more like, pieces of possible physical evidence people collected, but in the end turned out to be nothing. Plenty of that happens even with the best scientists in the most controlled laboratories. You think you have something great, you look at it with another technique, and it turns into a bust. There are also plenty of hair samples, blood samples, feces, and other pieces of physical evidence which are either bigfoot, or a giant, hairy human. Too bad bigfoots aren't giant, hairy humans (or close to humans), because that would make all of that evidence pretty definitive.
   
10. Physical evidence is meaningless: Umm.... if Radford says so, I guess it must be true. I just can't believe that scientists have been wrong all of this time. I was taught that analyzing physical evidence and comparing it to theories or developing theories to explain it was what science was all about. Guess I was lied to for all those years by the so-called "real" scientists. I guess we need to throw all of our computers and cell phones away because they are based on meaningless physical evidence. Oh, and forget about ever convicting anyone of anything, because the only "evidence" the prosecution will have is meaningless physical evidence, and a bunch of lying eyes.
    

LOL After reading your bitter condemnation of Radford, I was amused to see that YOUR very first statement is wrong. Fossils are not all bones. I learned that in elementary school. I'll show mercy and stop there.

Edited October 18, 2011 by parnassus

[Guest 127]

Without quoting your entire post - I'd like to ask you which specific sasquatch evidence you consider to be authentic? What gives you the most confidence that bigfoot is a real animal and not just a social construct? Thank you.

[BobZenor]

Several of your statements in this thread are incorrect. Surprisingly...

(Not to mention those that are just misleading.)

Please correct me then and be specific. The only way I was being misleading was slightly twisting his point about the biologist. I thought he was being purposefully misleading with his biologist statements.

You are quoting the DNA statement.What I said about that was undeniable. He made a surprisingly ignorant statement for someone that pretends to be scientific. To imply you need a bigfoot to compare it to or DNA is worthless demonstrates that he lacks basic knowledge and has no understanding of the subject. That is fairly typical of your average Joe but he is arguing as if he is a scientist.

Edited October 18, 2011 by BobZenor

[Guest Kerchak]

10 Reasons Bigfoots a Bust

Ah with input from Benjamin Radford...................the guy who makes money out of being a skeptic. How surprising.

[Guest]

I dont know anything about this Benjamin Radford guy, but as someone stated previously, you would think that if one were publishing skeptical articles about anything, they would use authors who were credible.

**(I was going to say "authors who were experts" but I know someone would say "How can you be an expert about something not proven to exist?")**

WE NEED A BODY!!!! Sorry, had to get that off of my chest.

[Guest]

The part about bigfoot living everywhere is a straw man argument.

Then it is incumbent on proponents to be clear about where bigfoot does live. Without any physical evidence, are we not forced to assume that bigfoots occur in places that produce anecdotal evidence? Please enlighten me on which of these states lack bigfoots:

Florida

Ohio

Oklahoma

Texas

Pennsylvania

California

All have markedly different habitats from which bigfoots are reported. Moreover, bigfoots are reported from Australia, Sumatra, Nepal, China, and Russia, and again, in markedly different habitats. Assuming bigfoots dispersed across Beringia from the Old World into the New, they must have occurred for generations in varied habitats ranging from temperate and coniferous forests to grassland and tundra. This is why the "no fossils because they live in forests with acidic soils" excuse is not supported. If bigfoots were only reported from such places, it would be a perfectly viable explanation for the lack of a fossil record, but they're not, so it isn't.

[Guest]

As to point number 7 - The wood bison was declared extinct in 1940. In 1957 a herd of 200 of the extinct animals that can reach a weight of 1 ton were discovered by accident by wildlife officials in Canada. Bison aren't that stealthy. If they can hide from the human population, I'm willing to bet a nonhuman bipedal hominid would be even more successful at it.

Parnassus - I think you're being a bit disingenuous with your dismissal of ajciani. You know what he meant by his statement that fossils are bones. It's not that hard to figure out. Bones are the original state of fossils. I'm not that bright and I figured it out. No offense, but it feels like you're using obfuscation to avoid a point by point rebuttal of his well-reasoned post. One wonders why you commented at all if your not going to use your own powers of intellect to counter his post.

[Guest]

There's nothing new in this article...just a regurgitation of the same old psuedo-skeptical claptrap. Every one of those points has been addressed repeatedly many times over, but still the Skeptics keep tossing out the same tired, refuted talking points...