1) doing more research into more known species to do precisely the comparison I told him was futile…before HE SAID THE SAME THING, thinking that was HIS point;

2) coming up with more brickbats and assertions that he’s smarter than any scientist I’ve listed (*my* 15-year-old thinks so, too);

3) wasting time he could spend talking about the evidence. If he ever read it.

So in an effort to save him time, I just want to tell him it’s time to move on.

Every Institutional Skeptic I talk to does the same things, over and over. And it’s kind of sad, actually. Here’s RB’s entire point. First his quote, then my translation:

” I’ve been looking at Bigfoot claims for 25 years. Not once have a I ever seen any reliable evidence. Feel free to present some. You keep prattling on about it in your comments and yet you never present any. What’s with that?”

translation:

“I am looking for PROOF. I just don’t know the difference between evidence and proof. I don’t understand that you can’t give me proof because science – having not reviewed the evidence – hasn’t proven it yet, and they are the ones RESPONSIBLE for proof in our society. (sub-translation: no matter the phenomenon, it IS NOT PROVEN UNTIL MAINSTREAM SCIENCE SAYS SO.) I know you say there is no proof, but I don’t know what that means. I know you say that the evidence demands followup to a conclusion, but since I am a true believer in what makes me comfortable, I’m not comfortable with that, so I just let it go in one ear and out the other. So I keep asking you for proof, just like the other guys and gals like me you have tried to educate, and continue to fail to understand that if it were proven – if science had just looked at the evidence and followed it up – we wouldn’t even be talking about this here because the sasquatch wouldn’t be a cryptid.”

Does anybody else wonder, with me, what is behind the extreme lack of CURIOSITY among these folks? What motivates all that spinning of wheels up there? What motivates all the denial that there’s anything for science to look at? What motivates the smugness? What motivates, well, the ignorance of how science works, and the extreme lack of desire to learn about that? WHAT IS BEHIND THE EXTREME, STULTIFYING, AND INSISTENT CHAMPIONING OF THE MUNDANE?

This isn’t about hope, faith, desperation or anything like that. It’s about evidence. Who wouldn’t want to know about this? Who wouldn’t want to see the evidence followed up and ignorance lifted? Who in his right mind would want to DISCOURAGE scientific inquiry by wholeheartedly joining the Donkey Chorus?

Somebody believes in something here all right. Isn’t it kind of sad? Isn’t enlightened, informed, true skepticism more FUN? (Nod.)

I am more than happy to let my posts stand. Because they’ve answered RB many times over. Just read ‘em, pal. And have some coffee somewhere in there, you need a wake-up call, and read a book or two on the topic, ferpetesake.

Wow. Onward. More scoftical fish to fry. But done here.

“6) You utterly failed to comprehend the futility of comparing a large population of gorillas that flourished in a dense mass of Congo jungle cut off from roads, logging, hunters, human activity in general to Bigfoot. Please feel free to demonstrate the relevance to claims of a massive upright ape living across two of the world’s most industrialized nations from Alaska to Nova Scotia to Arizon to Florida often in human inhabited areas.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA! *I” didn’t fail to do the comprehension, dude; YOU DID! You’re the one who went to all that trouble to point out all this stuff that is totally irrelevant to the discussion, not me! Wasn’t I the one who told you to stick to the ape WE ARE TALKING ABOUT? Follow my advice next time, Hansel! As Dr. DWA points out, in his inimitable fashion, but of course RB ain’t reading…..AGAIN:

“2. They can’t figure out that you can’t use any info about scientifically confirmed species to compare to the situation for something science simply refuses to acknowledge no matter what.

“3. They continually confuse evidence and proof. Despite copious evidence, which gavinf and I note well, scientists missed 125% of the acknowledged population of gorillas. There wasn’t proof they were there, but there was tons of evidence that, well, we might be missing some gorillas here.”

So, class, what RB went to all that length to help me with – and provides even MORE help in the above passage – are the following:

1) He’s right. Comparing sas and gorillas is ridiculous (so why did HE do it??? One can guess, can’t one? Hint: RIDICULOUS. ) Gavinf used that gorilla info in the RIGHT way, to show that….

….2) Scientists can on occasion display in spades the sort of raging incompetence – OK, we’ll just call it the sort of whoops, forgot to look at a map here! – that would make missing a few thousand apes on a continental land mass many times the size of that isolated-and-smaller-by-the-day Congo jungle, well, quite the plausibility, wot?

He clearly doesn’t pay any attention to what’s on the websites. And that’s the return on pitifully part-time work. Almost every BFRO or TBRC outing I’ve read about has encountered stuff that would be pretty hard to attribute to known species – but not so hard to attribute to the animal people are seeing. Then the three days are up, and everyone has to go back to work.

Does it require any kind of mental stretch to ask what a full-time outfit might bring back?

For some people, way too much of one, I guess.

“3) I’ve been looking at Bigfoot claims for 25 years. Not once have a I ever seen any reliable evidence. Feel free to present some. You keep prattling on about it in your comments and yet you never present any. What’s with that?”

Dunno, RB. The same thing that’s with you, must be. 25 years. Twenty-five years. TWENTY-FIVE.

OK, I have shown, repeatedly, on this site that if you know (Schaller) what I (Bindernagel) know (Swindler), you (Meldrum) th(Mionczynski)ink what I (Goodall) think (Chilcutt)(Krantz).

And you GOT NUTTIN’.

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS!

Either you are not reading it; you are drooling on it; [hmmmm, both...?] or you…gosh, what ELSE are you doing to it?

(Hint: the National – and Skeptical – I(E)nquirers don’t count.)

(Hint 2: 4) above. Eisner presents NO EVIDENCE FOR WHAT HE THINKS other than his opinion (which he clearly states as such) and the old chestnut about how P/G can’t be analyzed. Evidence: kinda, ya know, required in a scientific debate. Find somebody with longer horizons, if you really want to make a point. Other than how quickly you swallow stuff.)

Watch him come back and tell us he’s smarter than all those guys. That’s their favorite one. Then you ask for evidence for THEIR claims and you’re being UNFAIR. Lightweights.

(Watch him come back with how the proponents need to provide the evidence. Which they HAVE. Did I include “boneheaded refusal to understand how this stuff works”?)

I’m just gonna number your paragraphs and respond.

1) Compared to P/G: bad. BAD. You guys who don’t look at evidence are never gonna understand that it’s easy to see what Patty is. Show me a suit like it. Ever, anywhere.

2) Answered that one. You can go back over it and read it. (They throw the bigfoot hairs out. As to track plates: what tracks? I didn’t see any tracks.)

3) What would you call reliable evidence? PLEASE don’t answer that question; just read my posts first so you’ll know why you’re wrong. (CONSTANT failure to understand evidence, proof, or what science – and they themselves = consistently does to evidence that doesn’t comport with what they want to think. Am I right, people?) No evidence reveals your, um, need to read up like this paragraph.

4) No. It’s interesting that Eisner (and lots of other armchair experts like him) does that, not me. Summing him up, real neatly; he has no idea who he’s talking to. He’s a VW mechanic, calling Meldrum, who by comparison has designed top-selling cars for a dozen companies, a LAYMAN of all things. He’s on Meldrum’s ground; and he can’t understand how a compliant gait (NOT characteristic of humans, ya loon) and a midtarsal break AND a human-like foot can combine to be VERY biomechanically efficient for an animal traversing steep backcountry slopes. Shoot, that was EASY for me to grasp. So who’s the expert? I’m taking an architect over a hardhat, and a design guru over a single-species foot fixer, every time. People who don’t know enough to follow common sense? They won’t. (Meldrum has found subfossil evidence of midtarsal break in a hominoid with, wait for it, a humanlike foot. Now watch RB come back and assert he’s smarter than Meldrum. These guys make me laugh.) I’ll leave out the people who report seeing Meldrum’s foot in operation, firsthand – having no idea of Meldrum’s research at all.

5) Disotell devoting his own resources to it? You have got to be kidding me. And you don’t know SKEPTIC Magazine? Institutional skepticism – at least on this topic – walks around with its hands over its eyes and its fingers in its ears. Where’s Disotell’s book? Let me have that and I’ll reduce it to TP. No, it is NOT worth the effort for me to look for it or pay for it. SKEPTIC Magazine. He brings Parakeet Liner on here. SHEESH. Hint to the young fearless and naive: anything with Ben Radford’s name attached to it – “panel,” sheesh, stop killing me here – put down and walk away, slowly. He’s the Scoftical Patron Saint.

6) Shows an absolute inability to comprehend what I wrote. Ok, copy and paste. Just in case.

“I’d say so! Wouldn’t you guys? Sure you would. But RB alleges Green Hell, totally impenetrable to scientists.

“Any minute now, I know somebody is going to tell me how someone, anyone, anyone AT ALL could possibly have gotten into that green hell with no trails no roads no place to sleep and, my God, no breathable atmosphere, surrounded by 24-hour total war, TO CONFIRM, TO COUNT FERPETESAKE, ONE HUNDRED, THAT IS ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND GORILLAS IF THAT AREA IS TOTALLY INACCESSIBLE.

[Hint: cut off from general human activity probably means there are 400,000 gorillas in there. That it? Sheesh, they COUNTED them, the area is so absolutely inaccessible.]

“And let’s say nobody had gone in there. The place is on maps, isn’t it? Don’t you think they could have just looked at a map and said: Heeeeeeeeyyyyyy, our population counts don’t include THIS HUGE AREA THAT IF WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S IN THERE, MIGHT NOT A LOT OF GORILLAS BE IN THERE?”

[Right. Scientists don't look at maps. Gotcha. Eunice? I think we've isolated the problem!]

“They get their scales mixed up. This (that would be where all these gorillas are, Dr. Fever) is a restricted geographical area with a dense population of animals. The sasquatch is a much thinner animal on the ground – with a lot more ground to cover.”

[Watch. He'll show again that if he read it, he don't get it.]

7) No, YOU are hilarious. Have you seen how often TBRC updates their website? Oh yeah, they are on this all the time. Shoot, I have ten things I spend more time on than they do bigfoot research. Their real jobs have nothing to do with science, but for a few exceptions; and for them, sas ain’t paying no bills. NO ONE LOOKING FOR YOU. Can you read?

OK, folks, did I tell you they repeat themselves, over and over? Watch, he’ll do it again.

1) Bad wolverine photo? LOL. Somebody needs a trip to Lenscrafters. Try completely unambiguous quality video from a distance of about 8 feet in broad daylight against a white background. I don’t know what you were looking at but it wasn’t the great big video I put in front of your face.

2) The game camera and track plates set up all over Northern California have recorded every known mammal of marten size and larger living there. No Bigfoots. Can’t handle it, can you?

3) I’ve been looking at Bigfoot claims for 25 years. Not once have a I ever seen any reliable evidence. Feel free to present some. You keep prattling on about it in your comments and yet you never present any. What’s with that?

4) Eisner’s critique of the basic anatomical failure of Meldrum’s midtarsal break theory is flawed? That’s interesting how you just toss that out there like people or just going to take your word for it. I presented readers the information to review themselves and the best you have in your arsenal is “it’s flawed.” LOL. Why do you guys always do that kind of thing? DWA, not only are the training wheels on, you’re sitting on the bike backwards with the helmet pulled down over your eyes.

5) Same thing with Disotell. You said, “Address THE EVIDENCE FOR THE APE. Is this THAT hard to grasp? (As Disotell shows, science doesn’t. Wotta crock.)” LOL. DWA didn’t even check the Monster Talk interview with Disotell. Todd is devoting his own time and lab’s resources to examining alleged evidence for the ape all the time. DWA didn’t address a single sentence Disotell said. The irony, it burns.

6) You utterly failed to comprehend the futility of comparing a large population of gorillas that flourished in a dense mass of Congo jungle cut off from roads, logging, hunters, human activity in general to Bigfoot. Please feel free to demonstrate the relevance to claims of a massive upright ape living across two of the world’s most industrialized nations from Alaska to Nova Scotia to Arizon to Florida often in human inhabited areas.

7) “(Total camouflage = no one looking for you.)” LOL! Oops, I fell down. *wipes tears from eyes* DWA, you are hilarious. Nobody looking for them… Yeah, tell that to Craig Woolheater and the TBRC breaking their butts looking for them. Tell that to Mr. Money at the BFRO and his multi-millionaire backer, Wally Hersom. Tell that to the people of their 28 expeditions last year and the up to 100 expeditions they have planned for this year.

Nobody looking for them… Who is this guy? Can somebody get Gavin or Photoexpert back in here? ‘Cause I’m bee-boppin’ and scattin’ all over this DWA character.

Ruggiero’s Green Abyss comments (which RB swallowed whole) are a most classic case of mainstream science covering its ignorant butt.

Gavinf says this, just reminding everybody:

“You seem to accept no eyewitness evidence. That is weak science. Many scientists claim that eyewitness evidence isn’t helpful, but, as in the discovery of 125,000 gorillas in 2006-8, eyewitnesses told the scientists where to look. OOPS! How do scientists, who said for years and years there are only 100,00 gorillas, miss 125,000 more!? Bias, perhaps? Unwillingness to accept eyewitness testimony, perhaps?”

I’d say so! Wouldn’t you guys? Sure you would. But RB alleges Green Hell, totally impenetrable to scientists.

Any minute now, I know somebody is going to tell me how someone, anyone, anyone AT ALL could possibly have gotten into that green hell with no trails no roads no place to sleep and, my God, no breathable atmosphere, surrounded by 24-hour total war, TO CONFIRM, TO COUNT FERPETESAKE, ONE HUNDRED, THAT IS ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND GORILLAS IF THAT AREA IS TOTALLY INACCESSIBLE.

And let’s say nobody had gone in there. The place is on maps, isn’t it? Don’t you think they could have just looked at a map and said: Heeeeeeeeyyyyyy, our population counts don’t include THIS HUGE AREA THAT IF WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT’S IN THERE, MIGHT NOT A LOT OF GORILLAS BE IN THERE?

Right! (I love it when you folks are paying attention. Good answer!)

So this just illustrates one more time those nagging issues that “bigfoot skeptics” have.

1. They’re NOT skeptics. They’re ready to swallow anything that fits the puzzle they want to see.

2. They can’t figure out that you can’t use any info about scientifically confirmed species to compare to the situation for something science simply refuses to acknowledge no matter what.

3. They continually confuse evidence and proof. Despite copious evidence, which gavinf and I note well, scientists missed 125% of the acknowledged population of gorillas. There wasn’t proof they were there, but there was tons of evidence that, well, we might be missing some gorillas here.

4. And if they don’t buy that, they need to deal with their unflagging faith in the infallibility of science.

5. They get their scales mixed up. This is a restricted geographical area with a dense population of animals. The sasquatch is a much thinner animal on the ground – with a lot more ground to cover. Further camouflage is scientists’ inability to believe the animals could be there. (Total camouflage = no one looking for you.)

If scientists can miss those gorillas, fact is, missing the sasquatch is a piece of cake for them. As they are showing.

While I might quibble a bit about “all the evidence” (seems to me that that’s called “proof,” one way or the other), he’s got it nailed as it needs to be.

This isn’t about

1) belief;

2) whoring yourself to Institutional Skepticism, harrumph, Todd;

3) calling for people’s tenure when you don’t have the slightest idea what you are talking about;

4) attempting to explain something for which science doesn’t even look at the evidence in terms of things for which science automatically accepts the evidence, RB (that was a lot of WORK you went to for nothing up there, I mean like, Gavin and I KNEW ALL THAT, man!);

5) deciding before you even look what you want the evidence to say, rather than looking at the evidence, then deciding what the evidence should say to you (actually, RB, you may qualify under this one too! A twofer, man! Excited for you!);

6) not reading up on your topic before bloviating, because you know that ignorant people will look at the letters behind your name before they ask what you know about the topic.

All the negative takes I’ve seen on the sasquatch can be lumped under one of the above. ALL of them. Sorry, that’s a fact. If you are feeling peeved at this, maybe that is a signal that you need to raise your game and live up to science.

(Hint: THERE IS NO PROOF. We know that! STOP REPEATING IT OVER AND OVER. The only difference between evidence and proof is SCIENCE’S SAY-SO, which can’t happen until science has reviewed the evidence. We’d like you to use some of that time you have been wasting so far perusing the evidence, and telling us what you think of it.)

Which, of course, those determined to Grasp Every Straw in their effort to keep science from getting off its duff just take at face value, because it agrees with what they want to think. I mean, look how BUSY RB got up there! Did he really think that was doing something? Does he really think a photo of a dead deer says ANYTHING in a discussion about a giant primate? It wows me, folks. Address THE EVIDENCE FOR THE APE. Is this THAT hard to grasp? (As Disotell shows, science doesn’t. Wotta crock.)

[sigh] True Believers – in existence or otherwise – just tend to get in the way, don’t they, Gavin…?