Daegling takes Meldrum to task for not seriously considering the man-in-a-suit or movie-special-effects alternatives to the possibility that the P/G film shows a real, unclassified animal.

THIS IS NOT MELDRUM’S JOB.

In science, if you propound a thesis, YOU are responsible for backing it up. That skeptics continually fail to recognize this is telling. They ask proponents to back up their theory that we have a new animal here. (Good job, proponents!) Then they ask the proponents to consider - “seriously” - the proposition that this is a guy in a suit. Actually, this HAS been seriously considered; it is the basis of every analysis ever done of the Patterson film. The critter presents itself, prima facie, as something new to science. There is nothing in that film that says “guy in suit.” (Look at Sixties ape suits.) One might as well have made such an accusation against the first live coelacanth. Bipedal does not a human make. Ask any bird. Be that as it may, no analysis has shown how this could be human.

The only thing proponents are required to do is substantiate their proposition that this is an undocumented animal. As the skeptical counterclaim that it isn’t has not a scrap of evidence backing it up, they cannot offload onto the proponents their own dismal failure to put even one thin reed, much less a crutch, under their own proposition.

Other than the above, yep, Ben and I are around the same place on the Bigfoot-”belief” continuum.

Research dollars? What dollars? What money? What grants? I have not heard of any Government money being spent on proving and/or researching any of the above topics. Instead, the Government money is likely spending millions of tax payer dollars on on disproving, psyops, anti-propaganda, disinformation, helicopter rental, cold storage structures for bodies, hangers for UFO’s, rental for satellite NSA offices, mobile phone location tracing equipment, phone monitoring, phone harassment of private researchers. I estimate that the Government has at least 20 full time employees spread across the country, that are involved in maintaining the secrecy of Bigfoot, UFO’s, aliens, and an assorted list of interdimensional beings.

In the May 16th Biscardi internet radio show, the Feds appeared to cut out the person being interviewed, exactly when he was explaining that “interdimensional people that have not been often observed wearing clothes, likely have an” NSA APPEARS TO INTERRUPT PHONE LINE FROM INTERVIEWEE FOR ABOUT 5 SECONDS! What was blanked out was “orb phase!” You can hear is for yourself, the U.S. Government in action. Your tax dollars at work.

So Radford, is afraid of something that does not exist. Rather, the opposite exists. No significant government grants go to researching Bigfoot, UFO’s or other things that may upset the hundreds of millions of Americans who are hanging onto reality by their fingernails. U.S. Government money all goes to fighting the acquiring and the spread of, dare I say it, KNOWLEDGE !

Agreed…. And your right, I think one of them BIG GUYS being seen is my long lost uncle… Unhappy Jack…awhoooooeeeeeeeehehehe I kill me sometimes…

In the end its all about who gets the money.

And as we’ve been doing a lot of jousting with Ben here, it provides me an opportunity to say where our differences lie.

Things-in-the-woods pointed out: “The thing is Ben, I’m pretty much ‘on your side’. I’m coming from near enough the same position as you (with a few disagreement over epistemology and your occasional lapses of basic logic) (in fact, on the grand spectrum of views on this site, so is DWA-although he won’t thank me for saying so).”

Well, actually, that didn’t even make me wince. As things goes on to point out, Ben regularly gets his hackles up. (He just inspires me to educate. ) Where our difference with Ben lies is that things and mystery_man and I and some others here question all assumptions on the sasquatch. There are many assumptions Ben doesn’t question; he just presents them as givens.

Chief among them is the assumption that if it isn’t scientific evidence, it isn’t evidence. Well, science would certainly be stuck, on all fronts, if that were the case. We wouldn’t have penicillin or aspirin yet. We might not have the wheel. Evidence leads to proof; it never suffices as proof in itself. (Even scientific evidence is such only so far as it is diagnostic of something already proven.) At some point, science has to go: what might this mean? I think we’re at that point on the sasquatch, and that any scientist who knows as much about it as even I do would have to agree. He might say that there are other things on the plate right now that are more important; but he’d have to agree that there’s a worthwhile pursuit here, that certainly appears to be leading somewhere. George Schaller seems to think that the search should remain in the hands of those already doing it; but he’s on the record that “a hard-eyed look is essential.” Much of the evidence on which Schaller basis this statement is eyewitness testimony. It is always to be suspected, and never swallowed without further evidence to substantiate it. But the patterns seen so far seem to transcend that problem, and suggest places and ways for the search to proceed.

Another basic assumption Ben seems to make is that the track record of the searchers is tantamount to the probability of the animal. If you’re truly skeptical on this, you question everything the searchers are doing. Is the TBRC’s traditional approach still the way to go? Do we need a Jane Goodall soloist in the bush for months at a time, resupplied solely by water or air? (BTW: I think it should be a woman. ) Are game cameras - the more the better - the ticket? But you look at the evidence, not the searchers, for what to do next. The searchers’ missteps mean nothing to the existence of the animal. In fact, it’s the witnesses, not the searchers, who provide more of an index of the animal’s probability. Those who don’t believe this need to get there.

Another basic assumption is one we’ve haggled to death here: that if one tiny facet of the hoax is possible, then the hoax is likely. This old shibboleth must be tossed. The only effective counter to the almost overwhelming volume of evidence that this animal exists is a cohesive, comprehensive and reasonable scenario - taking into account every scrap of evidence, including a thorough familiarity with the anecdotal data - showing how ALL of it, or at the very least a significant portion, could be the result of lie, hoax or misinterpretation. Skeptics wield a peashooter until one or more of them comes up with this scenario. Saying it could be, or probably is, so, without showing how, simply implies - if not directly points up - unfamiliarity with the scope and depth of the evidence. Most of the skeptic camp doesn’t seem to understand that if what they recognize as the “crown jewels” of sasquatch evidence were all conclusively shown to be fakes tomorrow, I would not have to change a word of this paragraph.

I don’t know whether Ben’s tack will change; but it really doesn’t matter one way or the other. The animal’s out there - or not - whether we think it is, or not.

I think DWA made a point earlier that I kind of wanted to elaborate upon. He said that science is nearly a perfect system, but used by fallible humans. This is very true, in my opinion. As far as I’m concerned, science is the best way to understand the world we live in and how it works. It is a system for finding out facts from theories, and if used properly, it can open our eyes to the wonders of this universe. However, one of the very important things that one needs to keep in mind in any sort of scientific endeavor is that an unbiased approach to the data and evidence is essential if good research is to be done. The problem is, we humans are not particularly good at being completely unbiased. We are not cold, logical machines. We have passions, wants, beliefs, emotions, and desires, and all of these can influence us no matter how much we try to eliminate bias and look at the data with a “zen” mind as I like to say.

This can cause problems in any field, really, and I think very much so in cryptozoology, where passions are obviously running high on both sides of the fence. This is what leads to the cherry picking of data and using of evidence to fit into preconceived theories, often the ignoring of other perfectly good data that happens to contradict one’s one hypothesis, that happens here and indeed in mainstream science as well. The proponent side and the skeptical side are both guilty of this I feel. The way I see it, there is a lot of “bad” science going around but it is not because of the topic at hand, but rather how the data and evidence are approached. Science is a tool, and like any other tool, it can be used to good effect, or it can be misused or even abused. Don’t blame the science, blame the people using it.

In this sense, I have to say that Mr. Radford and I agree on one point very strongly, and this is that the science has to be done right. All of the evidence has to be considered from every angle. If there are skeptical opinions made, I don’t think we should be blowing them off, but rather looking at these opinions and evaluating just how good the methods being used are. These skeptical ideas may turn out to be wrong, but to not at least consider them would be unscientific, I feel. Science is a framework in which to operate so it is up to anyone doing this sasquatch research to make sure that they are respecting the proper way of doing things and not leaning to far towards any one assumption. Follow the data, do not make it follow you.

I know I didn’t bother helping him up; I’ll try to be more gentlemanly next time.

This club runs on evidence; and I think a whole lot more people see that evidence as convincing than any of us realize.

Bit of a slip, ain’t it - on the banana peel of “belief”?

The issue isn’t the information we don’t have, but the non-information we do have. The big guy is enough like us to know that withholding increases interest. OK, most men don’t know that so maybe the big guy is smarter than half of us. The big guy thrives on our ignorance. He may have infrared ultraviolet saffron vision, and hearing better than a bat’s let alone a dog’s, but he walks around with pine pitch over his eyes and pinecones in his ears because he knows our ignorance is what shields him and he loves to walk the line. He’ll never shave, download or buy a Saturn. He lives off the land, whatever it tosses him. He doesn’t take what the defense gives him; he takes what he wants. You go after him, and he goes home with you.

I’m practicing your style in case that last sentence comes true. But if you find the giant squid instead, that’ll be the scoop.