People describe what they saw; in most of the ones I’ve read, they don’t call it anything. In fact in many, they don’t want to, and in fact strenuously avoid that, because they simply cannot believe they saw THAT. But they describe what they saw, many of them with no acquaintance with the P-G film. And the description sounds like Patty; like a member of her species; or like a member of a closely related species.

And Chewbacca was based on sasquatch descriptions, of course, not the other way around. Although, sure, with a cultural referent now available, I’ve seen Chewbacca referred to in a very few reports.

And I wasn’t referring to physics as crap. I was showing how people unacquainted with the topic, and a priori biased against it, treat sasquatch evidence. That the sasquatch hasn’t been proven is irrelevant. It exists, or doesn’t, irrespective of what we think. Really, in fact, the only thing the physicists can do that the Bigfoot camp can’t is say “we’ve proven this.” Which in reality only means “we’ve agreed that it’s real, because most of us have looked at it and agree.” Both can show an impressive array of all kinds of evidence backing what they think. Any physicist recognizes the evidence from that field. Any biologist would recognize, and be impressed by, the sasquatch evidence. (And as I’ve said, they could not be plainer that they have not been exposed to it.) And while the scientific mainstream may not “hate” the idea of such an animal existing, as their comments show, they are very heavily biased against it, enough so that they simply can’t take evidence seriously in the way an open-minded scientist should do. If a scientist’s interest in a topic – backed very clearly by what his scientific expertise tells him – makes no waves with one, one’s mind simply isn’t open. There is no other way a scientist could look at it. No one – and I do mean no one – has advanced a demurrer against the sasquatch evidence that cannot be shot to pieces as unschooled by an informed layman.

The difference between floriensis and Denisovans, on the one hand, and the sasquatch on the other, is that remains of the former were found by searches with mainstream backing and entree. Imagine if an American Museum of Natural History expedition had come back with that film, and you have the difference.

A taboo topic will remain taboo until a corpse is stinking up your lab. Open-minded consideration of the evidence, however, avoids the stink, and gets the search into the field, where it long since belongs. And where most animals have been found on the basis of following up inconclusive – but compelling – evidence.

Right, TBRC?

That doesn’t mean that eyewitness accounts are all wrong, it means that there is nothing very surprising that many of them sound just like Chewbacca.

You can think physics is crap or not if you like. Some of it even physicists suspect is crap — string theory, for example. But one difference is that I can take you into a lab and SHOW you how to measure the speed of light or the charge on an electron. That’s a lot better than anything the Bigfoot camp can do, and that’s just a fact. Scientists don’t doubt Bigfoot because they hate the idea of such animals; if they did, it would be impossible to explain why Homo floresiensis is widely, though not universally, accepted, or why the Denisovans are accepted on the basis of one or two genetically distinct bones.

The point is, we haven’t been over the consistency claim. Your reservations with it simply don’t apply. There are no cultural biases in sighting reports. There aren’t. If there were, 99% of sightings would be by Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest. Instead, OH ranks up there with any PNW state – which it should; better habitat, and more people to register sightings – and so do PA, VA and MD, for the same reasons.

Oh, OK, there is one bias. In some places, people feel free to talk about their sightings, because most they know have had one or know someone who has. Those places are few, however. And OH, PA and MD are generally not among those few, which means there should be virtually no reports. But there are quite a few. And whites in MD are describing what Native Americans in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Alaska are seeing, pretty much. If no one told you what they were describing, you’d know they all were describing the same kind of animal – frequently right down to fine detail.

You have to read them to know that.

This is like me saying: physics? CROCK! I’m not made of tiny dots separated by vast spaces! And I don’t have to read anything to know that!

You have to read the evidence to understand that the “skeptical” counters aren’t skeptical. They are toss-off assumptions by people who haven’t read up. But “skeptics” don’t get that. They feel they can comfortably ignore anything they don’t agree with, or want to bother with, because this topic is silly. As Bindernagel says: they don’t think the evidence is evidence. They simply don’t recognize it, because they can’t.

(And yes, I’ve read that many.)

I turned on the video and waited for the boom! gorilla. Simple. Caught the first hairs to enter the screen.

(NOTE: NOT A GORILLA. A person in a gorilla suit. Human gait; human proportions. I just took care of pretty much every purported sasvid you will see put up here.)

How many passes? You think I was counting passes? I was simulating a sasquatch sighting.

People aren’t usually riveted on ONE THING THEY CANNOT MESS UP when they see a sasquatch. No, driving isn’t like that. You aren’t focused on one thing. (Count the left front tires you see.) Neither is hunting. (Breeze! Count the number of moving leaves.) You’re scanning, the way you are in regular daily life. Something anomalous crosses the field, boom, you’re on it.

A bigfoot, make no mistake, the reports say so, is something pretty anomalous.

As someone who’s read hundreds and hundreds of sasquatch sighting reports, I think they can be taken as pretty good testimony.

To me, “golden” = proof. No one says they are proof. But their extraordinary consistency, on all details, and correspondence with the morphology and behavior of known apes – reports come overwhelmingly from people with no knowledge of ape behavior in the wild – argue, very strongly, for exercising “a bit of caution” before totally dismissing them.

Which is what anyone is doing who simply says, “that isn’t proof,” and turns away, thinking that’s it, until we have a body.

Eyewitness testimony precedes practically all scientific discovery.

Or, for that matter, there are things like the connection between the “old hag” and sleep paralysis. People in many parts of the world interpret sleep paralysis as a kind of witch or demon that comes and sits on their chest. There are lots of eyewitness accounts of this. In the US, on the other hand, there is evidence that many accounts of abduction by space aliens are sleep paralysis. Whether this is experienced as an old hag, a space alien, or something else seems to be culturally determined. The culture also helps assure that the descriptions are largely in agreement. That doesn’t mean that either the hag or the aliens are REAL, nor does it mean that the people are lying about their experiences, only that the experiences and reality don’t correspond.

All that this means is that a bit of caution must be exercised.

“I’m not opposed to any form of belief OR disbelief. But if three friends told you they just saw a kangaroo in the corner bar, would you go look, or ask a scientist to do so?”

Neither of the above, probably, unless their report gave me good reason to believe the kangaroo would be there when I arrived. And, kangaroos being something we generally accept, I might be able to see a reason for one being there. Long-time regular’s pet, maybe. Or a promotion. Or drunk friends who wanted to have fun with me. (Alcohol: not a hallucinogen. Has anyone posting here ever had an alcohol-fueled hallucination? Me neither.)

(And forget it if the bar served nothing better than Bud. I’m not going there; nor would I advise anyone else to do such a thing.)

This is something different. What’s the proof for any of the allegations based on which this guy is publishing a book, and asking me to pay for it to boot? When I read about new species confirmed on the internet, I’ve already paid, and just for the access, not for the news, which comes at no additional charge. Hucksterism is hucksterism, regardless what’s being hucked.

I agree with you about the anecdotal evidence. I have gone on record here, more than once, that no species has had so much solid corroborating evidence as the sasquatch prior to confirmation by science. That’s a fact, not an assertion.

It’s also a fact that killing something to confirm it is nineteenth-century science, and no longer required. Although I do get the frustration that prompts such science-based, hard-nosed outfits as the TBRC to want to throw a body at the feet of science and say: told you so!

No problem with anything you’re saying.

It’s just that what the facts are changes as we learn more.

Although believe me there are thousands of facts that I simply take for granted, as do you

(side note: for the very reasons you point out, this is the only ammunition one needs to dismiss blanket skeptical attacks on eyewitness testimony as “bad evidence”)

…one needs to accept that for most of us, facts are what we believe to be true, as we ourselves have not independently verified them. In that sense – as Hadj-Chikh points out – knowledge is, for most of us, a form of belief, although it certainly appears to have been more strongly tested than what we term “belief in.” I think my belief that the sun is approximately 93 million miles away is backed much more strongly than anyone’s belief in, say, the Great Pumpkin or the Easter Bunny. Or pterodactyls in New Guiniea; or mokele-mbembe; or the Loch Ness Monster, for that matter. But maybe not that much more strongly than John Bindernagel’s conviction that the sasquatch is real, which is based on evidence that the vast majority of scientists simply haven’t reviewed. (Or aren’t letting on that they have.)

I could give greater credence to scientists’ skepticism regarding the sasquatch if any scientist expressing such skepticism showed any sign of having reviewed the available evidence. In fact, every scientist I have heard pronouncing negatively on the topic has not only failed to show any such sign, but has conclusively shown – within his first couple sentences – that he has not reviewed it. I finish his assessment noting, with utter confidence: I know more than this guy on this topic.

In other words:

The scientific nay-saying (e.g., yelling for Meldrum’s tenure on a pike) on this topic amounts not to skepticism, but to “belief in” the nonexistence of the sasquatch, backed by no evidence.

I can say this from my personal experience. It has taken a careful review and a lot of thought about the evidence to bring me where I am on this. (When I first saw P-G, I chuckled. When I first saw that encounters were being reported throughout the lower 48, I said: just like UFOs. Uh-huh.) And I can confidently say that no one who disagrees with me, and has pronounced on same, brings to the table what I do – let alone Bindernagel and Meldrum – in terms of knowledge, credentials aside.

And I think that I can also pronounce with confidence on this book. Because anything in direct contravention of the bulk of the evidence is, at the very least, not ready for prime time until the evidence has been reviewed; acted upon; and pronounced as a confirmed fact. (Such as those are.)

Regarding one thing, or another.

I want to say that I have GRAVE doubts that mainstream science will handle this matter safely and sanely. Can we doubt that, after confirmation, there will be capture expeditions? The lab is no place to study these creatures! We need to meet them in THEIR bailiwick, live like THEY do. And that will change the world incalculably!