Sure, people can see what they want. Kids do this all the time - take a child and scare them with a strange adult and in their minds a monster came after them - and is as valid to them as any other “real” person.

Hunters shoot other hunters all the time, claiming that the other guy looked like the prey animal. Its a common boo-boo.

It’s human nature to see something strange and make it fit according to currently known information. However, footprints, photographic evidence, and objective proof should be taken at value - if it can be proven, then let it be proven.

The problem isn’t that the proof is not compelling, its that people will cling to a belief, no matter how false it’s proven, because belief can’t be overridden with logic.

That being said, I don’t believe in Sasquatch, but I have a pretty good idea that something odd is out there and I would like to find it.

I’ll bet Mr. Brushwood has a hard time being certain of anything at all, considering how many different ways he knows of that people can be deceived. Just imagine him having a genuine bigfoot encounter and all of the pre-conceived “alternatives” which would dominate, or rather cloud, his mind and cause him to deny the obvious and propose the obscure. The greatest magician is one who is able to fool even his own self.

Also, although philosopher Karl Popper said it is easy to find confirmations for any theory if we look for confirmations, confirmations by themselves are inherently self-serving and only meaningful when they are compared to and agree with reality.

To find an explanation for a question is not difficult at all - it only requires imagination; but to find an explanation which is supported by reality is to discover truth and not need your imagination.

At the same time, he is not simply dismissive and admits to not devoting a lot of time or attention to the issue. That said, he would have done better to leave crypto out of his show if he wasn’t able to spend any real time on it.

For example, he says, “If [students] believe what I do, just because I tell them to, then they’d be right for the wrong reasons… and no better able to think for themselves when they encounter strange phenomena.” This is all well and good, but then he proceeds to demonstrate his own gullibility by citing his belief in news accounts supposedly revealing “the extent and depth of [Ray Wallace’s] hoaxes.”

Decrying, on the one hand, how “honest, intelligent people have a phenomenal ability to see what they want to see,” Brushwood demonstrates, on the other hand, his ability to believe what he wants to believe, providing an even more compelling example of Popper’s axiom than would-be sasquatch witnesses.

Sleight of hand, meet sleight of thought.

Not that I actually think Brushwood is being disingenuous, he simply pushes his analogies too far. If anything, he may also be a victim of sorts of (what seems to me to be) the sad fact that genuine investigative journalism is becoming a lost art.

Many journalists accept any tripe that comes over the lines as truth. If someone somewhere writes, for example, “family admits dad invented bigfoot,” other reporters slavishly pass on the story without assessing the legitimacy of the information for themselves. The public, all too often, also believes what they are fed by the media, as illustrated by our well-meaning magician friend.

I remember when the Wallace family mess happened. Shep Smith, a well-known anchor at Fox News, passed on the wacky story like it was gospel. Evidently no one at Fox thought to do so much as checking to see if the prominently displayed track stompers matched the casts of the tracks Wallace supposedly hoaxed.

It’s “safe” to belittle sasquatch-related stories. No one of any significance is standing guard to hold media representatives accountable for sloppy reporting. Similarly, Brushwood claims to “offer scientific counterpoints” to the assertions of sasquatch proponents, but his actual argument is simply that all things sasquatchian are “misremembered or misinterpereted” or hoaxed.

I guess I’m glad he’s being respectful.