Thanks for taking my input the way I meant it. I enjoy direct and logical conversation. You do contribute much to this sight, and many people value your input.

Keep up the good work and best of luck. Some day we will get the bottom of this phenomenon.

This

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Solid, reliable evidence is of utmost importance. Our scientific knowledge of the natural world is essentially a series of provisional truths backed by evidence, and these truths are amended based on actual new evidence, not what we strongly believe things to be. If we are to accept something new as generally accepted fact, there must be generally agreed upon evidence to show why we should and why the old way is not correct.

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is one of the best things I’ve seen written about science lately.

In fact, this would be useful in another discussion I’m having right now. May I use it? (I’ll credit you.)

I can’t see how data does not exist in the case of a suit hypothesis for this particular film since productions have created some pretty life like suits along these lines just as surely as Oliver exists. Animals are sometimes this still and show absence of nasal flaring and the like, but not always, whereas a suit most probably would be like this. With the somewhat low quality of footage and short length of the clip, I think bearing these things in mind it is reasonable for someone to consider a man in suit scenario without adding nonexistent data or complexity. I didn’t go with that foregone conclusion myself, but I could see how someone could contemplate it and still be within reason to do so. (Note to DWA, I am not talking about PG here!)

Anyway, you make valid points, and I did not mean to pick on you either or assume you were saying things you weren’t. I was just trying to illustrate my own point, such as it is.

Solid, reliable evidence is of utmost importance. Our scientific knowledge of the natural world is essentially a series of provisional truths backed by evidence, and these truths are amended based on actual new evidence, not what we strongly believe things to be. If we are to accept something new as generally accepted fact, there must be generally agreed upon evidence to show why we should and why the old way is not correct. Every time a paradigm has been shifted, or old beliefs overthrown (sometimes with great resistance, unfortunately), it was ultimately through enough evidence to show why the old way was wrong, not by those who believed or accepted things one way or another without it. I really feel that these video clips, even PG, are not that evidence, as compelling as they may be sometimes.

Science cannot assume anything, or at the very least should limit assumptions as much as humanly possible. It is a skeptical endeavor, because we have to be sure with in as much of a degree of reasonable certainty as possible. Science is about discovering how things really work, of trying to KNOW, of testing what is real and what is false. As a result scientists typically try very hard to prove each other’s theories wrong, and every hypothesis is checked and peer reviewed constantly in the hopes that whatever remains just might be the truth. A really good quote I heard somewhere was “Science is a way of not fooling ourselves.” Sasquatch may very well be real, but I want to KNOW. Don’t you? That knowledge is simply going to require more than video footage, or at least footage that is independently verified by many scientists (not just a cherry picked handful) and holds up to considerable critical scrutiny. This is how real discoveries are unearthed from the rough, the good ideas separated from the bad. This is a strength of science, it’s self correcting and demanding nature. We have to reason, compare, contrast, analyze, and consider, but to do this this requires evidence.

So when some try to point to how a piece of footage could be a man in a suit, I don’t think they should be ostracized and I don’t think it is necessarily always faulty thinking. Let’s hear them out. They are working within the confines of what is known, of what hundreds of years of study of our natural world has led us to. New discoveries can be made, of course, but it is up to the proponents to show them if they are incorrect, not the other way around.
If the overwhelming evidence was there, Bigfoot would be accepted. Obviously, some people with the power to conduct real research are not convinced that PG is worth their time. I don’t agree, but neither do I think we should bash on them because this is not paradigm-shifting compelling stuff at this point in time. Anyway, nobody is stopping anyone from following up on the PG footage anyway.

Sorry to go on like this, but I really do have a lot of trust in science and I think it should be respected. Yes, science has been wrong before, and indeed does not know everything. But that doesn’t mean scientific methods should not be applied, and it certainly doesn’t mean that those who think Bigfoot must be real (or that it ISN’T a man in a suit) are right. In the end, we essentially agree on the most important thing. More evidence is needed and that this sort of stuff should probably be looked into more than it currently is. Absolutely we should be encouraging more scientists or people with the means or equipment to verify or falsify sasquatch claims if they think it is worth pursuing. With enough evidence (if it is there to be found), it will not matter whether anyone THINKS this is a man in a suit or not, because we will know. End of story.

You are right in that this was the video of a real animal, yet people failed to see that and instead saw a suit. I’m happy you noted that I myself did not do this. I merely kept the possibility open. Real animals DO usually sniff and and look about when they are curious about something, as the subject in this video certainly was since it was looking up at the camera (agitated was an assumption, my bad.). Obviously it is not always the case, but it happens enough that I don’t find it adding unnecessary complexity to consider the possibility that this lack of movement could have some cause. I also think since very convincing, believable suits can be made, it is not really always adding undue complexity or new entities to the possibilities. Promoting the idea that this is an animal not yet proven to exist before considering the ideas based on scientific fact IS. Assuming a suit and assuming a scientific unknown as the answer are two wholly different things. No matter, the evidence will come through in the end, as it did here.

But sometimes “Pluritas non est ponenda sine neccesitate” might not mean what a lot of people think it does.

For example, positing Patty as a man in a suit postulates a ton of pluralities, most of which have been gone over and gone over here. That that figure is a human doesn’t seem to be the “natural” explanation, given what would have to pertain for it to be true. Despite Krantz’s misstep of resting his analysis on a single measure, the infamous man of which none anywhere are “built that broadly,” the fact is that on every relative measurement that can be taken, Patty’s at the very limits of the human curve. To postulate that one person like that - hitting on all of them - could be found (on Patterson’s budget!), or that Bob Hieronymous could be in that suit, well, requires that we add in or make-up quite a few unknown entities.

We may “KNOW people make…suits and hoax.” But “convincing” might not be the word I’d use. I personally have never seen a suit that could convince me; every ape suit I have ever seen - including Bigfoot outfits - requires a pretty much standard-issue human to fit inside of it. Padding doesn’t alter that issue enough to make a difference; it can’t, if you want the person to look natural in the suit. (Catch-22: “natural” means “human” in this case.) There’s no question, from the reports that I have read [many], that the sasquatch, if it’s the animal people are describing, doesn’t look like anything I have ever seen on, say, Youtube. (Except the Peguis, MN one. What happened to that guy?)

It does, however, seem to look like Patty, more or less, allowing for the differences one would expect among individuals in a species.

“We KNOW there was a chimp named Oliver who could walk upright and had similar features to what is in the film.” Exactly. THAT is a mundane option, and of course, bingo.

“We DON’T KNOW Bigfoot exists, and Occam’s Razor says that until the known ones are ruled out or incontrovertible evidence to support the unknown becomes evident….”

How I apply that one is: if you can rule out a suit (or show that the folks claiming to have been in it have postulated nowhere near enough pluralities to get themselves to fit in that suit), and you can rule out a known animal, you might have something that would benefit from further pursuit in order to figure out what it is.

I personally would like to see the conversation kept to the evidence. As fuzzy puts it: let’s set aside the time-wasters, and on with the search.