“Here, “cheesy” and “easily” are nothing other than the straw man technique being used to exhaust the opponent into having to explain why it is not so easy afterall.”

In my opinion, the proponents rise to this bait too readily, invent bad stuff (they can disappear! They bury their dead!) to justify themselves when they simply haven’t devoted enough thought to this, and should really cut it out. I’ve said it many times here: the scofftics ARE IGNORANT. They should be treated that way. They have performed a double arrogance:

- They have presumed to step into a scientific debate – one on which noted experts in relevant fields take decidedly different positions, based on careful analysis of evidence – with nothing to back their own case;
- They have entered the argument *not even knowing what their case is*, much less how to make it.

Let me help the scofftics, because my do they need it.

- Here is your case, OK? “All of the evidence for the sasquatch adds up to a false positive.” There. Wasn’t that easy? Ah, but now you can’t say that you can’t prove your case because “anyone knows one can’t prove a negative.” False positives *can* be proven; you must now back your case with evidence.
- Nothing you have offered so far amounts to evidence. Sorry. You must DEBUNK pieces of evidence, that is, prove them to be of artificial origin (hoax/lie/fabrication/misidentification), so many of them that the authenticity of the remainder is called into serious question. You must at least do that.
- If you don’t do the above, no proponent – no true skeptic – owes you the time of day on this topic.

If you cannot conduct this discussion like a responsible adult: Please step back, way back, and STOP OBSTRUCTING A SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY.

Thank you.

A very cogent comment you made about those who scoff, “not a single so-called skeptic I have read has any idea how difficult a good fake of something like this would have to be.”

Most skeptics talk the talk but how many times have they actually walked the walk? Moller for example calls the footprints cheesy and suggests that the Patterson film could easily have been faked. Here, “cheesy” and “easily” are nothing other than the straw man technique being used to exhaust the opponent into having to explain why it is not so easy afterall.

The general impression given to the public is that the BF researcher is the softhead and the doubter the hardhead. Clearly, it is time for this stereotype to become reversed because the researchers have a much better relationship with hard facts than the skeptics these days.

And once again, the skeptical side shows itself to be both ignorant of the evidence and unable to interpret its own disciplines correctly when the sasquatch is the subject:

- Moller doesn’t understand how little he understands biomechanics; how much specialists in the subject who vouch for trackways do understand it; and how the absence of a publicly-known or –available photo means nothing to how many have been taken. (I need to ask the skeptics one question, and they need to answer it: Just where is this gold mine to which the discoverer of the sasquatch will get the keys? And Moller: we have a movie, dude.) Moller’s other statements are just the kind I’d expect of “a software designer by trade,” i.e., somebody in pretty deep conversational water for him.

- Coren suggests that the spike in UFO reports when they were, in the article’s words, a “hot topic” suggests that they have no basis in fact. I am no UFO apologist; not even interested in the topic (mainly because of lack of evidence as to what they could be). But when something is a “hot topic,” any psychologist *should* be able to tell you that more people file reports because they feel that they are more likely TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. I hope I don’t even have to address his assertion…OK, I will. To say it’s a natural human reaction to see something unclearly and to immediately and vehemently assert that what you saw is a phenomenon not only not recognized to exist but ridiculed by the public is…well, it’s an untenable proposition for a psychologist. It goes against everything he learned in school!

Never mind that sasquatch reports have come in a steady stream over decades – hot, or not.

I need to remind the skeptics, yet one more time. YOU CANNOT ENTER A SCIENTIFIC DEBATE UNARMED AND EXPECT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. That they are says more about public ignorance than it says about their non-argument.

That never-underestimate-human-fakery schtick is like belief in Santa Claus. What you believe in would be cool, if it made sense. It is so childlike in its naivete that when I hear it I immediately deduce that the speaker (1) is virtually unacquainted with the evidence and (2) is totally unacquainted with the fakes. Not a single so-called skeptic I have read has any idea how difficult a good fake of something like this would have to be.

But the author does seem to get it. What I really like about this article is its open-minded attitude. Yeah yeah there’s the line in there about “that childlike belief that fantastic possibilities do exist on our planet.” But in this case, it’s almost offered as a see-I’m-keeping-my-skepticals-on aside rather than as the (always implicit) central thesis of the piece. I have almost never – maybe four exceptions come to mind – seen a mainstream article capture the essence of the evidence so neatly. Kudos to the writer.

All that having been said: corrick, good point. Some of us who think there could be something to this don’t even have to refer to cryptids-made-real; I’m not sure it’s helping the proponent case much at all (even though I have been guilty of using it a few times myself, with the saola of course always on the list).

“…even if most think he’s nuts—new species are discovered all the time, after all. The Congolese mountain gorilla inhabited the same mythical realm for westerners as Bigfoot until it was officially discovered in 1902, Kirk says.”

People, Orville Wright took the Flyer for a 12-second, sustained flight on December 17, 1903, the first successful, powered, piloted flight in history, and the first commercial radio program wasn’t even broadcast until August 31, 1920 by station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan. Technology in the world has changed radically in the past 106 years. Citing the mountain gorilla, the okapi or the giant forest hog, imho, has very little relevance today.
Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for cryptozoologists to finally start citing the Saola, Vu Quang ox or even the Iriomote cat? Afterall, it’s now 2008, not 1908.

My favorite is the idea that concerns digital cameras and cell phone cameras, and since there are so many, why haven’t we had a convincing photo taken. ONE, more people do have those on them, but cell phones are not that great at capturing split second photos, and even digital cameras are not fool proof–most people encounter BF as a surprise–sure it’s easy to take a decent picture of a tiger in a zoo when your poised and ready. But if you’re out in the wilderness and happen upon something (or it happens upon you), it’s a whole lot more difficult to fire off a picture, let alone a good solid one (and even if that has happened, there is so much skepticism on photos, that it is going to be hard to verify a fake from a real photo with today’s technology…well except for the Georgia bunch:)).

TWO, People always assume that since we’re talking about a 7-9 foot tall humanoid, and since people live in the U.S. and Canada, we’d see these things all the time. EVen though we have several hundred million people living in the U.S., most are in denser populated areas. There are still hundreds (actually more like thousands) of square miles of ground where people do not live or step foot in on a regular basis. That theory is a fallacy. There is still plenty of country for large things to hide in. AND the idea that you are looking for something like a big deer or moose with animal intelligence–the BF have shown better than animal intelligence, especially when it comes to getting close around humans, so that also gives the BF an advantage in avoiding us. There are a large number of accounts of people having things thrown at them or feeling something close by without ever seeing what is doing it.

Add that together and it does not surprise me at all that we haven’t put this to rest yet.

As for faking tracks…could it be done? The tecnology is there, BUT most people could not create tracks that intricate (even with springs and special to features), and certainly the idea that a handful of people are wasting time putting down tracks all over the U.S., Canada, and even in other countries just to pull one over on the cryptozoologists, is just plain silly. Only a handful of people would even want to waste that much time for no real gain, and the novelty would most certainly wear off after a few afternoons.

That is a place where Occam’s razor comes into play…all other things being equal, the simplest answer is the best.

So, is the idea that there are a whole group of people who spend many hours, much money and effort to pull off an elaborate hoax across an entire country (only counting the U.S. ), or is it simpler that there is an unknown, as yet undiscovered creature tromping through our wildnerness.

Seems that simple to me too…go BF

But in the 40+ years since the Patterson footage was filmed, we are still not a lot closer to solving this mystery than we were then. Don’t get me wrong; I’m in no way disparaging the sweat and toil of the Sasquatch researchers. It would just seem that we should be about at the point time-wise that this mystery was solved.

This is just a personal opinion, though I’m not the only one to postulate this; I think the US government has a stake in keeping this beast an unknown. WHAT exactly is at stake, I cant say. There seems to be enough activity going on at federal government installations that if this was simply a matter of cataloging a new animal, the means necessary to secure a specimen would have been brought to bear on the matter, and, case closed.

So we wait, and look, and pick up pieces evidence. And I, for one, extend my very best wishes for success in solving this mystery to everyone involved in the hunt.

Excerpt 2:
“Impossible to fake? People are very, very smart. If they want to see a toe that seems to splay, all it takes is a spring, a little bit of intelligence, and they can do it, says B.C. Society for Skeptical Enquiry chair Lee Moller.”

If these people are very very smart then wouldn’t they be doing it for $100K instead of for free? Great article!