Ben Blasts Bogus Bigfoot
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 17th, 2009
Ben Radford has a good column about the bogus Bigfoot from Minnesota, entitled “New Bigfoot Image Cut Down by Occam’s Razor.” See here. Too much attention has been devoted to this already, so I will be brief.
I’m not sure about the razor, but this case sure needs a good barber.
The above alleged Bigfoot was taken at 7:20 pm, on October 24, 2009, on a rainy night, by a game trail camera in woods north of Remer, Minnesota, according to the hunters who set up the camera. Someone seems to have been playing a prank on them. Now the trick on us seems to have been extended by the media.
A paragraph worthy of reflecting upon is the following one from Benjamin Radford:
This case also highlights one of the pitfalls of researching mysterious subjects like Bigfoot, ghosts, and UFOs: anyone can declare himself or herself an expert on the topic. There are no governing bodies or accrediting institutions for investigators, and most casual readers can’t tell which investigators use credible scientific methods and which simply put up a Web site and deem themselves authorities. The Minnesota trailcam non-Bigfoot photo says nothing about whether Bigfoot exists, but it does reveal a great deal about how these stories begin and spread.
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Loren Coleman no longer writes for Cryptomundo. His archived posts remain here at Cryptomundo.
just you watch…ol’ Tom will probably end up using this as “evidence” next chance he gets…
I really don’t see how this photo relates to the lack of accrediting institutions, governing bodies and methods of cryptozoology as a whole. It seems to me this one photo is being used here as a platform to make a blanket statement about cryptozoology in general. How did we get from this photo to the state of cryptozoology as a science? Let’s not use this hoax as a prop upon which to rest a case against cryptozoology. It’s a red herring.
The fact of the matter is that this is one photo that has been pretty much universally panned by cryptozoologists. This has been laughed at from the beginning. In fact, I have seen no serious arguments from advocates that this is a Bigfoot at all. If anything it has shown to an extent the critical thinking that skeptics want to see more of and has painted the general public as the ones clamoring to get this on the news and say “wow, a Bigfoot.”
To go from a photo that even “true believers” think stinks, to criticizing or questioning the validity of cryptozoology in general just doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s a bit of a stretch in my opinion.
m_m: couldn’t have said it better.
I will add this: using stuff like this the way Ben uses it here is typical of those who don’t have the slightest understanding of the evidence. (Or that seasoned squatchers almost universally laugh at everything like this. Or that Biscardi is no squatcher, although he is certainly seasoned at – or in – something.) Loren’s recent blog about the news media treatment of this same shot reflects the exact same ignorance (and tells you why you’re better off getting your news from Colbert and Stewart than from the “real” news networks).
Not, now, that I’m surprised.