Anyway, I’m glad that you an alcalde have taken the time to engage in this discussion. I think photographic evidence is a sore point with sasquatch, and it is good to get these thoughts out there for others to consider.

If sasquatch is indeed out there, I think trail cams like the one that took the photo here of the, let’s see, oh yeah, the zorro fox, stand good chance of providing some of the first good images.

Cryptomundo’s Flagship Critter ain’t the short-eared dog. THAT’s how we keep getting here.

It’s funny how many people (particularly after posts like that last one of mine) think I’m a proponent of the sasquatch. I’m actually not; I want it proven. it’s just that I think the evidence seems to point to something real. One thing that I think a scientist would grasp is that it’s very unlikely that a vast bin of lies and hoaxes, done by liars and hoaxers of all stripes, would behave like biodata. When one tosses in hallucinations and honest misidentifications, one has actually DECREASED the odds of all the datapoints behaving like something real.

Yet they do. That keeps me interested; and I would want people who should intuitively grasp that that shouldn’t “just happen” with false positives to get interested too.

But the more you talk to me the more I think that dog might not be stuffed.

But anyway, yeah, if it weren’t for some of the things that you mentioned, I wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place. Obviously I am open minded, but I am also very careful, and that is the way science is in any field. Scoffing bad, careful critical review of evidence good.

By the way, the reception that PG got has in no way stopped people from trying to hoax Bigfoot videos. The fact that they haven’t succeeded is telling, but the reaction seems to have had little to do with the lack of videos, I feel. You are right, only one video, as I explained in my post above, ain’t much. We need more.

A major problem with photographic evidence of sasquatch is that there just isn’t enough of it that could qualify as solid. If there were more clear photos and films presented, then there would be something to compare with and the collective body of these would carry a bit more weight as evidence. Since PG is really the only clear photographic evidence we have so far, it is sort of a conundrum. There’s not much left we can do with it but say “Hmmm. I don’t know.”

We need more clear photos that are not easily dismissed in order to establish credibility. I know that there are all sorts of reasons put forward as to why sasquatch isn’t photographed more often, but none of these reasons equate to evidence it is really there. It reminds me of the case of the fire breathing dragon problem that Carl Sagan once mentioned in one of his books.

I say that there is a fire breathing dragon in my closet. So you ask why it hasn’t been photographed. I say “It’s an invisible dragon.”

Ok then, where are its tracks in the dust? “Oh, the dragon floats.”

Ok then, you figure you will use infrared to detect its fire, but I tell you “It’s a special heatless fire.”

You decide to pour paint on it to make it visible. No dice. My dragon is incorpreal and so the paint won’t stick.

I could go on like this, countering every proposed physical method of testing you put forward with some reason why it won’t work. But the thing is, your inability to invalidate my claim of a fire breathing dragon in my closet is in no means the same as saying it is true. Only solid evidence will do that.

PG is good. We need more of that. No excuses, just going out and getting the clear photographic evidence that the sasquatch desperately needs.

(How did this become a sasquatch thread? I can do that. I mean, this thing in this blog ain’t a cryptid and it’s called Cryptomundo. )

I’ve actually spent copious time (1) reviewing the evidence about the sasquatch and (2) talking about it here. So excuse me if I’m a bit brief here. I plead exhaustion.

“Think of evidence as having weight, and of being put on a laboratory scale. If there’s 99 ounces on one pan, putting one ounce on the other won’t change very much.”

Actually, there’s about 99 ounces in the sasquatch pan. It’s just that science isn’t interested.

“We scrutinize pictures or Bigfoot because we don’t have ample evidence of bigfoot.”

Actually, we do. At least ample evidence to interest any scientist. It’s just that science isn’t interested.

“evidence that suggests contradiction to existing beliefs will be viewed with a degree of skepticism proportional to the cost of accepting such evidence. That cost, both psychological and economic, of changing direction, i.e., of discarding widely held beliefs, is too great to be accepted without the overwhelming pressure of evidence that cannot be credibly disputed.”

The sasquatch doesn’t contradict any beliefs except the one that it doesn’t exist. It would fit very neatly on the primate family tree (if it is one, which the copious evidence seems to all but confirm, confirmation of course being tough when you don’t have proof it exists yet). Many observed sasquatch traits and behaviors are right in line with known characters of the known great apes.

“I’m curious what evidence you feel exists regarding the existence of sasquatch that has not received scientific review. Also, do you feel the accumulated weight of such evidence merits the review?”

Well, I have worn my fingers out reiterating it. But I think that directing you to the Cryptomundo archives wouldn’t be the way to go here. Good search facility here, but it ain’t Yahoo.

Summing up as best I can:

(1) copious anecdotal evidence, much (probably the vast majority) of which I’ve read, dating back as long as Europeans have been on this continent, that conforms to biogeographical rules, supports statistical analyses, and whose guidebook consistency has given us an excellent start on the natural history of the animal;

(2) hundreds of trackways, giving a picture of the animal consistent with other evidence, and most left where a hoaxer wanting attention simply wouldn’t leave them;

(3) Other evidence (crude shelters, feces, kills, hairs, etc.) found in conjunction with either encounters or other evidence similar to that associated with encounters;

(4) The Patterson-Gimlin subject, which left evidence, including tracks, correlating strongly with much other evidence found both before and since the film was made. Many people have said that’s the animal that they saw. Even those who say nope, that’s not it, when they described the animal they saw, left little doubt in the mind of any objective person that they saw an individual either of the same or of a very closely related species. There are - for understandable reasons not public - other photo and film records (OK, allegedly, but given P/G’s reception I know why they aren’t public) available that corroborates what’s on P/G. No analysis of that film has come down with a single piece of evidence that could point to its not being genuine. Several analyses, by qualified workers in relevant fields, point to an unknown animal. (One analyst said: it’s a real animal. But I’m just unable to believe it exists.)

BTW, I’ve never seen a film other than P/G that isn’t a laughable fake. OK, two. But I grant that ain’t much. And again…with the reception Patterson got why is anyone surprised?

All of the evidence correlates with all of the other evidence to draw a clear picture of an animal we haven’t documented. I have said it many times here: anyone I have read who knows anything near what I know of the evidence - and all of these are well qualified in fields relevant to the search - pronounces one of two things: (1) that’s real, and it’s undocumented by science or (2) the evidence is so compelling that scientific research into the possibility of this animal is the clear next step. I’ve read scientists who pronounced negatively on this topic, and - absolutely without exception - they’ve offered up disclaimers I’ve shot to pieces in seconds. Why? They pronounce when they haven’t done their homework. The evidence seems like little because - outside of Bigfooters - it is utterly ignored. No one knows how much there is, except scientists like Meldrum, Krantz and Bindernagel, and pretty well read up laymen like me who just know how scientists should think when it comes to the unknown. (In short: they shoudn’t go off half-cocked.)

Don’t know how much clearer it could be.

We’d have proof now, I suspect, if it weren’t for a peculiar-bordering-on-pathological problem humans seem to have with believing that there could be anything else on the planet this close to us. No other species discovered in the entire time science has been discovering species has had anywhere near this much evidence prior to discovery.

Oh. Same for the yeti.

[WHEW] It’s not you, it’s just the number of times I’ve gone through this. (So many Cryptomundo readers, so little time.) But I’m getting better at it.

How do you get where I am? The only suggestion I can make is the one that got me here:

READ UP. Really. The evidence, in my opinion and that of people more learned than me, is very worthy of review. It will require one or a few people willing to spend long amounts of time in the field. But once science evinced interest, folks willing to do that would start dropping in science’s lap like apples off trees. Put another way: pursuing the evidence is so worthwhile because it’s not likely to cost too much.

I mean: how much did Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey cost? The sas and the yeti could use one.

Would I bet on their existence? If I had to, up or down, right now: you bet I would.

The evidence is that strong. I got it under my belt myself, is how I know. And I don’t even think I’m a Bigfooter. They’ve got lots more to add, I’m sure.

[WHEW] And yes. That’s BRIEF.

Another thing I say here: P/G is a grain of sand, on a beach of evidence. If that’s fake I just pull the references; everything else here stands.

DWA- Ok, I have a little better picture of what you’re getting at.

You are absolutely right. There is another option for anyone looking at these kinds of photos other than those you mentioned. I agree. Indeed a photo need not be proclaimed as fake or proof positive right off the bat. Another option could be to look at the photo and deduce what it could possibly be by comparing it to known phenomena and analyzing it for signs of a hoax, rather than immediately giving it weight as a photo of an honest to goodness living creature. But considering that sasquatch is an unknown, science has no choice but to ere on the side of caution. We do not have the luxury of accepting these photos at face value or giving them any special weight as evidence.

The issue I had with your earlier post was this-

“No questions arise when the animal is one known to exist (or of a type of animal of which we recognize similar species). When it’s something that’s not cut and dried, though, the photoshop experts come out.

And the argument that, well, we know these to exist isn’t really a logical argument, as anyone can see upon a moment’s reflection.”

Of course no questions arise. It is not illogical at all to look at photos of known animals and say, yes that is a zebra, or a zorro fox. These animals do exist, it is not disputed. Even a picture of a stuffed zorro fox would still be a picture of a stuffed known animal rather than, say, a sasquatch suit stuffed with possum organs. Even a fake zorro fox could be seen and we could say, oh look, a zorro fox. We do not have that luxury with sasquatch, an animal that is an unknown, is unrepresented by any similar North American animals currently, and so is subject to scientific scrutiny. Notice I don’t say dismissal, but certainly scrutiny.

So you might point out that a new type of fox would be considered proof even if there is no other evidence for its existence. But there IS evidence for its existence in a sense. We have other foxes, other animals that provide a precedent for presently existing in the wild. For example, a good photo of, say, a new type of wild dog, besides its clarity over most sasquatch photos, is not as extraordinary as one of a claimed existing bipedal hominid, and therefore can be given more weight based on other animals we know of for which there is plenty of documented proof. There is less background evidence needed to build on in order for us to be able to entertain the idea of a new wild dog, and less chance of a hoax as well. If the new species of wild dog was claimed to be found in downtown Detroit, THEN you’d need to provide more to back your claim up.

And that’s one of the things science does, it builds on what came before. There is a foundation upon which we compare new findings, and if what came before is wrong, you’d better come with some solid evidence of why it is wrong. Science is a self correcting process based on evidence, and I’m not sure that all sasquatch photos are able to be considered as good evidence.

A main thing here is these photos actually do not exist in a vacuum. If scientists had to immediately give credence to every anamolous photo passed their way, it would take a long time indeed to follow up on all of them. Likewise if they had to question everything that is known now and doubt every single photo of a new type of known animal, or start every single experiment from scratch. The thing is a lot of the evidence for sasquatch is circumstantial, and its credibility debatable, so therefore the photos of such creatures have to be approached critically if we are to move its credibility forward. It is not necessary to prove that sasquatch IS a man in a suit, but rather to show that a given photo could not possibly be a man in a suit, nor any other animal known to exist.

It does not work the other way around. We cannot accept things until they are proven NOT to exist, such as the common fallacy of saying “Show me it IS a suit.” That is totally the opposite of what science does. No, we have to show that it ISN’T a suit and that these photos should be given credence, and that requires a critical eye. We can only analyze the evidence, see where it may lead us, and build upon our case. That is the key, strong evidence to support ones claims, NOT evidence that ones claims are wrong. Photos of known animals or similar animals do not face this challenge, but sasquatch photos do.

A cryptid photo, essentially an unknown, might be evidence, but it can in no way be given the same weight as evidence compared to photos of known animals. These photos should certainly not be summarily dismissed, but they DO have to be scrutinized carefully. The scientifically responsible thing to do is to compare them to things we already know before jumping to unknowns.

Anyway, how did this get onto sasquatch again?

1. Consider it proof positive;
2. Laugh at it.
3. Say “that critter is stuffed.”

As a scientist, I know you see the error there. THAT’S our point. A known species: accepted. What appears to be one that isn’t yet: laughed at because, no matter what aspect of it is being discussed, it’s either too much of that or too little of it to be real. (Or just the right amount, which means it’s REALLY fake.)
——————————–

I’m not Mystery_Man, but I see a different error than the error that you see, per my previous post. Adopting position #1 is the wrong position if said animal is unlikely to exist based on all the other data we have. #3 would actually be the most likely thing.

Think of it this way: say I dug up an anatomically modern human bone that dated to a million years before modern humans are known to have existed. You’re suggesting we should declare it proof positive… in SPITE of all the other bones that don’t date back anywhere near as far and the fact that no other such bones have ever been found among any other million-year-old bones and such a finding is completely at odds with the evolutionary family tree? That violates the laboratory scale example and machine learning example I used. What science would and *should* do is suggest that there is something wrong with the dating method for that bone. Given the weight of evidence, that’s far more likely. Now, if I dug up the same type of bone twenty more times in the same area, the more likely explanation woud be something that’s screwing up the dating method for bones in that area - some type of radiocarbon exposure or such. If I found such bones in twenty different spots, science would and should suggest a world-wide event that messes up the dating period from a certain era. If only these bones are affected, and it’s the same type of bone I keep finding, science should suggest that the bones belong to an ancient creature that has one bone that resembles a modern human. That requires a much smaller shift in the body of established knowledge. If I finally find 50 complete skeletons all over the world that date to the same era and no other finds in the same areas and strata date out-of-place, then and only then would science be facing “the overwhelming pressure of evidence that cannot be credibly disputed” and begin to examine the idea that modern humans existed far earlier than first thought.

The fallacy you’re entering into is that in complaining that your evidence isn’t receiving the same weight, you inadvertently change the weight of the evidence *against* your hypothesis, which is far more numerous, and give that even less weight than you claim your evidence is getting. To change all of the established evidence regarding the hominid family tree and other aspects of biology will require more evidence than one fakeable photograph or black and white film.

the majority of my original post, especially that last line, was intended as a very tongue-in-cheek piece after I took a look at the photo and realized that if I’d seen it I’d have been convinced I’d just seen an unknown animal with a fox body and rodent snout.

Fortunately, I do not find myself in the position of passing judgement on cryptid evidence. Far from it. I might not survive such a job. Upon meeting my brother’s long-term girlfriend, I learned that one of the few things my brother had told her about me was the long list of unusual animals that have chosen to bite me :-). Said list includes both a yak and a skunk (yes, bit, not sprayed, don’t ask). If you came to check up on me during my first day on the job, you’d undoubtedly find Bigfoot sitting on me and a Mongolian Death Worm wrapped around my neck!

I’m curious what evidence you feel exists regarding the existence of sasquatch that has not received scientific review. Also, do you feel the accumulated weight of such evidence merits the review?

If I may intrude into your discussion with DWA for a moment, let me try to make the same point. Think of evidence as having weight, and of being put on a laboratory scale. If there’s 99 ounces on one pan, putting one ounce on the other won’t change very much. I’ve been doing some work recently with machine learning algorithms. Let’s say you have one algorithm that has generated the rule If A=1 and B=2 and C=3 then Class=X. It is able to cite as the confidence for this rule that there are 99 training cases it has seen with this pattern. Let’s also assume this is an algorithm that can modify its rules when it is shown more test cases. If an example comes along with the same conditions as above but the Class equals Y instead, there is no learning algorithm in use that I know of that will throw out the existing rule and change it to If A=1 and B=2 and C=3 then Class=Y. What the ones I know of will do next is keep the existing rule but change its confidence to 99% and continue to predict Class=X for the next example to come along. One piece of evidence that in this case Class=Y doesn’t throw out or outweigh all the evidence that Class=X. Similarly, if there’s only one case where A=8 and B=9 and C=10 few algorithms will even attempt to make a rule for it as there is too little evidence to support it. Most would predict “unknown” until more evidence came along. Some algorithms would flag the Class=Y instance as a possible outlier but none would do the same with the hundredth Class=X instance. A Bigfoot pic is far more likely to be spurious than a zebra pic. Admitting a phony zebra pic or Class=X instance into the model will have far less harm to the accuracy of the model than admitting a spurious Bigfoot pic or Class=Y example.

We don’t scrutinize pictures of zebras as we have ample evidence of zebras. We scrutinize pictures or Bigfoot because we don’t have ample evidence of bigfoot.

I recently re-read a paper by the just-deceased Dr. Tom Van Flandern, himself a scientist who drifted into holding several “alternative” and controversial views in the fields of physics and cosmology after a successful “mainstream” career. If I may quote him, the paper is “Evidence of Planetary Artifacts” by T. Van Flandern, M. Carlotto, H. Crater, J. Erjavec, I. Fleming and J.P. Levasseur, published in Infinite Energy magazine, Volume 7, Issue 40, 2001.

“In science, it is axiomatic that ‘extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary evidence’. This is not a precept, but an observation about the progress of scientific knowledge. Evidence that refines or extends knowledge in a way that is consistent with accepted beliefs is rarely scrutinized to dispel skepticism about its validity, since there is ordinarily no cause for such skepticism. In contrast, evidence that suggests contradiction to existing beliefs will be viewed with a degree of skepticism proportional to the cost of accepting such evidence. That cost, both psychological and economic, of changing direction, i.e., of discarding widely held beliefs, is too great to be accepted without the overwhelming pressure of evidence that cannot be credibly disputed. Thus, evidence that would necessitate such a change of beliefs is, and must be, subjected to a level of scrutiny that would be inappropriate (cost-ineffective; unjustifiably tedious) if applied to evidence consistent with accepted theory. Evidence that survives this extraordinary scrutiny is extraordinary evidence.”

Maybe he said it best of all.