No problem with anything you’ve posted.

But…particularly with your last sentence.

Somewhere the postulating of ever-more-scattered unknowns needs to yield to: here’s the case to look, and here’s how, and let’s do it.

I don’t really mind idle speculation that much and don’t think it is always a worthless endeavor. It can sometimes lead to bigger and better things, and some very important ideas have had their origins in idle speculation. However, I’d say that there has to be some sort of follow up on these hypotheses and some reason to suppose they could lead somewhere if one is to pursue them. There has to be some sort of inquiry to separate the reality from the bogus in order for idle speculation to evolve into something more; something that could be important.

In the case of Nessie, speculating on what the creature could be is all good and well, but then we have to determine if that speculation holds water or not. You have to strike that idea against the other ideas, evidence, and data at hand. For instance, there has already been a lot of good scientific data to be able to pretty much disregard the traditional explanations such as plesiosaurs.

I think that we follow an idea and disregard it or pursue it further in relation to where the evidence points. It seems there is something in the lake that is perhaps weird, but there is a lot of information pointing to and away from various hypotheses. I’d say narrow that down, look into or rule out simpler mundane explanations, see if an idea sticks and further bolster any one hypotheses before bringing in wild cards like the supernatural.

Right now, I’m still trying to determine if Nessie is just waves, logs, misidentified known species, or any number of other things it might be other than an undiscovered large animal. If it could only reasonably be an unknown large animal, then I would go about trying to determine what kind of animal it possibly is, and if it couldn’t possibly be an animal at all, you go from there. You work with and investigate the known before tentatively poking around into the unknown. That is how science tends to work.

In the case of Nessie, with all of the variables, conflicting reports, and general lack of really concrete evidence on any one idea, why would I want to go throwing in x factors like the paranormal at this point in time?

Idle speculation doesn’t have to be the enemy, but let’s not try to throw more unknowns onto the fire here.

Zoology – which is what “crypto”zoology is – is all about EVIDENCE. Just as the other hard sciences are.

People see odd things in the sky, and in the water. I’ve seen a few. But even the ones I didn’t explain (and I think there might not be more than one, OK, two, maybe), I figured that I simply didn’t get a good enough look to explain.

Nessie sightings seem much more all over the place than sasquatch or yeti sightings, in terms of what the witness describes seeing. There doesn’t seem to be a convincing handle on what they could be. Even the “extant plesiosaur, pinniped, cetacean, etc.” arguments for Nessie, although they have popular appeal, aren’t backed by an adequate level of evidence to justify search parameters. In the absence of this evidence, speculation can run rampant.

It shouldn’t.

Today’s paranormal might be tomorrow’s normal. Let’s figure out what’s in the Loch. There is only so much idle speculation one can do before scientists read it and go: THAT’s why I don’t spend a lot of time on this topic.