The Science of Bigfoot

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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The Science of Bigfoot

Post #1

Post by Dimmesdale »

I was encouraged by nobspeople and We_Are_VENOM to start a Bigfoot thread. Honestly, I only know a little about the Patterson-Gimlin footage (which I happen to think is authentic). I am not very knowledgeable about much else though. Still, I want to provide links to two videos which I think are worth looking at:

Blevins best proof of Patterson Gimlin Bigfoot is real:



The Patterson Gimlin Film, "One Minute to film, 45 years to explain":



Hopefully more participants can contribute. Thanks.
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #2

Post by Miles »

.


To quote from the first video:


" [Leroy Blevins] is an ardent skeptic. He believes that Patterson Gimlin was a fake.He spent 10 years trying to make a suit to copy PG. But the devil is in the details. His suit is very good. But it is 1/100th the way there. Here is a muscle test for his Bigfoot suit. It is SO ridiculous that LB actually PROVES that PG is real. Yet he doesn't see it."


The purported authors of this video, Jack Barnes and Jeff Andersen, make a very glaring, freshman error in reasoning (logic) here, namely; The lack of disproof of X is proof of X. To wit: because you haven't proven that flying unicorns don't exist proves they do exist.

IMO, reasoning like this should kill any further consideration of the rest of the video.


.

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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #3

Post by Tcg »

[Replying to Dimmesdale in post #1]

This might shed some light on the subject:
'Bigfoot creator' dies

Image
Dale Lee Wallace of Toledo reveals the original feet made from Alderwood his Uncle, Ray L. Wallace, used to make the now-famous bigfoot tracks in 1958.

The family of longtime Toledo resident Ray Wallace said the real Sasquatch died along with Wallace Nov. 26.

Relatives who could not be reached Thursday told the Seattle Times that Wallace enjoyed pulling pranks to see what kind of a stir he could make.

They claim his pranks — including making fake footprints and fake home movies of the infamous "Sasquatch," helped create the "Bigfoot" legend. Wallace even had his wife dress up as one of the half-human wilderness creatures, relatives said; they are reportedly looking for the suit he used to make the film.

...

Wallace's son Michael, a Castle Rock resident, told the Seattle Times this week that his father was behind the prank that created the Bigfoot legend in 1958 — making giant footprints on a work site in Humboldt County, Calif., that were reported by a local newspaper the next day.

That news story reportedly started the "Bigfoot" fixation throughout the country.

https://tdn.com/news/bigfoot-creator-di ... 488e0.html
If it weren't for the fact that dead people can't read, or do anything else for that matter, Ray Wallace would be thrilled to see the traction his practical joke still gets. Not a bad legacy, except for the fact that some still treat it seriously rather than understand the joke that it is.


Tcg
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #4

Post by Dimmesdale »

Miles wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:27 pm .


To quote from the first video:


" [Leroy Blevins] is an ardent skeptic. He believes that Patterson Gimlin was a fake.He spent 10 years trying to make a suit to copy PG. But the devil is in the details. His suit is very good. But it is 1/100th the way there. Here is a muscle test for his Bigfoot suit. It is SO ridiculous that LB actually PROVES that PG is real. Yet he doesn't see it."


The purported authors of this video, Jack Barnes and Jeff Andersen, make a very glaring, freshman error in reasoning (logic) here, namely; The lack of disproof of X is proof of X. To wit: because you haven't proven that flying unicorns don't exist proves they do exist.

IMO, reasoning like this should kill any further consideration of the rest of the video.


.
Well, if someone did manage to record footage of an entity, such as a flying unicorn (apparently, anyway) then that requires an explanation. Either that entity really is a flying unicorn, or it is something else. It isn't that a flying unicorn is simply asserted (in which case your logical fallacy would make sense). We have footage of something that looks very much like it. Ergo that requires an explanation.

What we have is the PG footage of a being. That being may or may not be a genuine Bigfoot. IF it is a man in a suit, then we in our current day and age ought to be able to reproduce such a suit. Since we cannot do so now, with more advanced technology, more time on our hands, and a controlled environment, etc, it is unlikely it could be produced 57 or so years ago. Hence, it's probably real. I fail to see anything illogical here. It is simply narrowing down the viable explanations.

Also, just because someone makes an error in logic need not invalidate the entirety of his presentation. If I treated Joe Biden that way then I wouldn't bother listening to anything he says either. But he's the leader of the free world.

The video is interesting, you should pay attention to it.

I'm convinced it was a real creature.
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #5

Post by Dimmesdale »

Tcg wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:09 pm [Replying to Dimmesdale in post #1]

This might shed some light on the subject:
'Bigfoot creator' dies

Image
Dale Lee Wallace of Toledo reveals the original feet made from Alderwood his Uncle, Ray L. Wallace, used to make the now-famous bigfoot tracks in 1958.

The family of longtime Toledo resident Ray Wallace said the real Sasquatch died along with Wallace Nov. 26.

Relatives who could not be reached Thursday told the Seattle Times that Wallace enjoyed pulling pranks to see what kind of a stir he could make.

They claim his pranks — including making fake footprints and fake home movies of the infamous "Sasquatch," helped create the "Bigfoot" legend. Wallace even had his wife dress up as one of the half-human wilderness creatures, relatives said; they are reportedly looking for the suit he used to make the film.

...

Wallace's son Michael, a Castle Rock resident, told the Seattle Times this week that his father was behind the prank that created the Bigfoot legend in 1958 — making giant footprints on a work site in Humboldt County, Calif., that were reported by a local newspaper the next day.

That news story reportedly started the "Bigfoot" fixation throughout the country.

https://tdn.com/news/bigfoot-creator-di ... 488e0.html
If it weren't for the fact that dead people can't read, or do anything else for that matter, Ray Wallace would be thrilled to see the traction his practical joke still gets. Not a bad legacy, except for the fact that some still treat it seriously rather than understand the joke that it is.


Tcg
Actually, your post sheds no light on the subject and is irrelevant.

The rumors of Sasquatch predate anything this guy may have done:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot#History

"According to David Daegling, the legends existed before there was a single name for the creature.[19] They differed in their details both regionally and between families in the same community.[19]

Ecologist Robert Pyle argues that most cultures have accounts of human-like giants in their folk history, expressing a need for "some larger-than-life creature".[20] Each language had its own name for the creature featured in the local version of such legends. Many names meant something along the lines of "wild man" or "hairy man", although other names described common actions that it was said to perform, such as eating clams or shaking trees.[21] Chief Mischelle of the Nlaka'pamux at Lytton, British Columbia told such a story to Charles Hill-Tout in 1898; he named the creature by a Salishan variant meaning "the benign-faced-one".

Members of the Lummi tell tales about Ts'emekwes, the local version of Bigfoot. The stories are similar to each other in the general descriptions of Ts'emekwes, but details differed among various family accounts concerning the creature's diet and activities.[22] Some regional versions tell of more threatening creatures. The stiyaha or kwi-kwiyai were a nocturnal race. Children were warned against saying the names, lest the monsters hear and come to carry off a person—sometimes to be killed.[23] The Iroquois tell of an aggressive, hair covered giant with rock-hard skin known as the Ot ne yar heh or Stone Giant, more commonly referred to as the Genoskwa.[24] In 1847, Paul Kane reported stories by the Indians about skoocooms, a race of cannibalistic wild men living on the peak of Mount St. Helens in southern Washington state. Also related to this area was an alleged incident in 1924 in which a violent encounter between a group of miners and a group of "ape men" occurred. These allegations were reported in the July 16, 1924, issue of The Oregonian and have become a popular piece of Bigfoot lore and the area is now referred to as Ape Canyon.[25] U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, in his 1893 book, The Wilderness Hunter, writes of a story he was told by an elderly mountain man named Bauman in which a foul smelling, bipedal creature ransacked his beaver trapping camp, stalked him, and later became hostile when it fatally broke his companion's neck somewhere near the Idaho-Montana border.[26] Roosevelt notes that Bauman appeared fearful while telling the story, but attributed the trapper's folkloric German ancestry to have potentially influenced him.[27]

Less-menacing versions have also been recorded, such as one by Reverend Elkanah Walker from 1840. Walker was a Protestant missionary who recorded stories of giants among the Indians living near Spokane, Washington. The Indians said that these giants lived on and around the peaks of nearby mountains and stole salmon from the fishermen's nets.[28]

In the 1920s, Indian Affairs Agent J. W. Burns compiled local stories and published them in a series of Canadian newspaper articles. They were accounts told to him by the Sts'Ailes people of Chehalis and others. The Sts'Ailes and other regional tribes maintained that the Sasquatch were real. They were offended by people telling them that the figures were legendary. According to Sts'Ailes accounts, the creatures preferred to avoid white men and spoke the Lillooet language of the people at Port Douglas, British Columbia at the head of Harrison Lake. These accounts were published again in 1940.[29][30] Burns borrowed the term Sasquatch from the Halkomelem sásq'ec (IPA: [ˈsæsqʼəts])[31] and used it in his articles to describe a hypothetical single type of creature portrayed in the local stories.[17][21][32]"
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #6

Post by brunumb »

Dimmesdale wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:05 pm IF it is a man in a suit, then we in our current day and age ought to be able to reproduce such a suit. Since we cannot do so now, with more advanced technology, more time on our hands, and a controlled environment, etc, it is unlikely it could be produced 57 or so years ago.
That's a bit of a sweeping assertion. Who has determined that we cannot reproduce such a suit?
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #7

Post by Dimmesdale »

brunumb wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 7:07 pm
Dimmesdale wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:05 pm IF it is a man in a suit, then we in our current day and age ought to be able to reproduce such a suit. Since we cannot do so now, with more advanced technology, more time on our hands, and a controlled environment, etc, it is unlikely it could be produced 57 or so years ago.
That's a bit of a sweeping assertion. Who has determined that we cannot reproduce such a suit?
Well, in the video Blevins apparently dedicated 10 years trying to make a rival suit. And it is pitiful in comparison to the original footage creature, both appearance wise and if you go into the technicalities.... For example, unlike in the footage the suit Blevins made is seriously deficient when considering details like musculature flexing and small details like gait, toe formation, etc. I don't have the technical knowledge to go into detail, but videos similar to the one I posted go into great detail analyzing the actual footage and poring over minute details that you can actually SEE up close - skin and fat pockets and such things. The suit in that video is indeed only a hundredth the way there.

I know. You can say, sure. HOLLYWOOD could have come up with an adequate suit, if not Blevins? I don't think anyone could have made a suit like that in 1967. I haven't seen anything like that in movies. Only when it comes to CGI. Not actual, physical suits. What gets me most is how the thighs move. The hip movement when Pattie turns. I have not seen anything remotely comparable in terms of animatronics. And I've seen my share of cheesy movies.

But, that's me.
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #8

Post by brunumb »

Tcg wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 5:09 pm If it weren't for the fact that dead people can't read, or do anything else for that matter, Ray Wallace would be thrilled to see the traction his practical joke still gets. Not a bad legacy, except for the fact that some still treat it seriously rather than understand the joke that it is.
You've reminded me of the great Carlos hoax instigated by James Randi and José Alvarez back in 1988. The most significant aspect of the whole event was how uncritically the media accepted everything Carlos claimed, and that even after the hoax was revealed people continued to believe in the psychic powers of Carlos.

http://skepdic.com/carlos.html

\https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pr ... 8/12875836
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #9

Post by Tcg »

Dimmesdale wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:05 pm I'm convinced it was a real creature.
I'm sure you are. Little children who find quarters or dollars or whatever is the going rate for teeth these days under their pillows after their mommies tuck them in at night are also convinced that the tooth fairy is a real creature. Of course the joy a belief brings is not evidence that belief has any correspondence to reality.


Tcg
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Re: The Science of Bigfoot

Post #10

Post by Dimmesdale »

Tcg wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 10:59 pm
Dimmesdale wrote: Mon Apr 05, 2021 6:05 pm I'm convinced it was a real creature.
I'm sure you are. Little children who find quarters or dollars or whatever is the going rate for teeth these days under their pillows after their mommies tuck them in at night are also convinced that the tooth fairy is a real creature. Of course the joy a belief brings is not evidence that belief has any correspondence to reality.


Tcg
Nice ridicule. I don't sense any logic though. And I live in the Temple of Logic, so if you don't got any.... that's kinda not my thing....
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein

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