This one is for Roger and his card...

So the sceptics say that we should "see" bigfoot more
often? After all "something" has to make all those
alleged tracks right?

I think my reply would be, we ought to see more hoaxers
in action yet we have no known reports by anyone seeing
a hoaxer at work. With literally many thousands of reported
tracks, someone somewhere has got to have seen the "perp"
at work, running with glee and abandon, astride some
enormous Wallacian wooden feet. Right?

I'd even further that and say a REAL 'hoaxer' (one who really 'gets off' duping people) would probably (especially nowadays) want to get VIDEO of himself DOING the hoaxing so as to add insult to injury by showing it publicly AFTER any media coverage and thus 'embarrassing' all the 'believers'.

If found, where does one report??

Wallacian..
That word will find a home, somewhere, in the english language..
It's just sounds too good not to.

HM: Thanks for wanting to help. Anyone else who has an idea for the Bigfoot Business Card ("Reasons Why Bigfoot Might Exist"--I'm up to 19 or 20 now) please speak up, because I'm offering 10 free cards to anyone who puts something into the hat bipto's now passing. Just PM me your address--I'll print an address label & delete your PM, preserving your privacy. (But I won't have the revised card ready for a week or two, so please be patient. It's going to be tricky shoe-horning RobUstes' latest item in.)

You can keep a card in your wallet in reserve, as a defensive measure, to hand to any jackass who brays in your face; or you can use cards to soften the scorn of relatives and close friends without having to engage in what might be a tough, argumentative tussle. They could be of use to BF investigators, to hand to skeptical reporters and officials in the field, to give them a hint that there's more to this topic than they may have thought. They aren't primarily intended for proselytizing, although you could also use them that way if you want.

Curiously, what I really need is one more "Reason Why Bigfoot Is Unlikely," for my parallel "Skeptics Organization Bigfoot Card." I'm one item shy of filling the number of lines I have available (using two sides). (I've revised it a bit from the version I posted here in Dec.)

One problem with HM's suggestion is that it is really a rebuttal to a skeptical objection, rather than a reason why BF might be real. I'm holding such items in reserve for a follow-up card (or article), "Skeptics' Objections Rebutted." (That follow-up card would also be the proper place for Goldie's observation about wolverines not being seen by trappers. It too is a response to an objection.) So the 3 cards I'm working on could be thought of as a Point/Counterpoint sequence, perhaps.

I'm afraid I don't think HM's point is going to convince many skeptics. They'd respond, first, with GC's observation: few people would bother to report a prank, or even know who to call. And if they did call the media, the media wouldn't report it, unless someone later came along who was fooled by it. Second, they'd say that hoaxers would of course take good care not to be seen, perhaps by stationing confederates down the road to warn of approaching cars by walkie-talkie. Third, hoaxers who were caught in the act by someone aggressive might simply agree to wipe out their tracks to get him off their case, a situation where once again nothing would come to our attention. Fourth, skeptics would say that some suspicious cases of ape-suit hoaxing (as opposed to footprint hoaxing) have been suspected at the time, such as the incident in Vermont, reported in the Bennington Banner a few months ago, where 3 of the 4 callers who saw the ape by the side of the road thought it looked phony.

(Even if it didn't look phony, the fact that it hung around to be seen by more than one motorist is suspicious--most BFs get off the road once seen by a motorist, if they were walking along (rather than across) it in the first place.)

I think the real counter to skeptics' constant harping on "the ubiquity of hoaxing" is to point out that FEW hoaxers have come forward (maybe 20), which one would think they'd be delighted to do, and even fewer have done so with any sort of photographic or other contemporaneous evidence of their activity. I'm aware of only a few of the casts believers have collected having been exposed as phonies (although there was one embarrassing case involving Krantz). HH's observation about the lack of a rub-it-in videotape is very telling, IMO, and it's the sort of thing an even-handed skeptic would have considered immediately. (Today's "skeptics" are merely partisan, one-sided "debunkers"--what I call scoftics--not rational evidence-weighers and plausibility-evaluators.)

What would be helpful would be to clarify the motivations of hoaxers, and distinguish them, so that when scoftics imply a pattern of hoaxers' secretiveness it would be seen to be "an extraordinary claim." Skeptics have confused the public, perhaps because they're confused themselves, into thinking that prankster-type hoaxers would have kept such secrets to their graves, when actually only con-man type hoaxers (who have a completely different motivation) generally do so. I've got a paper on this topic in my To-Do Box (along with responses to three or four posters I've let go unrebutted here), and I hope I'll get around to it by the end of the month.

Jeez Howlin', now look at what you started!

Good point on the hoaxer thing. I like it.

I didn't start nuthin' (it's only a few posts long so far )

It just occurred to me as I was doing some reading on
tracks, that there have been probably tens of thousands
of tracks found, and even conceding that a percentage are
faked (reasonable inference), the percentage can't be
that high. Someone would have seen the idiots. As far as
reporting a hoaxer? Not so much as an actual police report
or news article, but maybe in a book, on a forum, stories
told in families. I have never heard anything except a few
knuckleheads (Wallace) claiming to have done it and producing
very weak evidence. Has anyone else? I'd be very interested
in this.

Roger is right, it's more along the lines of "Oh yeah, well what
about this...?"

Food for thought if nothing else.

Uh ... what did i say??

(yeah, getting old, memory lapses i guess ... now wheres my socks ? )



Actually, rather flattered ! Thanks Dude !!

Personally, I have seen no claims of first hand observation of hoaxing efforts, which doesn't mean that such reports don't exist of course.

Given our species' propensity for weird behavior, yes, it does stand to reason that there are hoaxed tracks. Yet, it seems to me that the production of convincing fake tracks is not an easy endeavor. Look at all the things the hoaxer needs to take into account--depth of compression, foot proportions, evidence of biomechanics, appropriate stride length, and now, at least if the grain structure of the medium is fine enough, dermatoglyphics.

Presumably a hoaxer would get his/her kicks in one of two ways--the "fun" of putting one over when someone else discovers the tracks, or the "prestige" the hoaxer expects from finding the tracks him/herself. On the first point, note that a logical hoaxer must take into account the fact that tracks are ephemeral; snow melts, bare soil erodes. If the hoaxer expects the tracks to be found, they should be placed in an area of high human activity. Note also that it is much easier to produce a persuasive single print than a trackway.

Taking these things into account, it seems probable to me that most hoaxed prints consist of a single print rather than a trackway, and are either located where human activity is extensive or are "self discovered" by the hoaxer. Of course, I suppose there are also some hoaxes that are completely inartful, and have no higher aim than fooling a few urban teens.

-Vern

Wasn't that about the same level of 'sophistication' Ray Wallace's 'tracks' possessed....to fool a few 'yocals'? What was his supposed motivation anyway since he supposedly never 'let the secret out' whilst he was LIVING? Just curious..

"Harry"

OK, here's the latest version of the (two-sided) "Bigfoot Business Card" (BBC); I like it better now. If you have suggestions, yell "Stop the press" now! I've put the soft-evidence (sighting-related and inferential) items (#1-#11) first, as a gesture of disdain for the scientisitc over-emphasis on hard evidence.

20 Reasons Why Bigfoot Might Be Real:
1. Jane Goodall is a believer.
2. Sightings go back 200 years--Native Americans' further.
3. 30+ policemen have reported seeing a Bigfoot.
4. 1500+ “quality” sightings (= investigator-OK’d).
5. Witnesses unknown to one another in the same locale report
similar individual-BF characteristics (height, coloring, etc.).
6. Certain creature-characteristics would make hoaxing difficult,
e.g.: Height (often 8 feet!), Girth, Stride, Weight, & Stench.
7. Hoaxing of many print-trails in remote locations is unlikely.
8. There’s no convincing imitation of the ape in Patterson’s film.
9. Pranksters “crow”; but crowing about BF-hoaxes is rare (20).
10. 1000's of borderline encounters reported: unusual sounds,
stenches, rocks thrown, "beds" found, strange "kills," etc.
11. Dogs often fear the scent of Bigfoot, when brought to a site.
12. 25 hair analyses = “unknown animal” or “... primate.”
13. 33 positron emission profiles of Chinese Wildman/Yeren hairs
match one another, but don't match any known animals'.
14. Expert DNA analysis of Yeti-hair root: "unknown animal."
15. Feet: longitudinal dermal ridges & subtly non-human features.
16. Variance of footprint lengths to widths = bell-shaped curve.
17. Piles of human-shaped but gigantic poop have been found.
18. Twisted trees & branches; & BF’s been heard limb-snapping.
19. Audiotapes of Bigfoot calls have withstood sound-expert
analysis & been endorsed by those who've heard Bigfoot.
20. Bones possibly found in past: misplaced or ignored/discarded.
More BF Info: www.bigfootforums.com/bip/

I'm working on it.

[QUOTE]

Roger, I'm curious where you acquired the information in item 13. PET requires a positron-emitting radioisotope in the area to be imaged. When PET is done for medical diagnostic purposes, the radioisotope is inhaled or injected. How is the radioisotope introduced with the hair? Have you seen a paper or abstract of a paper on this procedure?

-Vern

Wallace's reason? Spotlight, it's all about being the
center of attention. You can see this pattern repeat
itself throughout the history of BF research. Sometimes
it's outright crap like Wallace, other times someone
has a bonafide encounter/finding. Freeman falls into
that category; he found tracks but then had a hard time
getting anything new, and it's suspected he hoaxed
several things to stay in the limelight. Marx may have
had a finding (Bossburg), but hoaxed repeatedly for the
attention. Crook, Green and some Others continue this
garbage to this day.

There's no such thing as bad publicity if you like the
spotlight.

[QUOTE]

C'mon, Howlin'. Surely you wouldn't suggest that there are people associated with bigfootin' who enjoy attention??? Personally, I admire the people who go out there, do the work, approach it as intelligently as they can, and keep their mouths shut. And there are some of them.

-Vern

I'm sorry Vern, was my cynicism showing

Here are my sources. (You can check the TR quotes at the IBS site, if and when they enter the issues I cite.):


Someone should scan in that Nature Journal article and send it to Bobbie to post on her site!

Their "lack of interest" will be held against them in a post-B-Day accounting:

[quote=RogerKni,Jan 16 2004, 05:50 PM] We then use PIXE (Proton Induced X-ray Emission) to analyze the hairs.  The accelerated proton beam has been used to bombard the hairs.  It ionized the k-shell or l-shell electrons.  When outer electrons jump back to fill the vacancy, a characteristic probability X-ray spectrum and excited quantitatively.  [Sic--looks like a mis-transcription from NJ; "and" should perhaps be "is".]  Analysis of the related parameters reveals elements in the hair qualitatively and quantitatively.  The major advantages of PIXE are:  analysis of various component elements in the sample simultaneously, high precision (10-6 -- 10-7) [-6 and -7 should be superscripted], small sample required, and harmless to the analyzed sample.  PIXE is especially suitable to analyze "precious" samples such as wild man hairs.

We analyze trace elements in wild man hairs, human hairs, primate hairs, gorilla hairs and bear hairs.  The results are:  (1) Fe/Zn ratio in wild man hairs is 50 times higher than human hairs, 7-8 times higher than ordinary animal hairs.  (2) PIXE can be used to distinguish wild man hairs from other animal hairs.  Repeated experiments using wild man hairs from different origins show consistent results.  It is suggested that wild man really exists in nature.  Or at least there is an unknown primate in nature whose Fe/Zn (iron/zinc) ratio in hair is significantly higher than other known primates.  Our report is the first one to provide scientific evidence supporting the possible existence of wild man.[/QUOTE]
[/quote]
[QUOTE]

Ah, so. Thank you, Roger. Your use of the term "positron emission" led me to think you were referring to PET, not PIXE. This is why I was unsure how (or for that matter why) they were performing these tests.

Now, I am still confused. Hair is, I think, principally formed from keratin (composed of a number of amino acids consisting of N, O, C and H) with the protein chains linked by disulfide bonds. Hair does contain trace elements, but they are not part of the hair structure as such but are there simply as a result of metabolization of dietary components or other exposures. Since it seems to me that the trace elements in the hair are entirely dependent on whatever the individual ingests or perhaps breathes, why should the iron-zinc ratio be diagnostic of a species or, for that matter, why should it even be a constant for a given species? Anyone here who can enlighten me?

-Vern

Damn, Vern. You sure come off as a sharp guy. What field are you in? What's your background?

[QUOTE]

Just goes to show that appearances can be deceiving, Jud. Erik Beckjord says I'm a pizza delivery boy. Honest work and I like pizza. Good enough for me.

-Vern

Yeah Vern, what Jud said. I guess it's time for me to speak up and welcome you to the board as well. I read your posts on Keegans board (not his oldest but eyes of the forest) . I also read your posts on Georges old board. I always looked forward to your input. I just hope you stick around as I and obviously others, value your input. Just remember...This forum is made up of individual thinkers. There is no group mentality here. Best place on the web for BF interaction as far as I'm concerned. I really missed your input, Vern, when Keegan closed his board down. High spirits over your presence.


Now, where in the hell is Keegan?

Vern, I'm inclined to think that the ratios can be skewed
by enviroment...

Hair and trace elements

It'd be interesting to see the actual documentation from the Chinese.

And for those following Roger's PIXE kick...

Hair contamination analysis techniques

[edited to add the PIXE link]

Ah ha! Great references, Howlin'! Thanks for digging them up.

-Vern

[QUOTE]

Well thank you very much, Angie. I make as many mistakes as the next person, but you're very kind.

As for Jim, maybe if everyone who likes him makes a loud, collective yell, he'll drop by.

-Vern

Sorry about mixing up "positron" with "proton."

Here is the introduction by Ray Crowe (on p. 5 of TR #63) to the long item I quoted above, giving the author of the report quoted, and his location. I suspect "Nature Journal" is a Chinese publication. I haven't been able to track down any copy of it or the article refenced with Google searches. Perhaps it's reprinted in the issue of Cryptozoology quoted above. If so, I hope someone will scan it in and post it. It's one of the top-ten relict-hominid publications ever.

"Report received from Dr. Li Zi, 12/31/96, with letter & photos. This is the Peking, China researcher that did a report on trace elements in Wildman hair."