Not to beat up on Boing! Boing!, but what the heck . . . I can’t be the only one who sometimes sees a lot of dissonance between the folks who post on Boing! Boing! For example, Cory Doctorow goes off on global warming “denialists”. Fair enough. I used to be fairly skeptical of global climate change, but I agree that the evidence at this point is so overwhelming for human-induced warming, that the only real debate now is over what, if anything, we’re going to do it about it rather than whether or not the phenomenon is real.
But a week later, David Pescovitz posts a ridiculous fund-raising plea for Loren Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum. Now I’m not quite sure on the one hand why Boing! Boing! would want to excoriate global warming skeptics on the hand, and then on the other turn around and help raise money for someone who spends his time on such scientific projects as The Mothman Death List.
Some of the commens in the Coleman thread made the absurd claim that since there have been “living fossils” found like the coelacanth, that cryptozoology is legitimate science. The problem, of course, is that the coelacanth and similar finds have been announced and described by working professional scientists while the cryptozoologists were wasting their time looking for Bigfoot (Pescovitz’s pet obsession) or the Loch Ness monster.
Again, I realize the folks who post at Boing! Boing! have different interests and agendas, but it is a little odd to see Doctorow post about the idiocy of pseudoscience, only to see that followed up by a post urging fund raising for pseudoscience.
Boing! Boing! brings me out of the woodwork, go figure.
I’ve had a growing uneasiness with them that seems to have crystalized on this issue. Of course, I’m also bummed at the “denialists” phrasing–skepticism is a legitimate endeavor, when not taken to ridiculous extremes, and rational skepticism helps to keep science honest–but that’s a kettle of another color, or something. If you’re going to get all het up over people bending science to their agendas, soliciting donations for another branch of pseudoscience is not exactly a defensible position.
I mean, I think it’s cool to think outside the box on the question of bigfoot and Loch Ness, and not confine oneself to “everyone knows” orthodoxy, but with the actual suporting data so very, very, very thin on the ground, the “science” is little more than speculation, fodder for an X-Files episode. All they’re doing is coming thiiiiiiiiis close to grabbing that brass of ring of being able to prove that stuff doesn’t and couldn’t exist, assuming they don’t continue to ignore the piles of contradictory evidence the cryptozoologists are gathering.
As far as Doctorow and Global Warming…as another blog pointed out, given Doctorow’s rhetoric, he doesn’t seem interested in actually doing anything about global climate change given his own carbon footprint. He’s still right about GCC, but it’s hard to see how we’re going to actually do something to avert climate change given that even the people most vehement about it seem unable to change their behavior.
Pescovitz has been reporting Bigfoot sitings as real news for quite a while. For example.
Bigfoot is like Loch Ness. It might have been possible at one point that we would find some new species to explain a handful of sightings, but there’s no way you have a sustainable population that accounts for so many sightings over a huge geographic range and yet leaves no solid evidence of its existence for decades. There are actually Bigfoot enthusiasts who account for this lack of confirming evidence which should be relatively easy to find by positing that Bigfoot possess ESP that prevent their discovery — sort of “these are not the Bigfoot you are looking for.”
I think it also undermines a lot of the BB anti-creationism postings. There’s as much evidence for Bigfoot as there is for the hypothesis that dinosaurs and humans were both on this planet at the same time. I’m not sure how you (rightly) dismiss the dinosaur hypothesis but then turn around and claim despite the complete lack of evidence that there is an undiscovered upright primate-like species prowling the American northwest/Canada.
You could just as easily claim that dinosaurs and humans did co-exist, it is just that no one has yet found the fossils to prove it
No argument on any of that. F’rex I think Instapundit and the rest of the right-wing gang have taken glee in pointing out Gore’s out-of-control footprint, but that is certainly what he gets for presenting himself as the spokesman for the issue. And the anti-creationism parallel is also spot-on. The only thing I could say in defense is that it is a group blog, and the content almost certainly varies between the contributors. However, for a group blog that is otherwise seems to have a pretty tight focus, the deviation into pseduoscience land (or, in the other example, the semi-private and very opaque relegation of Violet Blue to persona non grata) seems to stand out like a beacon, otherwise.
Waren Ellis yesterday declaimed that nobody would ever do a link blog as successfully as Boing Boing (and as such is calling for a return to honest to god original content.) Yay for the latter but boo on the former. Clearly there’s a need for a good link log outside their collective interests. The world cannot revolve around DRM, “Web Zen”, and unscientific claptrap, can it?
I remain astonished at how tone deaf the boingers have been at handling this and at how random and snotty their moderation is. It’s like they’re new to the internet and just now found out how it works. In the VB thread one of their mods actually expressed astonishment that Bacchus of Erosblog could possibly have been reading the site for years and just now decided to comment. Seriously? This is his counterargument?
They pretty clearly see their site as separate weblogs that just happen to share a front page and are astonished when they are treated as a collective. Ten minutes poking around the internet would have taught them otherwise. These are supposed to be our curators of interesting things on the Internet, Warren? I’ll stick with Metafilter if that’s the case, sir, with all due respect!
I find you have unfairly placed Boing Boing in a debunking tangle of fallacies that are non sequiturs.
I shall deal with the misinformation and the appeal to ridicule being spread here by calling cryptozoology a “pseudoscience” and the ad hominem misdirection related to my interests in the psychological underpinnings of the “fear factor” in Mothman studies, in another forum. But for now and here, let me address the two following statements by Brian Carnell:
(1) “…there’s no way you have a sustainable population that accounts for so many sightings over a huge geographic range and yet leaves no solid evidence of its existence for decades.” – Brian Carnell.
Of course, there is “solid evidence,” which has been collected for hundreds of years and is tangible and measurable: footprint finds, fecal material, DNA samples, hair samples, and physical evidence of their presence (such as fences being torn down, dog and deer kills, for example) for a possible population of large, undiscovered primates called Sasquatch or Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest.
However, the lab tests routinely return results of “near-human,” “higher primate,” or “inconclusive but not any known animal or human.” This will be what is expected until there is a type specimen, as until then there will be nothing to compare these bits of physical evidence to for the baseline.
As has been said often, the silly name of “Bigfoot” works against the serious nature of its discovery, and a higher standard has been set for its discovery versus, for instance, the sound recording and one blurry video of the “rediscovered” ivory-billed woodpecker.
(2) “There’s as much evidence for Bigfoot as there is for the hypothesis that dinosaurs and humans were both on this planet at the same time.” – Brian Carnell.
This sounds like a combination of a bare assertion fallacy, a little bit of a package deal, and the affirming a disjunct, which is at its foundation, indeed, false. There is literally rooms full of physical evidence for Bigfoot, compared to the “hypothesis,” “theories,” and thoughts that dinosaurs lived at the same time as humans. To use this comparison is to demean and dismiss the basic tenets of evidence within the hominological field, and try to equate it to creationism, which it is not similar to at all.
Loren Coleman
International Cryptozoology Museum
Loren Coleman wrote,
You’re sort of begging the question there, Loren. After decades of all this physical evidence and yet not a single conclusive specimen that can be definitively labeled Bigfoot. Hundreds (thousands?) of footprints, all those broken fences, close encounters, and not a single thing anyone can point and and say
“see, there it is!”
Inferring Bigfoot from inconclusive DNA testing on hair of unknown origins is just not good science.
Why is it that when I address your challenge you change the focus or rules of your argument?
You said there was “no solid evidence of its existence,” acting as if Sasquatch was merely based on eyewitness accounts alone. I pointed out that physical evidence does exist, although you seem to read that as my saying that is “proof” of existence, which I have not said.
So you move on to there is physical evidence but it “begs the question.” Well, I have a lot more patience for the discovery of animals than you do, apparently. As any student of cryptozoology knows, it took decades to discover the mountain gorilla and almost as long to capture the first live giant pandas. Why should we be surprised that Bigfoot hasn’t been discovered in a MTV moment?
Then you move on to putting words in my mouth. I did not “infer Bigfoot” from the inconclusive DNA results. I was merely pointing out the facts regarding why even having the physical evidence falls short of what is needed: a live capture or a dead body.
On that, I think we agree.