Bigfoot Double Feature
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 1st, 2007
Merely a reminder that tonight, February 1, 2007, in the USA, the History Channel is broadcasting at:
8:00 PM EST, “Giganto: The Real King Kong” on the History Channel, and at
9:00 PM EST, “Best Evidence: Bigfoot” on the Discovery Channel.
As Craig Woolheater mentioned here yesterday, the latter is an analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin footage conducted by California’s Stanford University. Dr. Jeff Meldrum and his Idaho State University lab are featured in “Best Evidence.”
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Can’t wait to see both of these.
that would be interesting to see, too bad I don’t have cable, let alone tv.
Looking forward to those. Thanks!
I missed the premiere of Best Evidence but I’m definitely going to watch it at 11:00.
I watched “Best Evidense” AND I MEANT TO SPELL it eviDENSE! Wow what a bunch of nonsense from the naysayers. The psychologist was a total nut job. And the lady with the sort gray-do; “sasquatch can’t be real because there aren’t enough of the foods a chimp would eat in the American backwoods”(!?) I can’t begin to count the # of reports I’ve read of BF being seen with dead deer, elk or eating rodents and fish. Hasn’t this woman done ANY reading? And Dick Smith (Of all people!) saying Patty looked amateur? I dare him to even come close. Well “he’d paint the bottoms of the feet differently” What an ignorant statement! The guy in the costume wasn’t as close as they tried to make it out; For all the muscle padding in the costume- it had ZERO definition, where as Patty has tons! And the most amazing thing to me was; NOT ONE (!) reference made to the fact that PATTY has breasts! But the fruitloop “researchers” kept referring to her as “HE”! What the %#@$! Many of my doubts about the so called intelligencia where confirmed tonight! “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools”.
Sas, you read my mind.
# sasquatch responds: February 1st, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I watched “Best Evidense” AND I MEANT TO SPELL it eviDENSE! Wow what a bunch of nonsense from the naysayers. The psychologist was a total nut job. And the lady with the sort gray-do; “sasquatch can’t be real because there aren’t enough of the foods a chimp would eat in the American backwoods”(!?) I can’t begin to count the # of reports I’ve read of BF being seen with dead deer, elk or eating rodents and fish. Hasn’t this woman done ANY reading? And Dick Smith (Of all people!) saying Patty looked amateur? I dare him to even come close. Well “he’d paint the bottoms of the feet differently” What an ignorant statement! The guy in the costume wasn’t as close as they tried to make it out; For all the muscle padding in the costume- it had ZERO definition, where as Patty has tons! And the most amazing thing to me was; NOT ONE (!) reference made to the fact that PATTY has breasts! But the fruitloop “researchers” kept referring to her as “HE”! What the %#@$! Many of my doubts about the so called intelligencia where confirmed tonight! “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools”.
Couldn’t have said it better myself, sasquatch.
I agree on the “expert” skeptics.
Jablonsky made several statements that showed she wasn’t even remotely familiar with much of the eyewitness and other evidence. She stated that nests and scat have never been found. This is wrong on both counts – suspected nests/shelters have been reported in a number of different locations and scat has been reported in several.
And the assumptions about diet were nonsensical. Chimps are omnivores that occasionally hunt monkeys. Larger primates that lived in colder climates could simply rachet up their meat consumption – which is consistent with a lot of the eyewitness reports of animals carrying carcasses, digging for shelfish, etc.
And although the “Russian tooth” technically isn’t Bigfoot related, it does represent skeletal remains, contrary to Begun’s statements. (Assuming the Russian tooth is authentic.)
You’re not employing the scientific method when you ignore or don’t even bother to examine large amounts of the available evidence.
Sas, this ol’ unknown primate agrees with you too. I didn’t get to watch the program til 1 am. I psyched up by browsing Cryptomundo, sketching bigfoot, sticking my head outside once in awhile (I live in an urban area, but ya never know!), etc. Once it came on, I settled into my big chair with a hot cup of joe. Minutes later, I realized that “here we go again”. And to think Dick Smith was one of my heroes back in my FMOF days! Still, Dr. Jeff saved it for me.
I originally was looking forward to “Best Evidence” and without using expletives found it to be a load of amateurish nonsense. Where do they get these people? Sas put it succinctly with “Many of my doubts about the so called intelligencia were confirmed tonight!” The futile and extreme difficulty in duplicating “Patty” in costume was laughable to say the least. Budget constraints? I taped it as a reminder of how ineptitude, complacency and the total lack of doing proper research on this or any other important subject as a lesson to be learned. These folks seemed to indulge in that.
Very good comments about the skeptics. Skepticism is a good thing, but not when the skeptic promotes misinformation to the general public and refuses to consider, or even look at all the evidence. During the last portion of the show, did anyone bother to point out the obvious disparity in arm length of the actor and Patty? Overall, I found the program lacking in balance and was somewhat disappointed.
I agree with all you. Last nights “Best Evidence” was lame. It was a total disappointment. People will never believe. It seems like no amount of evidence or type of evidence will ever be good enough. How the muscle movement on “Patty” could be faked is beyond me. I hear all these “experts” tell me it’s fake. They just sound silly.
“Best Evidence: Bigfoot”, while interesting was poorly done! I could have done a better job presenting the facts! The show came to no real conclusions. The “Matter Of Fact” scientists seemed “Uninformed”. Perhaps they should have done a bit of Bigfoot research? The ideas expressed that there is nothing for Bigfoot to eat, or that a primate type nest has never been found in the NW woods, are without research and thought. I guess there are no fish, small and big game animals! So Bigfoot would never eat deer liver or berries…
Several times while hunting I have found what look like large built nests, where branches thicker than my thumb had been ripped off trees, not cut with a saw! But no, such a nest does not exist and it must be in my imagination! As I have said before, when Bigfoot is proven, it will be scientits like the 2 on this show who will have their tails behind them. Then they will simply declare, “Well I always knew that Bigfoot was real”.
Humans are great actors. So what is the big deal that a human can copy the gait in the Patterson Film, in lab conditions? Where is the surprise in that? Lets see it be done in the field! Where rocks, loose ground and branches are in the way! Bet that would change everything! As a matter of fact I challenge anyone to reproduce the Patterson film with 1967 technology! Bet it can’t be done! Remember to include feet with dermal ridges and large breasts.
As far as I am concerned the Patterson film is the real thing. Show me a modern day reproduction using 1967 technology that looks the same. I doubt that will ever happen because most know it can’t be done. Were the Patterson film a fake, surely somone could copy/reproduce it today? Not being able to do this implies the Patterson film to be genuine.
Here’s my $0.02:
The gait test did exactly what it set out to do: determine if it was impossible for an actor to mimic what was seen in the P/G film. Nothing more, nothing less. Hypothesis rejected. It is possible for a person to mimic everything done in the film under “laboratory” conditions. I found this part of the program to be an attempt to allay the skeptics’ cry of believer non-impartiality.
I don’t see an issue with relegating mention of the suit’s quality to a footnote. We all know that any suit that we’ve seen leaves much to be desired, and pales in comparison to what’s in the film. I’d love to know what the SFX guy saw that I can’t in that 40-year-old overexposed film. He’s basing his claim that it’s a hoax on foot-pad color? Right…
I found Dr. Turtle’s input to be relevant, but only to those who actively go out in search of a specimen. I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone that someone who goes into the woods to find an 8-foot bipedal primate might just see one (“real” or not). How many images of tree stumps in the woods have we seen? I do find his experiments completely irrelevant for the couple driving down the road at night who chance upon something, or the people who claim to be complete non-believers prior to their experience. I didn’t expect to see the deer who ran out in front of my car this morning, nor did I dream about deer, read about deer, or even think about deer; but saw one, I did.
I can’t comment on Dr. Jablonski’s beliefs about the biodiversity and biomass in the coniferous forest, but it smacked of ill-preparedness. I can’t blame her for her ignorance about the possibility of scat samples and nesting, but someone should have told her about some of the evidence prior to filming her.
I found the testimony of Dr. Begun to be, perhaps, the most egregious, though not really in terms of content. Physical anthropology is not in my background, unfortunately, but scientific research (neurobiology) is. I find it troublesome that someone in the profession would say, and I beg forgiveness for the paraphrase, “A plausible hypothesis does not prove “truth”.” While I can’t disagree with this notion, I think Galileo, Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Jay Gould, Darwin, even Ramon y Cajal, might have a thing or two to say here… A plausible hypothesis requires testing, of course, but I would argue that “truth” is esoteric, and ultimately, unknowable. Sasquatch may be a reality, but we won’t know without rigorous testing of the hypothesis that it doesn’t exist. To use the most easily understood example, we believe that black holes exist because the evidence suggests they do, not because we’ve seen one with our naked eyes.
I also find his multiple mentions of “myself and many of my colleagues believe…” to be pretty small of him. What does HE believe? I don’t care what his colleagues think. They’re not being interviewed. We all have differing degrees of knowledge and understanding (to put it politically), which is why I don’t talk science with my immunologist friends.
Finally, and I’m overextending in my scientific credentials here, I’m not sure how valid the argument against the existence of an unknown creature is when you bring up “expected” anatomies. I understand that the fossil record suggests that an upright primate would MOST LIKELY have certain foot characteristics, but I fail to see the validity of the argument. It’s an UNKNOWN. Why can’t it go against the grain of preconceived assumptions. Why can’t it have both the mid-tarsal flexion, and a non-opposing digit? It may not fit the model, but nothing ever fits the model. That’s the thrill of discovery!
Still, the show, and Meldrum’s book, have me convinced that “we,” the believers and pseudo-agnostics, are going about this the right way. Taking the evidence at face value, examining it with an open mind, and making hypotheses. Then, testing those hypotheses, as weird as they may be, and making conclusions. Never be afraid of being wrong, and owning up to it. I’d be pleased as punch to see this whole issue fly in the face of the skeptics with incontrovertible evidence, but I’m also open to the (admittedly remote) possibility that ALL of this is a huge, multi-national, multi-generational hoax…
Brian, Ph.D
Bravo Brian! I could have never said it better than that.
Brian (nissl) that is probably one of the best reviews I’ve read in a long time. Thank you for posting it! (mind if I quote it elsewhere???)
Quote away, Kathy…
Brian