There is a sort of “asymmetric warfare” that occurs with arguments in the world of pseudoscience. The idea is that there are stubborn facts that refute and therefore undermine the whole edifice of the opposition’s argument.
I remember encountering such an argument when I was a high school student in the 1970’s. I remember picking up a religious tract at the county fair, a notorious missive by Jack T. Chick entitled “Big Daddy.” As time went on I found other creationist literature that contained one of the famous and much repeated canards against evolution, namely that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics.
The science of evolution is enormous, and is becoming even more refined with current advances in genomics and molecular biology. Thus to its opponents it’s a sort of edifice. If you propose that a particular “fact” refutes the entire edifice, that “fact” would be asymmetric in its power. In my opinion this is why creationists like Duane T. Gish promote such fallacies, as they allow an opinion to be formed without having to look at a huge body of work in geology, biology, genetics, and other allied sciences.
The converse of a destructive argument is also possible; the niggling “fact” that MAKES IT ALL TRUE. Some time back an individual named Kevin Buresh aka “Sweaty Yeti” began posting images from the Patterson – Gimlin purported Bigfoot film on various internet forums, including JREF. One GIF image purported to show movement of the film subject’s fingers. The implication is that an actor inside a costume would be incapable of duplicating this feat. Allegedly the arms of the film subject are too long for a human to move the fingers of a costume. This is a form of “asymmetric” argumentation in that if the film subject’s fingers bend and a human actor cannot do this, then it cannot be a human actor in a costume. If it’s not a human actor in a costume, then it can only be Bigfoot. If the Patterson – Gimlin film subject was a real Bigfoot it cannot be the only one, as there must be a population to survive as a species. VOILA! THE FINGERS MOVE, THEREFORE IT’S ALL TRUE!!! Bigfoot is real!
As skeptics do, this assertion was met with a variety of rebuttals. One of the more cogent was a GIF animation created by a man posting as “Dfoot.” It clearly demonstrates that fingers can move, and rather spectacularly so, while wearing a prosthetic glove.
I experimented for myself the very same thing, using a bear skin glove. A glove provides the illusion of a longer arm. One does not need to have fingers all the way inside the glove to cause the fingers to move. It’s obvious that bending fingers are seen with this hirsute glove.
Recently a JREF poster named “Tontar” posted a GIF animation of his own, which suggests that Buresh’s original animation was flawed from the outset by improper arm alignment. Click on the large side-by-side image of the film subject on this page to animate. The GIF animation may load slowly.
Buresh’s arguments are obviously crackpot, yet it’s doubtful that we will see the end of them. Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman went so far as to promote them on his Cryptomundo blog.
After 50 years of Bigfootery with no bones, no road kill, no teeth, a certain quasi-religious desperation is sinking in, with asinine arguments like “Bigfoot’s bending fingers” substituting for real science.
When Cryptomundo appeared on the Internet several years ago, I was quite interested, as it seemed like a worthwhile resource for news about cryptid animals. As the years went by, things changed. I started noticing lots more ads, in particular audio “pop-up” ads. One onerous message announced “congratulations, you’ve won” automatically when one logged onto Cryptomundo. At that time, I still hoped that this could be fixed and I sent Loren Coleman an e-mail asking that the audio pop-up ads be turned off. I received a response to the effect that “I just work here, you need to talk to the owner.”
For a time several years ago I posted on a crypto message board also moderated by Coleman. I remember writing a long post comparing John Green’s advocacy of a particular trackway to Ivan Sanderson’s advocacy of 15 foot penguins. Coleman refused to publish this entry. I suspect, but don’t know, that it was refused because calling out Sanderson as a crackpot is a no-no for those promoting Cryptozoology as serious science.
As the years went by, the dual themes of pathological advertizing and Coleman’s repetitive censorship would become apparent to many others besides myself. In addition, Cryptomundo began to really go over the edge into the land of bad taste by linking Cryptozoology to 9-11, and repeatedly posting photos of sexy women. What in the hell does 9-11 or sexy women have to do with unknown animals? It was obvious to me this was a shameless attempt to game the search engine rankings of Cryptomundo, and I’m not the only one who believed this.
Coleman’s reputation took a big hit in 2002 regarding the means in which he obtained photographs from Bigfooter Peter Byrne in the late 1990’s. The damning account was published in 2002 in a Northwest newsletter called the Track Record. Similar accounts were published by Daniel Perez in his newsletter Bigfoot Times in the October-November 2005 issue. But now it’s 2011, and these days Coleman doesn’t have to physically obtain photographs to publish them. He simply finds them on the Internet, claims “fair use” then throws them up on Cryptomundo. I’ve had two photographs of mine “scraped” this way. Note that I’ve included screen grabs of Cryptomundo, as Coleman is fond of historical revisionism, either by editing or redacting information.
Coleman’s “fair use” claim is amusing in light of his own claims of copyright on photos he obtained of what is called the Myakka Skunk Ape:
Coleman’s use of my photographs is galling because Cryptomundo is not just a labor of love, but a for-profit business. One that now regularly functions in a morally onerous way. At one point Cryptomundo even published a topless photo of Natasha Henstridge in an article about the Chupacabra! As is Cryptomundo’s style, the photo was quickly redacted. Then came the chronic begging, or as it’s sometimes known on the Internet “bleging.” If Coleman had lost his leg in ‘Nam, I would have some sympathy, but I really have no idea why he does this.
Today we had another little kerfuffle, though it seems that Coleman has redacted his entry once again! As we see in the Cryptomundo caption in my photo, Coleman likes to label his opponents. Today he lashed out at Sharon Hill as a “scoftic.” What makes this incident rather bizarre is that Cryptomundo linked to an obviously satirical blog entry. Coleman is not stupid by any means, so I find it inconceivable that he wouldn’t notice that it was a parody site. Why would he press on, as if it was a genuine thing? Again, I think it all comes down to SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Here is a screen capture from the yet-to-be-redacted Cryptomundo feed of Bigfoot Forums:
As you can see, we have a large photo of Sharon Hill. I suspect, but cannot prove, that it’s all in the search engine optimization of the photo tags. Here is the result of a simple test I performed today. I entered the term “bigfoot sexy” into the Google Image search. Lo and behold the photo of the sexy woman in the black swimsuit is from Cryptomundo!
How else can one explain why Coleman chose to publish such an asinine blog entry? I’d like to propose that the text around scraped photos of sexy women that appear on Cryptomundo is just so much Loren ipsum…
Coleman has put himself in an untenable position; he wants to be respected and taken seriously as a “Cryptozoology expert” yet at the same time he engages in repetitively pathological moral behavior.
Yes, this track is real! It’s a depression in the ground, and as such is a physical fact. But was it made by Sasquatch? That’s the sixty-four dollar question. With virtually all tracks attributed to Sasquatch, we don’t have a film or video record of what actually made the track at the time the track was made. We have to infer what might have made the track after the event.
First off, the track in question was part of a series videotaped by Paul Freeman. An edited portion of this video surfaced some years ago in a TV and DVD documentary entitled Legend Meets Science, produced by Doug Hajicek. The video that this screen grab was taken from was recently uploaded to YouTube, and contains shots of a trackway that appears very ‘Squatchy.
One track in particular caught my eye, and it appears at about 43 seconds into the video. The track contrasts strongly with the surrounding forest litter, as there is very little debris in the track itself. To me it appears to have been excavated rather than created by compression. I came to this conclusion because some years earlier I had made various tests using large prosthetic feet. One test I performed in my front yard. As you can see in my photo, there is plenty of green moss and fine vegetation in both the bottom of the track and the soil surrounding it. I made this track by repeatedly stomping on a Ray Wallace style wooden prosthetic. If you look closely you can see an impression of my own size 12 shoe to the right of the track.
Various details can be gleaned from this simple test, but the obvious one here is that a compressive event, such as a heavy mass pressing into the earth should mash the vegetation in with it, and the vegetation should remain. From this I would conclude that the track seen in the Freeman video was not made by a singular or even multiple compressive event, and as such cannot be attributed to an animal.
I’m not the only person who concluded that Paul Freeman’s tracks were fake. In 2005 a fascinating book entitled Tracker was published by Joel Hardin (ISBN 0-9753460-0-8) which included a chapter entitled Tracks of Bigfoot. Hardin details personally investigating a trackway associated with Paul Freeman in the Mill Creek watershed near Walla Walla, Washington in 1982. Hardin devoted 20 pages to detailing an extensive onsite investigation into this trackway. Unlike me, Hardin is a professional tracker, and perhaps not surprisingly concluded that the trackway was fake. It’s an excellent book, and deserves wider recognition within both the Bigfoot and skeptic communities. After reading Hardin’s book, the notion that an 8 foot tall monster could wander the North American continent and remain impossible to track becomes rather ludicrous.
Despite Hardin’s professional appraisal, the evidence put forth by Freeman has been taken quite seriously by Bigfoot advocate Jeff Meldrum, who devoted a considerable portion of his 2006 book Sasquatch Legend Meets Science (ISBN 0-765-31216-6) to arguing that Freeman’s evidence was real.
I’ve been in Las Vegas the last few days, taking in my first TAM. For those who don’t know, TAM stands for The Amazing Meeting, an annual conference put on by the James Randi Educational Foundation. This years meeting was “TAM 9 From Outer Space” with presentations having a space-based theme. One speaker was Bill “The Science Guy” Nye. I hadn’t seen Bill Nye in person in many years, and I thought his presentation was great. Funny and inspiring at the same time. His talk reminded me of a strange criticism I once heard.
Years ago I was watching a sideshow performer demonstrate an amazing new stunt that involved red hot metal. To get his steel red hot he had to use a small forge which ran on propane and air. This was back in the 1990’s, long before the Station Nightclub fire which killed 100 people. That fire pretty much put the kibosh on indoor performances that involved fire of any kind. This gentleman was going to walk on red hot steel, or so he said. As with any sideshow stunt that has any element of danger, the stunt must be hyped beforehand for maximum effect. The hype in this case took a strange turn, as the performer began to criticize Bill Nye.
Unfortunately I don’t know what Bill Nye said in the first place. Frankly I never caught his TV show, only his early work with Almost Live, a local TV comedy show based in Seattle. I suspect, but do not know that Nye probably offered the common “explanation” for fire walking, namely that it’s a matter of the low heat conductivity of the wood embers that fire walkers walk on. A classic analogy is that it’s possible to leave your hand in a hot oven as long as you don’t touch the hot metal. Both the air and the metal in the oven are at the same temperature, but the metal is a much better conductor of heat.
In any event, the sideshow performer suggested that Bill Nye was wrong, that it was possible to walk on hot steel without searing the skin. At this point we should consider the social nature of such a performance. The goal of a showman’s pitch is to create tension, to hype the act, and hopefully to leave a lasting impression in the minds of the audience members. It shouldn’t be intended as formal physics presentation! Consider that when an audience enjoys a comedian, a certain suspension of disbelief is in effect. We are OK with a comedian telling a story that may be complete fiction, as long as the punch line is funny. An audience accepts this kind of thing in a comedian that wouldn’t be accepted in a scientist. But was the criticism of the sideshow performer valid? Is the “official explanation” of firewalking wrong? Well, sort of…
As our sideshow performer kept his bally going, his steel slats began to glow red hot. Coupled with the roaring sound of the forge on stage it was an awesome psychological setup. Soon his slats were set into a frame on the floor. In what must have been no more than a second or two the act was over. Indeed, our brave performer had “walked” on the hot steel slats. Only he didn’t really walk so much as hop. And therein is the crux of this whole essay, namely that sometimes simple “explanations” for phenomena fall short, and that the true description is more complex. What our performer was effectively utilizing was a low exposure time. Had he actually “walked” on the hot slats he would have surely gotten burned.
This is not to take anything away from our performer! It was an outstanding stunt, one which I’d never seen before and one which I haven’t see other performers doing. But for our purposes, let’s take a closer look at the physics involved, and what we can learn from it. A good resource on the subject is the Wikipedia article on Thermal Conductivity. A key passage is this:
For general scientific use, thermal conductance is the quantity of heat that passes in unit time through a plate of particular area and thickness when its opposite faces differ in temperature by one kelvin.
Note the critical variable of “unit time.” If we lower the time of exposure to a heat source, we lower the quantity of heat that flows to that which is being heated. A commonplace demonstration of this is running fingers through a candle flame. If you keep your fingers moving you can avoid a burn. The variable of time is often missing in explanations of firewalking. Indeed, the stunt is firewalking, not “firestanding!” Walking provides a series of exposures to the heat instead of one continuous exposure.
It should also be pointed out that skeptics have done an excellent job of debunking the claim that some sort of special mental or “spiritual” state is required to walk on hot coals. Skeptics Ben Radford and Joe Nickell have both performed this feat, and neither needed “chi” powers or motivational seminars to do it. I was amused at Radford’s account of his own fire walk, as he had organized it as something of a house party affair!
I actually began to think about these issues many years ago, way back in high school. Sometime in the late 1970’s I recall reading in Scientific American magazine the suggestion that firewalking could be “explained” by the “Leidenfrost effect.” Indeed, suggestions are still being made that this is the correct explanation. In my opinion this makes no sense as an explanation for the simple reason that any putative hovering water droplets would quickly be smashed into the sole of the foot or the wood embers by the walker’s body weight!
There is a temptation to glom onto “explanations” of seemingly mysterious phenomena. It’s unsettling to witness things that we don’t understand or can’t explain. But when incorrect or incomplete explanations are offered, it can backfire. A classic example in UFOlogy is “swamp gas” which became a term of derision for UFO advocates. I think skeptics are entirely justified in calling out those who would charge money for staging fire walking demonstrations, especially when it’s couched in terms of nonsense like “chi” energy. Today practitioners of marshal arts would call chi “bullshido.”
I would like to suggest that we get our physics correct when we suggest what is really going on…
Way back in 2007 I had my first sighting. It was a bright, sunny day and I was walking on the footpath around Seward Park here in Seattle. Suddenly I saw it; a serpentine form sticking its slimy neck out of the water! Thankfully I had my camera with me and was able to capture this remarkable image:
I didn’t know what to do exactly; was there some sort of Lake Monster reporting center where I could log my encounter? Would they think I was a crypto-crank, a crackpot, a wanker, a chain-yanker, and mock my slithering serpent sighting? This beast was no beaver, or even an otter as some scoffing skeptics have suggested. No, it was the real deal, whatever it was.
But time moved on, and I began to doubt that I could ever see the Seward Park serpent ever again. But the fickle finger of fate has a way of appeasing the prepared, and lo! I saw it again! This time I was even closer, and managed to get off this quick pic:
I know it’s going to take a specimen on a slab for the skeptical scientists to take this seriously, but until that time I’m going to give it the tentative title of “Sewardsaurus.” Note that the second specimen seems to sport some sort of muzzle, or perhaps it’s licking a Frappuccino from a Starbucks cup. Though it’s no Ogopogo, a perfect palindrome like Aja, Aoxomoxoa, or Satanoscillatemymetallicsonatas, we see that “Sewardsaurus” is at least alliterative, like “Dover Demon” or “Fence Fiend.”
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