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.

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.

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…

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.”

But out in the real world most people equate the subject of Bigfoot with Weekly World News stuff, and so to even take the subject seriously enough to look into it seems like a foolish waste of time.

These days, the notion of a “Hollow Earth” is so ridiculous that it would be a waste of time to even investigate its claims, as there are numerous subjects that are vastly more important to investigate like anthropogenic global warming, vaccine safety, and homeopathy.

Some time back, I was visiting friends in Astoria, Oregon. Jan took me to the nearby town of Seaside which thrives on tourist business, especially in the summer. He took a photo of me in front of the window display of a palm reader.

For me, palm reading is about one click lower than astrology on the scale of what should be taken seriously.

I posted my photo to the popular photo sharing site Flickr way back in December. My characterization of palm reading was a parody; that one could read dermal ridges with the same degree of accuracy as reading flexion creases. Surprise, surprise, several months pass, and “Zorina” the palm reader wanted me to take the photo down! Instead of arguing that her palm reading was valid or accurate, she wanted the criticism of it to go away! It’s the lowest and sleaziest form of rebuttal, something that Simon Singh recently had to endure.

But I’m no lawyer, so I decided to utilize one of the Internet’s best resources for generalized questions; Metafilter’s AskMeFi. I got a number of very useful answers concerning copyright, and I’m satisfied that I’m not violating copyright by publicly posting my photograph.

One poster on Metafilter mentioned the Streisand Effect which is in fact happening to the photo on Flickr. If “Zorina” had never complained in the first place, she would have never become the butt of Internet ridicule!

My friend gave me the book because he knew that I liked weird literature, and this was certainly a weird book. It was mostly photographs of naked men, with their genitals and faces whited out. Along with the photographs were arcane graphs and charts. The text that accompanied the graphs and photographs seemed entirely fanciful and pseudoscientific.

At the time, I had never heard of William H. Sheldon, and so had no reference as to how this work was received by the scientific community. In the mid 1980’s, I was more fascinated with the strange theories of Wilhelm Reich, and even back then there was more information available on Reich than on Sheldon. It wouldn’t be until years later that the World Wide Web was able to provide me with some sort of background on a figure as marginalized as Sheldon.

If you start with the Wikipedia entry on Sheldon, like many people would do, you get a rather cursory and dismissive overview of his strange theories. Most people have probably heard the terms “ectomorph”, “mesomorph”, and “endomorph”, used as generalized descriptions of human body types. For Sheldon this was just the start. He attempted to quantify each of those parameters, and furthermore made the claim that each human being possessed a certain amount of each of these qualities.

First off, do the terms ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph even have exact meanings? Obviously skeletal structures and proportions are more or less fixed by adulthood, but beyond that, soft tissue proportions are highly variable, and can change because of any number of factors. These terms might be used occasionally in non-technical senses, but they aren’t used in real science for a simple reason; they just aren’t needed.

There are all sorts of physiognomic indices in use, and they are all very specific in measuring single quantifiable characteristics. Real science tends to avoid complex, multivariate, and especially “fuzzy” definitions.

Not only did Sheldon get off to a bad start with ad hoc definitions of intrinsically fuzzy and complex concepts, but he then tried to tie in physiognomy with human behavioral characteristics. Here he fell into the same trap that bedevils astrologers, namely the belief that broad, commonplace descriptions of human character are scientifically meaningful. Here is how Sheldon characterizes males of the “4 1 5 somatotype”:

“In the male the 4 1 5 is one of the weakling somatotypes, and so obviously or conspicuously so that other youngsters usually treat him with a certain deference or neutrality which at one stage in their development they typically reserve for girls. This is not a somatotype that is ‘picked on’, except perhaps occasionally by other weaklings who are not quite so weak”

But it gets stranger still; as Sheldon went on to imbue his “somatotypes” with animalistic metaphors. Now he’s genuinely off the deep end. Here is how Sheldon characterized the individuals pictured in the illustration, the “3 6 1 somatotype”:

BETWEEN THE CATS AND THE BEARS

Somatotype 3 6 1 (Endomorphic extreme mesomorphy, at extreme ectopenia, 10-level) Wolverines. Sometimes called “cat bears” and also as “weasel bears.” Compact, short legged, giant weasels who know no fear. A wolverine can put to rout a hungry bear and can hold his own against any North American animal except man (who perhaps uses unfair weapons).

Had Sheldon done this once or twice, we could interpret it as a poetic metaphor or even a sly joke, but his animalistic descriptions are included with every single “somatotype”.

The late skeptic Mike Dennett once told me that when a paranormal or “fringe” claim is made, it never goes away, no matter how well debunked it might be. An obvious example is creationism. And so it was with William H. Sheldon. A website called Inner Explorations offers a spirited and lengthy defense of Sheldon. Sheldon also makes a cameo appearance on pages 109 and 110 of Grover Krantz’ book on Bigfoot entitled Big Footprints. Krantz offers the reader a line drawing reproduction of “somatotype 5 6 1” and argues that even if such a specimen were “expanded” to 6’6”, it would not equal the mass and bulk of the Patterson – Gimlin film subject. Krantz argues that the film subject is beyond human proportions. Well, so what? No one but the “lunatic fringe” in Bigfootery argues that it’s a human; even skeptics concede that it’s either the real thing or it’s a guy in a suit. If it’s a guy in a suit, it hardly matters what his “somatotype” is. Given Krantz’ demonstrated gullibility on the subject of Bigfoot, it’s not surprising to find that he would be familiar with, and feel comfortable including, the work of someone like Sheldon.

Sheldon’s work was mentioned some time back when news surfaced of “posture photos” of Ivy League undergraduates had been discovered.

The last tidbit that I think I can extract from the strange saga of William H. Sheldon is the nerdiest one. Considering that each of Sheldon’s “somatotypes” was a three-value datum, the problem became how best to graphically display them as a whole set. Sheldon produced a three-axis map, which upon casual examination, looks like a Reuleaux triangle. Alas, When I broke out my compass to double check, I found that it too fell short; the sides didn’t bow out far enough…

Growing up as I did in the 1970’s, trick-or-treating by children was a tradition as deeply ingrained as celebrating Christmas with gift giving. Back then we didn’t have our parents escorting us from door to door.

Of course by the time we reached about 10 or 11, we became too old to go trick-or-treating. Certain adults would even scold us as when we rang their doorbell: “Aren’t you a little old to be doing this?” A total buzz kill for a child of that age…

Even as children, we would hear stories about “razor blades in apples”, but we were never given apples as treats. The worst “treats” we ever got were Bible tracts… Even in the early 1970’s everything edible was packaged candy anyway.

But by the late 1970’s, and certainly into the early 1980’s, the American cultural tradition of door to door trick-or-treating was on the wane. Over time, the idea that psychopaths were afoot, randomly poisoning or dangerously tampering with candy was taken more seriously. Back then, I had no reason to doubt this, as frankly I had no informational resources to fall back on. There was no World Wide Web, and I didn’t know how to do any kind of sophisticated search in the library.

Perhaps it was through one of Brunvand’s books, or through a newspaper story, that I encountered a rather radical notion; namely that the Halloween Psychopath was a myth! By 1985 I had learned of the Index Medicus, undoubtedly through pharmacy school. I remember using the resources of the Mansfield library, and probably the Index Medicus, to find a citation for a study published in a sociology journal about this topic.

Luckily, the library had the specific journal on the shelves, and I didn’t have to request a photocopy through interlibrary loan. It was just like the Internet, immediate gratification!

The study design was simple and elegant. The researchers assumed that a heinous act like the random poisoning of a child with Halloween candy would become news, at least local news. Surely if the Halloween Psychopath was real, some newspaper would have a story about it! The researchers went into the archives for, I believe, three newspapers; the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and a major Chicago newspaper. They carefully examined the issues of November 1, 2, and 3 for a period of something like 30 years prior to the publication of their study.

And what did they find? NOTHING! Zero, zip, nada! The only case on file in these newspaper archives was where a disgruntled adult had singled out a particular child to harm, hoping that the assailant wouldn’t be identified due to the number of people having given the child candy. But the assailant was eventually identified; he was a relative of the child, NOT a Random Psychopath.

I came from a “hard science” background so it was good to see that sound scientific methodology could be applied to the less-rigorous field of sociology. It was fascinating to me that such an esoteric subject would be investigated, and that a widespread belief was rather definitively shown to be bullshit!

I remember coming home for lunch to my parent’s house that day. I remember rather triumphantly announcing what I had just read. I figured my parents would share my enthusiasm at science having triumphed over urban mythology. My father seemed to be unmoved by this finding. He taught law at the University of Montana, and sensational subjects never seemed to interest him, especially those dealing with “fringe” or even popular culture.

My mother on the other hand had a rather different reaction. I had spent several minutes explaining the historical context of the Halloween Psychopath belief, my amazement that there existed genuine science on the subject, the nature of the test design, and the surprising result. After all that she exclaimed; “yes, but that really did happen”.

It was a sad sort of semi-epiphany for me, like learning that someone you know or like is a creationist, or believes in the divinity of the Shroud of Turin. I knew for years that my mother was irrational, but as I grew older and my critical thinking and research skills sharpened, it became all the more painful for me to witness her displays of intellectual nonsense.

No, the real danger for trick-or-treating children is being hit by a car, not receiving poisoned or adulterated candy. When I was a child, we would practically sprint from house to house in a mad dash to get as much candy as we possibly could. An obvious set-up for carelessly running across the street. So I guess that today’s modern tradition of parents escorting their kids is a good thing, if for no other reason than they can make sure their kids cross the street safely.

Note that I’m writing about events from almost 25 years ago strictly from memory. For a more much more updated and fact-checked take on the same subject, read Ben Radford’s excellent essay.