Skepticblog

Cryptomundo reveals first known photograph of pivotal early Sasquatch witness William Roe—a face never before published in the Bigfoot literature

Bigfoot Times newsletter editor Daniel Perez has embraced Abominable Science!, my cryptozoology book with Don Prothero, as a welcome corrective—a useful opportunity for the community of interested scholars to critically reevaluate the conceptual underpinnings, methodological challenges, and case studies of the cryptozoological field, and to make the improvements to cryptozoology’s rigor and responsibility needed to bring it closer to its scientific aspirations.

No, just kidding. Perez hates, hates, hates Abominable Science!, commenting at Amazon.com, “my review was one star…. Had there been an option for NO stars, Loxton and Prothero would have surely gotten nothing for stars.” (See his full review here, and my response here.)

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Illustration by Daniel Loxton. Originally published in Junior Skeptic 16, bound inside Skeptic Vol. 10, No. 2 (2003).

Exciting headlines are announcing that Oxford University geneticist Bryan Sykes may have “solved” the long-open case of the legendary Yeti of the Himalayas. According to reports, DNA analysis of alleged Yeti hair samples indicate that the region may be home to previously undocumented species or sub-species of bear.

Bears do live throughout the region: Asiatic black bears, sloth bears, and Himalayan brown bears  (Ursus arctos isabellinus, a subspecies of the brown bear, Ursus arctos—grizzlies are another). Of these, the Himalayan brown bear has long been strongly implicated as the real animal behind the legend of the Yeti. I’ve argued this myself in the pages of Junior Skeptic, and Don Prothero and I explore this likelihood in chapter-length detail in our new book Abominable Science!

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Click through to a Daily Mail story to watch Elder’s video footage

Much ink and many pixels have been spilled over a new [publicized late August, 2013] video notable for not showing any part of a Loch Ness monster. Everyone agrees that the video shot by East Kilbride photographer David Elder instead shows a wave. Nonetheless, as Elder told the Mirror, “I’m convinced this was caused by a solid black object under the water. The water was very still at the time and there were no ripples coming off the wave and no other activity on the water. … It is something I just can’t explain.”¹

Seems weird; therefore, monster! Media rushed to craft headlines asking, could this unremarkable footage finally be “proof” of Nessie? (A useful rule of thumb warns that headlines ending with question marks should always be answered, “No.”)
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Kyle Hill has a great cryptozoology post up on his But Not Simpler Scientific American blog today, titled “Why Bigfoot is Unlikely Only If You Know What ‘Unlikely’ Means.” The piece includes a shout-out for my new book with Don Prothero, Abominable Science!, and also includes some quotes drawn from an email exchange with yours truly. I thought I might share some more of those comments here for your interest:

Hill: The theme of the piece is “The Unlikely” and I want to look at how the un-likelihood of something is treated differently in science and pseudoscience.

Loxton: In some ways pseudoscientists and paranormal enthusiasts such as cryptozoologists assess probability very differently from scientists. A scientist generally starts with the conservative working assumption that proposed new ideas are not true or that hypothetical new entities do not exist, and then revises her probability estimate upwards only when the evidence forces her to do so. A pseudoscientist typically starts with the assumption that a novel proposal seems to be true, and then revises her probability downward as the evidence leaves her no choice—if she is willing to surrender the possibility to any degree at all. (Some paranormalists are very reluctant to do so. Despite all the exposed hoaxes and bad ideas in cryptozoology, for example, I’m not sure that any cryptid or class of evidence has ever been abandoned or ruled out by the community of cryptozoologists overall.)

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My critical cryptozoology book with Don Prothero, Abominable Science!, continues to garner kind reviews from readers and press, with one perhaps predictable exception (or partial exception): monster proponents. While some cryptozoologists have generously received the book as “sympathetic to cryptozoology…a favor and a contribution to Bigfoot research,” or even “a superb contribution” that “goes on the ‘must reading’ list for anyone interested in cryptozoology,” others are less positive.

The other night, for example, I noticed a lengthy negative review of Abominable Science! posted by Loch Ness monster proponent Roland Watson, published on his blog and also as a one-star Amazon customer review. It argues that Prothero and I “dig a hole for themselves in terms of accuracy” and engage in a “lot of misquotes.” Mr. Watson’s numerous rapid-fire arguments about fine details of the Loch Ness literature pose a bit of a conundrum—a conundrum familiar to skeptics as the so-called “Gish Gallop.” I do not agree with Watson’s arguments, and I feel that I can give a robust accounting for my positions on each and every point that he raises, but it might take me days to walk readers through them all. So I read the review, considered his points, and resolved to move on without comment. You can’t respond to everything, after all—and a blogger who throws around accusations of poor scholarship while admitting he wrote his review before bothering even to read the whole book? I trust you’ll forgive me if this was not at the top of my list of priorities.

But then I received a note about this same review from Daniel Perez, publisher of the Bigfoot Times newsletter. Perez emailed me the text of Watson’s critique, quoted Watson regarding something Watson calls “an astonishing act of omission” on my part, and expressed his feeling that this “omission” confirmed his own poor opinion of Abominable Science. (Perez earlier offered his own harsh review, which he ran in the Bigfoot Times and posted as another one-star Amazon review. I responded to Perez’s review here at Skepticblog—I thought, pretty charitably.)

So, what the hey. Let’s dig down specifically into Watson’s “astonishing act of omission” complaint in detail, just because we can.
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Story time is a big deal at the Loxton household. For years, my young son and I have been working through a stack of some of the great adventure novels, just as my dad used to read poetry to me and my brothers. I’m delighted by my son’s edge-of-his-seat immersion in the worlds of hobbits and pirates and talking lions.

On other nights, we lie awake talking about ideas. As Carl Sagan once said, “Kids can understand some pretty deep things.”¹ My son has long since discovered the irresistible trick of asking fascinating questions about those deep things right after I turn off the lights. I’m a sucker every time. Recently, our conversation turned to “true” ghost stories related by his young colleagues on the playground.

“You know I investigate strange mystery stories for my job?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he answered, recalling what I had taught him at other times. “I know that no ghost story has ever turned out for sure to be a ghost.”

“Many such cases have been investigated over a very long time. Very, very often they turn out to be mistakes, or tricks, or just made up stories. It seems that ghosts probably do not exist.”

“Or they’re very rare.”

“Yes. But my own opinion is that they do not exist. What do you think?”

He thought about this. “I think they might be real. Not for sure, but we don’t know.”

“That’s true,” I said. “We don’t know for sure. But we have learned that most ghost stories have other explanations.”

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Abominable Science! was the work of several intense years, so you won’t be surprised to hear that its warm reception by media from The Wall Street Journal to Nature is very exciting to me. It may surprise you slightly more to hear that I looked forward with particular interest to the review of Abominable Science! in an altogether smaller, niche publication: the Bigfoot Times newsletter.

It’s appropriate and welcome that the Bigfoot Times should take a crack at a critical review of the book; after all, Don Prothero and I offer a fairly robust critique of cryptozoology (certainly a critique offered in good faith). I was hopeful that they and other cryptozoology proponents would weigh in with substantial contributions about what they see as the merits and roadmap for future development for cryptozoology, while also giving serious, honest consideration of some of the deep problems with the field.
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As we finish the first full month of release for Abominable Science!, I’m pleased to say that a number of reactions and reviews have emerged. My co-author Don Prothero and I have also had the pleasure of a number of interesting interview conversations about the book.  I thought that I might take a moment to round up some of the press highlights to date:

• Wall Street Journal: book review (paywall);
• The Times of London: book review (paywall);
• Nature: full page book review (paywall);
• Discover magazine: “Hot Books in September” book review;
• National Geographic Daily News: interview with Loxton and Prothero;
• National Geographic Phenomena blogs: book review by Brian Switek;
• BBC Focus magazine: book review, plus sidebar interview with Loxton (print only);
• BBC Focus magazine podcast, August 2013: interview with Loxton;
• The Scientist magazine: book review;
• Inside Higher Ed: book review;
• Publishers Weekly: book review;
• Library Journal: Starred Review (July 2013, print only); (continue reading…)

A classic science-based skeptical investigation of a paranormal claim, translated into English for the first time in Skeptic magazine

Does History Matter?

Should “scientific skeptics” care about history? You’ve chosen to attend a workshop with the dusty title “Preserving Skeptical History,” so I imagine you have opinions on this yourself. But you’d be surprised how often this question comes up.

It really breaks down to two different questions:

Should skeptics care about studying or preserving or exploring our own history?

And, to what extent should skeptics devote resources and time and attention to the study of the history of claims and hoaxes?

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Advocating for the importance of skeptical scholarship is a bit of a theme for me—the scholarship practiced by skeptics, and also scholarship about skepticism. In particular, I’ve devoted quite a bit of attention to the exploration of the history of (“scientific”) skepticism. Especially over the past couple of years, historical reflection has become a larger ongoing concern that unifies much of my work.

With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to start a post here in which I can collect, list, and link to some of my work relating to the history of skepticism. The idea is that I can return to update this post with new links as time goes by.
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