Things More Likely Than Bigfoot, Part 1

As we await the definitive proof of the existence of Sasquatches (Sasquatchi) to clear peer review and be published, we here at Foster Disbelief will pass the time with a new series: Things More Likely Than Bigfoot!

For part one of our series, we will travel to Zarozje, Serbia, by way of Salon:

“One should always remain calm, it’s important not to frighten him, you shouldn’t make fun of him,” said villager Mico Matic, 56, whose house is not far from the collapsed mill.

Oh, a collapsed mill?  My interest is peaked!  Who is this mysterious “him.”

Some locals say it’s easy for strangers to laugh at them, but they truly believe.

“Five people have recently died one after another in our small community, one hanging himself,” said Miodrag Vujetic, a local municipal council member. “This is not by accident.”

Five deaths, one by hanging?  Outsiders laughing at the superstitious locals?  I can feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up.  Do go on.

“He is just one of the neighbors, you do your best to be on friendly terms with him,” he said with a wry smile, displaying garlic from both of his trouser pockets.

So apparently you will be fine if you just treat this mysterious “him” in kind ways, as any other neighbor.  I’m sure, however, this “him” is vicious if you cross him.  Wait.  Did he say garlic?

“The story of Sava Savanovic is a legend, but strange things did occur in these parts back in the old days,” said 55-year-old housewife Milka Prokic, holding a string of garlic in one hand and a large wooden stake in another, as an appropriately moody mist rose above the surrounding hills. “We have inherited this legend from our ancestors, and we keep it alive for the younger generations.”

Yes, he said garlic.  And she is holding a wooden stake.  Which means that old Sava is a, wait for it, vampire!  (Cue ominous music.)

But before you reach for your crosses and stakes, prior to making a trip to Whole Foods for some garlic cloves, realize that these locals may not be warning you of this vampiric menace out of the purest of motives.  Just like American politics, this is all about the money.

They say rumors that a legendary vampire ghost has awakened are spreading fear – and a potential tourist opportunity – through the remote village.

A local council warned villagers to put garlic in their pockets and place wooden crosses in their rooms to ward off vampires, although it appeared designed more to attract visitors to the impoverished region bordering Bosnia.

Remember the council member talking about the five deaths earlier?  His further statements:

Vujetic, however, said that “whatever is true about Sava,” locals should use the legend to promote tourism.

“If Romanians could profit on the Dracula legend with the tourists visiting Transylvania, why can’t we do the same with Sava?”

If you are planning to travel to Europe next year, stop by this region and spend a little money.  It is an impoverished region, and the people in the area have been through hell with the conflicts and war that have taken place in Serbia and Bosnia.  You can hear a vampire legend and go on a vampire search, and help people massively less privileged than yourself.

Who knows?  You may even run into Sava himself.

It is more likely than Bigfoot, after all.

 

 

Sasquatchi Are Totes Real Man…

As I wrote the other day, a team of researchers claims to have sequenced the DNA of the elusive unicorn chimera Men’s Rights Advocate that isn’t an asshole Bigfoot.  This caught my eye since I feel that the chances of Sasquatches (Sasquatchi) actually existing are, while more likely than finding an MRA that isn’t an asshole, only slightly less likely than finding a herd of unicorn populating the NYC subway system.  Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be proven wrong.  Finding a new primate species would be an incredible day in the history of science.  (Especially if discovered by Bobo cooking bacon in the forest.)  But the lack of one dead body (or body part) or convincing photo in a nation filled with cars, hunters, and camera phones just makes Bigfoots existence increasingly unlikely with everyday that goes by without one.  Sasquatches are claimed to be living all over the United States, not just in one isolated pocket.  If you imagine one lone Sasquatch for each forest with a sighting, I am sure you can rationalize the lack of proof.  But any large mammal needs a breeding population.  Following the claims of sightings of Sasquatches (Sasquatchi), hikers should literally be stumbling upon them daily.  There are not many skeptical topics I feel comfortable stating things this bluntly, but…  Bigfoot does not exist.  It is a mythical creature.

Still, evidence is evidence, and this evidence needs to be looked at closely.  Since the paper has not been published yet, it is too early to make any definite statement on it, but while we wait we can always speculate!

First we will look over at the Inquisitr:

The shocking Bigfoot DNA discovery made by Dr. Melba Ketchum hasn’t convinced everyone on the planet that Sasquatch is the real deal, according to the Los Angeles Times.

You mean not everyone is willing to abandon all scientific thought on a subject based on an unpublished study still in peer review?  Damn skeptics.

 

Although the dedicated researcher is convinced that the creatures came into existence after a woman mated with a male from an “unknown hominin species,” some experts are’t convinced that Ketchum has discovered the proverbial smoking gun.

This remains the point that convinces me that Ketchum is mistaken.  As unlikely as I feel an unknown North American primate species still in existence is, I find the thought that that species is a human/ape hybrid infinitely more unlikely.  She is claiming that some type of an ape fucked a woman and the resulting offspring was fertile.  Think about that.

As you are thinking about that, let’s have a little bit of rain on the Bigfoot parade:

 

Eric Berger, science blogger with the Houston Chronicle, certainly isn’t convinced the Bigfoot DNA proves the existence of these mysterious beasts.

“At this point I should probably remind readers that there’s not at present a shred of credible scientific evidence that a Bigfoot, or Bigfeet, exist in North America, or anywhere in the world. These are, in fact, mythical creatures,” Berger explained.

He added, “What about the paper, you say? Well, almost anything is possible.”

Other than Berger’s use of “Bigfeet” rather than my preferred “Sasquatchi”, I couldn’t agree more.

 

According to the Los Angeles Times, University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks is another individual that isn’t taking Ketchum’s Bigfoot finding at face value. Hawks explained that he wouldn’t comment on Ketchum’s claims until the DNA research had been completed.

“No data, no discovery,” he said.

I like that.  It should be in all skeptical books, right beside “The plural of anecdote is not data.“

 

And while you are still thinking about that huge unknown ape fucking that poor (relatively) tiny woman, consider this as well:

 

Interestingly, the International Science Times discovered that DNA Diagnostics — the company used to dig through the alleged Bigfoot DNA — has been given an “F” by the Better Business Bureau. In fact, over a dozen people have complained about the company’s services.

At least it is a reliable company.  Reliably bad, but still reliable.

 

Dr. Melba Ketchum said she won’t comment further on this controversial Sasquatch project until her research has concluded.

Really?  Sigh.  Perhaps she shouldn’t have commented at all until it was out of peer review?

 

For a more scientific look, we will next visit Dr. Steven Novella over at his wonderful blog, NeuroLogica:

 

Until these results are peer-reviewed and published it is difficult to give a definitive critique, but from what is being reported a few things are clear. First, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is unambiguously human. I suspect these samples come from hair, which retains mtDNA but not nuclear DNA (nuDNA). (Mitochondria are the energy factory of cells, likely evolved from primitive bacteria, and still retain some of their own DNA. Nuclear DNA comes from the nucleus of cells and is the main genetic code of the organism.)

The nuDNA also contains human sequences but also unknown sequences. We are told these do not match Neanderthal, other known early hominids, or any known ape. They are simply unknown. So, in short, we have human DNA (not human-like, but human) mixed in with some unknown sequences. Ketchum concludes from this that the samples are from a hybrid between a human and an unknown primate occurring less than 15,000 years ago.

Alternate hypothesis please, Dr. Novella?

Let me offer a preliminary alternate hypothesis. The hair samples that contain only human mtDNA are from a human. The samples from which the nuDNA is isolated are also from humans but with some contaminants or some other animal source mixed in. That seems to be a more parsimonious interpretation. I would like to know more about the source of the DNA, but I guess that will have to wait for the full details to be published. The fact that the human DNA is modern human (hence the need for the alleged hybridization to have occurred so recently in the past) is most easily explained as the source simply being modern humans.

But I am still stuck on the ape fucking a human.  (How can you not be?)  And so is Steve, although in a much less vulgar way:

Let us also consider the scenario that Ketchum is suggesting – in the very recent past (less than 15,000 years) an unknown primate bred with modern human females (mtDNA comes almost exclusively from the female line) producing the creature we now know as bigfoot. What, then, must the original unknown primate looked like? The result of this pairing then produced fertile offspring, enough to generate a new stable population of bigfeet. It is highly doubtful that the offspring of a creature that looks like bigfoot and a human would be fertile. They would almost certainly be as sterile as mules. Humans could not breed with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, or any living ape. It is probable that we could produce fertile young with Neanderthals, but it gets doubtful the further back in our evolutionary history we go – and how far back would we have to go to reach a common ancestor with bigfoot?

Bottom line?

The bottom line is this – human DNA plus some anomalies or unknowns does not equal an impossible human-ape hybrid. It equals human DNA plus some anomalies.

And just because I love this quote from Ketchum:

Yet Ketchum (somewhat prematurely) suggests:

Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a ‘license’ to hunt, trap, or kill them.”

I suggest an immediate ban on unicorn hunting as well.  We must protect their noble horns.

And although Dr. Novella, as I have, makes it clear that this evidence must be examined once it passes peer review and is published, I couldn’t agree more with his closing statement.

What can be recognized is the process of pseudoscience – anomaly hunting and then backfilling to the desired conclusion. What we don’t have is compelling evidence for a new species.

Sasquatchi.  Still as mythical as non-asshole MRA’s.

Color Me Skeptical….

About to leave for work, but I just noticed this and wanted to post it.

Bigfoot DNA Sequenced

A team of scientists can verify that their 5-year long DNA study, currently under peer-review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” living in North America. Researchers’ extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species.

This report was not vetted by CNN.  I will look more into it in the morning, for all I know it could be a straight up hoax.  But since I feel that Sasquatch is one of the most unlikely pseudoscientific  ideas, any story claiming proof is of interest.

Lines like this deepen my skeptical colors:

Ketchum calls on public officials and law enforcement to immediately recognize the Sasquatch as an indigenous people:

“Genetically, the Sasquatch are a human hybrid with unambiguously modern human maternal ancestry. Government at all levels must recognize them as an indigenous people and immediately protect their human and Constitutional rights against those who would see in their physical and cultural differences a ‘license’ to hunt, trap, or kill them.”

So an ape fucked a woman?  I can not wait to find follow up on this.

Skeptical sense, tingling….

 

Jason Linkins Wins “Dick Morris Related Headline of the Week” Award I Just Created

In political punditry, as in the larger real world, there are certain things that are just unarguable.  If you add 2 to 2 you end up with 4.  Objects attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.  Fox News is “fair” and “balanced.”  The higher the turnout in an election, the better the prospects for the Democratic candidate.  Ann Coulter is a horrible person.  The Log Cabin Republicans confuse even other Republicans.

And Dick Morris is always wrong.

Forget the state polls.  Forget 538.  Forget Votamatic, forget the PEC, forget Intrade.  The single biggest indicator that Obama would win re-election was Dick Morris’ prediction of a Romney landslide.

The result was that the presidential race reached a tipping point. Reasonable voters saw that the voice of hope and optimism and positivism was Romney while the president was only a nitpicking, quarrelsome, negative figure. The contrast does not work in Obama’s favor.

His erosion began shortly after the conventions when Indiana (10 votes) and North Carolina (15) moved to Romney (in addition to the 179 votes that states that McCain carried cast this year).

Then, in October, Obama lost the Southern swing states of Florida (29) and Virginia (13). He also lost Colorado (10), bringing his total to 255 votes.

And now, he faces the erosion of the northern swing states: Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4) and Iowa (6). Only in the union-anchored state of Nevada (9) does Obama still cling to a lead.

In the next few days, the battle will move to Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10) and Minnesota (16). Ahead in Pennsylvania, tied in Michigan and Wisconsin, and slightly behind in Minnesota, these new swing states look to be the battleground.

Or will the Romney momentum grow and wash into formerly safe Democratic territory in New Jersey and Oregon?

Once everyone discovers that the emperor has no clothes (or that Obama has no argument after the negative ads stopped working), the vote shift could be of historic proportions.

Sure, lots of conservative pundits picked Romney to win this election, and every indication suggests that they actually believed in the prediction; it wasn’t just hype.  But those pundits lack Dick Morris impressive track record of ineptitude.  If Dick Morris told me that Sasquatches (still like Sasquatchi) were non-existent, I would start looking for one.  If he told me that Obama was born in Hawaii, I’d start asking if the birth certificate was a forgery.

And now that the election is over and all of the conservatives, convinced by the right wing echo chamber that Romney would win easily, deal with the actual results, we get to see those that claimed the polls were skewed and the electorate loved Mitt explain how they got this election so hilariously wrong.  Which leads to headlines such as this, from Jason Linkins at the HuffPo:

Dick Morris Falls On His Sword For Wrong Predictions, Misses Sword

Can Dick Morris be such a horrible pundit that he gets this election wrong after it has already taken place?

I’ve got egg on my face. I predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker.

An Obama “squeaker”?  Wait, what?!?

Back in the HuffPo piece, Linkins lists a few reasons that conservative pundits may have been mistaken about this race, then gets back to Morris:

Does Morris go on to cite any of these factors in his mea culpa? Nope. He is thoroughly convinced that he was undone by the weather.

But the more proximate cause of my error was that I did not take full account of the impact of hurricane Sandy and of Governor Chris Christie’s bipartisan march through New Jersey arm in arm with President Obama. Not to mention Christie’s fawning promotion of Obama’s presidential leadership.It made all the difference.

Not really, actually! Philip Bump put together a simple graphic that illustrates the fact that Romney’s momentum had ceased and Obama’s had picked up again well before Sandy even got her name, and that by the time the storm made landfall, the race was no longer looking like a squeaker. The whole “Sandy altered the race because Chris Christie hung out with Obama” notion is just one more casualty in this year’s war between “pundit narrative nonsense” and “quantifiable political science,” won decisively by the scientists.

Not to worry, though. Morris will nevertheless enjoy another four-year term of being wrong and ridiculous, which only goes to prove that America is a great and charitable nation.

For just an added bit of humor, remember Dick’s prediction for the Senate this year?

The most likely outcome? Eight GOP takeaways and two giveaways for a net gain of six. A 53-47 Senate, just like we have now, only opposite.

 

By the way, the runner-up for the “Dick Morris Related Headline of the Week” Award was “Jason Linkins Wins ‘Dick Morris Related Headline of the Week’ Award I Just Created”.  You know, in case you were wondering.

 

 

 

Hey Animal Planet! Send Your Idiots This Way!!!!

Animal Planet needs to send the Finding Bigfoot “true believers” to Pennsylvania!  (Again?  I think they were here once already but I have better things to do than watch people walk around with night vision cameras and cook bacon for imaginary primates…)  But if they do come, they need to leave someone to watch their van, because Bigfoot is apparently an obnoxious teenage vandal.  Or is he?  Does this AP article even have a point?  I report, you decide!

From the Washington Examiner (because their article title amused me…)

LYKENS, Pa. (AP) — A central Pennsylvania man is giving state police a lead as they look into who might have damaged his 1973 Winnebago: A bigfoot.

State police said Friday a trooper took a report in Lykens, 30 miles northeast of Harrisburg, for a report that taillights and windows on the RV had been smashed.

John Reed tells police that a large, brown, hunched-over bigfoot has been seen nearby. The 39-year-old Reed is a veteran bigfoot hunter, and maintains the Lykens Valley Sasquatch Hunters page on Facebook.

Reed says he’s been seeing bigfoots in the area and studying them for about three decades, but he’s not sure if one of the furry menaces is responsible for damaging his vehicle.

Police are calling it an incident of criminal mischief.

Let’s break this story down, shall we?

1. A RV was vandalized in Lykens, Pa.
2. A man who often sees Sasquatches (Sasquatchi?) tells police that he saw a Sasquatch.
3. The AP connects the obvious dots.
4. Profit!?

Note that the guy who sees Sasquatches (I still like Sasquatchi) makes no claim that the damage to his RV was caused by a Bigfoot.  In his mind, the damage to the vehicle and the local Bigfoot appearing are completely separate incidents only connected by the AP writer.  Which leads me to ask the obvious question about this article:

Why is John Reed lying to protect this “furry menace” to society?  Is the Sasquatch in fact blackmailing John Reed, forcing him to keep silent on the Bigfoot’s vandalism?

Why John?  Why?  Halloween is fast approaching, and if Bigfoot is brazen enough to vandalize the RV of the only person who can see him, who knows what string of tricks the Sasquatch is planning for Samhain.  Houses will be TP’d.  Eggs will be thrown.  Shit will be placed into paper bags, placed on porches, and lit on fire.  (Assuming Bigfoot has access to a match or a lighter, that is…)  For God’s sake, this renegade Sasquatch may even ignore the sign that reads “Take One, Please” placed on the big bowl of mini candy bars by people too lazy to hand out treats themselves.

Mr. Reed, it is your civic duty to come forward with whatever evidence you possess that can tie this Sasquatchian hooligan to his crimes.  I don’t know what he is using to blackmail you, but it can not be worth the price of inaction.  Think of the children!

Oh, and it says that you’ve been seeing Sasquatchi for nearly three decades.  Have you heard about the latest invention?  It is called a camera.  You see, you point it at something and then through magic (well, not really, but I don’t feel like explaining how it works) it makes a lasting image of what you pointed it at that other people can  examine.  If you know about this dazzling new technology already, I have to question why you haven’t already used it to take a picture (that’s what the image the camera makes is called) of the Sasquatch.  If it is because the Sasquatch doesn’t like to be photographed (that’s what taking a picture of something with the camera is called) , you should explain to him (or her) that the picture would be worth a lot of money and you would share the cash with him (or her).

The Sasquatch is going to need bail money after you turn him/her in, after all.