Mythusmage Opines

A meditation on Ray Wallace and Bigfoot

Part One: The Closing of the Skeptical Mind

A few days ago I decided that while reading PZ Myers’ Pharyngula remains a worthwhile thing to do, participating in the discussions engendered by PZ’s posts is not. The thread that led to this conclusion was this one, Hairy Horde Marches On.

HHMO was the latest in a long run no topic thread that has been ongoing for a long time. Officially each iteration of the thread unending has no topic, but each has an unofficial topic. In the case of HHMO the unofficial topic was the sasquatch, Bigfoot. The cryptid North American ape said to live in the continental United States. There are those who say sasquatch exist, I am one of them. Others say the animal does not exist, and as you can see in the thread linked to above, the skeptics can get down right nasty in their denouncing of sasquatch supporters.

It is claimed by the deniers that there is no evidence pointing to the existence of sasquatch. This is contradicted by four types of evidence; photographic, footprints and one body impression, fecal matter, and calls. Yet the skeptics insist that such evidence is faked. Even when they can provide no evidence that all such pro-sasquatch evidence is false they keep insisting it must be. This, I’m afraid to say, is the same line of reasoning by global warming deniers, holocaust deniers, and even creationists. As far as I can tell sasquatch deniers engage in this behavior for the same reason creationists do, because the fact there is a native North American great ape upsets their strongly held beliefs in how the world is. And why are they so adamant about it? The answer can be found in the person of one Raymond L. Wallace, and the fraud he committed on the scientific community and the world.

In part two of The Closing of the Skeptical Mind, how a logging contractor poisoned scientific inquiry.