Is cryptozoology a legitimate science?

[Piney]

8 hours ago, stereologist said:

Tat's not true. Astrology does not create hypotheses that they test. I am not aware of cryptozoologists doing that either. Hunting for evidence is not science. 

No, it's not.

To me it was a hobby and I'm not a biologist. There was no "science" involved. Just my bushwhacking skills after listening to peoples stories. 

[stereologist]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

No, it's not.

To me it was a hobby and I'm not a biologist. There was no "science" involved. Just my bushwhacking skills after listening to peoples stories. 

I can certainly see that. I'm always missing out on things in the wild. I've never identified a shrike and yet I know they are here because people have seen them  here.

Years back I was looking for shark teeth in a phosphate mine. I had a 4 hour window to look for fossils. The first 2 hours were a bust with me finding nothing. Then I started to find things. I either went from an area in the mine with no fossils to a rich area, or I suspect I learned to see what I needed to see. Found 3 megalodon teeth and a total of 103 shark teeth in the two hours left. Also found teeth of sperm whales and seals.

My feeling/opinion is that interpreting what we see is learned. That fossil incident was soon matched up with looking for topaz. I had found a sizeable piece of topaz in a place in Texas. I invited the local gem and mineral club to go there and showed them that many of the pieces they dismissed were in fact very nice gem quality pieces of topaz. Beyond that I also found a number of broken points that must have been spear points. They were probably broken early on in the process of making these brilliant pieces of craftsmanship. An unseen defect in the rock at least presented itself before too much effort had been expended in the production of the tool. Kind of interesting to find something that someone else held possibly hundreds of years ago.

[Piney]

15 minutes ago, stereologist said:

They were probably broken early on in the process of making these brilliant pieces of craftsmanship.

No, defective bifaces don't "ring" and are rejected. Probably a cache broken on purpose or they broke while butchering something.

You ever come to New Jersey we have some great marl pits for fossils. 

[stereologist]

1 minute ago, Piney said:

No, defective bifaces don't "ring" and are rejected. Probably a cache broken on purpose or they broke while butchering something.

You ever come to New Jersey we have some great marl pits for fossils. 

I have my finds in a wooden box and I show them to guests on a regular basis.

When you are looking for the heavier things that turn out to be gem stones and out pops a piece of old workmanship I think about the expertise it took to produce it even if it is not finished. And these are items my untrained mind can recognize. How many items went by me that were useful or used that I do not recognize?

In that same light of being a novice we have people proclaiming identification of all sorts of oddities they have no idea what they are talking about.

[Piney]

2 minutes ago, stereologist said:

When you are looking for the heavier things that turn out to be gem stones and out pops a piece of old workmanship I think about the expertise it took to produce it even if it is not finished. And these are items my untrained mind can recognize. How many items went by me that were useful or used that I do not recognize?

Like when I would take students out to a village center and pick up hammerstones, mullers, scrapers and gravers and have to physically show them and some still didn't see it.  

[stereologist]

2 minutes ago, Piney said:

Like when I would take students out to a village center and pick up hammerstones, mullers, scrapers and gravers and have to physically show them and some still didn't see it.  

I probably fall into that 'some'. I have a problem finding my car in a parking lot.

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

On 8/23/2019 at 1:46 PM, stereologist said:

They didn't do science as we know science today. A good example of this is that the Greeks did not do experiments. You probably didn't know that.

What utter trash!  So you are saying then that Eratosthenes who proved the circumference of earth 2,400 years ago was NOT a scientist? Pythagoras was not a mathmatician...?  Frankly your moving of the goal posts by redefining "scientist" - all for purposes of making a negative retort, leaves me nauseated. 

The rest of your post does not deserve to be read after that one. You have no creds.

 

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

On 8/23/2019 at 1:47 PM, stereologist said:

Tat's not true. Astrology does not create hypotheses that they test. I am not aware of cryptozoologists doing that either. Hunting for evidence is not science. 

Below is  what I originally wrote:

On 8/23/2019 at 1:35 PM, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

I would argue that Astrology is not a science because astrologists never seem to do research to see what causes the affects they cite and they don't seem to change if science shows some of their beliefs wrong.

The two statements are rough equivalents to each other, yet you say "Tat's not true. (sic)".

This is PROOF that you spam-post me in the negative to start arguments and yes, I have this bookmarked so that the next time a thread closing argument occurs I will have the evidence  to show the mods. You are a major league BS-er and trouble maker

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

18 hours ago, stereologist said:

But scientists looking for evidence of an event are not necessarily doing science. Today we often misunderstand engineering as science.

What happens in almost every science fiction novel is really technological fiction. There are a few like Gravity's Rainbow that include a fictional science. In the rest of the genre it is a fictional technology.

Finding the cause of the Notre Dame fire is applied science or applied engineering. It is not science.

mostly false.  Searching for Planet Nine

By analyzing the strange orbits of the objects, Batygin and Brown proposed the presence of a new planet in the solar system, an object four times as large as Earth and 10 times as massive. They traced the possible orbit of the unseen giant, which they called "Planet Nine." To create the observed disturbances, they mapped an orbit that comes as close as 200 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and travel as far away as 1,200 AU. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
---------

By your way of thinking these SCIENTISTS are out chasing butterflies. Pay attentions and learn something.

[rashore]

I think cryptozoology can be a more legit science. Like when one takes folklore like a giant panda and does the actual serious field biology to find the animal really exists. Or set up cams to try tracking local wolf or big cat lore. Or when one opts to try tracing the folklore in an anthropology sense, though that can be kind of stretching it.

But I think a lot of cryptozoology is just a bunch of campfire tales, untracked legends, some creepy pasta, and a bunch of folks that got no idea how to track or hunt real animals while wandering around looking for ones that are supposed to exist. Like the BF shows where the folks are running around screaming and making noise- they aren't likely to encounter much wildlife at all with all that racket, let alone something that's supposed to be shy or elusive like a BF.

[XenoFish]

3 minutes ago, rashore said:

I think cryptozoology can be a more legit science. Like when one takes folklore like a giant panda and does the actual serious field biology to find the animal really exists. Or set up cams to try tracking local wolf or big cat lore. Or when one opts to try tracing the folklore in an anthropology sense, though that can be kind of stretching it.

I think this also applies to other fringe studies. Instead of just jumping onto the bandwagon and saying, "Aah! Bigfoot/Aliens/Ghost/Toilet Gnomes/ETC?" really look at the history of and mythology surround said subject. Plus actually doing something. 

[Earl.Of.Trumps]

50 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

I think this also applies to other fringe studies. Instead of just jumping onto the bandwagon and saying, "Aah! Bigfoot/Aliens/Ghost/Toilet Gnomes/ETC?" really look at the history of and mythology surround said subject. Plus actually doing something. 

I would agree, Xeno and @rashore that a lot of creature subjects being studied have no physical traces but that is not true for BF and Yeti. They have physical manifestations - "traces", if you will, and no, it does not at all prove such entities, nor do the physical evidences of a Planet Nine prove its existence, either.

Intriguing, yes, but no proof yet.

Edited August 26, 2019 by Earl.Of.Trumps

[ThereWeAreThen]

2 hours ago, rashore said:

I think cryptozoology can be a more legit science. Like when one takes folklore like a giant panda and does the actual serious field biology to find the animal really exists. Or set up cams to try tracking local wolf or big cat lore. Or when one opts to try tracing the folklore in an anthropology sense, though that can be kind of stretching it.

But I think a lot of cryptozoology is just a bunch of campfire tales, untracked legends, some creepy pasta, and a bunch of folks that got no idea how to track or hunt real animals while wandering around looking for ones that are supposed to exist. Like the BF shows where the folks are running around screaming and making noise- they aren't likely to encounter much wildlife at all with all that racket, let alone something that's supposed to be shy or elusive like a BF.

But there already is a field of science looking for creatures, it's called biology. So why create a new field of science which does the exact same thing? 

Don't get me wrong, I love cryptozoology, I really do. I love hearing the stories of sightings, despite most of them being nonsense (read Cthulu thread). Which people may be surprised as usually my replies to threads are usually "bias towars skepticism".

But again, biology already looks, finds, studies and categorises any new species discovered.

[Dradan]

6 hours ago, rashore said:

I think cryptozoology can be a more legit science. Like when one takes folklore like a giant panda and does the actual serious field biology to find the animal really exists. Or set up cams to try tracking local wolf or big cat lore. Or when one opts to try tracing the folklore in an anthropology sense, though that can be kind of stretching it.

But I think a lot of cryptozoology is just a bunch of campfire tales, untracked legends, some creepy pasta, and a bunch of folks that got no idea how to track or hunt real animals while wandering around looking for ones that are supposed to exist. Like the BF shows where the folks are running around screaming and making noise- they aren't likely to encounter much wildlife at all with all that racket, let alone something that's supposed to be shy or elusive like a BF.

Yes, i agree. Its a bit sad, because there are actually some serious people out there, who are putting a lot of time and effort into it, and that includes people with a scientific background. But when you have fruitcakes running around in the woods while screaming and making noise, who calls themselves bigfoot investigators, then its hard for the scientific community to take it seriously.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Ultimatium

[stereologist]

On 8/24/2019 at 3:17 PM, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

What utter trash!  So you are saying then that Eratosthenes who proved the circumference of earth 2,400 years ago was NOT a scientist? Pythagoras was not a mathmatician...?  Frankly your moving of the goal posts by redefining "scientist" - all for purposes of making a negative retort, leaves me nauseated. 

The rest of your post does not deserve to be read after that one. You have no creds.

 

Apparently you have no idea what you are talking about. Eratosthenes was not a scientist by today's standards. He was a natural philosopher in the Greek tradition. 

NO idea why you are bringing up Pythagoras - oh that's right you are ignorantly attempting to promote a straw man argument.

I'm not redefining scientist. It seems this is all about your ignorance of simple issues.

Science begins in the 1600s. Take the time to learn for a change.

 

[stereologist]

On 8/24/2019 at 3:23 PM, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

Below is  what I originally wrote:

The two statements are rough equivalents to each other, yet you say "Tat's not true. (sic)".

This is PROOF that you spam-post me in the negative to start arguments and yes, I have this bookmarked so that the next time a thread closing argument occurs I will have the evidence  to show the mods. You are a major league BS-er and trouble maker

It's not the so-called research that makes it a science. 

Please take the time to learn for a change. Astrology has nothing at all in common with science. It was a produce of natural philosophy, not science.

[stereologist]

On 8/24/2019 at 3:32 PM, Earl.Of.Trumps said:

mostly false.  Searching for Planet Nine

By analyzing the strange orbits of the objects, Batygin and Brown proposed the presence of a new planet in the solar system, an object four times as large as Earth and 10 times as massive. They traced the possible orbit of the unseen giant, which they called "Planet Nine." To create the observed disturbances, they mapped an orbit that comes as close as 200 astronomical units (AU) from the sun and travel as far away as 1,200 AU. (One AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
---------

By your way of thinking these SCIENTISTS are out chasing butterflies. Pay attentions and learn something.

Again, you seem unable to read simple English.

Astronomy is a science that does involve creating hypotheses. Those hypotheses lead to the collection of experimental evidence.

The analysis of data leading to the hypothetical new planet is a part of the astronomical survey work being done by Brown and others. It is tested against other information about the solar system.

I was completely correct when I posted:

But scientists looking for evidence of an event are not necessarily doing science. Today we often misunderstand engineering as science.

What happens in almost every science fiction novel is really technological fiction. There are a few like Gravity's Rainbow that include a fictional science. In the rest of the genre it is a fictional technology.

Finding the cause of the Notre Dame fire is applied science or applied engineering. It is not science.

The application of science and engineering to the Notre Dame is applied science at best, not science.

[stereologist]

On 8/26/2019 at 3:44 PM, rashore said:

I think cryptozoology can be a more legit science. Like when one takes folklore like a giant panda and does the actual serious field biology to find the animal really exists. Or set up cams to try tracking local wolf or big cat lore. Or when one opts to try tracing the folklore in an anthropology sense, though that can be kind of stretching it.

But I think a lot of cryptozoology is just a bunch of campfire tales, untracked legends, some creepy pasta, and a bunch of folks that got no idea how to track or hunt real animals while wandering around looking for ones that are supposed to exist. Like the BF shows where the folks are running around screaming and making noise- they aren't likely to encounter much wildlife at all with all that racket, let alone something that's supposed to be shy or elusive like a BF.

There is also the use of the fossil record to show that the ancestors of the supposed creature exist. Are there fossils of large primates in North America, or fossils of chupacabra like creatures, or fossils of large marine reptiles after the end of the Cretaceous.

[Dradan]

Please keep my thread civil, stereologist and earl of trumps.

Edited August 29, 2019 by Ultimatium

[ThereWeAreThen]

On 8/28/2019 at 6:03 PM, stereologist said:

Again, you seem unable to read simple English.

Astronomy is a science that does involve creating hypotheses. Those hypotheses lead to the collection of experimental evidence.

The analysis of data leading to the hypothetical new planet is a part of the astronomical survey work being done by Brown and others. It is tested against other information about the solar system.

I was completely correct when I posted:

But scientists looking for evidence of an event are not necessarily doing science. Today we often misunderstand engineering as science.

What happens in almost every science fiction novel is really technological fiction. There are a few like Gravity's Rainbow that include a fictional science. In the rest of the genre it is a fictional technology.

Finding the cause of the Notre Dame fire is applied science or applied engineering. It is not science.

The application of science and engineering to the Notre Dame is applied science at best, not science.

This is going to sound pedantic.. cause it is. But everything and nothing in the known/unknown universe is science.

[stereologist]

1 minute ago, ThereWeAreThen said:

This is going to sound pedantic.. cause it is. But everything and nothing in the known/unknown universe is science.

Interesting. Why do you say that?

[ThereWeAreThen]

6 hours ago, stereologist said:

Interesting. Why do you say that?

Think about it. Everything is made out of elements (Chemistry), the universe is expanding (physics) and there's life on this planet (biology).

Those are just 3 examples. Even nothingness itself is science. Even me thinking about what I'm typing is science due to chemical reactions in my brain cell (I have a cell not developed a brain as of yet ).

 

 

[stereologist]

2 hours ago, ThereWeAreThen said:

Think about it. Everything is made out of elements (Chemistry), the universe is expanding (physics) and there's life on this planet (biology).

Those are just 3 examples. Even nothingness itself is science. Even me thinking about what I'm typing is science due to chemical reactions in my brain cell (I have a cell not developed a brain as of yet ).

 

 

Even though these are related to science they do not exhibit the scientific method. A rock for example is not science, but can be studied by science such as petrology.

I do see what you mean though. Science can and does study a wide range of the things we experience.

[Dradan]

On 8/22/2019 at 7:26 AM, Carnoferox said:

Cryptozoology wasn’t even a concept when the platypus was discovered, so it’s hard to call it a cryptid. We also have fossils outlining the evolution of the platypus, which can’t be said for bigfoot.

Well, the platypus is widely recognized as one of the few cryptids that turned out to be real. Im not sure how popular cryptozoology was back in those days, but it goes to show that science isnt always right.

On 8/22/2019 at 2:30 PM, stereologist said:

Remember that the platypus was in hand. They had a specimen. I don't recall any specimens of bigfoot or yeti in hand.

The same is true of some other creatures cryptozoologists point to:

• mountain gorilla - they had bones
• colossal squid - they had beaks and pieces of tentacles in whale stomachs
• okapi - they had a piece of hide

They had pieces of the animals which made them look. They found the animals and in years. BF hunts have been going on for half a century and longer. There are plenty of differences.

Yes, thats true. We really dont have much proof of sasquatch besides the tracks, recordings and eye witness accounts. Its obviously not indesputible evidence, but it gives us a hint that something may be out there, which is what makes it so interesting.

 

Edited September 22, 2019 by Ultimatium

[stereologist]

1 hour ago, Ultimatium said:

Well, the platypus is widely recognized as one of the few cryptids that turned out to be real. Im not sure how popular cryptozoology was back in those days, but it goes to show that science isnt always right.

Yes, thats true. We really dont have much proof of sasquatch besides the tracks, recordings and eye witness accounts. Its obviously not indesputible evidence, but it gives us a hint that something may be out there, which is what makes it so interesting.

 

The BF recording are not actually BF recordings are they. They are sounds that people claim are BF but can't actually show that to be the case. The tracks are also unlikely to be real. There are casts with 3 toes, 4 toes, and 5 toes. Mammals are even toed or odd toed. Primates are all odd toed so what is it with the weird toes? All we are really left with are stories.

All of the other animals that crytozoologists point to in their literature were animals that were known by biological materials. The okapi, gorilla, and giant squids were known by pieces of their bodies. The coelecanth is mentioned and was not being searched for. It was found and added to the list of animals that are alive today.

People claim to have shot BF. They produce a piece of bear. They claim to have hit them with their cars. Yet, no hair or blood or skin is given. People claim to have obtained BF DNA yet it turns out to opossum.

What I think is interesting is that people think they see a hairy man like beast when they can't really make out what it is. Why do our brains go there? I believe this is all about some process in our thinking rather than an actual creature.