Failure of due diligence on research

[briantk]

I was listening to Radio Dead Rabbit several days when I found a good example of failure of due diligence of fact checking on paranormal research.

The episode is called EP 415 - Is The Government Covering Up Civil War Bigfoot?. The host found interesting article from Mysterious Universe about cryptid encounters during the American Civil War.

Article explore several encounters, such as crocodingo, a cryptid of dingo with crocodile feature. Then it cited a book by Edgar Riley called The Civil War of the Worlds: First-Hand Accounts of UFOs and Other Mysterious Phenomena During America’s Civil War. It mentions water creature, bigfoot and creature with reflective eyes. This caught the host of the podcast intrigued and tried to look for the book. He couldn't find it. He couldn't find the author either with only reference he found was a Union soldier with same name. Only other source was a link that cite same book. Then host speculate whether there is a cover up.

I too was intrigued by this book and try to find but no luck as well. Then I went main page of the link host mention as second source. Old format, saw the owner of the website as Civil War re-enactor. As a scroll down the page, I found the link to the article. And it has caption: "(humor)".

In other word, Mysterious Universe article wrote an cryptid article based on non-existent book. An fanfiction. This is a classic example of failure of due diligence.

[Saru]

The article in question is four years old, plus there's a comments section underneath that you could use to comment on any issues or concerns.

Generally speaking we try to avoid hosting threads criticizing rival sites in the interests of avoiding cross-site conflicts.

For that reason, I'll close this one as well.

Closed.