Thursday, December 29, 2005

The Eyewitness Problem

Many sightings of Bigfoot have been from reliable eyewitnesses. However, are these witnesses credible? The skeptics would say that the eyewitnesses are not credible because these accounts cannot be tested, unlike a body, physical remains. There are many eyewitness accounts, mostly in John Green's files (he has over 5,000 in nearly 50 years of research). But, are the accounts any good? Certainly there are cases where the eyewitness mistook a bear for a Bigfoot, or maybe saw a strange shadow, or perhaps a tall human or even stumps on the side of the road. Then there are the hoax reports in which a man in a gorilla suit parades around in dark conditions risking perhaps getting shot. However, these do not account for all of the historical reports or the good, credible reports from people with nothing to gain from telling their stories. John Green said in his book that if just one of these stories is true, then the phenomenon is real, no matter how many fake reports or misidentifications there may be in all of the other reports. I do agree that the eyewitness story is impossible to test, but at the same time it gives us a better picture of what the eyewitness saw. Bigfoot reports can be reliable, don't qualify as hard evidence, unfortunately.

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