Sharon Hill: You are Not Entitled to Your Own Bigfoot Facts

Joe Friday from Dragnet insisted on the "Just the Facts"

Our favorite skeptic continues to keep us Bigfooters on our toes. In an article posted on www.csicop.org Sharon Hill, who runs the Doubtful News website, questions the use of the word fact in our community. Sure, her article mostly focuses around Matt Moneymaker, who is an easy target for bold claims of Bigfoot behavior.

The only argument we have is not all claims of Bigfoot behavior (including the examples she uses) are presented as facts. True, they don't have the disclaimer of being speculation, but that's because everything about Bigfoot is, by default, speculation. Isn't it? Aren't we all guessing in the end?  

So, while we agree presenting Bigfoot behavior as facts is a little much, we would defend the practice of tossing out the modifiers that indicate we are speculating when describing possible Bigfoot behavior. It's Bigfoot, its all going to be speculation by default. When we claim, "Bigfoot prefers to be at a higher elevation overlooking game trails," we don't think it will be accepted as a fact but speculation by default. 

Below is a excerpt from Sharon Hill's article which we encourage you all to read and give your opinion. 

Self-styled Bigfoot researchers make claims that suggest they know more about Bigfoot than Bigfoot might know about himself. They can tell me what Bigfoot likes and doesn’t like, where he sleeps at night, how he avoids detection, and how he communicates. They tell the public that Bigfoot makes those sounds they hear at night. They find locations where a Bigfoot passed through or slept or built a shelter. These researchers even know about Bigfoots’ “culture”—what they do with their dead relatives, how they can fool humans. But apparently they don't know enough to catch one.

Fact? You Keep Using that Word But I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means

Perhaps there is confusion over what exactly is meant by “fact.” That word doesn't have a hard and fast definition, but rather one that is based on how the statement is verified—from universal on the left end to personal verification on the right. A scientific fact is at the extreme left end. It is incontrovertible, verifiable to anyone who wants to check it. Facts are the building blocks of theories that describe how nature works.

A more everyday usage of the term “fact” is in the middle: a statement that can be confirmed to the point where the consensus will be that it is true, it really occurred, or it is certainly the case. That infers that there was some process undertaken to establish some basis for what is stated. We accept a lot of things as facts not because we have personally verified them but because others probably have and/or because it is reasonable to accept those facts as true.

On the extreme right side is a fact based on personal verification. “Fact” is used as a label for a statement that a person very much wants to believe or believes to be true. It's a fact in that person’s mind because he or she has accepted it completely: “I know this is true. I’ve seen it.” You probably won't be able to sway that person’s belief with any counter facts of your own. Religious facts are in this category.

Read the rest of the article titled You are Not Entitled to Your Own Bigfoot Facts where Sharon Hill makes an example of Matt Moneymaker. But we will still stand by our position; some of us Bigfooters talk about Bigfoot behavior without acknowledging is is mere speculation, because speculation is inherent to all Bigfoot discussion.