Cryptozoology is my first love. As a child, I spent endless hours planning the cryptozoological expeditions I thought I would one day lead. Even today, as a “professional skeptic,” I carry a torch for monsters and hidden beasts.
Which is how I came to frequent the popular cryptozoology blog site Cryptomundo. Presided over by the prolific Loren Colemen, Cryptomundo is updated constantly, and always a source of fantastic claims and speculations.
I get on quite well with Loren, who is one of the more skeptical and responsible pro-cryptozoology writers. (He has, for example, critiqued the “Jacko” story from sasquatch pre-history, writing, “in reality Jacko may have more to do with local rumors brought to the level of a news story that eventually evolved into a modern fable.”)
Before long, I found myself contributing regular comments on Cryptomundo posts. I knew something about the subject matter, and joined Ben Radford and one or two other “resident” skeptics at the blog site. I even contributed a guest post at one point. I love these mysteries, so it was pleasant to talk about them with others who found them interesting.
(As you might expect, the skeptics at Cryptomundo did take some abuse. That’s a shame. I argue that name-calling and straw men are always ugly and counter-productive, whether coming from cryptozoologists, from skeptics, or from anyone else — see comments on the posts “Is Scoftic a Useful Term?” and “Speaking of Name Calling and Skeptics.” I’m not quite sure how I ended up becoming a cheerleader for civility, but there it is.)
Then, one day, I posted a comment only for it vanish almost immediately. It turned out my comment had broken a house rule: by raising a comparison between cryptozoology and other paranormal claims, I had posted “off topic.”
I found this discouraging, although there are good reasons for this rule. Serious cryptozoological enthusiasts believe cryptids are living species of animals, and wish the scientific world would make an effort to locate these “hidden” creatures. What mainline cryptozoologists do not want is to be lumped together (and further marginalized) with other “paranormal” topics like ghosts or aliens. They are especially touchy about this because a loud fringe within the cryptozoological community insists that cryptids must be understood in paranormal terms. (Like, “We can’t find Bigfoot because it’s a psychic shapeshifter from another dimension.”)
An Argument That Should Never Be Made Again
My deleted post was a mild rebuttal to an argument heard often in cryptozoological circles — an argument that should be immediately and permanently laid to rest. It’s wrong, and I think that’s easy to demonstrate to the satisfaction of almost anyone.
If I may paraphrase, this common pro-cryptozoology argument goes something like this:
There are thousands of sightings of Bigfoot! They can’t all be wrong. Sure, some may be hoaxes, and some are probably mistakes — but all of them? Come on. I think the skeptics are the ones making the extraordinary claim, there!
This “where there’s smoke there’s fire” argument is central to cryptozoology — and to most paranormal claims. That universal popularity is a huge red flag, and exposes a critical flaw.
Whether you’re a skeptic, a cynic, a mystic, a believer or what have you, I think you should join me in agreeing right here:
Yes, it is possible for entire categories of paranormal claims to be completely, 100% bogus. Yes, it is possible for hundreds or thousands of supporting testimonials to comprise nothing but mistakes and hoaxes.
To see that this is true, just scan this short sample list of paranormal claims. Stop as soon as you see something you’re persuaded doesn’t exist:
- alien abduction
- visitations from angels
- “therapeutic touch” energy healings
- astral projection
- demonic possession
- the Loch Ness Monster
- predicting future events using tea leaves
- miraculous weeping statues
- Satanic ritual abuse cults
- saintly apparitions
…and so on. We could add hundreds of similar things on this list. If any one of them is false it debunks the “where there’s smoke there’s fire” argument, revealing it as a non sequitur. Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke. (Note that my purpose today isn’t to assert that this sample list of paranormal claims are untrue — only to point out a flaw in one argument they share in common.)
It’s a fact that many people have claimed personal encounters with Bigfoot, ghosts, mermaids, and psychics. But, that fact is ultimately trivial: it does not, by itself, allow us to draw any conclusions about whether these things are real or not. (As the old saying goes, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.”)
Comparisons Are Poisonous
Cryptomundo has good, practical reason to avoid paranormal digressions. Believe me, those are a genuine pain for anyone who wishes to do serious research on cryptozoological topics. As a purely administrative matter, I think they should continue to maintain some version of their “stay on topic” rule.
But, I submit that this habit of compartmentalization is wrong in principle. It’s artificial, and it’s deeply misleading. Pretending that one’s favorite claim exists in isolation is to reduce it to a kind of soap bubble or hothouse flower. Are cryptid cases so delicate that they cannot survive encounters with the wider literature on hoaxes, paranormal claims, and the ways in which thinking goes wrong?
In the case of Bigfoot, it is obviously relevant that people routinely report encounters with paranormal and supernatural creatures like aliens and angels. It is obviously relevant that people claim literal or de facto conspiracies to explain away absence of evidence for many different kinds of paranormal claims. (“Scientists are too dogmatic to consider psi/sasquatches/homeopathy/creationism because this would threaten their funding/world view.”) Trace evidence like ectoplasm is relevant to trace evidence like Bigfoot tracks. The existence of habitual, multi-year crop-circle hoaxers, professional fake psychics, and other scammers and practical jokers is relevant to arguments about cryptid hoaxes.
Confronting relevant comparisons is poisonous for many paranormal claims — and for some claims, lethal. But, I suggest that this exercise is necessary for any proponents who hope to move a paranormal topic away from the fringes….