Debunking the debunkers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

People who debunk urban legends and paranormal claims sometimes get their facts wrong, or jump to conclusions, or just plain have an axe to grind. This is a thread for “debunkings” that need to be debunked themselves.

Case in point:

Recently I saw a TV program about the “Amityville Horror,” the case where the Lutz family claimed that supernatural activity forced them out of their house on Long Island, NY. Contrary to what you might have heard, the Lutzes have NOT admitted that the whole thing was a hoax. That claim was made up by someone who was writing a book. What the Lutzes admitted awhile back was that that the movie The Amityville Horror embellished a few events to make them more dramatic. Directors do this all the time; it was hardly earth-shaking news. The TV show interviewed Mr & Mrs Lutz on the subject, so I know that the TV show wasn’t just repeating second-hand information. They also interviewed the guy (sorry, I don’t remember his name) who wrote the book trashing the Lutzes. Let me tell you, he did not come across well. When they pressed him, he couldn’t produce any evidence that the Lutzes lied, just his opinions. He seemed to be a very spitefull man who was grinding a major axe of some kind.

Anyone know about any other cases where the skeptics need to be put in their place?

2

Yes, for a long time everyone said the infamous Newlywed Game UL was false. This was the “That’s be the butt, Bob” one. It’s even still listed as false in the Urban Legends FAQ. In fact, Bob Barker (was that who hosted the show?) even offered a 10,000 prize, so sure he was that this episode did not exist (or maybe just to convince everyone it did not exist). If you said you saw it on alt.folklore.urban, you’d be shouted out of the forum.

This non-existent episode just played a month or so ago on reruns. Well it wasn’t EXACTLY like the UL says, but it’s close enough. Go to http://www.snopes.com for more info.

3

Long time lurker, first time poster, and was inspired to arise from the swarthy darkness by this question, and this question alone. The answer: yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

I’ve been fascinated all my life by the possibility that a large, bipedal primate undiscovered by science roams the forests of America’s Pacific Northwest. That’s right, baby. Sasquatch. And what needs debunking are the debunkers who have wrongfully proclaimed the famous Patterson/Gimlin film of 1967 as a hoax. This includes, in particular, a Fox television special, “World’s Greatest Hoaxes: Revealed” that aired a few years back, and the recent spurious claims that John Chambers, who designed the monkey suits for the “Planet of the Apes” movies, orchestrated the whole thing. Even Chambers himself denies this, but oops…the damage’s already done.

I won’t ramble on, but http://www.ratsnest.net/bigfoot/library/patterson.htm is a vast repository of info on the film, and I strongly urge anyone who’d written off “Patty” to stop on by. The truth? After all of these decades, it still defies explanation.

I know this is a silly thing over which to get excited, but it steams me the way such a potentially earth shaking, conventional-science shattering discovery could be so tepidly received. If it does exist (and I merely suggest that it MAY), it’s numbers are almost certainly dwindling.

By the way, it’s good to be here.

4

But, indeed, the “Amityville Horror” was a hoax. The prior & subsequent tenants have notated nothing supernatural, and no outside 9unbiased) source during the residence of the Lutzes noted anything. They made the whole thing up.

5

the OP makes a valid point, but uses a ridiculous example.
yes, the amityville horror was an obvious hoax. or maybe the people involved actually believed in the crap that happened, when it did not.

the newlywed game response provided a good example of knee-jerk skepticism and later refusal to admit that altho the original UL turned out to be true… some still clinged to technicalities.

Other absurd examples of hyper-skepticism i’ve seen here concerned the snake eating the small child pictures on snopes. Lots of people went on and on about obscure shadows and photographic manipulation. to me it’s inconclusive, but it’s completely possible that a big-ass snake could eat a small child.

In a few david blaine threads one poster claimed that it was “unreasonable” to believe that the man was inside a block of ice for 3 days. This would require that you accept that a dummy-human stood around for 72 hours in full view of onlookers (don’t know how the switch would be made), then somehow replaced with the human, again in full view of onlookers, to come out again.

The much more obvious conclusion is that he was actually in an ice-cavity, stayed awake for three days, and had heated air pumped in.

I’m all for taking claims with a grain of salt, but some people go to ridiculous extremes.

6

As info, I heard a guy on a local radio show saying the David Blaine/block of ice trick was done with a “cocoon” of crystallized sugar. Blaine actually was in the ice, but the cocoon of sugar that surrounded him acted as insulation against the cold. The guy estimated it would be around 70 degrees where Blaine was.

I have no idea if this is true, but thought I’d pass it along for what it’s worth.

7

I have to agree with the poster above, the Amityville Horror is either a hoax, or a bunch of easily spooked people. Similarly, how could the sasquatch not be a hoax? I don’t want to get into a debate on these things, but I just wanted to agree that I still doubt those things, even if they were indeed falsely debunked.

There’s the realm of things that kooks / relgious types try and debunk with ultra-skepticism: The earth is round, we landed on the moon, human life evolved from one-celled animals, Oswald killed Kennedy, the Holocaust, etc. However, since experts disagree with all of those debunkings, the true debunking would be the debunking of the debunking. Just a thought.

Anyway, the newlywed game UL is the only thing I can think of right now that truly fits the OP. Anyone else?

BTW, about the David Blaine thing - why he would need more insulation than the ice is beyond me. I would guess that it provide a nice cosy environment, similar to the Eskimo’s igloos. I’m guessing his body heat will eventually warm the cavity inside the ice to normal temperatures.

8

For the record, I believe that something scared the Lutzes out of their house. Whether it was ghosts or something mundane I don’t know, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion. What needed debunking was the claim that the Lutzes have admitted it was a hoax. They haven’t.

Knee-jerk skeptics are the kind of people who make science look bad. They need mountains of proof before they’ll admit that something DID happen, but if any “expert” comes along and says that it didn’t happen, they immediatly sieze upon this as an irrefutable fact, without subjecting the counter-claim to the same kind of scrutiny. Look at my example, or Recently Digested’s. One phone call would have established that John Chambers did not say that he created the Patterson-Gimlin film, or that the Lutzes have not said that the events in Amityville were a hoax. Yet skeptics all over the world accepted these claims unquestioningly. That’s why I love ripping on knee-jerk skeptics. :wink:

9

I did notice with the david blaine thing, that he was only suffering from sleep dep and not from frost bite.

My Best WAG is that since there was no breeze, and that the air in there was still, as long as he didn’t touch the sides, he was safe enough. It’s still cold, but not unsurivivable.

10

money.

11

**

Exactly. America is truly a fascinating dichotomy: we doubt AND/OR believe without proof or reason or research or caution. I suppose it all comes down to a lazy complacency, a contented ignorance, and perhaps even a deeply-seated fear of facing the truth.

12

Oh yes, and by the way, Diceman…you’re familiar with the P-G film?

13

Yes, RD, I’ve seen the P-G film.

I disagree with those who say that the creature is “obviously just a man in a monkey suit.” That’s not obvious at all, IMO. In fact, the creature’s movements remind me more of an ape than a human.

14

Diceman

I take it that you dismiss the words of the guy that went up there with him on the day concerned and said that he thought their reason for going to that neck of the woods seemed to have been contrived as if something was expected to happen.

Or that the video reconstruction showed that the creature was far smaller than had been originally mooted ie not 9ft tall but more likely around 6ft.

15

Anyone who makes a statement as laughably glib and uninformed as “it’s so obvious it’s a man in a suit” is trumpeting their ignorance. Some quick research, hell, even a cursory glance at the film itself, would make more than evident the near (note I said “near”) impossible nature of that scenario. The mystery man’s shoulder sockets, besides being three feet or so apart, would have to be a good 10, 11 inches below his chin (this is, of course, assuming that the hoaxer’s head was located within the “sasquatch”'s head…I suppose it could have been below, in the “shoulders” of the suit.) I simply don’t understand how the P-G film remains not “good enough.”

16

Diceman, Digested - the Sasquatch in that film doesn’t look apelike to me at all. Apes are quadrupeds and find bipedal locomotion very uncomfortable. When they do rear up and walk like humans, apes tend to look like they have poles up their…well, you know. The only primates to have that striding gait are us and our ancestors going back about 6 million years. Of these, only we reached the Americas, about 10 to 12,000 years ago, so it’s not a lost cousin. No primate fossils appear in North America after the Eocene, and that’s five eras back. So it’s not likely to be a previously unknown primate, either.

Bears, to my knowledge, only stand to look around, never to walk. This Sassy looks even less bearlike than apelike. I can’t think of any other North American critter that could pass for the being in the tape. I am forced to conclude that the image is of a human.

17

Do you have a cite for any of this? Both Digested and I have given instances of cases where “confessions” were invented by unscrupulous people who were looking for a little spotlight. To my knowledge, it was only Patterson and Gimlin that went out on horseback. One of them (Gimlin?) has since died, and he went to his grave without retracting one word of his story.

I seem to remember a TV show where they asked Patterson if it was possible that Gimlin had scammed him somehow. Patterson responded that it was possible, but that he still thought that their encounter was genuine. Could this be the quote you mentioned? If so, then someone distorted it quite severely, which fits my OP perfectly.

Also, remember that just because you can conceive of an alternate explanation, that doesn’t mean that the original explanation is incorrect. Alot of knee-jerk skeptics fall into this trap, including some here on the SDMB. Sure, it’s possible that the creature in the P-G film is a man in a monkey suit, but it’s also possible that it’s a hominid currently unknown to science. If you want to convince people that it’s a man in a suit, you must try to prove it, either logically or through evidence; just suggesting the possibility doesn’t prove anything.

To be fair, however, both skeptics and fanatics fall into this trap. UFO fanatics do this all the time. Sure, those strange lights could have been alien spacecraft. But they never provide any evidence.

18

don Jaime, while you are right in a sense, it feels like you’re trying to convince me this thing is an apple while I’m here postulating that it is, in fact, an orange. You’re right…it’s not a bear, but, at the same time, it’s not an ape, either. (are we not men?) Nor is the gait in question humanlike, which makes it all so troubling and potentially valuable.

Let me address a few of your points:
1.) Primates, save us and “cousins,” don’t walk upright.

While this is, in essence, true, a bipedal primate (non-human, of course) is not unheard of. There’s a chimpanzee by the name of Oliver currently residing at Lubbock, Texas primate house who, after spending a lifetime touring the freak show circuit, lives out his days in comfort with a bevy of interested scientists, interested because Oliver walks, and has always walked, on two legs. More unscrupulous carny barkers have touted him as being a number of things, the long elusive sasquatch being one of the more prosaic explanations. DNA tests prove he’s just a chimp, albeit a fantastic one.

2.) It can’t be our ancestors, etc.

I plead ignorance on the details, but I know that Professor of Anthropology (?) at Washington State University (?) and big-name sasquatch theorist Grover Krantz believes it to be a remnant population of Gigantopithicus (sp?). From the little I DO know, the existence of the Giganto rests on precious little fossil evidence. Needless to say, Krantz has been crucified by his colleagues for taking the situation seriously, which is a shame, but I suppose inevitable.

Casdave- yeah, like Diceman said, you’re going to have to be a little more specific. I can only assume you’re talking about Bob Gimlin, who, by the way, is the survivor of the two.

Patterson died of cancer and, yes, did so apparently CONVINCED that he had filmed the sasquatch. Unfortunately, Patterson was a shady, chronically poor man who wasted no time in at least trying to make money off the grainy footage (from what I remember, he wanted to mount an expedition to another mystery biped hotspot…Siberia…not exactly the behavior of an unbeliever.) He was never the sharpest tool in the shed, either, according to those who knew him. If it WAS a hoax, and I doubt it, I simply don’t believe Patterson had the guile to pull it off. If it was a hoax, Patterson, himself, was hoaxed, as well. Gimlin is the key to the mystery, I believe. It will be interesting to see if he has any revealing last words when his time is finally up (not that I want the man to die or anything.)

Unfortunately, even if the hypothetical suit is pulled from the moth balls tomorrow for all to see, 75% of the film’s staunch believers would STILL maintain its veracity. Just look at the example of the so-called “surgeon’s photograph” of the Loch Ness Monster. Everyone involved (who isn’t dead) has confessed, yet you still find it adorning crytozoology websites, books, etc.

Interesting, indeed…

19

It’s Gimlin who’s still alive? The TV show I remember interviewed the survivor of the two about whether the dead guy could have pulled a hoax. As I said, the answer was along the lines of “Sure it’s possible, but I doubt it.”

On a (hopefully) lighter note, I just remembered a UL that I’m SURE is true, but that Snopes and everyone else thinks is false. It’s the ‘Doe…Knob’ one. I personally remember seeing this happen on The $25,000 Pyramid. Interestingly, I remember this because I DIDN’T get the joke when I heard it.

For those of you that might not have heard of this one, there used to be a gameshow called The $25,000 Pyramid, where a contestant tried to make someone say a certain word by saying related words. If, for example, the magic word was “pets” the contestant might say “dogs,” “cats,” etc. The contestant was usually paired with a has-been celebrity that noone had heard from in years.

One one of the episodes, a contestant was paired with a black celebrity (possibly Nipsy Russel, although I don’t really remember anymore). I don’t remember the category, but just like in the UL, word the celeb was trying to guess was “deer.” The contestant tried saying “doe,” and Nipsy (or whoever) reponded “knob.” Suddenly there was an awkward pause, and a moment later everyone started laughing. At the time I was about 12 or 13 and, like I said, I had no idea what everyone was laughing at. Neither did the celebrity, IIRC. He just sat there looking confused. But everyone in the audience was cracking up, and even the host was laughing (although he tried to hide it.) I think they cut to a commercial and the game continued after the break.

I e-mailed Snopes about this a few years ago, but they didn’t believe me. But they were wrong about the “That’d be the butt, Bob” quote and I’m sure that they’re wrong about this.

20

Yup. And either Patterson or Gimlin’s wife/widow has a webpage devoted to the Patty footage. Don’t know what the address is, though. It’s copyrighted, that’s for sure. That’s why you can only find frames from the film online and not a Realvideo clip or something.