hoax – Modern Pterosaur

December 7, 2012May 14, 2014

Statistical Analysis of Sighting Data

I highly recommend this blog post:

We now have 74 sightings with wingspan estimates, up from the 57 that were analyzed about one year ago. The updated database includes the earlier sighting reports, as they were combined with the newer accumulations of information on such things as wingspans, time-of-day-or-night, presence or absence of a long tail, head crest, etc.

Whitcomb’s analysis is somewhat brief, with general concepts that show how the weight of evidence points to a lack of hoaxes for those sightings in which wingspan estimates were given. This could benefit from a closer perusal.

By the way, Whitcomb is open to requests for the original database, for those who would want to take the time to do their own analysis.

Getting back to wingspan estimates, the proposal by some antagonists, that hoaxes caused sighting reports, is countered by Whitcomb’s data on wingspan estimates. To understand this, it helps to know something about what type of pterosaur is often reported.

The long-tail to no-long-tail ratio is about twenty to one as follows:

long tail 41%
no long tail 2%
not specified 57%

This means that if many hoaxes had contaminated the data then those jokesters would need to be in one of the following categories:

Trying to convince people that basal pterosaurs were seen
Ignorantly including long tails in their hoaxes

If number one, the hoaxers would have given wingspans below about seven feet. But Whitcomb’s data clearly defeats that possibility, for the only impressive peak is more like eight to thirteen feet, and that peak is not extremely high, tapering gradually into those wingspans that are somewhat larger than wingspans of large birds. Number one is practically eliminated, for it would not have led to the data we have on wingspans.

Number two seems more likely, but a different problem presents itself. If jokesters had ignorantly promoted long-tailed pterosaur sightings, what would influence them in providing wingspan sizes? It would be large wingspans, probably over twenty feet, that they would have lied about, for three reasons:

Cause shock from a report of a huge size
Avoid the possibility of a bird-misidentification interpretation
Connect the hoax with popular science fiction movies and stories

No jokester would report seeing a modern pterosaur with a wingspan of eight or nine or ten feet. That’s too much like the size of large birds. Where’s the shock value in that lie? But it’s in that simple concept that we have a device for eliminating the number two category of jokester mentality. Here is part of Whitcomb’s data for wingspan sizes in feet:

6, 6, 6, 6

7, 7

8, 8, 8, 8, 8

9, 9, 9, 9

10, 10, 10, 10, 10.5

11, 11

12, 12, 12.5

13, 13, 13, 13

—

16, 16

17, 17, 17

—

20, 20, 20, 20, 20.5

21, 21.5

—

25, 25, 25, 25

—

The range from 8-13 feet is small, compared with the overall range from 1.3 to 46 feet, but see how many sightings have wingspan estimates from 8-13 feet inclusive: 23 sightings, which is 31% of all those in which wingspan was given numerically. That number, 23, eliminates the number two possibility for jokesters, for if they existed, they would not have given wingspan estimates of 8-13 feet.

Now we compare that five-foot range (8-13) to the five-foot range from 16-21 and see the difference: Only 12 sightings in that range, far fewer than the 23 sightings from 8-13 feet. I chose 16-21 because it is just above the wingspan size of large birds. When we go further up the wingspan size range, we see fewer and fewer sighting reports, which eliminates that kind of hoax potential. Nothing in the wingspan estimates makes any sense when we think about how hoaxes could have skewered the data.

I’m not preaching absolute purity from any hoax contamination in the data. I can’t say whether or not there is complete purity. But there could not be any major contamination. To be plain, there could have been one or two hoaxes among so many, but what would that mean? It would not have any influence on the numerous other sighting reports. Even so, I have not yet seen any evidence that even one of Whitcomb’s reports has any evidence of it being from any hoax.

I also recommend the following:

Tail flange and long tails

Supporting the Bible, yet respecting beliefs of those of various religions, "Searching for Ropens and Finding God" can appeal to many

Searching for Ropens and Finding God – true adventures that support the Bible

From page 181:

I had wondered why so many sightings are in daylight; ropens are nocturnal. Then I began finding clues, including reports of storms that sometimes pass through before sightings. Since a sighting in Georgia in 2008, I sometimes ask about the weather, including for the previous day or two before the sighting.

March 6, 2012March 20, 2012

Nineteenth Century Hoax

The hoax I mention is in an 1856 issue of The Illustrated London News, in the article about the pterodactyl that stumbled out of a railway tunnel after a drilling explosion or manual digging. I see little need to examine this old newspaper story, for the details point to a hoax, if I have learned those details correctly. I mention this now because of the writings of Glen Kuban, who seems to take this newspaper joke as if it were evidence that eyewitness accounts in general are hoaxes, or takes it as if it throws suspicion on all reported sightings of modern pterosaurs.

I don’t say that everything that Kuban says about reports of modern pterosaurs is wrong, but that he may do more harm than good by trying to convince people that pterosaurs all became extinct long ago. And one thing he probably does not understand, and this relates to that old London newspaper story, is that nineteenth century newspapers, when they carried joke-articles, may have been influenced by true stories that were not mentioned in the hoax-story articles.

I now refer to American newspaper articles in the nineteenth century, for a possible example, and I use the book Live Pterosaurs in America, in quoting:

Cryptozoology author Chad Arment wrote “The Pterodactyls of Fresno County, California” for the BioFortean Review (November 2006, No. 5). I include a summary of those newspaper accounts here . . .

I cannot prove all the accounts were genuine, for they were recorded secondhand in the early 1890’s. I suggest that at least some eyewitnesses were telling the truth, regardless of the opinions of the news reporters of that time, and that at least some eyewitnesses may have seen a living pterosaur. I do not submit these old reports as indisputable evidence to prove pterosaurs lived in the late nineteenth century; I submit them to dismiss any potential objection that twentieth century and twenty-first century reports of living pterosaurs in California are without historical precedence: Sightings continue.

The point is that when a newspaper in the nineteenth century printed a hoax story, the idea may have come from another newspaper that had printed a genuine story about an extraordinary sighting of a real pterosaur. The hoax articles do not prove or even lead one logically to assume that all articles on that same subject must be hoaxes.

But there’s something else. We need to be careful about extreme positions, and I don’t mean just pterosaur extinction itself, for there have been countless species living at some time in the past. Extreme positions about newspaper stories means blindly taking every one of them as if containing indisputable facts or taking every newspaper story about a pterosaur sighting as if must have been a hoax. Take each story, instead, by itself. If two or more newspaper accounts seem to relate, then take that into account. Just beware of extreme positions, for newspaper reports are human and hoaxers are not yet extinct.

Hoax Explanation for Living Pterosaurs

In 1856, according to The Illustrated London News (newspaper) at the time, men working on a tunnel in France discovered a living pterosaur (by whatever name). In 1890, according to the Tombstone Epitaph (newspaper) at the time, two Arizona ranchers shot a giant flying creature. What do these two accounts have in common? Each is now believed by many to be a hoax. But not all accounts of living pterosaurs can be easily dismissed as hoaxes.

Living Pterosaurs? Not by Glen Kuban

But Whitcomb’s web page does not go nearly far enough in emphasizing the testimonies of Brian Hennessy and Duane Hodgkinson. Glen Kuban’s web page ignores those two witnesses entirely. Hennessy and Hodgkinson witnessed “prehistoric” looking flying creatures in daylight, at fairly close range, with locations being Bougainville Island and the Finschhafen area, respectively, both in New Guinea, which is now the nation of Papua New Guinea.

Marfa Lights up in the Houston Chronicle

Large newspapers, the traditional backbone of major media, rarely publish ideas that contradict basic assumptions of the sociey in which they exist. It was no surprise when the Houston Chronicle’s December 19, 2010, print edition played to the audience with the article “What’s going on in Marfa?” published online on December 16. The subject was Marfa Lights. It played to the assumption that no “dinosaur” could live in Marfa, Texas.

March 2, 2012March 16, 2012

Why a Hoax Does not Explain Sightings

Again the subject of a hoax or hoaxes has come up in regard to accounts of modern pterosaurs. There seems to be no end of refutations for the “hoax hypothesis,” as it has been called. Statistics from years of eyewitness sighting reports disprove any generalized hoax explanation, for the degree of certainty in descriptions of featherlessness (if “featherlessness” is a word) fly in the face of those skeptics who use the word “hoax.”

But that is not exactly the direction I wish to take at present. I say we need to look at some of the key eyewitnesses of modern pterosaurs, look into why they might or might not play a hoax. First, we look at the psychologist Brian Hennessy.

In 1971, perhaps before Hennessy had a degree in psychology, I don’t know, he was on Bougainville Island, which is now part of the nation of Papua New Guinea. In his own words:

Our truck had stopped on our downward journey from the top of the range to the coast way below. The sound was amplified by the road-cutting into the mountain. That is, there was bare red/orange clay, rather than the surrounding jungle. I can’t remember why our vehicle had stopped. Maybe we had to wait for another vehicle to pass us. I don’t know. But I can still hear that slow flapping sound in the stillness of an early tropical morn, on the road from Panguna down to loloho on Bougainville Island in 1971.

When I looked up, trying to see what was making this sound, i saw a very unusual creature. Firstly, it was very big (wingspan at least 2 metres, probably more…possibly much , much more). I can’t remember the exact distance estimate that this creature was from me…let’s say about 50 metres above.

It was black or dark brown. I had never seen anything like it before. It certainly looked prehistoric, in that it did not look like any other bird that I have seen before or since. Why prehistoric? Well, maybe my memory has been influenced by the intervening years, but I recall seeing this creature with a longish narrow tail…almost like a counterweight that a kangaroo has, although not as large.

The body seemed to be quite narrow. However, the head was disproportionately large compared to the body (no feathers in sight). The wingspan was large. The head had no ‘normal’ beak. Rather there seemed to be (and this is difficult to describe) a kind of beak that was indistinguishable from the head, and the head seemed to continue this ‘point’ at the back of the head.

I’ll explain why I have brought up this particular sighting. When Hennessy reported his experience, in 2006, he was a professional psychologist. I believe that he still is. But why would he agree to have his real name be used in cryptozoology literature, if he was playing a hoax? It would likely come back to haunt him in his profession.

A skeptic might say that reporting a live pterosaur could come back to haunt you. But Hennessy did not say that he had observed a live pterosaur. He simply described it. He did not say that there could not have been any feather on that creature. He simply told us that he saw no sign of any feather. He was not trying to convince everybody that he had observed a modern pterosaur, but he was simply reported his observation. He was obviously not playing a hoax.

Second, we look at Paul Nation, a cryptozoologist-explorer, who explored in Papua New Guinea at least four times. If he had any desire to play a hoax, why has he said nothing about personally observing anything like any pterosaur? He tries to let people know about the possibility of the existence of modern pterosaurs, so why has he not lied and said that he did see a pterosaur? Surely it is because he is honest and simply reports what eyewitnesses have told him and what he personally observed in distant flying lights. That brings us to the final point: Honest people do not play pterosaur hoaxes.

No Hoax With Pterosaur Sightings

Evelyn Cheesman was a biologist who searched for insects and small animals in remote areas, including New Guinea, in the 1920′s and 1930′s. In fact, some of her discoveries put her name to some of those creatures, including Lipinia cheesmanae—a skink (lizard), and Litoria cheesmani—a treefrog.

Cheesman’s successes in biology are worthy of praise, but what about her observations of strange flying lights? They resemble the strange flying lights observed by Paul Nation, miles south of where Cheesman saw them. She was no cryptozoologist and was surely not playing a hoax when she wrote about her observations in her book The Two Roads of Papua.

Other eyewitnesses could be mentioned, but the point is that a generalized hoax hypothesis cannot touch all of the sighting reports, therefore any critic who wishes to be thorough must find some other explanation or admit the possibility of modern pterosaurs.