Story of the Loch Ness Monster

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Is Cryptozoology Good or Bad for Science?(review of Loxton & Prothero 2013), September 2014 (now stripped of all images) Some commentators seem content just to criticise the length of the article, its writing style and try to draw negative psychological conclusions from it. Well, that's nice, but I was more interested in the logical arguments I was making about how scepticism approached the photo in the form of Maurice Burton.

After proving to myself on paper that the Dinsdale film could be a boat, the next step was to go out and get evidence for my theory. Does this actually mean anything that leads one to a solid deduction? The logic applied here clearly attempts to synergise separate objects into the concept of a larger whole (a hoax). However, the argument relies on these smaller items having clear, designated functions.

Living there in a caravan, without running water, without electricity or proper heating was quite a revelation for a spoiled westerner like me, " she later wrote. While she never saw any sign of a monster, she said that she had "talked to many people who had. So I'm quite convinced that there is a family of large creatures living in Loch Ness". Since she had first-hand experience of Searle's ability to dupe, she added tellingly "I do, however, reserve judgment on any photograph taken by anybody at all, since anything can be faked". Perhaps Burton was afraid that O' Connor would sue him for calling him a hoaxer? That seems to be the suggestion in communications I had with another researcher. Burton claimed O' Connor threatened to sue him if he said anything against him or Dinsdale; so Burton said he pulled this account. But this is just nonsense, don't the other objections to the photo made in his book make that same accusation and Dinsdale certainly did not escape Burton's withering analysis? So, let's just conclude that Burton's lawsuit reason is actually no more than an excuse! A clue may lie in an article Burton wrote for the Sunday Express on the 2nd August 1959 entitled " Is there really a Loch Ness Monster?". In this article, bailiff, Alex Campbell, could only recall seeing two such mats in his forty odd years (and even then it was clear what they were).

Guide Number for PF5 flashbulb with 200 ASA film (HP3) = 330 @ 1/50th sec. (using feet as distance measurement). What about the pump nozzle? Well, what about it? I take a pump nozzle with me when I camp at Loch Ness every year. However, it is not used for any sinister purpose. I use it to inflate the airbeds we sleep on! They had inflatable camp beds in 1960 which were pretty much similar to what we have today. Again, there is nothing sinister here which does not have a simpler, more innocent explanation. Before we look at the JARIC report mention should be made of the inconsistency of the length and time of the film.However, they eventually agreed. I went up into their loft and selected six reels, all containing incredible ­footage. In summary, the equipment used could not have produced a flash exposure of a subject (whatever that subject indeed was) at the distance claimed, but instead the picture should have shown the subject and it's surroundings lit mainly by ambient (sun) light. It was Maurice Burton, more than anyone, who had the most to write against this picture. Here we concentrate, not on arguments for this being a monster photo, but on arguments against this being such a photo. For you see, when arguments are made for and against, one could imagine a pendulum swinging towards " hoax" or through " inconclusive" towards " real" as the debate ebbs and flows. Maurice Burton stated his case and ever since the pendulum has spent most of its time beyond " inconclusive" in the " hoax" area. Cronch Cats, Beasts of Gévaudan, Dinosauroids, Mesozoic Art and Much More: TetZooMCon 2021 in Review

Beautiful, Big, Bold Dinosaur Books: of Molina-Pérez and Larramendi’s Theropods, Rey’s Extreme Dinosaurs 2, and Parker et al.’s Saurian Heuvelmans, B., 1975. Dans le sillage des monsters marins- Le kraken et le Poulpe Colossal, 2nd edn. Paris: Francois Beauval. George, D. G., 1993. The Life in the Loch. Project Urquhart: The Scientific Exploration of Loch Ness.Later, Burton was to be found unreliable again in stating the facts when he was again asked about the Taylor film. To quote one Loch Ness researcher: He was smitten and returned the next year, which is when, he says: "I had the misfortune of seeing one of these things with my own eyes." This was not a hoax. The history of Loch Ness Monster imagery involves a vast quantity of wishful thinking and over-keen desperation, much of it driven by people who already believe in the monster, and want others to be convinced by the evidence too, such as it is. And that’s what happened here. The whole ‘Nessie Flipper’ saga is often described or characterised as ‘a hoax’. But that’s not really what it was. For starters, the key players here – those in the LNIB and AAS – honestly believed that Nessie was real (which is a faulty and naïve starting point, but we all make mistakes). When they got those sonar and photographic records in August 1972, I believe that they honestly thought they’d gathered valuable and compelling evidence. Add in some ‘eye of faith’, a fair bit of desperation that surely some good must come of all this time, equipment, money and people-power, and those concerned managed to convince themselves that they’d succeeded in recording images of flippers in the two relevant photos. Photographic enhancement seemed to boost this conclusion, but the visuals still weren’t impressive enough for those already critical or dismissive of the Loch Ness Monster, so the best course of action (as determined by an unknown perpetrator or perpetrators) was to enhance the ‘flippers’ physically, on the printed photos. Again, I don’t think this was done maliciously or to fool anyone but, rather, to convince them, the thinking being “now YOU can see the flippers too, right?”. A statement which has nothing to do with the main argument, so we class this as deflection. Again, the commenter says my argument is weak but offers no logic or data as to why. Sixth point rejected.

On this occasion, we’re going to look at the so-called Loch Ness Monster FLIPPER PHOTOS of 1972. Here we go… Shine, A. J., 2006. Loch Ness; the Loch Ness project, Drumnadrochit, Inverness. [email protected]. The awful webcam images, our new mainstay, are nowhere near acceptable as evidence, in my opinion. Intriguing, yes, but that's it. No offence to the observers, but the images have the clarity of a fogged up window. One wonders if a turn of the century webcam is about as good as we're going to leave it, to allow disbelief to be suspended.In terms of accepting the evidence that Maurice Burton has proffered in the past, it seems some caution has been urged by researchers. Peter Costello offered the most scathing line when he gave his opinion on this matter of beach evidence: Somebody said to me I bet you've seen this monster, but you're not saying anything because it doesn't look anything like your models!"