Mokele-Mbembe, debate, and anecdotal evidence

A couple of days ago, a student and I were discussing the issue of how much weight should be given to purely anecdotal evidence.  It's an important question, not only in "fringe" fields like cryptozoology and UFOlogy, but in medicine and law -- because what, after all, is eyewitness testimony but anecdote?  In scientific circles, anecdote is usually considered the lowest tier of evidence, for the very good reason that it relies on the very unreliable human memory.  Anecdotal evidence is simply too prone to cherry-picking, misremembering, or outright lying to be given much credence in the absence of any more reliable support, even if you have lots of it.

As my student put it: "The plural of anecdote is not data."

I bring this up because of a debate that happened last week at Utah Valley University between paleontologist Paul Bybee and folklorist Danny Stewart, called "Surviving Dinosaurs in Africa."  The gist of it was to look at claims that there is a holdover from the Cretaceous Period still stomping around the Congo Basin, a fearsome beast called the Mokele-Mbembe.

(Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons)

An excellent summary of the alleged sightings of this creature can be found here, wherein we can read accounts like the following:

In 1909, Lt. Paul Gratz, after hearing a number of natives describe the creature and having been shown a hide that purportedly came from Mokele-mbembe, became the first to describe the alleged creature as resembling a sauropod (which means lizard foot). In the same year, renowned big game hunter Carl Hagenbeck said that a number of independent, reputable sources familiar with the region reported a large animal that resembled a sauropod, and, as a result, stories about the cryptid became a popular media topic for a while afterward.

In 1913, a German officer, Captain Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz (try to say that while eating crackers), a surveyor of the German colonies in what is now Cameroon wrote of reports of a creature the size of an elephant or hippo with smooth brown/grey skin and a muscular tail like an alligator. He was shown a path that was said to be a Mokele-mbembe made trail, but because of the multitude of large game (elephant, hippo, etc.) tracks, there was no real, clear evidence to be found.

Despite (by some accounts) over 20,000 sightings of this giant animal, there is not one piece of hard evidence supporting its existence -- not one bone, tooth, or bit of skin.

But that doesn't stop silliness like last week's "debate," in which we get to hear statements like the following, from folklorist Stewart: "The scientific method has a hypothesis.  I see folklore, fantasy and mythology as synonyms of hypothesis."

Sorry, but this is one of the wackiest examples of the If-By-Whiskey fallacy I've ever heard -- simply altering the definition of a word to suit whatever point you were trying to argue.  "Hypothesis" in science has an extremely precise meaning -- a testable proposed explanation for a phenomenon (I actually rather detest the grade-school definition of "an educated guess" because it makes the whole thing sound far more random than it actually is).  "Folklore" isn't a synonym for "hypothesis;" "folklore" is a synonym for "people making shit up."

Now, I realize that sounds pretty harsh, and before all of the mythology buffs out there start throwing heavy objects in my general direction, allow me to point out two things.  First, I love mythology and folklore myself -- I have had a positive passion for it since childhood.  However, I have always been certain that the stories about Odin and Loki and Thor et al. were stories, and that however much I sometimes think the world could use a good dose of Ragnarök, it's not gonna happen.  (You might be interested, though, to read about a publicity campaign currently being run by the Jorvík Viking Museum in York, England, which claims that the Norse myths were all true, and that the world is gonna end in 100 days, on February 22, 2014 -- a date that coincidentally enough, marks the start of the annual Jorvík Viking Festival.)

But second, honesty demands that I point out that there have been times when folklore has proven true.  Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy is often cited as an example, although you might argue that The Iliad is more mythologized history than it is folklore -- similar, in that way, to Le Chanson de Roland and the bible.  *dodges heavy objects thrown by a whole different set of people*  There are other examples where folklore has a basis in fact, of course; one in my own field is the tradition, common in northern Germany and Denmark, that when a baby is born, the eldest woman in the family is to kiss the baby's forehead, and if she tastes salt, the baby is going to be sickly and die young.  A weird superstition, you might think, until you find out that in this area of Europe, the gene for cystic fibrosis is common -- and among its symptoms is producing very salty sweat.

But just because "some folklore has partial basis in truth" is a far cry from "all folklore deserves scientific investigation."  Every culture has its accounts of big horrible monsters, which in my mind stem more from a love of scary stories than they do from an accurate representation of reality.  And it bears mention that as anecdotal evidence builds up in the absence of hard evidence, the likeliness of the claim being true does not increase, it diminishes, as counterintuitive as that might seem.  If there really have been 20,000 sightings of Mokele-Mbembe in the Congo Basin, what is the likelihood that such an apparently large population of animals has never once left behind a corpse for someone to find, or even a Jurassic Park-style bunch of dinosaur poo?

So much as I'd love to see a "survival" like this, I'm of the opinion that it's nothing more than a wild tale.  And even Stewart, last week at Utah Valley University, admitted, "There's nothing to back this up, but it's a fun story," which makes me wonder why anyone thought that there was anything there to debate.

Anyhow, now that we've got that taken care of, maybe we can move on to other things, such as the claim by a guy from Antioch, Tennessee that there was a Bigfoot in his back yard, and he has a photograph to prove it, which looks exactly like Bigfoot would look if it was a large featureless black lump.  But he did say that he howled at the Bigfoot, and it howled back, which sounds promising.  I think we should definitely send someone down to investigate, preferably before Heimdall blows the Gjallarhorn and the Frost Giants attack.  You can see how that would put a damper on things.

Vampires in Serbia, unicorns in North Korea

Today, we have two stories in from people who evidently need to review what the definition of "mythological creature" is.

First, from Serbia, we have news that the town council in Zarozje has issued a vampire alert, and has gone as far as to suggest that all residents hang garlic on their doors.  [Source]

Apparently the vampire in question is one Sava Savanovic, who in times past lived in a mill next to the Rogacica River.  Savanovic was reputed to drink the blood of people who came to use the mill to mill their grain, a move that you would think would have been bad for business.

Be that as it may, Savanovic eventually died, possibly of blood poisoning (ba-dum-bum-ksssh), and the mill was sold to the Jagodic family.  At first, they were afraid to use the place, for fear of disturbing the dead vampire (so we might also need to refresh them on the definition of "dead"), but soon realized the tourist potential of owning a mill that had vamipiric associations.  But they were afraid to do any renovation on the building itself, not wanting accidentally to uncover anything with fangs -- and now the roof has collapsed.  And this, local townsfolk believe, has pissed off Savanovic, and he's going to exact revenge by going around and drinking some more blood.

You'd think that local government officials would tell folks to take a chill pill, but no.  Zarozje mayor Miodrag Vujetic said, "People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people.  We are all frightened."  He also advised using garlic, resulting in a run on garlic sales in local markets, and added, "We have also reminded them to put a Holy Cross in every room in the house."

Well, that should take care of the problem, I'd think.  I'd hope that when a few weeks have gone by and Savanovic hasn't shown, and no one in Zarozje has been exsanguinated, everyone would heave a great big sigh of relief, have a good laugh at themselves, and say, "Wow, what goobers we've been, believing in vampires and all."  But it'll probably go more like the joke about the guy who, every time he went to a friend's house, would close his eyes, raise his hands, and chant, "May this house be safe from tigers."

After this happened several times, the friend finally said, "Look, you don't have to do that.  There aren't any tigers anywhere near here.  There's probably not a tiger within a thousand-mile radius of this house."

And the guy smiled knowingly, and said, "It really works, doesn't it?"


Then, from North Korea, we have a report that some "scientists" have discovered a secret burial ground... for a unicorn.  [Source]

One of their early kings, King Dongmyeong, who was also known as King Dongmyeongseongwang because "Dongmyeong" was thought to be too easy to pronounce, was supposed to have ridden on a unicorn.  And now the Korean Central News Agency, the official media outlet for the North Korean government, has "reconfirmed" that the burial site for King Dongmyeong's unicorn exists, in the capital city of Pyongyang.

They haven't released any photographs of bones, or (better yet) a skull with a horn.  Their proof, insofar as they've been willing to discuss it, consists solely of a claim that at the burial site, they found a marker that said, "Unicorn Lair."

Well, that proves it to me.

The problem, of course, is that the KCNA is kind of famous for making bizarre pronouncements.  Remember all the hoopla about earthquakes and weeping birds and atmospheric phenomena of various sorts when Kim Jong-Il died?  So it's not like they've established much of a reputation for sorting fact from fiction.

Oh, and there's also the thing about King Dongmyeong having not been born in the usual fashion, but having been hatched from an egg.

Anyhow.  We seem to have yet another example of people believing weird stuff based on essentially no evidence, something that has become sort of a theme on this blog.  I have to admit that it'd be nice to stop running into new examples of this phenomena.  Even though it would put me out of business, just having humanity be a little more rational would be a move in the right direction.  Now, excuse me while I go saddle up Pegasus for the flight to work.

Mangy coyotes, mad cows, and mythological creatures

Today at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're keeping a close eye on three developing stories.  At least I am.  My research team, made up of my dogs Grendel and Doolin, are currently asleep, having just completed a critical mission of barking at nothing at 4 AM. 

Of course, maybe there was something there, and I just didn't notice it.  Some people in Cedar Park, Texas, were probably wishing they had dogs as brave as mine to protect them when they saw, skulking in a field near Hill Country Winery, a pack of Chupacabras.  (Source)

"I don't know what it is," said Rick Cumptson, who has also seen the animals in a field outside of his store. "I'd never even heard of Chupacabra until about two weeks ago. I started looking, trying to figure out what the hell these were.  They were just hanging out there in the field.  It looked like maybe they had just had breakfast, and were out there playing around."

Well, already that has to make you wonder.  Chupacabras don't "play around."  They terrorize residents with their horrifying visages, rippling muscles, and glowing red eyes, and look around for goats to disembowel.  Be that as it may, Cumpston and others who have seen the animals are certain that what they're seeing is the renowned blood-sucking cryptid.

Me, I'm not so sure.  Every time someone has seen a Chupacabra, or taken a photograph, or shot one, it's turned out to be a coyote with sarcoptic mange.   Jack Bonner, who works for Williamson County Animal Control, concurs.  "Anybody that calls in a Chupacabra -- it's a coyote with mange," Bonner said, adding that there was a "really, really, really nasty, ugly, mangy coyote that was over in that area" a few months ago.

Cumpston, of course, isn't convinced.  "I don't think it's possible," he told reporters for the Austin Statesman.  "I've seen coyotes and I've seen this -- two of them within 25 feet -- their head is nowhere similar to a coyote at all. Their ears are different, their eyes are different. I just can't believe that."

So, if you visit Texas, watch out for Chupacabras on the rampage.  Or mangy coyotes.  Either one, I would imagine, would be really, really, really nasty to meet.


But not, perhaps, as scary as a bunch of deranged cows, which is what some farmers in Indiana had to contend with after their field got buzzed by a UFO.  (Source)

MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network) posted a story on June 5 that there was a report from an undisclosed location in Indiana, telling about a sighting of a UFO that "streaked across the sky very fast and had a long tail behind it."  This, so far, isn't that unusual -- dozens of such reports come in every day.  But what happened afterwards sets it apart.

Minutes later, the eyewitness said that his cows began "going nuts, making noises and slamming themselves into the gate."  He himself reports feeling "strange and shaky," and says that shortly thereafter, he "heard sirens and saw several emergency response vehicles headed in the direction that the 'UFO' was traveling."

The whole thing puts me in mind of the strangely satisfying CowAbduction, where you see a photograph of a calmly grazing cow, and when you click on it, the cow moos and gets flung upwards into the air, as if with a tractor beam.  No, nothing else happens, but it's still funny enough that just I spent ten minutes messing around with it, probably because I need to have another cup of coffee so that my brain will actually start working.  On the other hand, the tracker on the CowAbduction page says that the website has logged 1,650,553 cow abductions to date, so I guess I'm not the only one who is easily amused.


And even cow abductions aren't as scary as what's going on in Chesterfield, Michigan, where a mythological creature is stalking the woods.  (Source)

A Macomb County police report from June 6 states that a Chesterfield resident had a rock thrown through his window, with a scary note attached.  The note "said a mythological creature was in the woods nearby and that children should be made aware of the danger."

Police scoured the woods nearby and "did not find any suspects, nor any mythological creatures."

Me, if I was trying to warn my neighbors about rampaging mythological creatures, (1) I would find a less antisocial way to warn them than throwing a rock through their window, and (2) I would be a little more specific regarding what I was warning them about.  What kind of mythological creature?  A centaur?  A leprechaun?  A balrog?  You can see that the kinds of responsive measures you might want to take would be different in each of those cases -- respectively (1) hide the women-folk, (2) look for a pot in which to bring home your gold, or (3) piss yourself and scream like a little girl.  So it would have been nice if they could have given the Chesterfield resident a little more information regarding what they were up against.  However, there were no further reports of balrogs in the woods, so it all ended happily enough.


So, anyway, that's our report for the day.  I think that about winds us up here, which is a good thing, because my dogs have woken up and are barking again.  Maybe this time there's actually something out there in the back yard -- possibly a mangy chupacabra, a mad, UFO-crazed cow, or a "mythological creature."  Or maybe they're just barking because they like to bark.  Myself, I suspect it's the latter.