Tuesday 17 November 2015

The Infrasonic Nessie

The rise of scepticism has brought with it a desire to find more natural explanations for eyewitness claims to large creatures in lochs and lakes around the world. We are familiar with the older theories regarding boat wakes, seiches, vegetable mats, birds and other forms of misinterpreted phenomena, but not much new has hoved over the sceptical horizon recently.

So, it was with some interest that I noted a comment left by Loch Ness researcher, Dick Raynor, on this blog a couple of years back:

I am just beginning a new avenue of amateur investigation involving infrasound and I am sure that Ted and Tim would have been years ahead of me had they still been with us, as both of them (and I also) had experiences consistent with its effects.

This work, if successful, will in no way claim or prove that there are no unknown large animals in Loch Ness, it will only add to the argument that their existence is not necessary to account for the wide variations in observations and data obtained so far. If I see and film a plesiosaur from one of my boat tours tomorrow I will happily admit "Yup, there are plesiosaurs there too."

You can find Dick's thoughts on this matter at his website. In summary, the theory draws on previous work by Vic Tandy which suggested that inaudible sound at around a frequency of 19Hz triggers various physiological effects such as fear, blurred vision, shivering and dizziness. The blurred vision is alleged to be due to the human eyeball resonating at this frequency. Tandy's own personal experience made him think a grey spirit was entering at his peripheral vision but vanished when he turned to look at it.

Dick Raynor thinks this is applicable to some aspects of the Loch Ness Monster phenomenon. The infrasound waves are theorised to be generated by the culvert pipes below the road which then affect human observers near them. These pipes are used to run hillside water off into the loch and the photo below is of one such culvert at Loch Ness which I took recently.





However, how exactly this is to be applied to the Loch Ness Monster is not made clear on his website. A look around for Dick's other comments does not elaborate much more on the neurophysiological mechanisms involved or the proposed alterations in perception. One comment here has him actually applying the infrasound mechanism to Bigfoot as well!

Adding to what Rangoon says, the same naturally occuring infrasound could produce the perception of bigfoot in addition to the "bad" feelings. Witness is unaware of cause but senses both effects and the brain then turns one of them into a cause.

However, one assumes culverts do not run past Bigfoot sites. On another forum, he says:

Could it be that Science has added a new category of 'answer' that relies on modern physics, including infrasound-generated psychological / perception disturbances ...

Could produce, could it be? Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Let's look at issues with this theory.


SEMI-SCIENCE

Now Dick said (albeit two years ago) that this was a work in progress and it is just as well he said that because what we have just now is not science but at best incomplete science. He has proposed a theory, albeit thin on the human perception side, but having more to say on the matter of the physics of resonating culverts.

The main problem is immediately obvious to those with experience of the scientific method. There is no evidence that this theory has been tested. It is over two years now since Dick outlined his theory on his website, but nothing more has been added. What do we need to see to progress this?

First, is there any evidence of infrasound emissions near the culverts? Has Dick gone to some culverts with measuring equipment in an attempt to measure the presence of sound waves in the proposed frequency range? If nothing has been detected, clearly the theory is already dead in the water.

Secondly, the intensity of any proposed waves also need to be measured. Herein lies a deficiency with the theory as it is not stated at what decibel level the proposed perception-altering changes kick in. Culverts may emit at 18Hz, but may be too weak to have any effect on humans.

Thirdly, a control test needs to be done at a site well away from culverts on the loch side. This is to establish whether any theoretical infrasound presence can be statistically linked to the culverts rather than another potential cause. If infrasound were to be detected nowhere near culverts, it is unlikely to have anything to do with them.

Have any of these tests been done? If not, it is incomplete science, it is semi-science. Many a theory has been proposed over the centuries of scientific enquiry, they may have been totally plausible and mathematical, but in many instances they turned out to be wrong due to an unwarranted assumption, loose handling of the data or a missing piece in the equations.

On the other hand, it is of course entirely possible all this has been done, it just has not been published yet. In that light, we await the possibility of unrevealed research for further critique.


PEER CRITICISM

The other aspect to all of this is whether the initial and original theory is as worthy of acceptance as it is made out? In that light, I took a step back from what is being proposed regarding the Loch Ness Monster and sought out the opinions of others on Vic Tandy's theory of infrasound and paranormal phenomena. It did not take long to find a dissenting opinion.

This objection can be found in a paper authored by Jason Braithwaite and Maurice Townsend in October 2006 entitled "Good Vibrations: The case for a specific effect of infrasound in instances of anomalous experience has yet to be empirically demonstrated" which is a long winded way of saying "we don't think anything has been proven here".

I see that Dr. Jason Braithwaite lectures in Cognitive Science and Brain Science at Birmingham University and his academic profile is here.  You can obtain their article here. His view in the paper is that the infrasound phenomenon has not been properly quantified, there is no baseline data and the neurological side is inadequately stated.

That does not mean that infrasound effects on human perception have been proven false, it just means they are not proven to an adequate level of scientific enquiry. 


CONCLUSION

There is no proof that infrasound can perceptually affect observers at Loch Ness or anywhere else. No measurements at this time confirming their presence at culverts are forthcoming and there is no mechanism adequately explaining how resonating pipes lead to people seeing plesiosaurs. Apart from these objections, it's a great theory. :)

We await further scientific revelations from Dick Raynor.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com





Monday 9 November 2015

Jennifer Bruce's Monster and Sucking

Every time I see a picture of a gull, I think of the 1982 picture of the Loch Ness Monster by Jennifer Bruce. I wrote about this in 2013 and when I look at such a gull picture, I am less convinced by the sceptical interpretation that it is nothing more than a passing seagull. Let's just say that if that was a gull, it would be so deformed as to be incapable of flying in the first place!





I saw yet another gull in a recent photo and include it below with a zoom of Bruce's Nessie. Compare and contrast.








Now whether the bird in the photo is a bona fide member of a gull species seems irrelevant to me. After all, damn! Those are the strangest looking wings I have ever seen on a supposed bird in Bruce's picture. Perhaps it is a weird, cryptid bird like the legendary Thunderbird looking up its watery cousin in Loch Ness?

Quite simply, the sceptics have been suckered into a case of pareidolia here; they see something that looks vaguely like something else. That brings me to a flaw in sceptical logic that is a repeat offence. I call it the "my theory sucks the least" argument and there is normally some fancy Latin  phrase to describe these things, but I am not particularly bothered to find it.

The argument runs like this, the probability of there being one or more large monsters in Loch Ness is approaching zero. So it is not a valid explanation for things we see in photos and films from Loch Ness.

However, since one wishes to look authoritative and intelligent, some kind of explanation needs to be offered as to what is in the picture. Now since any explanation that looks half plausible is going to be more probable than a monster one, it is therefore a probable explanation - use it.

Since the majority are not going to criticise this approach, people will generally get away with it - until they get shot down (like a gull) on this blog and others. So, you declare Bruce's photo is a bird. What do you mean it doesn't look like a bird on closer inspection!? It's more probable than a monster, so that's good enough for me!

Matey, if you think the odds of a monster are a million to one against, but the odds of that thing in the picture being a gull are a thousand to one against, you better just drop both and keep quiet.

This "my theory sucks the least" approach is found all over the place. Another example was Maurice Burton's explanation of the Surgeon's photo. He said it was an otter in the act of diving. It's a daft explanation, but it sucks less than a monster one, so we're cool with that.

I see it all time to varying degrees of dubiety. That does not mean that people do get it right on various pictures (e.g. Steve Feltham outing George Edwards or Alistair Boyd on the Surgeon's Photo), but some others attempts are just ... embarrassing.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com








Saturday 7 November 2015

More on the man "who invented Nessie"

Or not as the case may be. A commenter pointed out that a Loch Ness researcher had written on Digby George Gerahty over twenty years ago. The researcher was Steuart Campbell, author of the popular book,  "The Loch Ness Monster: The Evidence".

The article was "Who Invented the Loch Ness Monster?" published in the March/April 1992 issue of The Skeptic magazine. Steuart has kindly sent me the scans of these pages which I now include for your interest. You can view the first page and the second page via google drive.









Tuesday 3 November 2015

Upcoming Book Event




Gareth Williams, author of the upcoming "A Monstrous Commotion", emailed to inform me that the book will be launched at Waterstones bookshop in Inverness next week on Thursday 12th November at 6:30pm. You can find out more at the Waterstones website. Unfortunately, I am just back from the area and so can't make it, but I am some of our local readers may want to come along.










Saturday 31 October 2015

Was Nessie invented by a publicist?

As part of the promotion for the upcoming book, A Monstrous Commotion, the Daily Mail runs an article on the author, Gareth Williams, and an interesting piece from his book. It concerns a Digby George Gerahty, who claimed to Henry Bauer before his death in 1981, that he was the inventor of the Loch Ness Monster via a series of planted monster stories back in 1933. You can read more in the Mail article.

The story is not unfamiliar to me, I just discounted it as one of the various competing theories promulgated as to what triggered the Loch Ness Monster story. The competing one is the influence of King Kong. The other is road works and blasting rousing the monster. One that also springs to mind is the Italian journalist, Francesco Gasparini, who in 1959 made similar claims:

Italian newsman Francesco Gasparini claimed in an article published in the Milan weekly magazine Visto that he had invented the Loch Ness Monster. His story was that in August 1933, while working in London as a UK correspondent for an Italian newspaper, he saw a two-line item in the Glasgow Herald about a "strange fish" caught in Loch Ness. Having nothing else to write about, he expanded on this, turning the fish into a monster, and soon "other papers began to print eyewitness accounts of the monster being sighted." Gasparini's claim was not taken very seriously. "The man is talking rot," one Scot was quoted as saying.

And then there is poor Alex Campbell, long time water bailiff of Loch Ness, who people such as arch sceptic, Ronald Binns, pins the blame on for inventing, embellishing and sustaining Nessie stories to catalyse the Kelpie legends into life.

Who's to blame? All, none or some? As Gareth says, he is not the one to judge, it is down to each of us to form our own opinion. I look forward with greater interest to the release of his book on November the 12th.

POSTSCRIPT: follow up article here


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com









Wednesday 21 October 2015

An Old Tale from Loch Ness

Nothing to do with Nessie, but an amusing tale of life on the loch from "Angling and Art in Scotland: some fishing experiences related and illustrated" by Ernest Edward Briggs, published in 1908.

But the morning train from Perth was quite an express, and, if I remember rightly, only took four hours to accomplish the distance, arriving at Inverness about eleven o'clock. That gave one ample time to look around the cleanly little Highland town, and to pay a visit to the fishing-tackle shop ; for the steamer up Loch Ness did not leave until three in the afternoon. This afternoon boat, which went no farther than Fort Augustus, was also of the most leisurely ; you could, however, get a decent tea on board, with fish and cold meat. A peaceful calm pervaded the whole establishment. It was impossible to instil any great amount of energy into any of the employees; the utmost excitement on the part of a passenger brought no answering light of enthusiasm to the eye of the deck-hand. It was on this boat that a portly, well-to-do, though irascible Highlander, bound for the Temple Pier at Glenurquhart, found as he neared his destination that his portmanteau had been mislaid.

The luggage for the various ports had been put under tarpaulins, each in a separate pile, for it was a wet afternoon, and the pile destined for Glenurquhart, when examined, did not furnish the missing article. This fact, when demonstrated, produced a perfect ferment in the mind of the owner, who charged about the deck accusing the captain and sailors, jointly and severally, of having made away with his luggage. One of the sailors particularly, whom he vowed had brought the precious case on board, fell under his severest displeasure. But the company, from the captain downwards, were in no wise to be ruffled. This dignitary, in fact, remained perfectly unmoved by the most forcible language and threats, merely affirming that if the portmanteau had been properly labelled for the Temple Pier, it would have been found amongst the articles destined for that port, and therefore there was no doubt that it had never been brought aboard.

Ultimately, when Glenurquhart was reached, the excitable gentleman had to go ashore minus his luggage, muttering half-articulated threats into his beard, evidently having himself now some doubts as to whether the bone of contention had been properly labelled or no. But the climax came when one of the deck-hands — perhaps more conscientious than his fellows — actually found the missing article amongst the Fort Augustus luggage, and literally hurled it on to the pier just as the moorings were being cast off. The owner immediately pounced upon his property, growling over it as a dog would growl over a bone. He rapidly examined the label, and found it to be correctly addressed.

I Ah! you should have seen him then, that irate Highlander, alternately thumping with his fist the label which he had hastily torn from off the portmanteau — and which he was holding up for the captain's edification, as he ran along the pier keeping pace with the now moving boat or vigorously shaking that same fist at the imperturbable despot, bawling out as he did so, "Ye're condemned, Sir! Ye're condemned!" It was a mercy, in his excitement, that he did not tumble into the water on coming to the end of the pier, where for several minutes we could see him dancing like a bear on hot iron, gesticulating wildly, while his curses were wafted ever more faintly over the waves as the steamer forged ahead.

I note the observation "the utmost excitement on the part of a passenger brought no answering light of enthusiasm to the eye of the deck-hand" and wonder if even a raising of the eyebrow would be elicited if any passenger had seen the "huge fish" spoken of in former times gambolling nearby? Imagine the scene.

Gladys: Look! Look! What are those three humps and long neck in the water?!

Claude (looking at zombie crewmen): Clearly nothing to get excited about, Darling. It must be a bow wave generated by a sturgeon pursuing a cormorant. Another sandwich, Dear?


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com
 



Thursday 15 October 2015

The Sightings Problem

It is the constant refrain of the sceptical - "Where is the conclusive film or photograph?". Having "jousted" with such people over the years on this subject and replied in various articles, there is no need to repeat long arguments and replies. 

However, the sceptical demands for evidence are brought into contemporary relief by the advent of mobile phone cameras and the supposed deduction that this ought to produce something game changing. My previous replies to that suggests it is not as clean cut and wrinkle free as they make out.

A further look at the recent sightings database reveals more. I produced the graph below for the aforementioned article to demonstrate that image capture was on the increase due to such technology. The proportion of images taken in relation to the total number of reported sightings has increased substantially since the 1980s with at least 50% of reports carrying a film or photo.




However, that is not enough for the critics. They want an irrefutable image which would somehow get past the accusations of "Fake" and "CGI". Setting aside the issues of how exactly a photo is deemed fake-free or non-CGI, one thing is certain and that is the Loch Ness Monster would have to be pretty close and well out of the water to produce such a compelling image. Here begins the problems. I charted the number of historical sightings which were less than 100 yards or meters from the witness and got this graph.



As you can see, close up reports of Nessie have been on the decline since the 1970s. To put it plainly, if the monster is not playing ball by putting in a close appearance, no amount of fancy or expensive HD ready mobile phones will capture anything that could be called game changing.

Accept it, as they say.

You won't? Okay, let's take a closer look. The question is why close up reports have declined? This is not surprisingly part of a general decline in sightings, for which I drew up a list of possible reasons in an earlier article:


  1. People are less easily fooled by natural loch phenomena. 
  2. People are less motivated to report sightings in a sceptical age. 
  3. People find it harder to find an "official" centre to report sightings. 
  4. The media does not report as many sightings as it used to. 
  5. The creature(s) is surfacing less often either due to population decline. 
  6. The creature(s) is surfacing less often due to aversion to increased surface activity. 
  7. Reports from recent years have still to filter through to researchers. 

To be clear, though, the absence of close encounters with Nessie at a hundred paces is not going to be explicable by all these categories. For example, the first explanation is not so convincing for close up encounters, I quite frankly get bored with people who insist witnesses mistook a cormorant for a monster at sixty feet. You can only dumb down witnesses so far.

In fact, of these seven speculations, I would think only 5 and 6 are relevant as I can't imagine a close up view of Nessie not making it into the media mainstream. In fact, the bottom line is that sightings of the calibre of MacLean, Jenkyns, Cockrell and so on have just not happened in recent years.

I would add a modifier to option 5 and that is the travelling Nessie hypothesis. As opposed to population decline due to overfishing and pollution, perhaps the Loch Ness Monster has just vacated the premises? Since the sightings record indicates at least three or more creatures seen at one time, the population in the loch is not so dependent on breeding but on new creatures every few decades coming in to replenish the numbers. Whether they can leave again is a matter of debate and an article in its own right.

But we do have sightings which have occurred within 100 metres of the witness, but whatever was seen was just below the surface or barely showing. One example is the photo taken by Jon Rowe in 2011. There may be one or two others but they involve water disturbances rather than a full show of the creature.

Which brings me to a comment posted a while back on the matter of how many films and photos should we have of the Loch Ness Monster. That word "should" is pretty loaded as it can carry a lot of bias generated assumptions with it. Their reasoning went as follows:

"Ok let's show mathmatically the minimum since 2005, because I have read a stat that 90% of adults since 2005 have carried a mobile phone with a camera, averaged over the last 10 years. This seems reasonable, certainly not far off the mark in terms of everyday observations. In 2015 it is higher than 90%, in 2005 it was lower. So for argument's sake we will both ignore the years before 2005, and we will not factor in the multitude of digital cameras and video cameras (inc night vision) taken to the loch additionally.

Next we need to know how many sightings lasting more than 10 seconds have occurred since 2005. We are told that this figure is down to about 3 a year.

So doing the maths, there should have been 30 sightings of more more than 10 seconds, and 90% of these should have been filmed. We should have 27 films worth looking at since 2005, and dozens more from before then. Of these 27, if they were all clear views of Nessie, they would all produce footage worth analysing.

Now, your turn to justify why we have ZERO instead
"

So, our commenter is expecting 27 films of the Loch Ness Monster since 2005 - and he thinks I expect zero. The first thing to do is ascertain how many sightings have actually been logged in the ten year period up to 2015. Consulting my own articles as well as the database maintained by Gary Campbell, I have come up with at least 24 recorded events as opposed to the 30 assumed by the commenter. In this, I have excluded webcam reports, sonar contacts and Google Earth map stories.

How many resulted in films or photos? Our commenter applies a 90% ratio to get 27 image captures and for some reason he expects them all to be motion and not still images. As it turns out, the number is 13, 11 of these were photos and 2 were film. That is an image/report ratio of 54%. Three of the cases involved driving in a car and three were in boats. If the car drivers are removed as potential camera users, the ratio increases to 62%. The list is shown below:

2005 - 4 (Bell, Yeats, Anonymous(b), Girvan(p))
2006 - 1 (Murphy(d))
2007 - 2 (Wilson(bp),Holmes(f))
2008 - 1 (Ellis(p))
2009 - 1 (MacDougall)
2010 - 1 (Preston(p))
2011 - 4 (Rowe(p),Hargreaves,Gruer,Jobes(p))
2012 - 2 (Assleman(p),Ross(p),Anonymous(d))
2013 - 0
2014 - 3 (gamekeeper,Loch Ness Lodge staff(p),Bhardwaj(bp))
2015 - 5 (Ross(f),Anonymous,Bruce(d),Bates(p),McKenna(d))

d=driving
b=boating
p=photo
f=film

Those are the numbers and I would not class any of them as a close up view of a fully exposed monster. Indeed, some reports will be too far for such a situation. So that means I do expect films and photos but I (at this point in time) expect no game changers. There are others things to note.

The first is that even monster researchers will not accept every sighting as a bona fide sighting of Nessie. Some are going to be misidentification, though these will tend to be the ones which are much further away or only seen briefly before a proper assessment could be made of the object in question.

Secondly, witnesses prefer taking photos than films. As much as sceptics fume at dumb witnesses not switching their phones or cameras to video mode, it just doesn't happen the way they want it. The raw data says that 15% of images taken are motion and not the idealistic 100% of our commenter.

Where does this leave us? That sceptics expect films is not to be denied. The problem is the old girl is not putting in the required close up appearances. They say this is because such "sightings" do not happen now because witnesses are better educated and not so easily fooled. I say prove it and how on earth does that apply to close ups at 100 metres where doubts over what you are seeing should be minimal.

Rather than accept these arguments, consider the possibility that the Loch Ness Monster is just not surfacing as much as it used to. Whether that is due to increased surface activity or population decline or just due to some of the monsters vacating the loch  is now a matter of debate.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com