Where Be Monsters? The Daedalus Sea Serpent and the War for Credibility

http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/4/where-be-monsters-daedalus-sea-serpent-and-war-for-credibility

by drjohnson • 12 years ago

82 29 12 years ago

te_platt• 12 years ago

There are a lot of interesting subjects this article covers. One that stood out to me was how new evidence seeming in favor of something can be turned against it. E.T. Jaynes describes it with what he calls the "deception hypothesis". A nice article touching on that can be found here:

http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2011/12/e-t-jaynes-explai...

ggchappell• 12 years ago

Interesting article. If I might "think out loud", and summarize:

Suppose I have decided that claim X is false. Now someone says, "Here is evidence for X." Then I am likely to think that there is deception involved: someone made something up, or misinterpreted something. Now suppose someone comes up with very strong evidence for X. I think: of course there is deception involved.

Thus, what is presumably strong evidence for X becomes, in my hands, strong evidence that either flawed reasoning or fraud is happening.

reitanqild3• 12 years ago

Not my post but I'll add a little meta observation anyway: I can't see why this isn't taking off at HN.

I've personally found the recent discovery of the giant octopus interesting. It has been reported by sailors for numerous times as far as I know, yet science has shown little intereset until a specimen was found.

In the same vein the fact that wolves have attacked humans in the last 5 years is very interesting. When I grew up we were taught that wolves were afraid of humans and none of the old stories were true. (I have come to the conclusion top trust naval officers and grandparents more than scientists in such cases.)

speeder• 12 years ago

I know some sailors that when they heard about the collection of that giant squid they were very happy to point out: "see? We are not liars, the krakens DO exist!!!"

andrewflnr• 12 years ago

Which recent discovery? We've been aware of rather large octopuses for a good long time.

jvreeland• 12 years ago

I think he's referring to the Colossal Squid. Recently (2007) a specimen was found alive and then died and was frozen and brought to a lab to be defrosted and examined. Previously the samples found were long dead and degraded (eaten/decomposed). While we know that it existed we also knew almost nothing about it. Some people misunderstand the discovery and dissection of the squid, the largest and most intact specimen. As the discovery of the species.

greiskul• 12 years ago

But there were giant squid bodies long before we managed to find a live specimen. We also found many beaks on sperm whale stomachs that showed they did exist. So while a great discovery, there was reasonable evidence of it's existence before the first intact bodies and video images.

Is there any evidence like this for sea serpents?

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

I've personally found the recent discovery of the giant octopus interesting.

By "giant octopus" (creatures that have been known for a very long time) do you mean "colossal squid" (which has been known, and of interest to science, from body parts since the early 20th Century, but of which a live specimen was never discovered until the 2000s)?

Because your statement doesn't make much sense for the former, and is still wrong for the latter (science showed plenty of interest before the recent live-specimen discovery, though the popular media, at least briefly, became more interested when a live specimen was found.)

In the same vein the fact that wolves have attacked humans in the last 5 years is very interesting. When I grew up we were taught that wolves were afraid of humans and none of the old stories were true.

When and where were you taught that? While I certainly remember being taught as a child that -- like many animals -- wolves were shy of humans, I certainly was also taught that they were dangerous, extremely territorial, aggressive pack animals and that they might attack humans in any of wide range of circumstances.

reitanqild3• 12 years ago

Because your statement doesn't make much sense for the former, and is still wrong for the latter (science showed plenty of interest before the recent live-specimen discovery, though the popular media, at least briefly, became more interested when a live specimen was found.)

Thanks for correcting me.

Now tzs also has a much better example than me :-)

When and where were you taught that?

Primary school I think.

brc2• 12 years ago

The issue with 'scientist' is that it is a self-applied term. As the position 'scientist' carries with it some weight. Therefore those who want to boost their credibility style themselves as scientists to borrow the reputation of others.

I've found that areas of real knowledge don't call themselves scientists (ie, physicist, chemist, astronomer) whereas those fields struggling for credibility tend to add 'scientist' on the end. (ie, _____ scientist) At the extreme end you've got people who astroturf organizations and advertise people wearing white coats testing their product. (Ponds Institute, anyone?)

Add to that a deep suspicion anyone who is confidently making bold predictions about the future and you've got a two-pass filter for assessing whether to really pay attention or not. That's what works for me.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

I've found that areas of real knowledge don't call themselves scientists (ie, physicist, chemist, astronomer) whereas those fields struggling for credibility tend to add 'scientist' on the end. (ie, _____ scientist)

Since when do physicists, chemists, and astronomers not call themselves scientists? IME, they tend to do so as a more general term than their specific field name.

If you mean "they don't put 'science' in the name of their discipline", well, consider that "physics" -- which is just the latin-derived English (archaic now, but not when "physics" became a name for the field) word for "natural science" pluralized -- is probably not a good example of the trend you are trying to illustrate.

Its true that newer fields are more likely to have "science" in modern English as part of their name rather than taking it from some other source (or a Latinized-greek suffix like "-(o)logy"), but that's really not all that substantive a difference. Which is probably just because no one likes the sound of things like Computerology or Datalogy, not because those naming those fields are any more "struggling for credibility" than those who named, say, "geology".

codezero5• 12 years ago

preface: this was a great and interesting article, forgive my grumbles below :)

People are rarely reliable witnesses when they are trying to tell a story. Being an officer of anything doesn't really lend anyone extra credibility either, everyone has their own biases and fantasies. Astronauts have claimed to see aliens and this doesn't make them more credible than a guy on his farm who claims the same thing.

I do think that it's always worth keeping an open mind about the existence of undiscovered creatures, but I don't think it's necessary to latch on to transient sightings to decide that those are the creatures we should look for.

Every time a decaying dead whale washes up on shore, even smart people think it might be something new or undiscovered, because that sounds less banal than the reality, this causes news media to stir up because life is generally boring, and people eat it up for the same reason.

I'll leave the science to the scientists and wait patiently for their new discoveries :)

nardi2• 12 years ago

Astronauts have claimed to see aliens

Really? Which astronauts?

codezero5• 12 years ago

Correction, an Astronaut believes in a global conspiracy to cover up human knowledge of UFOs and extra terrestrials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell

unrelated: your bio sounds interesting, do you have any info on your roguelike mmo? :)

User9812• 12 years ago

Agreed, people are unreliable sources of information. It's not because we're trying to fabricate a story or lie, it's because our memory is anything but perfect. I remember seeing some good YouTube videos that demonstrated this, but I can't find any at the moment. Below is a random eyewitness video I just stumbled across...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSzPn9rsPcY

I think the best part of that video is how the professor mentioned the robber had an odd nose. Later, the student recalls seeing the robber firsthand with an odd shaped nose, but they don't recall hearing anything from the teacher. This is basically inception, the teacher planted a small seed of information, and now it turns into the memory of the student without them knowing.

codezero5• 12 years ago

Yep, for sure. Reminds me also of the Gorilla experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

gknoy• 12 years ago

I think it does make them more credible. Our early astronauts came from the test pilot programs, mostly, where careful observation of things (expected or not) out of the ordinary was a critical life skill, not to mention part of their job.

If Bob says he saw a UFO, I am likely to believe that he might have been drunk, or mistaken, or tricked by the light. If a test pilot (who is more familiar with light effects and weather balloons, etc) or astronaut tells me they saw something out of the ordinary, I lend that more credence.

Of course it's possible that they're mistaken in their testimony, but I think it's more likely for the astronaut to have noticed and correctly reported something than for the average Joe.

codezero5• 12 years ago

The real thing you should ask is, did "Bob" believe in UFOs before he/she became a pilot, or involved in the military? The military doesn't give people any more information than they need, there's no reason to think that a highly trained pilot has any more information than they need to fly a very fast deathplane :)

Someone• 12 years ago

Whatever your experience, there always is something that is so rare that you won't have seen it. Bob's will have that with an event of which the test pilot thinks "I have seen that countless times", that test pilot will have it with an event that is way rarer, but that still may have some quite ordinary explanation. Program is, we don't have an super test pilot who can say "I have seen that countless times".

And yes that will be something out of the ordinary. But the test pilot claims as to what it is, I wouldn't trust more than Bob's claims as to the nature of the things he finds extraordinary.

lilsunnybee• 12 years ago

Experts in a field can also be quick to dismiss new ideas and accounts presented by people not in their field, or without years of experience and a strong reputation. To me it seems similar to how programmers can be quick to dismiss unlikely-sounding user bug reports, until they can see the bug with their own eyes.

brc2• 12 years ago

You've got to remember that the first anatomical specimen of a platypus sent from Australia to London was considered to be a hoax. That was the scientific establishment rejecting an actual specimen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus

It's hardly surprising that mere sightings of a creature were treated with the same incredulity, particularly if it had originated as the stuff of sailors legends. Most people would associate it with Yeti sightings or similar.

But as a lost airliner proves, people are too willing to think that searchability and knowledge about continents extends equally to the deep ocean. When the truth is that we probably know a lot more about what's in the solar system than what is in the deep oceans.

gwern• 12 years ago

'They laughed at Galileo. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.'

The platypus is remembered because it was one of the many hoaxes which turned out to be real; the OP even lists a whole bunch of hoaxes and fakes!

Similarly for the comment about rogue waves: are giant waves really that improbable? Now, how about giant ship-sized sea snakes? (What do they eat? Why haven't we gotten any real samples of their bodies, when they aren't even abyssal creatures? Why has the rate of discovery of sea-going reptiles been zero for decades when human populations, scientific research, travel, and sensor technology have all been increasing exponentially?)

The OP links a short statistical analysis of discovery rates: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2008-woodley.p... What struck me was not that the most reasonable analysis, the logistic regression, estimates zero species remaining to be found, but the authors' list of lame discoveries in 'cryptozoology': stuff like moths, peccaries, and whatnot. Really? Really? That's your defense for the plausibility of giant sea snakes - moths and small land mammals in extremely remote locations?

tzs• 12 years ago

Whatever the reality, the number of reported sea serpent sightings declined rapidly after the nineteenth century. Writing in 1925, Austin Clark of the Smithsonian Institution offered a typical explanation for the decline. “In the last 20 years,” Clark noted, the size of ships rapidly increased and steam ships replaced sailing vessels. These maritime advances mean that the “vantage point” for observing the sea serpent moved “from the low and insecure wave-washed deck of a small sailing boat to the high, comfortable, secure, and relatively dry deck of a much larger steamer.” This shift in perspective “removed the element of fear and hence dulled the imagination so that sailors are now able to study calmly and report correctly what they see.”

Or perhaps the sea serpents were predators, and they depended on one of the species that our bigger and more powerful ships allowed us to hunt more efficiently, and we destroyed enough of their food source that they went extinct.

Much of these stories remind me of the stories of giant waves that come out of nowhere and destroy ships. Sailors told stories of these waves for centuries, and their stories were dismissed as exaggerations from drinking or their judgement being thrown off by rough seas (e.g., you think the wave was 75 feet because it was taller than your 75 foot mast...but because of the rough seas you didn't realize the mast was actually pointing at a steep angle at the time so the top was only 40 feet above the water).

By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists thoroughly understood ocean waves, and stated that it was impossible to have waves higher than 50ft in open ocean. No matter how many sailors saw such waves, they were told that they MUST be wrong because science had proved such waves cannot exist.

Then sensors on an unmanned platform in the North Sea reported an 84 ft wave during a storm. The operators assumed that this meant that the sensors were malfunctioning, and sent a repair crew. The crew found that the sensors were fine, and there were clear signs of wave damage showing that the wave really was that big.

Now that scientists finally had evidence that they could not dismiss as drunken sailors, they went looking for more evidence and quickly found many instances of rogue waves. They found enough to see a pattern, and were able to figure out some of the conditions that would cause them, and find areas that would have a lot of them. And guess what, those were the areas where sailors had long been reporting ships wiped out by those "impossible" waves.

Science is great. It's the best thing we've got for finding out the truth about nature. But sometimes science gets arrogant and ignores anecdotal evidence even when it is so widespread that some of it almost certainly is from reliable observers. That's what happened with rogue waves, and I would not be at all surprised if that happened with at least some of the "mythical" large sea creatures.

reitanqild3• 12 years ago

You explained it better than me: "Science is great. It's the best thing we've got for finding out the truth about nature. But sometimes science gets arrogant and ignores anecdotal evidence even when it is so widespread that some of it almost certainly is from reliable observers."

Where Be Monsters? The Daedalus Sea Serpent and the War for Credibility

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