The Pseudo Art of Nessie Science

Now seems a good time to look further at the scientific method as it is applied to the Loch Ness Monster in the light of a recent news item.

Readers may recall the furore last year over a popular cryptozoological series called "Finding Bigfoot". The format of the show was pretty much in keeping with the TV hunt shows such as MonsterQuest and Destination Truth. However, the producers of the show were exposed as being economical with the truth and using shots which were made to look like mysterious events but which in fact were known to have ordinary interpretations by the very hunters involved in the program making. The Bigfoot people themselves complained about this at the time (for example, see link).

That this seemed to be a common format for at best filling in "gaps" and at worst distorting the whole show was even exposed at the respected British Broadcasting Corporation and their acclaimed series "Frozen Planet". It transpired that a shot of a mother bear with her cubs in a den which was shown interspersed with Arctic scenes was actually filmed in a Dutch zoo with snow added for good effect. The truth of this matter was only revealed in an obscure section of the BBC website, anyone watching the show would have been fooled into thinking it happened in the wild frozen north (story here).

The question therefore to ask of modern documentaries is not if this warping and dumbing-down happens but how much it happens. In that light, I wish to address the 2005 "Loch Ness Investigated" documentary made for the National Geographic and which I think also came under the "Naked Science" series (correct me if I am wrong). The documentary itself was viewable on YouTube at this link but that is now gone. For now you will just have to trust me on what I say!

The documentary is one of those "cool science" programs where we are shown how science and logic have all the answers and now watch us dismantle the Loch Ness Monster. Anyone watching the program will indeed get that impression, but as somebody who has studied the Nessie phenomenon for decades I was not impressed and wondered how much of the aforementioned reality-distortion technique was being applied to this program.

Before I begin, this is a commentary on the production of the program and not the Loch Ness experts that were brought in to state their case. It is possible they had no say in the final editing process, so they are largely left alone here. 

The program begins with the usual introductions to the Loch Ness Monster and before long the traditional plesiosaur is wheeled in (as an aside, Robert Badger who we featured in a recent classic sighting, makes an appearance). It's acknowledged that people in general think this is what Nessie would be if she did exist but the producers of the show indulge in a straw man argument by implying this is the only possible exotic explanation for Nessie. Once they dispose of this animal as a viable theory, the program fails to consider any other hypothesis apart from the sceptical one and gives the impression there is no more to be said.

The first main howler is when they state there is only 24 tonnes of fish in the loch to feed on. This is in fact a false statement. The 24 tonnes is taken from a study done by Loch Ness expert Adrian Shine. But a closer look at his original study reveals that this estimate was only referring to the fish swimming in the open waters near the top of the water column. It did not include the salmon, trout and eels which inhabit the sides and bottoms of the loch because these areas were not accessible to the sonar devices used in the study. If these were included, it would not be an overstatement to say the numbers could be trebled. More mistakes were made in regard to this food stock issue such as the predicted predator biomass but for further info see this link.

THE CLASSIC PHOTOGRAPHS

Having made that mistake, one did not exactly grow in confidence, but I watched on as they moved onto the sceptical arguments about the various pieces of Nessie evidence. Three of the classic images were first addressed. The Surgeon's Photo, the MacNab Photo and the Dinsdale film.

In regards to the Surgeon's photo, David Martin, the co-author of the book which exposed the hoax, was interviewed. The story was told of Marmaduke Wetherell and the fake tracks he created with a hippo's taxidermy foot and the subsequent desire for revenge as the Daily Mail newspaper dumped him for this tomfoolery. He set up a fake photo using a model head and neck on a toy submarine and the Daily Mail swallowed the bait as it published the picture and the rest is history. 

The story seems fine enough and this hoax will always be brought out first as "Exhibit A" by the prosecution. However, note this is not evidence against there being a creature in Loch Ness. I have no reason to think the confessor of the deed, Christian Spurling, was a liar. However, the producers did not address some failed predictions based on this story. The first is that there is a second photograph of the head submerging. The story does not predict this and this remains a bit of a mystery. More importantly, the story is wholly predicated on Wetherell's desire to get back at the Daily Mail for firing him.

He executed the first part perfectly in palming the pictures of to them but it is an unanswered question as to why he did not follow thru to expose the fake to the world and to the Mail's great embarrassment. In fact, the exact opposite happened as the Mail's new picture went on to be the icon of the Loch Ness Monster for the next sixty years (the other quibble I have with the toy submarine theory is that when the hoax is staged for TV, very lightweight styrofoam is used as the base for the fake head-neck. Hasn't anyone tried the actual metal submarine?)!

Next up for analysis was the famous Tim Dinsdale film. The whole thesis here revolved around the fact that Tim Dinsdale failed to recognise a boat for what it was and naively thought it was a brown backed monster. The main proof given for this is the idea that certain intermittent blobs seen behind the main body as it travelled parallel to the opposite shore were in fact images of a helmsman. By sequencing some frames from the film, it was claimed that this "helmsman" object was indeed part of the film.

A stereoscopic examination of some "helmsman" images were also presented as proof that the suggested helmsman was indeed part of the object.

Is that an end of the Dinsdale film then? Not quite, for the producers do not mention one thing and that is the quality of the data that was examined. Testing of theories can only be as good as the data available. The documentary itself shows about eight seconds of the object travelling parallel to the opposite shore. When one compares a still from their excerpt of the film with a similar still from the 1973 Disney Documentary, "Man, Mysteries and Myths", the problem with the data quality becomes obvious.

In the field of science, the ability to reproduce another researcher's results is key. If it can't be reproduced, doubt is cast upon the theory's validity. So, I can take this clip from the National Geographic documentary and attempt the image stacking that was shown. I may or may not be successful in reproducing what is claimed to be there but it is worth doing (and thanks to Adrian Shine for his help in this regard). So, does the poor quality of data hinder a proper assessment? Does the inferior data with its higher noise to signal ratio introduce artifacts that are not there in the original? The ultimate answer is to repeat the experiment with the original film (or something close to it) and its complete far shore sequence. So I have to suspend judgement on this aspect of the program until I see how far I get with the image stacking process.

The final photograph assessed was the one taken by Peter MacNab in 1955. The producers presented the case that it was simply the wake of a boat. To that end, the documentary homed in on a PC screen with the MacNab photograph overlaid with lines which were said to be converging boat wakes and the contention was that the "monster" lay along one of those lines. However, a further look at the photo shows that such a line simply does not exist. Take a look at the "monster" and see if you can see any boat wake ahead of it along the presumed line of travel. There is nothing there and so this particular line of reasoning should be seriously questioned.

 
The second photograph is my own taken near where Peter MacNab stood in 1955. Should I presume the other wakes in the upper part of the picture should be associated with the foreground cruiser once it disappears from view? No, and neither should they be in the MacNab photo.

The second problem as regards the MacNab picture involved the TV crew filming up close the wake of a boat and trying to make this look like the MacNab object. It was an abject failure and unworthy of critical thinking. The wake was filmed almost at eye level and much closer than the MacNab photograph (since this is the best way to see them). But from MacNab's position hundreds of yards away at an elevated position, no one would be fooled.

However, this appears to be another case of the producer cutting corners in presenting their argument because I suspect the person they consulted on this photograph would also disagree with their abbreviated conclusion. Last time I looked he further required some touching up of the photograph to "enhance" the two humps. To see what a real boat wake looks like, we have the 1969 Jessie Tait photo below and reversed to point in the same direction as the MacNab photo. Note that compared to the MacNab picture, the "humps" are of a different size, shape and spacing and that the wake continues beyond the front "hump".

My own analysis of the MacNab picture can be found here.

THE ART OF DECEPTION

Having "disposed" of all the classic Nessie pictures, the thoughts of the production crew turned to what they thought explained all sightings. The argument mainly lay in a series of witness deception theories which we now consider in turn.

SEICHES

At this point we were treated to a scientific explanation of what seiches were and how these underwater currents can make objects move in a contrary fashion to the prevailing wind. It was then suggested that such currents can fool people into thinking they are watching an inanimate object become a "live" object.

Now we readily admit that such a thing is possible, but a seiche on its own cannot fool anyone. A piece of footage was produced which was described as "rare" which perhaps indicates the infrequency of these events. However, it was quite clear that the object being moved was a log. That means other factors are required to complete a complex scenario such as obscuration by distance or time (i.e. too far away or too short in duration). In other words, seiche, log, time, distance makes for a less likely scenario. To that end, the probability of the person being deceived is not primarily down to the seiche but it is in inverse proportion to the distance to the object and the time available to view it.

MIRAGES

More scientific talk came but now about temperature inversions between the loch surface and the air distorting familiar objects into unfamiliar objects. However, unlike the seiche footage, nothing was offered by way of proof that such conditions produce Nessie-like objects. One wonders if these proposed events are so rare as to be of no relevance to the discussion. I appeal here for any such footage else we'll consign talk about Nessie-like mirages to the merely theoretical (and I mean Nessie-like mirages and not general large scale pictures of distorted mountains and forests). I would note in general that I too often see theories proposed to explain how witnesses misinterpret events but little in the way of field testing these theories.

I WANT TO SEE NESSIE! 

But the most contentious slot for me was the psychological theory about people seeing Nessie in ordinary objects because they are somehow pre-conditioned for this before they arrive. A psychologist was brought in to conduct an experiment in which an ordinary pole was made to bob up and down in the loch water as tourists stood on the shore taking in the view. The people were then asked what they saw. It was an exercise in the difference between what is there and what is perceived. However, the tourists were not playing ball and no one said they thought it was the head and neck of a Loch Ness Monster. We were treated to such non-committal descriptions as:

• "I think I saw Nessie's kids toys" (?)
• "Some kind of underwater machine"
• "It looks like Nessie's breathing pipe"

The best candidate for this less than convincing experiment was a young lad who thought it was Nessie but changed his mind when he had a closer look and decided it was a log. The producers triumphantly showed the boy's boat-like picture (everyone else drew a pole), but it was clear it was a picture drawn from his first impression rather than what he saw on a continued look.

It was evident that no one was really deceived by this and the experiment to me was a failure (unless only kids ever report seeing Nessie). Even creative editing would not have rescued this experiment and an excuse was made that one in ten would make a misidentification. Based on this episode, we are not convinced of that unsubstantiated statement.

For some reason, they then took the pole to a body of water at Stirling University and reran the experiment. What was the point of this I asked myself? No one was going to scream it was the "Stirling University Monster", in fact, it appears they got the same results as at Loch Ness!

THE UBIQUITOUS LOG

Logs seemed to feature a lot and as a final experiment a piece of tree was chosen "at random" to be used. Pretty good choice for a Nessie-like log, I thought, considering it was random. It was set off afloat and filmed and ... it looked pretty much like a log. Curiously, no mention of experiments with tourists was mentioned. Perhaps they had learnt the lessons of the other experiment?

ENTER THE STURGEON

Yet despite all this debunking of Nessie reports, one sighting was allowed to "live". It was a report from 1932 by a Miss MacDonald who said she saw a crocodile like creature in the River Ness. The reason it was allowed to live was because it was seen to support the theory that some sightings could be down to a large sturgeon. Now I am not sure why the program needed a sturgeon. Was it to instill a feeling that perhaps all these sightings are not adequately explained by logs, waves and wishful thinking? Or was it down to a desire to keep the mystery alive but in a more scientific context? Whatever the reason, the sturgeon theory was presented as an explanation for some sightings.

Now, we are quite sure the evidence for sturgeons is irrefutable, but the evidence for sturgeons in Loch Ness is no better than the evidence for an unknown species in Loch Ness. We have no carcass, films, photographs or sonar which allow a final classification of either of these critters. Sure, there have been sturgeons caught in the Moray Firth but nothing inland. It seems as if the scientific rigour of proof applied to an unknown species is not being applied to a known species. Again, it seems we are asked to equate something which is plausible to the realms of probable.

But I don't mind the sturgeon theory being proposed. It is a viable theory after all but if any sceptic asks where the exotic species carcass is, I will simply tell them it is in the same place as the sturgeon carcass (though Adrian Shine informs me that cartiliginious bones decay quicker than other bones).

EARTHQUAKES

What on earth have earthquakes got to do with Loch Ness Monsters sightings you may ask? As it turns out, seismic activity can disturb waters in unusual ways, but is this enough to explain any Nessie sightings?

One got the impression the bottom of the barrel was being scraped here but it did introduce an unusual element to this documentary - someone was brought in to present an alternative view on this theory. If only they had been more even handed with the other theories presented. The dissenting geologist said that earthquakes were not frequent or strong enough in the Great Glen to make such an explanation useful.

It was then stated in the program that the last time an earthquake had such a noticeable effect on Loch Ness was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. Well, actually, this was another inaccuracy in the program. There has been at least one more recently documented story about unusual earthquake-induced effects upon Loch Ness. I'll leave it as an exercise to the documentary makers to find out where it is.

CONCLUSIONS

  

I was tempted to entitle this article "The Art of Pseudo Nessie Science" but to be fair, the producers were going about in a largely scientific way, it's just that it was not done very convincingly. It may convince those who are not familiar with the subject, but that is as far as it went. Hence I suggest there was a bit more of the "art" and less of the "science" in the final copy. One of the contributors to this documentary once described this blog as "justifiable as art" but not science. If this National Geographic documentary is the last word on "science" at Loch Ness, then for now I'll gladly stick to the "art" that goes on at this website!

National Geographic has released a new documentary on the Loch ness Monster under their "The Truth Behind ..." series. Once I see this, I will post a review. Hopefully it is an improvement on this 2005 version.

Review Of "The Missing Evidence: The Loch Ness Monster"

British broadcaster Channel 5 televised the next in their series "Missing Evidence" on Monday, and Nessie was the subject of choice for their investigation. I have seen many a documentary over the years and the trend has, not surprisingly, been towards the sceptical. This programme very much continued that trend.

The program followed several threads of enquiry which were designed to lead the viewer to the conclusion that there's no such thing as the Loch Ness Monster.

THE HUNTER

Well, not quite. Arrayed against a line up of sceptically minded guests was Gordon Holmes, the one person who held out that a large creature of some description inhabited Loch Ness. Gordon's 2007 video naturally featured, but he was also filmed pursuing his latest hunting ideas. That meant a foray along the shores of the loch at night time. I like that idea, I have promoted it on this blog many a time.

Gordon trained a high powered lamp onto the loch in the hope of catching a sight of the creature. Quite how he planned to deploy the device and capture evidence was not made clear, but more power to his elbow, I say. His well known video was discussed, with the theory that it (and a nearby, similar disturbance) was the now ubiquitous seal. Gordon himself is not of this opinion. He thinks he filmed two members of a species of giant eel.

However, the main narration thread involved well known sceptic, Adrian Shine, as we were taken through a brief history of the phenomenon and Adrian's theories on it. Cue a whistle stop tour starting at St. Columba and spending an inordinate amount of time at the "Plesiosaur" and "Surgeon's Photo" stations.

Perhaps it is just my well worn familiarity with the subject, but it was a bit tedious watching the plesiosaur being trotted out again and being shot down to the exclusion of all other potential candidates. Again, no mention of the other alternatives, giving the unseasoned viewer the impression that if you disprove plesiosaurs, you disproved everything animal.

I hesitate to mention the Atlantic Sturgeon which inevitably gets mentioned when Adrian is around. But, you bet, it got the mandatory mention, but there is no evidence that such a creature has ever been in Loch Ness, and even if it had, Adrian himself admits it only forms a tiny part of the sightings database.

So, of all the various pieces of film and photo evidence that have passed our eyes, which ones were analysed? Only those which suited the sceptical theme and that meant the Surgeon's Photo and the 1972 Flipper Photo. I don't doubt this story is of interest to those unfamiliar with the subject, so I guess they are always going to turn up. My only wish is that the main man who actually exposed the photograph, Alastair Boyd, got the credit or, better still, did the talking himself.

One thing I did find interesting about the flipper analysis (by Mike Hartshorne), was his attempts to enhance the original photo using modern image processing software. Even this could not match the retouched flipper photo, which is not surprising.

ANALYSIS OF SIGHTINGS

Speaking of databases, Charles Paxton's ongoing work on a comprehensive sightings analysis was featured, and this was new to Nessie documentaries. The program promised some breakthrough evidence, which I shall come to later. I had attended Charles' recent talk on the same database work, so some of what was said was interesting, but Charles had already told me he planned to publish his findings in an appropriate science journal.

In other words, this documentary was probably not the prime place for full disclosure. Either way, Charles said his work neither proves or disproves the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. However, the multi-hump genre was mentioned as one statistical cluster than predominates in calm weather.

One may assume that was the case because multiple humps are harder to spot in rough, choppy waters, but this was taken to be a sign that all such cases were boat wakes. A seeming contradiction then ensued. The documentary switched to the FloWave machine run by Edinburgh University which can reproduce various wave effects. This mechanical tank allowed waves of various forms to be driven against each other to produce standing waves.

We were told that the topology of Loch Ness allowed for boat wakes to reflect off the loch sides to produce these effects. But I don't think that is the case, more likely the waves just dissipate as they reach the shores. Any standing wave effects are more likely to come from interacting boat wakes.

Those seals got a mention again when Charles told us the average reported length of a sighted object was 16 feet. This seemed good enough for Adrian to raise the matter of seals as a source of single hump reports and even the odd land sighting. He mentioned the creature moving in front of pony carts, which I take to be a reference to the 1919 Jock Forbes story. He had estimated the creature slithering past them to be at least 12 feet long. But seals are only a few feet long, so we are assured he was way out in his estimate - despite having the width of the road as a ruler!

A MENAGERIE OF EXPLANATIONS 

Adrian then declared there was one or more seals in Loch Ness during the manic year of 1934 to keep the story going. Again, there is no evidence that seals were in Loch Ness during that period. These inquisitive, frequent surfacers would have most surely been seen and photographed while Loch Ness was under intense scrutiny. Adrian states there were reports of seals but does not mention who and where.

But I suspect one of them was the claimed sighting by notorious hoaxer, Marmaduke Wetherell, creator of the dubious hippo tracks and the Surgeon's photograph. I would not trust his account any further than I could throw him and the seal theory was a tactic of  his employer, the Daily Mail, to gracefully opt out of the hunt after the debacle of the hippopotamus tracks.

I'll tell you what though, Loch Ness seemed to be host to all manner of creatures between 1933 and 1934. We have Adrian's sturgeon and seals on patrol but we also had Albert Jack's swimming elephants.

Why this theory was included in the program was beyond me, it is so daft that even the narrator felt compelled to argue against it. The theory was that Bertram Mills would take his circus elephants for dips in Loch Ness and fool a lot of people into thinking the back and trunk were the classic head-neck.

It's a pity they didn't try and argue against the other sceptical theories to add some balance to the program. In fact, it would have been better to edit out Albert Jack's ramblings and get Gordon Holmes (or someone else) to have a go!

MASS HYSTERIA

That brings us to a fellow called Chris French. He is Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London and he is a vocal, ardent and prestigious sceptic. I have seen him before on other programs debunking other mysteries, so I presume the Loch Ness Monster is not his specialist subject. His assignment was to go beyond the seals, waves and elephants to add the "icing" of misperception.

First of all, he went through the expectations of our brains, false memories, the suggestibility of memory and the influence of cultural imagery. The implication of this was that the brain is not a perfect recording device and will fill in any gaps with preconceived notions about the Loch Ness Monster.

In an attempt to demonstrate how memories can be manipulated, French set up an experiment where pairs of volunteers watched a staged robbery, discussed the contents of the video and were then tested on their recall.

As it turned out, one of the pair was a "stooge" who would suggest false information to the other person. As a result, the majority of volunteers got some things wrong. They thought a gun was there when it was not, likewise somebody stacking shelves and a certain type of jacket were not there.

What was then attempted looked like a sceptic's version of "bait and switch". The robbery video was replaced by an object on Loch Ness. The stooge feeding false information was replaced by the plesiosaur imagery witnesses allegedly carry in their minds. We were then invited to accept that this is how birds, logs and waves become dinosaurs.

But in a narrative twist, Charles Paxton revealed that comparisons of retold eyewitness testimonies, often decades apart, were unexpectedly consistent and did not grow with the telling. Charles regarded this as a "mystery" and we did not get the pleasure of seeing Mr. French trying to explain this away.

My own view of this is simple. Dramatic events, such as seeing a real, large creature will burn into the memory more readily and have a greater permanence. You will know this yourselves, memorable events, be they good or bad, are retained better in our memories. Why Mr. French did not address this as a real aspect of eyewitness perception is also a "mystery" to me.

As for the attempt to reframe the experiment in a Loch Ness setting, I am far from convinced. A dark object against the back drop of uncomplicated, homogeneous water is not going to tax the memory as much as a complex robbery scene in a shop. A supposed idea of a dinosaur is a far cry from someone beside you feeding misinformation. Moreover, this theory does not explain close up sightings where opportunities for memory gaps are at a minimum. And, lastly, the theory is unfalsifiable, which is not where objective, critical thinking should end up.

FILMS

But Chris French left his most dubious theory to the end and this was our supposed revelation from Charles Paxton's database. Using an annual chart of sightings since 1933, he claimed that the number of sightings rose and fell with various monster films. The obvious one is King Kong from 1933, but I have covered that canard in a previous article.

The other mentioned film was one I had never heard of called "The Giant Behemoth" which was released in 1959. Now sightings subsequently increased into the 1960s, but we don't need a little watched B-movie to explain that coincidence. The Dinsdale film of 1960 and the arrival of the LNIB in 1962 to improve the collecting of sightings is all you need to know.

It was also mentioned that the much watched "X-Files" was responsible for an uptick in Nessie sightings. However, this run of 202 episodes ran from 1993 to 2002, which is a pretty broad spread for making any comparisons. Moreover, not many of these episodes dealt with lake cryptids. Ultimately, I would like to see his graph of supposed correlations and particularly how well it stacks against monster films which see no increase in sightings.

So, after an hour of trying to convince me that Nessie did not exist, I still believe Nessie exists. Then again, I am a diehard who will fight his corner. The man on the Clapham Omnibus may come to a different conclusion, especially if the argument was as imbalanced as it was on Channel 5.

As the program drew to a close, Adrian Shine reminded us of those three sonar contacts obtained during Operation Deepscan. He said he still did not know what they were, but that this did not mean they were monsters. This was probably the nearest admission from "Missing Evidence" that there is yet a mystery to be solved in Loch Ness.

The First Book on Nessie

A Happy New Year to any visitors as we look into Nessie past and present again.

I am an avid collector of Nessie books and naturally the very first publication on Nessie is one that would excite the imagination. Unless someone wishes to correct me, I believe there were four books of varying sizes and depth published on the monster in 1934. I am aware on none being published in 1933.

After comparing and contrasting these four books I believe the first was the one entitled The Home of the Loch Ness Monster written by Lieutenant Colonel W. H. Lane and published in March or April 1934. The publication date is not given but a foreword by Mr. Lane is dated 11th March 1934 from his home on the shores of Loch Ness at Tigh-na-Bruach. I published a blog on the author himself previously which you can read here. The cover of the book is shown below.



It is a small work of eighteen pages printed by Grant & Murray Limited of Edinburgh in conjunction with the Moray Press. There is one illustration and one map contained therein and there are two themes to the book as the title suggests. One is the monster and the other is its home, Loch Ness.

To the first subject, Lane devotes half the pages and puts up a defense of his theory that the creature is a giant salamander. To back up this view from eyewitness testimony he cites the case of a witness to the creature in the River Ness in February 1932 who describes seeing a six to eight foot beast which looked like a crocodile, but had "wicked pig-like eyes" on the top of its head. It had a long jaw and a number of round teeth visible filling the mouth. It was noted, critically to Lane, that it had no neck to speak of and had to half-turn its body when it turned its head. It slowly paddled upstream against the strong spate of the river and swam out of sight.

We now know the witness was a Miss K. MacDonald and the matter of short/no neck appearances has happened a number of times in Loch Ness lore. I would not presume to suggest we have two mysterious beasts in Loch Ness but not knowing with any certainty what the monster is leaves such a question very much open.

Lane then addresses the supposed long neck and head and examines the Spicer land sighting but asks us to consider that it was the tail and not the neck being observed there and elsewhere since it could not be ascertained with certainty that any eye nose or nostril was visible - which is a reasonable argument given the often breif and distant nature of a typical head and neck sighting.

Finally he (unfortunately) uses the now discredited tracks found by Wetherell as a proof since they fit so well with the spoor of the salamander.

The second part flows from the first when he asks how such a beast got into the loch and here he moves into his other interest of ancient history. His map puts forth the theory that there was once a grand trunk river that flowed along the great glen and formed tributaries which we now know today as the Tay, Tyne and even Thames and so on.

This he believed to have been a pre-glacial feature inhabited by man along its mighty banks. After this he discusses the possible migratory patterns of man and animals as they recolonized the area after the great melt. He adds that the North Sea was once a plain which this river flowed through as men and animals followed its banks back to Scotland.

Make of that what you will, I am no expert in Highland geology. But the book takes its place in Loch Ness lore and my own quest to obtain a copy was a long wait. I saw it first for sale on eBay perhaps in 2005 but was outbid to the tune of hundreds of pounds by a more enthusiastic collector. When another copy appeared on eBay a year or two ago, I was prepared to bid high but ended up getting it for £10! All good things come to them that wait ...

I shall look at the second book on Nessie ever published in a later blog.

Review of Lochend - Monster Hunting on the Run

 

Joe Zarzynski, seasoned hunter of the monsters of Lake Champlain and Loch Ness has published his autobiography and I review it here. I pre-ordered this in mid-December when it was announced, but it took until a couple of weeks ago before it finally arrived. As the title suggests, it is a biography that spans two worlds, running and hunting. The running refers to Joe's love for marathons and the other was his second love of cryptid hunting.

To be more specific, Joe crafts his story around an ultra-marathon run he did from Fort Augustus to Lochend in 1984. An ultra-marathon is running a distance beyond the 26 miles of the classic marathon. Before that, Joe tells us how he got into the two pursuits around the same time and how they grew together as he ran marathons into the 1980s with his interest in cryptozoology beginning in the mid 1970s and developed into expeditions at Loch Ness and his more local Lake Champlain for at least another ten years.

Joe got to Loch Ness in 1975 and thus began a series of trips as he tells us about the various characters we have got to know about through other books, videos and so on. The list includes Gregory Brussey, Alex Campbell, Tim Dinsdale, Robert Rines, Roy Mackal, Adrian Shine, Winifred Cary (whom I mentioned in my last article) and others.

We are regaled with tales of Joe working with these people and their projects and some helping him at Lake Champlain. Add to this his trips to other lochs reputed to have monsters and we have an enjoyable mosaic of tales to read. Indeed, the chapters recounting the monster and people landmarks along his marathon run of 1984 are also informative and entertaining. Indeed, Joe may be the only person to have seen both Nessie and Champ!

Joe eventually moved into marine archaeology but never lost his belief in cryptids or the taste for the hunt. His later interest in underwater wrecks was preceded by his sonar and scuba searches which gives us interesting insights into the sunken Wellington bomber of Loch Ness, Marty Klein's stone artifacts and the Loch Ness Monster prop lost in the loch around 1969.

Now I am no fan of marathon running or athletics in general. I only ever really took an interest in the 100m and 200m sprints and watching the likes of Alan Wells, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt. One thing that did chime was Joe's 1984 Loch Ness run and his encounter with the cars and lorries racing down the road. Joe tells how he had to dodge these vehicles as he ran.

I can totally concur as I once had to walk from a parking layby to a spot of interest a couple of miles down the A82 and just opposite Foyers. That was not an easy trip as I had to keep a keen eye out for approaching vehicles and moving quickly to the safest spot. That may have been jumping over a wall into the bush and grass or just stepping into the ditch as there was nothing resembling a path. The things you do in the name of research.

So runs the story of Joe Zarzynski, marathon running and Loch Ness. Joe speculated that he may have been the first person to run a marathon along Loch Ness. He may well have been, it was not something I would know of, but I thought I would check the newspaper archives for any predecessors. Admittedly, most long distance athletes were of the aquatic variety as various people have swam the length of the loch. There was even a diver who walked along Loch Ness underwater!

However, there may have been at least one person who ran the length of Loch Ness back in February 1960. At that time, the owner of the Butlin holiday resorts had put up a £5,000 prize for a national walk from John O' Groats to Lands End. The News Chronicle for 29th February gives an update on the competition:

Late last night Robinson and John Grundy, from Wakefield, Yorks, were both at Fort Augustus. 19 miles farther along the loch. about 150 miles from the start Robinson arrived at 8:50. after covering the last 42 miles in 11 hours 40 minutes; Grundy, a marathon runner. who runs all the way, arrived at 8:12 after taking 8 hours. 20 minutes for the same stretch. Robinson. who lives at Maidenhead, Berks, was a member of the Oxford University cross-country team in 1953. 

So it appears a John Grundy ran 42 miles from Dingwall to Fort Augustus 24 years before Joe, though it surprised me he was allowed to run and not walk. Well, you could argue it wasn't a marathon along Loch Ness, I will leave others to define what constitutes a marathon run.

The book is accurate and balanced throughout, the only error of note that I saw was that he placed the fake Marmaduke Wetherell hippo prints at Dores, when it was actually further south near Foyers. It is apparent Joe still believes in the likelihood of large creatures in Loch Ness and Lake Champlain and I would like to have read more about what he classes as the best sightings, photos, etc from his perspective as a seasoned monster hunter. I guess that includes such items as the Mansi photograph.

All in all, a book I recommend to Nessie and Champ lovers.

Comments can also be made at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog Facebook group.

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com

The Carcass Problem (Part 1)

Is there a Loch Ness Monster? Does anything swim in the dark depths of that Scottish lake? The proofs offered range from controversial photographs and films to close up sightings by various people of varying observational skills. However, the gold standard that will finally convince the majority is a piece of the monster itself. 

Once you deliver that pound of flesh to the laboratory of science, it is no longer a case of "if" but "what".  To be fair to scientists, that has been pretty much the stance of zoologists since this mystery came to the public's attention 80 years ago. Admittedly though, some have departed from this strict methodology. Dr. Maurice Burton, who worked at the Natural History Museum, was one of the early advocates of some large creature in Loch Ness. As we know, he eventually retracted such views.

There was also Dr. George Zug, curator of Reptiles and Amphibians at the renowned Smithsonian Institute in Washington. Having examined the 1975 underwater photographs of the Academy of Applied Sciences, he said: "I believe these data indicate the presence of large animals in Loch Ness, but are insufficient to identify them."

But, in general, zoological scientists demand a live specimen or a verifiable sample of a dead animal. From these, morphological and genetic analysis leads to the creature being classified and taking its place in the "official" tree of life. Clearly, the Loch Ness Monster still swims outside of that system, despite premature names such as Nessiteras Rhomboteryx.

Visit a few cryptozoological forums and it won't take long to find skeptics deriding any talk of large, unknown creatures in lakes, forests or mountains which do not provide the body. The Loch Ness Monster is no different and the question has to be asked, why has no physical evidence for this creature turned up after eighty years of searching?

The critics say it is because there is no Loch Ness Monster. This blog takes a different answer to that question. But for part one of this subject, I look back at some claimed carcass finds in decades past. To this end, I recommend Glen Vaudrey's "Sea Serpent Carcasses: Scotland: from the Stronsa Monster to Loch Ness".

Glen's focus is on the various bodies that have washed ashore on Scotland's coasts over centuries past such as the Stronsay Monster of 1808 and the strange Gourock beast of 1942. Most of these have or will turn out to be the ubiquitous Basking Shark carcass, others may live on in mystery.

Firstly, in terms of folklore, we have a few tales of Kelpies being killed or captured. Those captured were press ganged into forced labour and one tale of a dead one describes it as assuming a jelly like form by the morning. None of these tales centre on Loch Ness.

But carcass stories from around Loch Ness take up about a tenth of the book and range from whole bodies to bits and pieces. The oldest one is surprisingly from 1868 when a strange looking body was found washed up at the top end of the loch. I covered this one in a previous article and it may surprise people that such a stunt was pulled  65 years before the Nessie story began in 1933. But monster tales have been around longer than that and evidently some waggish boat crew took advantage of this.

So a monster hoax presumes a monster tradition, and that carried on through to 1933 when Marmaduke Wetherell found his fabricated tracks on the loch side. This is not strictly carcass material, but residual traces of monsters such as tracks or faeces could, in theory, provide DNA material. I mused on this subject in this article.

The most well known Nessie "carcass" is the one which was supposedly found at Loch Ness on April 1st 1972 and was apprehended by the police by the Forth Road Bridge as its owners headed south. An examination proved it to be nothing more than a dead elephant bull seal with some cosmetic alterations. The date also gave away the motives of the perpetrators.

There are other stories you can consult in the book such as the dead conger eels found in 2001, the plesiosaur fossil vertebrae of 2003 and the alleged tooth of 2005. But there are two stories not mentioned in Dale's book which I cover here. 

The first is the alleged carcass spotted by Robert Rines' team in 2001 as they sent a ROV down into the mouth of Urquhart Bay (below). It was found at a depth of about 330 feet. Now it has been speculated that it has a morphological resemblance to the Loch Ness Monster and that is conceded. 

I myself think it is nothing more than tree debris. A lot of logs and branches make their way down from the rivers Enrick and Coiltie into the bay. Moreover, the size of the object is not stated and as far as I know, no attempt has been made to recover it.

The second concerns the object in the postcard below.

Now the story of this foot was certainly doing the rounds in the late 1950s and into the 1960s and was presented as proof of the Loch Ness Monster. Tim Dinsdale recounts looking at it during his second expedition to the loch in July 1960. You can read his fuller account in his book "Loch Ness Monster". However, he found it at a house in Drumnadrochit and the owner allowed him to examine it. The foot was well preserved and measured thirteen by seven inches.

It was apparently found by Urquhart Castle, but Tim was in little doubt it was the foot of an alligator or crocodile. He speculated it may have been from the Gharial species, of which we have a picture below to compare feet. Also note the long snout which Tim speculated could be mistaken for a long necked monster!

But Tim (like myself) speculated this may actually have been a genuine carcass find at Loch Ness. Dinsdale refers to the story related by Rupert T. Gould in his 1934 book, "The Loch Ness Monster and Others" (page 140). Gould tells of a story from a Mrs. J. S. Fraser who was told to watch out for the crocodile by the shore of Dores in 1888. This was apparently due to a South African who had settled in a house between Dores and Foyers and had brought three young crocodiles. When they became too big to look after, he arranged for them to go to a zoo, only for one to escape into the loch.

A different slant on this story is given in a letter by David Murray Rose to The Scotsman newspaper of 30th November 1934. He tells of how three young crocodiles were presented to the Scientific Institute at Inverness by a John Fraser of Charlestown, Carolina in 1827. Two of them died and the other was placed in Loch Ness  at some unspecified time. Rose speculates whether the longevity of crocodiles saw this one survive to that present day.

In fact, one crocodile was definitely seen in Loch Ness in 1938 as this article from the Scotsman shows!

Gould also makes mention of a crocodile like skull that was found in the waters of the River Shiel in Loch Moidart some years before 1933. This is a long way from Loch Ness but interestingly feeds into that other Water Horse body of water - Loch Shiel. Perhaps one loch monster has a carcass to speak of?

Such is the story, but one must wonder how long a crocodile would survive in Loch Ness? The aforementioned foot seems to have been found in 1937 in the waters of Urquhart Bay, according to an article I found from the Aberdeen Press and Journal of May 8th 1958 (below). Could this have been the foot of this escaped crocodile? Perhaps, perhaps not. I leave it to the reader to form their own opinion. It may yet turn out to be nothing more than a trophy foot brought in from a foreign trader.

In conclusion, Loch Ness has its fair share of carcass stories, but all are hoaxes with the possible exception of our crocodile foot. I am not suggesting Nessie is a crocodile, but two independent sources suggest a crocodile may have once inhabited Loch Ness for some period of time. One wonders where this foot is now? It makes for a great story and a nice exhibit for one of the exhibition centres at Loch Ness!

Part two of this article gets down to the nitty gritty question. Why has no Loch Ness Monster carcass been found? There are three possible answers to this, I concentrate on one of them next time.

A 1934 Book on The Loch Ness Monster

I just wanted to mention that Karl Shuker has updated his bibliography on books devoted to the Loch Ness Monster. By way of introduction, he mentions the first book on Nessie by W. H. Lane. For further information on this book and its author, you can view my previous articles here and here. (regular reader Steve Plambeck will warm to Colonel Lane and his giant salamander theory.).

Karl's list is a bit different to mine in that he includes non-fiction juvenile and non-english books. I don't, but I do include books which have sizable sections on Nessie while Karl is only interested in books devoted to the Loch Ness Monster. Between us, I think we have covered all the bases on what has been published. Well, that is not quite true, there are always general books out there which have a chapter on the Loch Ness Monster, these may well exceed what we have listed.

One title most of all caught my eye and that is Karl's up and coming book called "Here's Nessie!" which is a compilation of his writings on the famous beastie.  I look forward to this and Paul Harrison's forthcoming biography on Frank Searle in the months ahead!

While I am here, I promised in that first book article to look at the second ever book on the Loch Ness Monster. This was a 16 page booklet entitled "The Mysterious Monster of Loch Ness" published by the Fort Augustus Abbey Press and authored by a W.D.Hamilton and J.Hughes.

Unlike Lane's first ever book on the Loch Ness Monster, I have never seen the second book on public sale. I personally had to obtain a photocopy of an original held in Edinburgh. If it ever turns up on eBay, I expect it to go for hundreds of pounds. The authors are not mentioned in the book itself, but rather from the library catalogue. However, Michael Turnbull's book "Abbey Boys" which relates the history of the Fort Augustus Abbey schools, mentions them as teachers during the 1930s.

The book makes no mention of anything beyond May 1934, so I presume it was published around June 1934 putting it a few weeks ahead of Rupert Gould's better known book, "The Loch Ness Monster and Others". Proceeding in a chronological manner, the booklet goes through St.Columba, the Willie MacGruer land sighting around the First World War and the 1932 "crocodile" sighting in the River Ness.

A further note of interest states that the rumour of a released crocodile dates back to about 1913. I covered this persistent crocodile story in this article. Wetherell's infamous spoors are mentioned, but it is more interesting to note that this was contrasted with what was stated as the favoured theory of the locals which was of a "bearded eel".

The booklet goes a bit strange when it mentions strange toothmarks in sheep and deer carcasses but then states they were discovered to be those of a walrus! That in itself would be an unusual event as would be the tale of a famous deep-sea diver finding great honeycombed caverns in the gloom of the loch.

Having run off a few stories of other lake cryptids, the authors make no commitment as to what the creature may be and give a list of various candidates. The one thing that puzzles me from the list is what is a "megovia"?! The discourse ends with the two stories often given as the origins of the name of the loch.

PUBLIC NOTICE: Can "P.C." email me at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com about the painting they sent a comment to me about.

The Photographic Problem

Take a look at the photo montage above. Do you believe all the pictures are of the Loch Ness Monster? If so, you are likely what they call a gullible believer. If you think none of them are of the Loch Ness Monster, you are likely a die hard sceptic, whether you say you are a believer or not. I say that because over 85 years and a swathe of good sightings, some of these will be converted into photographs or films. There will be a minimum greater than zero, if you say there are zero pictures, you are effectively saying there is no Loch Ness Monster (this is in distinction to the argument that there should be more pictures which I discuss elsewhere).

How do many people today sit with this logical tension? The answer is due to the assault on these pictures by a band of die hard sceptics dedicated to the task of debunking the Loch Ness Monster. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, most photographs purporting to be of the creature were passed through in a largely uncritical manner by Loch Ness researchers of the time. Or at the very least, they kept quiet about the ones they had reservations about.

Fast forward to the 80s and 90s and we see a form of historical revisionism as those who once believed but no longer believed, attempted to align these photographs and films with their new worldview. Theories were formulated to explain away such pictures in terms of boat wakes, birds, dogs or just plain fakery. Since this was a process which lacked a negative feedback loop, it grew into the bloated form of lazy scepticism we see today.

As we progress in the new millennium it is time for a new form of revisionism which is sceptical of the sceptics and the tools and techniques they employ. This blog has attempted that over the last eight years and one would like to think others are involved too. But what is the problem I allude to? I shall explain in general terms and then apply it to one specific photograph that has recently gained attention.

I titled this article after a chapter of the same name in Ted Holiday's 1968 book, "The Great Orm of Loch Ness". His problem concerned the difficulty of obtaining good photographs at the loch. This article is concerned with the ease of obtaining bad explanations of photographs. Let us start with the example of the Surgeon's Photograph. Prior to the expose by Alastair Boyd and David Martin, several sceptical explanations were offered to explain what had been photographed. We had an otter's tail, a water bird, the branch of a tree and a fake model.

Logically, of those four theories, at best three are wrong, at worst they are all wrong. It wasn't until the Boyd-Martin expose that we got to see who was swimming naked when the tide went out and it was the model theory that won. The other people, despite their detailed and convincing arguments were simply wrong. No doubt they had their followers, but it didn't matter how convincing they came across or the evidence they produced - they were as wrong as wrong can be.

Sadly that is the ongoing state of affairs with Nessie photographs. People make arguments which sound convincing, but may not actually add up to a hill of beans because no one can prove that is what actually happened. When people go around promoting their pet theory as if they had been there when it was being perpetrated, they should remember Burton's otter tail and Mackal's water bird.

Although hoaxes are normally undesirable events which tarnish the reputation of Loch Ness investigation, they do serve a useful purpose in testing the robustness of sceptical theorising. As we just saw with the Surgeon's Photo, if Boyd and Martin had not published, all four theories would have been considered as viable and plausible to this day.

Another chance to see who was swimming butt naked came with the George Edwards photograph of 2012 which was exposed as a fake fibreglass prop by Steve Feltham. Prior to this revelation, another local researcher, but die hard sceptic, had published his own mathematical analysis and concluded the object was 23 inches across above the water.

Without Steve Feltham, people would have concluded this other researcher had with the application of science, crafted an unassailable theory. How wrong they were as the actual exposed part in the water turned out to be 46 inches long. The mathematical wizardry was not 10% out or even 20% out, but 100% out. How many other sceptical theories are sitting pretty claiming they have solved this and that monster picture, but actually are as useful as a chocolate teapot?

THE FALSIFIABILITY PROBLEM

I will revisit this principle as we apply these thoughts to a recent sceptical analysis of a Nessie photograph from 2006, but I move onto another problem with scepticism and that is the problem of unfalsifiability. To put it in a nutshell, no matter what picture you put before sceptics, they will always find an explanation for it. This is a violation of the scientific principle of unfalsifiability which requires that any theory must require a test or experiment to disprove its viability.

To put it another way, if one asked a sceptic what kind of photograph would prove immune to any of their explanations, you may not get an answer. Even a close up picture of the monster, nostrils and all, may just elicit the response, "good CGI picture". I would go further and say that if a genuine picture of a large unknown creature was taken, we would get a raft of theories explaining why this is anything other than what is shows!

I ask you what use such a theory is if it always produces a sceptical result? It is of no use and is just a shell game. Now we know that photographs of misidentified objects and downright hoaxes exist and some kind of scrutiny needs to be applied to them. However, the problem is not so much the theory but the warped version of it applied in an unscientific and biased manner by certain people.

The final point I would make in this regard is how, once formulated, such explanations are handled in the context of Occam's Razor which states that the theory with the least assumptions should be accepted. Here some pseudo-intellectual pressure is applied when it is argued that since a sceptical theory requires less assumptions than a monster theory for a given picture then it should be given priority.

The problem here is that since it will be argued that a large creature in Loch Ness is a big assumption, then people will be led to always accept a sceptical theory over a monster one, even if they sound flawed. The flaws are papered over by invoking the "big assumption". The truth is that if a theory with less assumptions is flawed, then it is just as wrong.

DEGREES OF PROOF

Now I am not saying you cannot prove a photograph to be a hoax. This has been done in various ways. The first line of proof is participant confession. We had this with the Surgeon's Photo and Christian Spurling. I would prefer a corroborating confession and we got that with the 1975 newspaper article citing Ian Wetherell's confession and his part in it. Such confessions are few and far between in the Nessie world.

The second is physically direct evidence of fraud. There is no better example of this than Frank Searle's infamous 1976 "Brontosaurus" picture where it was obvious to even the most gullible believer that Frank had superimposed a silhouette from a contemporary postcard onto the waters of the loch.

That is the closest one gets to empirical facts, but after that the "facts" weaken and become more indirect and circumstantial. In other words, they become deductional rather than empirical. At that level of proof, we have Anthony Shiels' infamous 1977 Nessie picture. Unlike Frank Searle, we have no model and no confession that he faked this photo. However, we have a taped confession of Shiels discussing how to fake sea serpent photographs and a confession that he faked a multi humped object in, ironically, Loch Shiel (below).

That is indirect evidence rather than direct evidence, but the waters begin to get murkier after this. One favoured mode of what is called indirect evidence is inconsistency of eyewitness testimony. This is a very contentious area of analysis which attempts to find contradiction in a testimony such as a time or a place. For example, the witness may say he was in such a place when the photo suggests he was elsewhere. They may say the event happened at such a time when the photo suggests the sun was in the wrong place for such a time.

Sceptical interpretations will seize on these apparent discrepancies and say "It looks like they lied about this, so how can we trust them on the actual photograph?".  But it has been demonstrated that such an approach can often be ambiguous and easily challenged.

When a photograph of a curious fin like object in Loch Ness was published back in 2016, the aforementioned researcher who erred with the Edwards hump declared he did not think it was taken at Loch Ness (due to the lack of background hills) and was likely a dolphin. When Steve Feltham produced the uncropped picture, the insinuation that the photographer was lying was retracted and the dolphin transformed into an osprey. But what if there had been no background hills, the sceptic's almost dogmatic pronouncement would have seemed important.

Likewise, the same researcher took the Lachlan Stuart photograph to task because he claimed the sun was visible above Urquhart Bay which would have been impossible if Stuart had taken the picture when he claimed. However, comparison shots done by myself showed that the bright patches were easily reproduced by clouds above Urquhart Bay reflecting light from the sun when it is on the opposite side of the loch. Again, a dogmatic decree becomes an easily challenged opinion.

The examples could go on as the analysis dilutes to the point where empirical fact goes from deduction and onto pure speculation. Example of speculation include objections that the testimony of the photographer does not sound right. By that one may produce objections such as "why did he do that instead of this" or "why did he not do that instead of this". Such low levels of analysis do not need empirical or deduced facts and are especially useful to debunkers when the person is no longer around to answer and silence is taken to mean guilt.

These are the levels of analysis and they are quite legitimate to use so long as one recognises their relative strengths, the problem arises when there is no one to cross examine them when the researcher is preaching to the converted.

THE REPRODUCIBILITY PROBLEM

Perhaps one of the biggest issues regarding investigation of cryptid images are reproductions. By that I mean experiments where investigators attempt to reproduce an original image using what they think were the original hoaxing ingredients. This has been attempted at various times over the decades with various famous pictures of the Loch Ness Monster.

Some examples will suffice. A few years back an attempt was made to reproduce the 1951 Lachlan Stuart photograph with its famous three humps and head. Since a Richard Frere had claimed that Stuart had confessed to him that hay bales and tarpaulin were used, these constituted the main ingredients for this particular experiment. It is important where possible, to use items which were readily available at the time with no modern contrivances involved.

The results were arguable for reasons I laid out in my response to that staging. The bales did not look like the triangular peaked humps of the original and there was no third hump reproduced raising questions as to whether a third bale would have sunk, bringing the whole experiment into question.

The Tim Dinsdale film has also had the reproduction rule run over it with distant boats being filmed with an original Bolex cine camera and film back in the 1990s. Maurice Burton attempted to reproduce the Peter O'Connor picture with inflated bags and sticks. The Surgeon's Photo has been the focus of floating necks on styrofoam and other materials. And to bring things right up to date, the recent debate over the anonymous 2006 picture is discussed below.

Problems may arise as to what constitutes original hoax ingredients and a lack of such knowledge may lead to researcher bias selecting the materials that produce the best results without any regard as to whether they had anything to do with the alleged hoax. In the Stuart case, we have an unverified claim by Frere, it's the best they have, so they go with it. Others have less to work with.

But the problem I allude to is one of psychological manipulation rather than any degree of proof discussed previously. Sceptics love to craft these reproductions, trying to get them to look as much like the original, like some artist copying the Mona Lisa. The trouble is, a very good reproduction of the Mona Lisa does not make the original a fake.

Perhaps some will claim that a decent reproduction of an original is proof that this is how the photograph was done. Actually, all it proves is that they can produce a photograph that has a resemblance to the original. Whether the original picture was created using this technique cannot be proven from such an experiment.

For example, suppose we raise further theories that the Lachlan Stuart photo was faked with three airbags or three rocks (as implied by Ronald Binns). People may discuss the merits of either theory and similar looking photos may be reproduced. However, at least two of these three theories are completely wrong even if convincing reproductions are made! The only way to know which, if any, of the three techniques is true is further evidence as discussed in the previous section, be it a confession from one of the participants or physical evidence found near the scene.

Note I am not saying that I have disproved the meaningful use of such reproductions, only that another level of proof is required to corroborate the use of the image. Beyond that, it is a matter of opinion how to interpret the reproduction.

Ultimately, I am fairly convinced that even if a genuine monster photo was presented to a group of sceptics, they would come up with a theory as to how it was faked and they may even go out and stage a similar looking picture. What does that say about the whole process? I think the operative word is again "unfalsifiable" and in this age of CGI, sceptics have a safety net to fall back on if things get too tough to debunk.

A REPLY TO AN ANALYSIS OF THE 2006 PHOTOGRAPH

Now having said all that as a backdrop to the photograph from 2006 that I recently published, there has been various opinions offered as to the nature of this picture. The one I will focus on here is Steve Feltham's reply which basically states it is a monster shaped piece of bird excrement on a window photographed over a passing boat but not its wake, this giving the impression of a monster on the move.

This opinion was not the first as another person, Aleksandar Lovcanski, had suggested a similar theory some days before, but using a monster cut out stuck on a window. Indeed, this is all rather reminiscent of the 1955 Peter MacNab photograph which debunkers to this day claim is no more than a black cut out over another boat wake passing the castle.

Nessies on windows is nothing new. I took the picture below in 2014 as I took a ride on the Cruise Loch Ness boat out of Fort Augustus. It's a little trick for tourists to snap pictures to kid on people back home. Obviously, no one is fooled by it and neither is it intended so. But can you fool people in  a serious way with this technique?

So Steve has put out an article detailing his investigation which you can find here. In summary, he thinks the photo was taken from the windows of a rented house near the Clansman Hotel based on what he perceives as similar foreground vegetation and some other cues. he also attempted his own monster cut out experiment which I shall address below. Steve is pretty confident he has the solution, but I am not so convinced and will begin with this photograph he took from the rental house.

The first thing I did with this photograph was to overlay the original 2006 picture on top of it, line up the major topological features and see how the two compare. The result is shown below and presents some difficulties. The first thing to note is that the tree which is claimed to be the same as the vegetation in the 2006 picture is not in the expected position in the overlay.

As you can see, the 2018 tree is well to the right of the 2006 vegetation (be it tree or bush). Based on that discrepancy, I do not accept that these are the same objects and therefore we must look elsewhere for the location of the 2006 picture. We are also told that the second item of vegetation seen in the 2006 picture is located just behind a large hedge which now dominates the foreground.

Again, there is little information in the 2018 comparison photo to make that deduction since the object is largely obscured by the hedge and so no compelling conclusion can be drawn. There is also the matter of that hedge. Obviously, no hedge is present in the 2006 picture and so we are asked to assume that it was not there or not high enough back then. Should we make that assumption or should we ask for more proof of this assertion? Be that as it may, the picture does not square up for other reasons.

In fact, comparing trees in pictures is not the easy task it is made out to be. We are led to believe that the twelve year gap between the original and comparison pictures is a matter of no consequence. Look again at the two trees in the overlay. They are practically at the same height, should that be accepted after a time gap of twelve years?

I don't know what the trees are in either photo, they could be birch or hazel, in which case, annual growth rates can be from 1.5 to 3 feet per year. You can do the maths for a 12 year growth period and again conclude it is unlikely these two trees are the same tree. One could also take trimming into account but still come up with an essentially unknowable scenario.

Steve also questions whether any of the nearby parking spots on the road were suitable due to the background tree heights. The first point to make here is that the height of the trees will again be different compared to 12 years ago, be it due to growth or any trimming done. Secondly, we do not know exactly where the car stopped to take the photograph.  That requires further investigation with the proviso that this 12 year gap has to be taken into account.

PAPER NESSIES

That alone could conclude this analysis, but there are some other items to discuss. Steve went further in his analysis by trying to demonstrate how such an image may be produced. He glued a paper cutout of a notional monster onto his car window and snapped pictures as boats passed and were obscured by the cutout. I compare one of his photos below with the 2006 picture (zoomed and flipped).

Now no one in principle is saying that you cannot produce a Nessie like object superimposed over a boat wake. Indeed, that accusation has been around since sceptics turned their attention to the MacNab photograph. However, that principle has two requisite components - reproducibility and repeatability.

In terms of reproducibility, the question is asked whether the reproduced image has the same "look and feel" of the original. Looking at the two pictures above, the answer is clearly "No" as the reproduction is of an inferior quality and is obviously a fake. The retort may come that it was not the intention to fully reproduce the original, to which one can legitimately ask how much quality needs to be lost before the reproduction experiment is rejected? I suspect the answer to that depends on one's own bias.

In terms of repeatability, this is a requirement that the original tools are used to reproduce the original image. This is something that is often overlooked in modern analysis as corners are cut to produce an image with psychological impact. The issue here is that the initial reaction to the 2006 photo was that the blurred nature of the object suggested it was out of focus due to its proximity to the camera.

The reproduction here actually shows the overlaid object is not much less blurred that its surroundings. The point being that a digital camera from around 2006 may be a better candidate to resolve the issue of whether the blurring is due to motion or focus as well as inform on any other differences between itself and a modern camera.

In this case, the theory is that the opportunistic tourist was lucky enough to have a piece of monster shaped bird excrement on his window. The one thing I would point out here is to look again at the overlay picture (below) and you will see that a cruiser boat is passing very close to where the 2006 object is. Note how the object is not big enough to cover the boat and so one wonders what kind of boat it would have to cover and still produce a noticeable wake?

So a substitute method was used in the reproduction and thus we have no idea if the originally proposed method is actually viable. Is the original proposed scenario something you find on demand? I agree it is not and so we must logically take the position that the conclusion is "inconclusive" on whether the originally proposed method would work.

I hope to do some further onsite and offsite investigations on this photo in due time, so watch this space.


The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com