a b c Gerbic, Susan (February 3, 2017). "Local Skeptical Outreach & Activism: Monterey County SkeptiCamp". CSICOP. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on February 3, 2017 . Retrieved February 11, 2017. Let’s approach this like a normal social scientist would approach reviewing a student’s thesis. Here are the most significant repeating profile points with my critical commentary as to their potential strengths and shortcomings: You can also search for missing persons yourself, or provide information to law enforcement if you think you may have seen the missing person. One of the most famous is the case of Benjamin Bathurst, a British diplomat who vanished in 1809 while on a journey from Perugia to Vienna. To this day, no one knows what happened to him or where he went. And that’s just the first step. It’s quite possible that the population of people who visit national parks differs significantly from the whole population of the given states or countries under normal circumstances. The comparison actually needs to be made between the Missing 411 sample and what’s normal for national park visitors in general, as well as it needs to be made between the Missing 411 sample and a control sample of non-Missing 411 missing people, ideally controlled by location (park vs. rural vs. urban).

The cases of inside-out clothing in particular remind me of one potential UFO abduction case of Zigmund Adamski, which happened on the 6th of June 1980 in the U.K. It has many of the Missing 411 hallmarks — Adamski disappeared while on a walk and was last seen in the afternoon, only to turn up five days later, dead, on top of a coal pile located in a town twenty miles away. Naturally, without any explanation as to how he got there.While the circumstances surrounding each case are unique, there are some common factors that often contribute to a successful outcome. Even if the name was selected purely on the basis of bad feelings, it may indicate that dangerous terrain, gases, radiation, or infrasound can be found in the area. Something that could be invisible and undetectable without very specific instruments, but nevertheless entirely normal and real. And even if the name is just related to the remoteness, more remote and hard-to-get areas would mean the most difficult search environments. According to Paulides, every person should be found, especially if they are a small child or if they’re mentally or physically disabled and therefore presumably unable to travel long distances. Paulides also keeps mentioning that he doesn’t question the thoroughness of the searches or the dedication and skill of the searchers, or effectiveness of canines or helicopters with FLIR.

The books publicized the fact that the National Park Service does not keep a comprehensive list of people who go missing in parks and although there’s a database for criminal and incident reports, it’s underutilized and doesn’t interface with other criminal databases.Perhaps the only type of thing that Dave tends to do that’s somewhat less than ideal is that in his descriptions of the cases, he sometimes omits facts that point toward more mundane explanations. But still, even assuming that they’re intentional omissions and not just Dave not knowing a fact or Dave keeping a fact to himself in the interest of the family of the victim, it’s very human. It makes for good storytelling, and beyond that, it’s important to understand that everyone has a bias. Scientists do this all the time. Unwrapping the Enigma While our current medical science is far from perfect, the real number of truly unknown causes of death appears to be quite low, somewhere in the range of 1.34 per 100,000 (in the U.K.) and 15 per 100,000 (in the U.S.). The U.K. study also suggests that the truly undeterminable deaths (called the “sudden adult death syndrome” there) can be incorrectly misdiagnosed as a different cause of death as much as two thirds of the time. If you think that this whole scenario is crazy, then you haven’t watched enough Star Trek. There are multiple instances of Starfleet observing pre-warp civilizations (which it is not allowed to interfere with due to the Prime Directive) from a secret base cloaked as part of a mountain. If we can already think of that, and undoubtedly would do it ourselves given the opportunity, it’s not crazy. What’s weird is that this is not happening in all of the parks equally, suggesting that a thorough comparison should be made. Finally, being associated with Bigfoot research also doesn’t disqualify everything that you say about anything. Especially if it was research, like going places where Bigfoot might live, interviewing witnesses, collecting samples and sending them for laboratory analysis, and so on. That’s what Dave was doing regarding Bigfoot. Assuming that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, this is still a completely reasonable activity. Research is how we get to know things. Missing 411 – Western United States & Canada: Unexplained Disappearances of North Americans that have never been solved (2012) ISBN 978-1-4662-1629-7