Tuesday 27 November 2012

The Marks of Honesty and Deceit

While the final part of the series of the Lachlan Stuart photograph was in progress, a thought occurred to me as I was considering this oft vilified forester.

Lachlan Stuart and other authors of classic Nessie pictures have been branded as hoaxers by mainstream Nessie analysts today. For example, it has been suggested that Hugh Gray knowingly photographed a dog, Kenneth Wilson was in on a plot hatched by Marmaduke Wetherell to fool the Daily Mail. Likewise, Lachlan Stuart is accused of setting up some hay bales in the water whilst Peter MacNab deviously photographed nothing more than a boat wake and then touched it up in his photographic dark room.

Of course, there are others such as Frank Searle and Tony "Doc" Shiels, and the list of the accused is long and wide. 

Now, I reject the contemporary statements that all the classic Nessie pictures have been explained away. I have critiqued that assertion on this blog before and found it wanting. However, it was a series of similar statements from debunkers that got me thinking.

Whenever a photograph was discussed, such critics would, of course, reject it but they would sometimes add a statement to the effect that the hoax got out of hand or what started out as a simple joke blew out of all proportion when the media got their hands on it.

The implication of such a statement being that the hoaxer underestimated the public reaction to their photographs. This led me to ask a question. If the so called hoaxer was taken aback by such a media reaction, what then should his reaction be? One might retort that the answer depends on the personality of the hoaxer. That is true but tells us nothing. But if we look at the reactions of known hoaxes, we may get a better picture.



As it turns out, only one photograph (as far as I know) had a public confession and that was the Surgeon's Photograph. The confessor was Christian Spurling who admitted to modelling the now iconic image. However, the man who was the focus of attention was Dr. Kenneth Wilson and his reaction to the limelight was markedly different. As Alastair Boyd and David Martin point out in their expose book, Wilson did not confess but was very evasive in his answers to Loch Ness researchers, even to the point of obliquely suggesting all was not as they thought with the photograph.

But was not Wilson a great practical joker who loved a laugh? I wouldn't wish to dispute that, but when a practical joke such as this becomes a media monster of international dimensions, even a hoaxer knows when to stand back and say no more. 

Wilson, of course, did the right thing, the hoax had produced the desired effect at the time but there was no need to prolong it or succour it any more and he henceforth minimised his involvement with the affair. Pushing it any more would be counter productive, intrusive and possibly detrimental if it ever was exposed in his lifetime.

I would put it to you that Kenneth Wilson is the model one-off hoaxer and provides a template as to how other hoaxers would proceed once the initial, desired effect has been achieved - they tend to retreat and shut up. In that light, how have other alleged hoaxers reacted to the spotlight being trained on them?




In the case of Hugh Gray, after the initial flurry his photo caused, he did not batten down the hatches but continued to retell his story with deliberate conviction. So, we find that he met up with Constance Whyte 22 years later in 1955 to openly discuss his photograph. Five years later, Tim Dinsdale met up with the man he described as a gentleman and courteous in 1960 and they walked to the spot where it all happened. I suspect Hugh Gray was aged about 70 by the time he met Tim, so the record of his persistence in being public about his story probably did no extend much further.


In the case of Lachlan Stuart, there was the initial publicity as reporters from the Sunday Express plus Constance Whyte and Maurice Burton who engaged Stuart during their investigations. However, again, this Loch Ness Monster photographer did not shirk the limelight thereafter as he appeared seven years later on the BBC TV documentary "Legend of the Loch" in 1958 to be interviewed for national broadcast. Details of that interview can be found here.




When Peter MacNab's photograph hit the headlines in 1958, it became a classic, possibly only outdone by the Surgeon's Photo. Did MacNab do a Wilson and duck the attention of the media once the initial hubbub was over? Not a chance. In the decades ahead, he would readily correspond and help out various Loch Ness researchers such as Mackal, Raynor and Boyd. In fact, nearly 25 years later, he would take part in the making of the "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" episode on the Loch Ness Monster which was televised in 1980.

So we see nothing in the way of distancing themselves from the supposed hoax or any attempt to offer subtle suggestions that what they photographed was perhaps not a Nessie. The psychology of these so called hoaxers is running counter to the one test case we have.

But what about Frank Searle and Anthony Shiels you may ask? Did they not hoax photographs but continue to defend them to the hilt? Does this not nullify any argument here about hoaxers distancing themselves from their work?

I would suggest the answer to that is "No". The difference between Searle and Shiels and the other grouping is that these two were serial hoaxers whilst the other alleged hoaxers were "one shot" perpetrators.

If you are a serial hoaxer, you do not cast doubt upon your own work because after one picture is out in the public domain, the seed for the next one is already planted. If you distance yourself from one, you have to distance yourself from the rest and this is counter-productive to your lifestyle. This group has to be treated differently to the others in terms of modus operandi.

(As an aside, I presume the charge of hoaxing against Shiels is sustainable. He produced at least four monster photographs which put him in the serial hoaxer class. The main charge against him is a taped interview of him discussing how to fake a monster picture. I have not yet critiqued this accusation and even then may find nothing to dispute the hoax label. So until then, I side with the current view on him.)

In summary, the scenario of the "single hit" hoaxer based on Kenneth Wilson suggests an underestimation of the media attention and an attempt to walk away from the story without confessing outright. The high such a hoaxer gets from this adventure is short lived and further intrusions into normal life tend to be unwelcome as one is obliged to repeat at length a lie. Gray, Stuart and MacNab displayed no such behaviour which suggests they may have actually been telling the truth.

PREVIOUS POSTS:
A Look At Some Nessie Books




Tuesday 20 November 2012

Nessie Books: Plesiosaurs, Plagiarism and Prägnanz

Back in March 2012, I constructed a bibliography of the Loch Ness Monster detailing all the publications I was aware of on Nessie. That total came to fifty four books and booklets but since then I have picked up on more books of varying character which I would like to bring to your attention.

1. The Mysterious Monsters of Loch Ness
Harmsworth, Tony
Precision Press, 1980





This title is a slight variation on the 1934 booklet "The Mysterious Monster of Loch Ness". I thought I had covered the bases on older publications on the Loch Ness Monster, but one should never be presumptuous on this mysterious subject. Tony Harmsworth was curator of the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition back in the 1980s and they produced several publications. This 32-page item was one of the introductory booklets to the subject aimed mainly at the tourist trade.


Tony has gone over to the sceptical side of the debate now and in an effort to erase his past, he even reviewed his own book on amazon.com with this comment:


I wrote this 30 years before my new book Loch Ness, Nessie and Me. At the time I was working with very little material and it was all pro-monster. My learning curve over the next few years was dramatic to say the least. If you buy this it might be a bit of fun, but don't expect it to help you understand the mystery at Loch Ness, even in the slightest. My apologies to anyone who ever bought it. LOL. Collector's item possibly though.


One did not need to wait 30 years to discern Tony's changing stance as his 1985 booklet "Loch Ness - The Monster" demonstrated a more measured tone with such stories as Richard Frere telling Tony that he had personally witnessed Lachlan Stuart setting up his famous three humps photograph with hay bales and tarpaulin.

Having recently purchased the 1980 booklet and read it myself, I think Tony is being too critical of his own work. But then again, I continue to hold that some of the evidence he puts forward is still valid. But it warms the cockles of your heart to read Tony being "totally committed to the animals' reality" and putting the case strongly for a modified plesiosaur which he reckons is "very near to the truth indeed".

Well, the Loch Ness Monster may be a modified plesiosaur but those evolutionary changes would have to be quite a lot. But I'll leave that for another day and another article.

While we are on the subject of Tony's books, I would point out that his 2010 book, "Loch Ness, Nessie and Me" has been republished this September as "Loch Ness Understood" though Tony tells me this is to satisfy distributors and any changes in the book are more of a grammatical nature.


2. Loch Ness: An Explanation
Seniscal, Ben
Privately Published, 1982


This book, despite being listed on Amazon, is one of those Nessie books that has completely vanished from the face of the Earth (well, I am sure someone has a copy somewhere). Fortunately, the booklet is reprinted in his 1993 autobiography, "On the Road to Anywhere".

Ben Seniscal worked for the Forestry Commission in the 1950s and 1960s but was forced to retire on medical grounds in 1969 due to coming into contact with the pesticide chemical dioxin. He is pictured below in this photograph of forestry students at Benmore Forester Training School in 1959. He is seated to the far left on the front row (original link here).





I was curious to see whether his forestry work in Scotland crossed paths with two men I have discussed elsewhere - Lachlan Stuart and Richard Frere. As it turns out, I found no mention of them, to which I conclude he never met them or had nothing to say about them despite devoting two chapters to Loch Ness.

The first chapter on Loch Ness concentrates on his attempts to get his booklet published. With a private print run of several hundred copies, he was not particularly successful in getting his argument across to publishers. This would explain the extreme rarity of the booklet.

The next chapter is the reprint of the booklet and essentially it is similar to Maurice Burton's Vegetable Mat theory. Using his experience of forestry, he crafts a persuadable theory about how various aggregations of organic materials from forests can sink, decompose and then rise on methane gases to the surface of Loch Ness to form a hump like display. Add a protruding branch to the mass and you have your legendary head and neck. We even get the bonus explanation of gases ejecting horizontally to move the object forward!

However, practise contradicted theory in subsequent studies which showed that Loch Ness was generally not a suitable place for such scenarios due to conditions which slowed down decomposition rates. To this day, records of such organic eruptions are rare indeed and at best can only explain a small fraction of claimed sightings.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, he puts across the theory better than anyone and I hope to use his thoughts as a basis for a future article on this particular subject.


3. Gestalt Forms of Loch Ness
Byrne, Gerard
JRP Ringier, November 2011






I haven't purchased this book yet, but there is an abstract from another website:

In this book, Gerard Byrne brings together the culmination of ten years of research into the Loch Ness Monster, the myth fuelled in the 1930s by the popular press in order to sell newspapers. Appropriating formal conventions from the history of Land art that position landscape as the "other," Byrne has compiled a series of images that deploy Loch Ness as a signifier for the enigmatic, the unreadable. Using both the populist literature spawned by the Loch Ness myth and the photographic material his own expeditions have yielded as "found material," Byrne has developed a project both humorous and melancholic, that ultimately reflects a crisis of belief in the photographic image that has surfaced since the last heyday of Loch Ness interest in the 1970s.


At this point, I suspect the book is not only a personal voyage in pictures but a look at how everyday objects can deceive. The word "gestalt" is interesting in that it may refer to Gestalt Psychology which, according to Wikipedia:


is a theory of mind and brain of the Berlin School; the operational principle of gestalt psychology is that the brain is holistic, parallel, and analog, with self-organizing tendencies. The principle maintains that the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts. Gestalt psychologists stipulate that perception is the product of complex interactions among various stimuli.


The "Prägnanz" in the title is described thusly by Wikipedia:

The fundamental principle of gestalt perception is the law of prägnanz (in the German language, pithiness) which says that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric, and simple.

Now, this may chime with a theory mentioned in previous posts which deals with the so-called "Nessie Effect" where witnesses see more than is actually there because their brains "interpret" the visual signals through various filters including an alleged "I Want To See Nessie" filter for want of a better phrase.

An interesting theory which resonates with a postmodern interpretation of cryptids suggesting "Nessie is whatever you want it to be". However, the theory's force is in inverse proportion to the clarity of the sighting. No one should seriously suggest this theory has any credence when the creature's proximity increases. 
 

4.  Loch Ness Monster in Popular Culture

5.  Loch Ness Monster
Russell, Jesse and Cohn, Ronald
2012, Bookvika Publishing 









Here we have a couple of books that seem worthy of a Christmas purchase, but this is a recommendation NOT to buy these books. It turns out you may well be wasting your money as previous buyers of books from Bookvika Publishing complain that the titles are just cut and paste jobs of various Wikipedia articles, etc. Actually, the product descriptions at amazon.co.uk says this:

"High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Loch Ness Monster is well known throughout Scotland and the rest of the world and has entered into popular culture."

Which is probably a clue to the buyer. The two authors may or may not exist but they have "authored" numerous books on diverse subjects such as Lee Remick, Diazepam and Syriac Literature which suggests they probably known little about the subject matter of their books.

But if you like Internet content packaged up into a book then this might be for you, but don't expect anything new. One could even argue that the web content might be gone or changed significantly in a few years and books like this have some function as pure and simple Internet snapshots. I think I remain to be convinced on that, but sites such as archive.org already do a pretty good job of archiving web pages.

The word "plagiarism" from this article title alliterates well but is probably not so applicable since these people are not making any claims to originality. I am also curious to know if any other material from the Internet (such as this blog) has ended up in their books because at 116 pages, it is hard to believe that Wikipedia alone could supply all that material. I may buy it just to find out, but in general, don't waste your money.






Saturday 17 November 2012

Sceptics' Corner

This post is a "folder" for the various articles I have posted on this blog regarding the sceptical position on the Loch Ness Monster. But what exactly is a "scepticism"? In this particular context, it refers to a modern trend in scepticism which questions a belief in a large set of creatures in Loch Ness on the basis of scientific understanding and logical deduction.

When applied to various people, it can be a rather nebulous term since "sceptics" just like "believers" can come in various forms. I say that because, people can take a sceptical stance on subsets of evidence for the Loch Ness Monster but still believe there is a large creature in the loch.

For example, Nessie Hunter Alastair Boyd is well known for exposing the Surgeon's Photograph as a hoax but is firmly in the camp of "believer". So, in this case, there is scepticism focused on a particular item of evidence.

However, there is also a form of scepticism which focuses on theory. This refers to a disbelief in a proposition about the creature. One good example is the opposition to the theory based on eyewitness accounts that the creature has a long head and neck.

So, in some sense, there should be an element of the "sceptic" in every Loch Ness Monster researcher. The problems in being sceptical arise from either applying faulty logical processes or using data that is either incomplete, false or irrelevant to come to incomplete, false or irrelevant conclusions. I think it is safe to say that everyone has at some time has fallen foul of these pitfalls, because after all, we're all fallible humans.

The main articles are listed but a lot of other posts address sceptical arguments for various Loch Ness Monster cases.

1. A general overview of the sceptical position: LINK.

2. The problem of finding evidence that would convince the sceptical position: LINK.

3. Seven things sceptics will focus on to debunk eyewitness testimony: LINK.

4. Case Study: The debunking of the Greta Finlay sighting: LINK, LINK.

5. How sceptical enquiry can be exaggerated by the media: LINK.

6. Does scepticism reduce motivation to collect sighting reports? LINK.

7. And to balance things, when being sceptical proves correct: LINK.

8. Yet for all the naysaying, some might just say "perhaps ...": LINK.

9. Do sceptics bother about what witnesses claim? LINK.

10. The marks of honesty and deceit - LINK

11. Review of sceptical book "Abominable Science" - LINK

12. Should we be seeing more Nessie photos? - LINK

13. Sceptics, Steamships and Nessie - LINK

14. Sceptics and Scottish Independence - LINK

15. Those otters again - LINK































Wednesday 14 November 2012

Search Box added to Blog

The blog has now racked up nearly 200 posts since July 2010 and so some means of searching has become more desirable.

The links I put on the right hand side plus the archive further down help to some degree but how many times do I refer to Marmaduke Wetherell in my posts? I don't know either without some further help!

So I have added a "SEARCH THIS BLOG" box on the right just below the Hugh Gray photo for anyone who is interested. Note this facility will also search the comments section.

As to Marmaduke Wetherell, the answer is that he is mentioned in five posts.


Monday 12 November 2012

The Creature of Loch Ulladale

Beneath a certain mountain on a certain island lies a small loch by the name of Ulladale. With a length of about half a mile and a width of one quarter mile, there is not much to commend this body of water which lies under the gaze of its namesake mountain, Strone Ulladale.
 



Situated in the windswept south of the Isle of Lewis and Harris, there are no trees to offer wayfarers shelter and, indeed, there was something there in days of old which offered the very opposite in the way of hospitality. We talk, of course, of the Each Uisge or Water Horse.

This loch was discussed in The Water Horses of Loch Ness as one of the waters across Scotland's terrain that was reputed to be home to this pernicious and devilish pursuer of men's flesh. By way of a detour from An Niseag, we recount the tale of this island beast and add a new story recently gleaned from the literature.




It was over 200 years ago that the Water Horse of Loch Ulladale was mentioned by James Hogg in his 1807 work, The Mountain Bard. It is one of the older references to water horses, but unlike various tales of water horses that had passed down through the generations, this one was fresh in the minds of the fearful locals. We take up Hogg's tale as he recalls the reticence of a Hebridean guide to go past a certain loch:

“In some places of the Highlands of Scotland, the inhabitants are still in continual terror of an imaginary being, called The Water Horse. When I was travelling over the extensive and dreary isle of Lewis, I had a lad of Stornoway with me as a guide and interpreter.

On leaving the  shores of Loch Rogg, in our way to Harries, we came to an inland lake, called, I think, Loch Alladale; and, though our nearest road lay along the shores of this loch, Malcolm absolutely refused to accompany me by that way for fear of the Water Horse, of  which he told many wonderful stories, swearing to the truth of them;  and, in particular, how his father had lately been very nigh taken by  him, and that he had succeeded in decoying one man to his destruction, a  short time previous to that."

The decoying undoubtedly refers to the Water Horse's universal habit of enticing weary travellers to mount its inviting saddle only to find themselves stuck to it at the moment of terrifying revelation. The victim's fate was invariably sealed as the devilish creature sped to its loch to drown and then consume its prey.

One wonders how the Hebridean's father had evaded captured. Did he possess a piece of the talismanic rowan tree or did he invoke the name of the Christian Trinity by way of divine protection? We will never know, but rather than fading into the mists of folklore, this particular creature refuses to go away. Most water horse traditions stay no more than that, but some, such as the water horses of Morar, Ness and Treig live on and claim the attention of men. So it is with the Loch Ulladale Monster.

As it turned out, and months after the publication of my book, I was perusing some archives and came across a Scottish magazine of tales, songs and traditions called "Tocher". In the issues for 1991 (one of numbers 40 to 43), a Mrs. Peggy Morrison was being interviewed on the history of the Isle of Lewis (though Loch Ulladale is in Harris). The relevant part of the interview was as follows:

McL: And what about the monster in Loch Ulladale?

PM: Oh yes, they thought there was a creature to be seen there right enough. Everybody knows - the Monster of Loch Ulladale, everybody talked about it in the old days. But it isn’t all that long since they were seeing it there. A man who was going out to work on the road, the short-cut that's out there in the glen. he was going out.

And it must have been in winter, the time when there are long nights and daylight is late in coming. It was in the first grey light of dawn he was going out, and he saw this big black beast at the edge of the loch and with the fright - evidently the road was near the loch - he turned back. He didn't dare go past. And, anyway, he turned back for home, and another man met him who was going to the road to work as well, and they united there until it got quite light - they weren't  risking going past.

And, anyway, when the day had got quite light, they went. There was no sign of this thing. but they went back to look at the shore of the loch - there’s sand there, apparently - and the tracks were there. the tracks of whatever it was, there they were, and they just couldn't make out what sort of animal it was.

If I have read the magazine correctly, this interview was conducted in 1977.

One hundred and fifty years since Hogg, the water horse had returned again to strike fear into the hearts of men! A big, black beast beside the waters which left tracks of an unknown nature. What could it have been that caused these two men to wait until the Hour of the Each Uisge was over?

A problem common to many such legends is the size of the lochs these creatures reputedly inhabited. Surely there is not enough food in these lochs to sustain such beasts? This is a charge laid against the vast Loch Ness - how much more these small lochs?

But in the eyes of the Highlanders, there was no such problem. These supernatural creatures ate men, not fish.

In the words of one old seeker of An Niseag, a beautiful story can be destroyed by an ugly fact. Those that deride such stories may suggest the natives merely saw a grey seal pursuing some fish from the River Ulladale that empties into the sea loch of Resort. For after all, is not Loch Ulladale well stocked with tasty salmon and sea trout?

Perhaps it is, but the two mile winding river is tight and hazardous for a seal. And can't the natives of Lewis and Harris recognise a seal when they see one?

Ah, but was not the creature seen by the first grey light of dawn when viewing conditions were not ideal comes the retort!

But then again, should not such river faring seals produce such legends for all the local lochs and not just this one? And so the arguments go on. Ugly facts or just ugly speculations?

I mentioned this loch in a previous post about creatures of the Western Isles. At the time, I did not know about this modern encounter. If I had, perhaps I would have been bolder to forge into that treeless region.

Well, bolder while the Hour of the Water Horse had not yet come upon me!

The author can be contacted at lochnesskelpie@gmail.com


POSTSCRIPT

Here's a YouTube clip of someone fishing on Loch Ulladale to give you a sense of the place.











McI_: And what about the monster in Loch Ulladales’ PM: Oh yes, they thought there was a creature to be seen there right enough. Everybody hnows-the Monster ([1] Loch Ulladale. everybody talked about tt in the old days. But it isn’t al that long since they were seeing it there. A man who was going out to work on the road, the short-cut that's out there in the glen. he was goin out. And it must have been in winter, the time when there are long Tits and daylight is late in coming. It was in the first grey light oftlawn he was going out. and he saw this big black heast at the edge of the loch and with the fiight-evidently the road was near the loch-he tamed back. He didn't dare go past And. anyway, he turned back for home, and another man met him who was goin to the road to work as well, and they united there until it got quite light-they worm’: risking going past. And. anyway. when the day had got quite light, theywent. Therewas no sign thing. huttheywenttoloohattheshore of the loch-there’s sand there, apparently-and the tracks were there. the tracles of whatever :1 was, there they were, and they just couldn't make out what sort of animal it was. Free Online OCR: http://www.newocr.com/
McI_: And what about the monster in Loch Ulladales’ PM: Oh yes, they thought there was a creature to be seen there right enough. Everybody hnows-the Monster ([1] Loch Ulladale. everybody talked about tt in the old days. But it isn’t al that long since they were seeing it there. A man who was going out to work on the road, the short-cut that's out there in the glen. he was goin out. And it must have been in winter, the time when there are long Tits and daylight is late in coming. It was in the first grey light oftlawn he was going out. and he saw this big black heast at the edge of the loch and with the fiight-evidently the road was near the loch-he tamed back. He didn't dare go past And. anyway, he turned back for home, and another man met him who was goin to the road to work as well, and they united there until it got quite light-they worm’: risking going past. And. anyway. when the day had got quite light, theywent. Therewas no sign thing. huttheywenttoloohattheshore of the loch-there’s sand there, apparently-and the tracks were there. the tracles of whatever :1 was, there they were, and they just couldn't make out what sort of animal it was. Free Online OCR: http://www.newocr.com/
McI_: And what about the monster in Loch Ulladales’ PM: Oh yes, they thought there was a creature to be seen there right enough. Everybody hnows-the Monster ([1] Loch Ulladale. everybody talked about tt in the old days. But it isn’t al that long since they were seeing it there. A man who was going out to work on the road, the short-cut that's out there in the glen. he was goin out. And it must have been in winter, the time when there are long Tits and daylight is late in coming. It was in the first grey light oftlawn he was going out. and he saw this big black heast at the edge of the loch and with the fiight-evidently the road was near the loch-he tamed back. He didn't dare go past And. anyway, he turned back for home, and another man met him who was goin to the road to work as well, and they united there until it got quite light-they worm’: risking going past. And. anyway. when the day had got quite light, theywent. Therewas no sign thing. huttheywenttoloohattheshore of the loch-there’s sand there, apparently-and the tracks were there. the tracles of whatever :1 was, there they were, and they just couldn't make out what sort of animal it was. Free Online OCR: http://www.newocr.com/

Monday 5 November 2012

Can There Be Convincing Nessie Footage?

A reader recently directed me to that clip from the film "Incident At Loch Ness" where a "Nessie" swims past an incredulous camera crew. They get a shot and the clip from the movie is shown below.




Some of you may be familiar with the clip and it's a realistic looking stunt. Obviously, this kind of footage - if it was real - would outdo anything presented as evidence in the last 80 years of Loch Ness Monster hunting. It goes without saying that, unless some equivalent of the MacRae film is holding out, this quality of footage has never been taken.

In some ways this is not surprising. Firstly, the equipment used to record the stunt was of high, professional quality and this is not the type of machinery the typical Nessie witness will have to hand. You are more likely to have some consumer grade mobile phone doing the recording on a lower resolution.

Secondly, the hump prop in the film was perhaps only 20 metres or so from the camera. As rare as Nessie sightings are, it is even rarer for anyone to report something less than 100 metres away. As an object recedes into the distance, detail is obviously lost and interpretation becomes more ambiguous.

Thirdly, there is the "paralysing" effect once spoken of by monster hunter, Alastair Boyd. He had a sighting in 1979 of a large hump breaking the surface of Urquhart Bay. So striking was the sight that he could only but gaze at the spectacle before he snapped to it and scrambled unsuccessfully to get his camera as the creature submerged out of sight.

Monster surfacings are all too brief and Alastair defied anyone to calmly go through their rehearsed camera routines when the Great Beast of Loch Ness deigns to show itself to you.

As the film shows, such a close encounter seems more likely from a boat. In fact, the recent George Edwards hoax was such a claimed event. However, as suggested by the eyewitness data, the Loch Ness Monster does not seem to like boats as witness reports from boats are much less. It is possible though that this is due to less potential witnesses being in boats than on land, but then again the expected proportion may still exceeded the actual proportion.

But, if you are potentially closer to the monster, more sightings should in theory happen on water. A resolution to the matter would require a study of the eyewitness database. However, if the assumption is held to, it is noisy engines rather than boats themselves that deter the creature due to the high auditory acuity I think it possesses.

I will say what I have said before, just because Loch Ness is a "mere" twenty four miles long, one mile wide with an average depth of 433 feet, it is assumed finding one or more creatures is relatively easy with the right application of technology and human ingenuity. This was the attitude in the 1960s as searches got more organised, but Nessie steadfastly refused to yield so easily.

An object appearing halfway across the loch is about half a mile away, too far for recording of decisive images. The high opacity of the loch underwater makes photography near useless and sonar is too blunt an instrument, especially when nobody can say for sure what a sonar trace of Nessie would look like.

Throw in the likelihood that our beasts stay on or under the bottom and sides of the loch and you have a recipe for futility. But these techniques will continue to have their place in Loch Ness research, just don't expect final, decisive proof.

But going back to our clip from "Incident At Loch Ness", suppose it was the real thing, perhaps taken by a TV camera crew filming a regional news item? Would it be accepted as proof of a large creature in the loch or would some explanation be proffered as to why it is no more useful as evidence than any photo of a distant blob?

Well, I would say that the default reaction of leading Loch Ness researchers would be one of caution. That is no surprise and probably the best one given the history of evidence at the loch. The film and its owners would then be subject to scrutiny as questions are asked, frames are analysed and the scene of the event examined.

At the end of this process, the film will be declared to be a natural but misidentified object such as a seal or certain inconsistencies will be pointed out about the owners or film that suggest the film takers are not being wholly truthful.

Well, that's the normal modus operandi. But would this type of higher grade evidence get over that hurdle? I can't honestly say the majority of recognised Loch Ness experts would be won over because of a problem in the aforementioned modus operandi.

Now the mode of critical thinking that proceeds in this wise is in my opinion faulty. One of the main premises behind it is the well known "Occam's Razor". According to Wikipedia:

"It is a principle stating that among competing hypotheses, the one that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected."

So, there are two competing hypotheses for this type of film clip. One concludes it is a large, unidentified creature that is not from the known variety of wildlife and the other says it is either a known animal or a hoax.

The "unknown animal" hypothesis would no doubt conclude we have something "real" here but my contention is that the "normal object" hypothesis will always come out with an answer - no matter how good the film,  photograph or eyewitness report. So what good is a hypothesis that always comes up with the required answer? It is non-falsifiable and therefore useless for critical analysis. It is like spinning a two headed coin.

Let us by way of example apply this to our hypothetical film clip.

In the case of natural objects, the hypothesis would clearly struggle and be forced to consider the hoax scenario. On this basis, it would be stated that since the hump is in theory "hoaxable", then a hoax cannot be discounted and indeed should be entertained as a better explanation since it is a simpler assumption than the presence of large unknown creatures in Loch Ness.

Speculation can then have its way as various schemes are considered as to how the effect was achieved. A frogman with a plastic hump attached to his back being driven by a DPV (Diver Propulsion Vehicle) or the prop being towed by an out of sight motor or perhaps its a CGI effect.

Human imagination could invent a number of reasons how something could be hoaxed and hence always come up with an explanation. Again, I say what use is such a hypothesis?

Widening the hypothesis to eyewitness reports, the other explanation of people misidentifying objects as monsters is because their judgement is "clouded" by Nessie expectations. The over-application of this sub-theory weakens the overall hypothesis further. To more forcefully put across my point, when the Logic Fairy sprinkles this dust over even the best Nessie sightings then deer, otters and ducks magically become monsters.

Again, what use is such a theory when it always produces the expected answer?

Now when monster hunters of old put the various sightings through their own "Monster" hypothesis, at least it didn't always flash "Monster" at the other end of the pipe. But consider the case of this hypothesis where a non-exotic but non-indigenous solution is proposed such as a sturgeon or catfish.

But even these more mundane explanations can't get past the filters of misidentification or hoax because again "misidentification" or "hoax" are preferred by Occam's Razor. Because after all, it is simpler to believe that a report was misidentification, etc than the alternative explanation that a visiting Atlantic Sturgeon was passing through.

In conclusion, perhaps the weighting given to suggestions of misidentification or hoaxing needs to be lessened to allow other theories a look in. But perhaps we have reached an evidence impasse here and nothing short of a plesiosaur or sturgeon carcass on the shore of Loch Ness will do.

But then again, who is to say the sturgeon was not simply dumped there by a passing fishing boat?

Well, you see the problems.