bulverism – Pterosaur Eyewitness

September 8, 2014January 3, 2019

Ropen “Extinction” on Wikipedia

By the investigative journalist Jonathan Whitcomb

The “ropen” page on Wikipedia, at one time, had many paragraphs, delighting some cryptozoologists but annoying some skeptics. One biology professor in Minnesota, in particular, detested the many web pages he saw that supported belief in modern living pterosaurs, including the long-tailed ropen. It may have been a coincidence, but when he wrote his own blog post, ridiculing me about my writings about the ropen—that was about the time that the “ropen” page became extinct on Wikipedia. With limited warning, it was deleted, with the excuse that it did not provide enough mainstream opinion about the flying cryptid.

Why did no biologist or paleontologist seem to make any “ropen” statement on Wikipedia? Who knows? I tried to quote the words of one paleontologist Dr. David Martill, to save the Wikipedia page from deletion, but one self-appointed editor, with not enough patience to look deeply, deleted my quotation. It was unfair, but I could not spare more hours of work to submit text that could again be deleted within five minutes.

The “Ropen” page was censored through deletion on Wikipedia

I don’t think Dr. Martill (the pterosaur fossil expert) had anything to do with deleting the Wikipedia page; whether of not the biology professor in Minnesota caused the censoring, directly or indirectly, I don’t know. But since the man in Minnesota railed against the countless web pages that I, Jonathan Whitcomb, have written on the subject of modern pterosaurs, I now submit the following as evidence that I am not the “only” source of information about ropens. None of the following three pages were written by me:

Ropen of Papua New Guinea

I don’t believe this page is perfectly accurate in all details. The wingspan estimate given by Duane Hodgkinson was actually about twenty-nine feet rather than twenty feet, for it was similar to the size of a Piper Tri-Pacer. Also, I do not believe that “demon flyer” is the literal meaning of the word “ropen.”

Unknown-Explorers – Ropen

I also see problems with some details on this page, including the wingspan estimates and confusion about “ropen” and “duah.” Different names of flying creatures, among natives having hundreds of different village languages, is hardly evidence that different species of animals are being described. Some ropens are small and older ones are larger. “Duah” surely is a mistake by a Western explorer, many years ago; the correct name is “duwas.”

Ropen on Destination Truth

This actually has little text. It does mention extinction being avoided by this “pterodactyl”-like creature. The page has links to Destination Truth pages on cryptids like the Orang Pendek, Ogopogo, and Swamp Ape.

Critics and Bulverism

The British author and philosopher C. S. Lewis used the word “bulverism” for the habit some people fell into to avoid actual reasoning on topics. A person may dismiss an opposing idea by explaining why the opponent is “so silly.” Some critics of modern-pterosaur investigations find fault with imagined motivations of me and my associates, using that bulverism to avoid the real issue of whether or not all species of pterosaurs became extinct. Why not, instead, just discuss the subject?

UPDATE: January 3, 2019

As of January 2, 2019, there is still no page on the English Wikipedia named “ropen.” On the other hand, it does have a page titled Kongamoto, which is about a cryptid in Africa that seems to resemble the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Wikipedia also has a page on the winged cryptid Orang-bati, which is reported to fly in Indonesia.

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Ropen made extinct on Wikipedia

. . . his blog post may have contributed to the extinction of that page on Wikipedia, however (“There are no living pterosaurs and ‘ropen’ is a stupid fantasy”). It seems likely that one or more of his students or one or more of the readers of his post were involved.

Ropen Q & A – Modern Pterosaur

I just got an email from a reader of my digital nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in Australia and in Papua New Guinea. The man’s questions deserve answers but for everybody, not just this one reader.

April 23, 2012September 8, 2014

Smithsonian Incapable of Calculating a Probability

I don’t mean that somebody associated with the Smithsonian made a math mistake. But Brian Switek’s post “Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth” (Aug 16, 2010) suggests a bias so severe that it reflects negatively on the credibilityof the Smithsonian regarding objectiveness in evaluating one particular kind of human experience: an eyewitness sighting of an apparent living pterosaur.

The bulverism was easy to spot, with Switek attacking the reputations of specified individuals who had explored in Papua New Guinea, searching for flying creatures whose descriptions strongly suggest large Rhamphorhynchoid pterosaurs. And why ridicule the religious beliefs of those American explorers?

I agree with Switek’s general assessment of the newspaper article by Terrence Aym, for Aym really did get carried away with his enthusiasm for live pterosaurs; he was also careless. (He included a photo of Frigate Bird as if it may have been a ropen-pterosaur; I don’t want to even mention the name of that newspaper article.) But a poorly written article is no excuse for writing a poorly conceived blog post: About researchers and explorers, Switek knows little, aside from what he read in a poor newspaper article and perhaps only a limited number of other sources.

I saw no references in Brian Switek’s post. It seems he neglected critical key sightings that were, in contrast, examined my peer-reviewed scientific paper: “Reports of Living Pterosaurs in the Southwest Pacific” (Creation Research Society Quarterly, Volume 45, Winter-2009).

Take the four critical sightings in the southwest Pacific: Finschhafen-1944, Bougainville-1971, Pung-1994, Perth-1997. In context with the history of the pterosaur-extinction axiom (the weakness in the pre-Darwin assumption of universal pterosaur extinction), each of the above four encounters independently appear to have been unlikely to have been from any non-pterosaur. I judge each one at less than 10% of being from any non-pterosaur. In 0ther words, there is less than one chance in 10,000 that no living pterosaur was involved in any of those four sighting reports. And that is not even beginning to examine the other 94 sighting reports that have been analyzed statistically.

Is there not even one human associated with the Smithsonian who will come forward and examine the years of searches and research involving sighting reports of apparent living pterosaurs? Why use, instead of reasoning, bulverism?

Don’t Get Strung Along by the Ropen Myth

“He [Brian Switek] may have been correct in recognizing one or two problems with a newspaper article that promoted modern pterosaurs, but he failed to dig deeper, apparently assuming that the sources for that article were worthless. In reality, the faults were in the writing of the article itself, not in the investigations of American explorers who inspired the writer of that fault-ridden article.”

Smithsonian Gets “Discovery” but Runs Away From Discovery

Space Shuttle “Discovery” took its final flight on the back of a modified 747 Jumbo Jet. It will be a museum piece in the Smithsonian, the largest system of museums in the world. But even though they get the “Discovery,” the Smithsonian museums had previously run away from the potential discovery of a modern living pterosaur: the ropen of Papua New Guinea.

December 11, 2010December 15, 2010

Did Satire Backfire?

The Live Pterosaurs post “Can Satire Backfire” mentioned legitimate purposes for satire, with an example of how this literary form was inappropriate in a particular blog post about the Marfa Lights of Texas.

A recent use of satire in Texas, however, may have backfired, with potential consequences unforseen by the blog writer. Prompted by a press release about a new interpretation of the Marfa Lights of Texas, and the publication of a nonfiction cryptozoology book with a chapter devoted to those strange ghost lights, the blogger ridiculed the idea that the source of those lights are bioluminescent flying predators that may even be living pterosaurs. I wrote both the press release and the book it promotes.

But the best example of satire is seen in the third comment, the brief remarks from “Doc.”

. . . OBVIOUSLY the Marfa lights are caused by the Glow-Goblins of Deverax, who have flown here from their magical prehistoric kingdom to protect us all from the Invisible Soul Reavers who infect our minds and cause things like depression, stuttering . . .

So how did satire backfire? Any mention of Marfa Lights, even ridicule, draws attention to the phenomenon, and those readers who see past the satire and past the bulverism (“Doc” referred to me as a “certified whack job”)—those intelligent readers may notice the first and second comments on Connelly’s post: Clear refutation of the assumption that there are no mysterious lights that ever appear around Marfa, Texas. For some readers, those two comments may “turn on the lights.”

For the original post ridiculing the new Marfa Lights interpretation, see: Richard Connelly.