Loch Ness Monster Research Articles

Selling the nation: the commodification of monstrous, mythical and fantastical creatures

ABSTRACT This paper addresses a lacuna in animal geographies, extending the limits of this area of scholarship to include considerations of inanimate nonhuman animals. Drawing upon insights from animal geographies and interdisciplinary monster studies, a case is made that, in having effect and impact, monstrous, mythical and fantastical creatures exert agency which can be harnessed to support the creation and commodification of tangible assets. The Scottish tourism industry has commodified legendary creatures that feature prominently in folklore, tradition and cultural heritage. The Loch Ness Monster, kelpies and unicorns are used to support three facets of contemporary heritage tourism, namely (i) Scotland the theme park, (ii) post-industrial commodification and economic regeneration and (iii) a search for the authentic, or subversive nationalism. There is potential for further studies to elucidate how monstrous, mythical and fantastical creatures are intertwined with how people understand and engage with the world that they live in.

Failings of Nessie Debunkers and of Debunkers in General

That Loch Ness Monsters, “Nessies”, might exist has been argued by many people on the basis of films, sonar contacts, photos, and eyewitness accounts. At the same time, some observers have insisted that these are not real creatures, nothing but misperceptions of natural phenomena or known animals. Their arguments typically address the weakest evidence (eyewitness accounts) rather than the strongest objective evidence of sonar and film. Such evasion or avoidance constitutes a strategy of misdirection, as does the insistence that, since Nessies are not recognized by “science,” therefore taking their possible existence seriously amounts to doing pseudo-science. Debunkers arguably irrational and go beyond the evidence in declaring that Nessies are definitely non-existent. Although Nessie fans do believe that they exist, most will admit that final proof requires a specimen or detailed close-up of unequivocally valid photography and insist only that enough evidence exists to warrant further searches: that is not pseudo-science.

Murky waters: Incident at Loch Ness, Grizzly Man, and Herzogian notions of truth

ABSTRACT Werner Herzog avers that cinema reveals a truth beyond mere fact, a truth he calls ‘ecstatic truth’. The film that offers the clearest view of this conception, the mockumentary Incident at Loch Ness (2004), remains understudied and obscure. In Incident, Herzog plays a fictionalized version of himself who is making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. This fictional version of Herzog shares the real Herzog’s filmmaking philosophy, a philosophy Incident lays bare for study: namely, Incident reveals how the pursuit of ecstatic truth takes us to the limits of human understanding. While Incident helps us explore the concept of ecstatic truth, I argue it also helps us understand much of Herzog’s oeuvre, including 2005’s Grizzly Man. In this paper, therefore, I analyze ecstatic truth as presented in Incident and apply that understanding to Grizzly Man and its controversial tape scene. Examining said scene through the lens of the ecstatic truth will, I argue, not only garner us fuller insight into Herzog’s films, but will also shed light on the effects of Herzog’s controversial choice to not play the tape of Timothy Treadwell’s death in Grizzly Man.

Realising countable groups as automorphisms of origamis on the Loch Ness monster

It is known that every finite group can be represented as the full group of automorphisms of a suitable compact origami. In this paper, we provide a short argument to note that the same holds for any countable group by considering origamis on the Loch Ness monster.

Occam's Razor and Bayesian Measures of Likelihood Suggest Loch Ness Monsters Are Real Animals

Lay Summary—The simplest explanation for all the evidence is that Nessies, the “Monsters” in Loch Ness, are real but as yet unclassified animals — evidence comprising eyewitness reports, sonar results, surface and underwater photography, and surface moving film. The Bayesian approach to estimating probability points to a similar conclusion. If sonar and photographic evidence had preceded rather than followed intense global interest based on eyewitness reports, the existence of Nessies might have become widely accepted rather than disbelieved. This analysis points to the need for public policies about science and medicine to be informed by people who understand how science works, for instance historians of science or individuals versed in the modern discipline of Science & Technology Studies.
 Abstract—Regarding claims of Loch Ness Monsters, what the simplest explanation might be depends on how the evidence is assembled and judged. Taken individually, eyewitness reports can be simply and plausibly explained away as misperceptions and occasional hoaxes. Many of the claimed surface photographs can be simply and plausibly challenged as misleading representations of natural phenomena, and again some deliberate faking. Simple explanations are less readily to hand for the underwater photos and the Dinsdale film, yet disbelievers have offered some. However, when the evidence is taken as a whole, the simplest explanation is that there are real animals responsible for these three or four quite independent types of evidence. A similar conclusion would be reached by considering the evidence sequentially by a Bayesian approach, progressively modifying the estimated likelihood using each independent type of evidence. Loch Ness Monsters might be the sort of premature discovery described by Gunther Stent: the best evidence came too late to influence media attitudes and popular belief. The difficulty of changing long-held views is illustrated not only in this instance but also within science overall, where hegemonic theories have for lengthy periods withstood the accumulation of considerable contradicting facts. Advice to policy makers should come not from practicing scientists but from individuals who know the history of science and understand the many potential pitfalls in advancing knowledge.

Comments on Watson's "Empirical Analysis of the Hugh Gray 'Nessie' Photograph"

I would like to comment on Watson’s interesting paper in the Spring 2022 Journal of Scientific Exploration on the subject of the 1933 Hugh Gray Loch Ness photograph. Having a couple of Roland Watson’s books in my personal library (which I strongly recommend) and having corresponded with him for his opinion and thoughts in my own research, I can assure the reader that Watson has a significant knowledge of the history and current thought on the subject of the Loch Ness Monster (LNM) and other unidentified aquatic megafauna of the area. I would suggest this paper would benefit, and the proposals strengthened, with a greater and more consistent application and methodology (Heuvelmans, 1988) and a greater effort towards explanations of any imbalance.

Empirical Analysis of the Hugh Gray 'Nessie' Photograph

The first photograph said to be of the Loch Ness Monster was taken on 12th November 1933 around noon by a local man by the name of Hugh Gray. I say "Loch Ness Monster" because I believe the photograph to be genuine and part of the evidence portfolio. The picture that generally circulates is shown below. The Scottish Daily Record took his picture and Mr. Gray gave the following account to them having been interviewed by Hugh Mackenzie (the future Provost of Inverness), Peter Munro representing Hugh Gray's employers at the British Aluminium Company and a Daily Record staff member:
 Four Sundays ago, after church I went for my usual walk near where the river enters the Loch. The Loch was like a mill pond and the sun shining brightly. An object of considerable dimensions rose out of the water not very far from where I was. I immediately got my camera ready and snapped the object which was two or three feet above the surface of the water. I did not see any head, for what I took to be the front parts were under the water, but there was considerable movement from what seemed to be the tail, the part furthest from me. The object only appeared for a few minutes then sank out of sight.
 A contemporary picture of Hugh Gray was printed later which I don't think flatters him much but is shown below to show you the man behind the monster.
 The tenor of the account suggests some throwing up of spray and water as the presumed tail beat about the waters and hence caused some blurriness around that region of the picture. Mackenzie described Gray as a man highly respected by his fellow workmen, employers and locals. Likewise, the Daily Record had the negative examined by four experts who deemed it as untampered. It caused a stir, was panned by zoologists and faded along with general Nessie-lore as the World entered war six years later. Twenty-two years on, Nessie author, Constance Whyte, visited Hugh Gray in May 1955 who was sticking to his story and still had vivid memories of that day plus he also recounted five other times he claimed to have seen the monster over those decades. Renowned monster hunter, Tim Dinsdale, also recounts how he visited Gray in April 1960 and described him as "a most courteous individual" as he took him to the spot of the sighting[4]. He spoke with "complete conviction" about that day as well as maintaining an accuracy of his account. He also added some detail of his other sightings which partly consisted of rapidly moving bow waves with no visible cause. What remains of the photograph today is uncertain.

The type problem for Riemann surfaces via Fenchel–Nielsen parameters

A Riemann surface X $X$ is said to be of parabolic type if it does not support a Green's function. Equivalently, the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of X $X$ (equipped with the hyperbolic metric) is ergodic. Given a Riemann surface X $X$ of arbitrary topological type and a hyperbolic pants decomposition of X $X$ , we obtain sufficient conditions for parabolicity of X $X$ in terms of the Fenchel–Nielsen parameters of the decomposition. In particular, we initiate the study of the effect of twist parameters on parabolicity. A key ingredient in our work is the notion of nonstandard half-collar about a hyperbolic geodesic. We show that the modulus of such a half-collar is much larger than the modulus of a standard half-collar as the hyperbolic length of the core geodesic tends to infinity. Moreover, the modulus of the annulus obtained by gluing two nonstandard half-collars depends on the twist parameter, unlike in the case of standard collars. Our results are sharp in many cases. For instance, for zero-twist flute surfaces as well as for half-twist flute surfaces with concave sequences of lengths our results provide a complete characterization of parabolicity in terms of the length parameters. It follows that parabolicity is equivalent to completeness in these cases. Applications to other topological types such as surfaces with infinite genus and one end (also known as the infinite Loch–Ness monster), the ladder surface, and abelian covers of compact surfaces are also studied.

The Emergence of Relativism: German Thought from the Enlightenment to National Socialism

The Emergence of Relativism: German Thought from the Enlightenment to National Socialism

The Essential Guide to the Loch Ness Monster and Other Aquatic Cryptids by Ken Gerhard

This is a readable overview of reports of unidentified aquatic creatures in the oceans and in freshwater, and it can be a useful introduction for people who have not previously read much about this subject. Cryptozoologists, however, will find nothing new here; the treatment is purely descriptive rather than analytical and critical. A nice Foreword by Steve Feltham, in residence at Loch Ness for 30 years looking for Nessies, includes the important point that the number of actual sightings is a large multiple of the number of publicly known reports. The first two chapters are about the Loch Ness Monster. Chapter 3 deals with sea serpents. Chapters 4 through 6 are about the Canadian “Ogopogo” of Lake Okanogan, the American “Champ” of Lake Champlain, and less-well-known lake monsters of North America. Chapter 7 reports on lake monsters around the world. Chapter 8 surveys the typically mysterious carcasses periodically found on seashores. Chapter 9 mentions the surprises that the ocean depths occasionally reveal, notably the coelacanth, the giant squid, and the megamouth shark, as well as the little-known beaked whales, oarfish, and sturgeon of monstrous size.

Parabolicity of Zero-Twist Tight Flute Surfaces and Uniformization of the Loch Ness Monster

In this paper we study the zero-twist flute surface and we associate to each one of them a sequence of positive real numbers. Conversely, we associate to each sequence of positive real numbers $\mathbf{x}=(x_{n})_{n\in\mathbb{N}_{0}}$ a torsion-free Fuchsian group $\Gamma_{\mathbf{x}}$ such that the convex core of $\mathbb{H}^2/\Gamma_{\mathbf{x}}$ is isometric to a zero-twist tight flute surface $S_{\mathbf{x}}$. Moreover, we prove that the Fuchsian group $\Gamma_{\mathbf{x}}$ is first kind if and only if the series $\sum x_{n}$ diverges. As consequence of the recent work of Basmajian, Hakobian and {S}ari{c}, we obtain that the zero-twist flute surface $S_{\mathbf{x}}$ is of parabolic type if and only $\sum x_{n}$ diverges. In addition, we present an uncountable family of hyperbolic surfaces homeomorphic to the Loch Ness Monster. More precisely, we associate to each sequence $\mathbf{y}=(y_{n})_{n\in\mathbb{Z}}$, where $y_{n}=(a_{n},b_{n},c_{n},d_{n},e_{n})\in \mathbb{R}^5$ and $a_n\leq b_n \leq c_n \leq d_n \leq e_n \leq a_{n+1}$, a Fuchsian group $G_{\mathbf{y}}$ such that $\mathbb{H}^2/G_{\mathbf{y}}$ is homeomorphic to the Loch Ness Monster.

Clarifying the structure and nature of left-wing authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism has been the subject of scientific inquiry for nearly a century, yet the vast majority of authoritarianism research has focused on right-wing authoritarianism. In the present studies, we investigate the nature, structure, and nomological network of left-wing authoritarianism (LWA), a construct famously known as "the Loch Ness Monster" of political psychology. We iteratively construct a measure and data-driven conceptualization of LWA across six samples (N = 7,258) and conduct quantitative tests of LWA's relations with more than 60 authoritarianism-related variables. We find that LWA, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation reflect a shared constellation of personality traits, cognitive features, beliefs, and motivational values that might be considered the "heart" of authoritarianism. Relative to right-wing authoritarians, left-wing authoritarians were lower in dogmatism and cognitive rigidity, higher in negative emotionality, and expressed stronger support for a political system with substantial centralized state control. Our results also indicate that LWA powerfully predicts behavioral aggression and is strongly correlated with participation in political violence. We conclude that a movement away from exclusively right-wing conceptualizations of authoritarianism may be required to illuminate authoritarianism's central features, conceptual breadth, and psychological appeal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Is the Intellectual Functioning Component of AAIDD's 12th Manual Satisficing?

Is the Intellectual Functioning Component of AAIDD's 12th Manual Satisficing?

Dessins D’enfants and Some Holomorphic Structures on the Loch Ness Monster

Abstract The theory of dessins d’enfants on compact Riemann surfaces, which are bipartite maps on compact orientable surfaces, are combinatorial objects used to study branched covers between compact Riemann surfaces and the absolute Galois group of the field of rational numbers. In this paper, we show how this theory is naturally extended to non-compact orientable surfaces and, in particular, we observe that the Loch Ness monster (LNM; the surface of infinite genus with exactly one end) admits infinitely many regular dessins d’enfants (either chiral or reflexive). In addition, we study different holomorphic structures on the LNM, which come from homology covers of compact Riemann surfaces, and infinite hyperelliptic and infinite superelliptic curves.

Introduction to PNAS special issue on evolutionary models of financial markets

One of the longest debates in economics involves the existence of a rare Hominid “species” known as Homo economicus , the economic human. H. economicus is able to determine the optimal use of its resources to maximize its well-being as defined by the assumptions of neoclassical economics, leading to behavior that has come to be known as economic rationality. When interacting with other members of this species in market settings, such behavior leads to a magical outcome. The participants’ self-interested efforts to exploit their disparate pieces of information aggregates, distills, and compresses their information into a single number: the price. And because no piece of information is left unused or uninterpreted in the process of price discovery, this market is deemed “efficient.” Prices fully reflect all available information, as Eugene Fama concluded in his first articulation of the efficient markets hypothesis (1). Modern financial theory and practice are built on the foundation of H. economicus and efficient markets. However, booms, busts, and financial crises have created stress fractures in that foundation, implying that investors are not fully rational, that markets are not infallible, and that their failure can be catastrophic for the global financial system. Behavioral economists, on the other hand, view investors and markets as fundamentally irrational and inefficient. From their perspective, H. economicus is a case study in cryptozoology, as relevant to scientific discourse as Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster. Nevertheless, it is an empirical fact that markets behave well most of the time, and when they do break down, it is often for understandable and predictable reasons. In recent years, the two sides of this debate have moved closer as more sophisticated models of investor behavior and macroeconomic dynamics have been developed to rationalize empirical anomalies, such as the equity risk premium, excess stock market … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: slevin{at}princeton.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Mystery Cats of the World Revisited: Blue Tigers, King Cheetahs, Black Cougars, Spotted Lions, and More by Karl P. N. Shuker

At long last, after 31 years, the first book by noted British zoologist and cryptozoologist Karl Shuker has been expanded and updated. Mystery Cats of the World first appeared in 1989 and was the only book to review feline cryptids worldwide. In this 2020 edition, Shuker repeats this admirable achievement and, in the process, gives us a solid overview of current knowledge of felid evolution, taxonomy, and genetic variation. In fact, the only feline mystery cat he does not describe is Hello Kitty. Shuker has more than kept up with cryptozoology over the years, keeping the public informed with numerous popular books on dragons, new and rediscovered animals, the Loch Ness monster, and many other lesser-known cryptids. His ShukerNature blog and his regular “Alien Zoo” column in Fortean Times provide an always-fascinating glimpse into ongoing cryptozoological controversies. Scientific names and genetic relationships are updated throughout the text in this new edition. He notes that since 1989, our understanding of genes that cause variations in felid coat color has become more complicated. For example, the chinchilla mutation in tyrosinase was then considered responsible for “partial albino” tigers (white tigers with black stripes). In 2020, a point mutation in a transporter protein that prevents the manufacture of pheomelanin (red and yellow pigments) is seen as a more likely cause. Rather than go into great detail about these ongoing discoveries, Shuker sensibly opts to include the bare minimum of updated felid genetics in his discussions of specific cryptids. However, for clarity and comparison he provides a table from the first edition that describes the six major genes and their mutant alleles that in the 1970s were thought by UK geneticist Roy Robinson to be responsible for major cat color morphs. (Believe me, this chart comes in handy throughout the book.)

Has Physics Theory Become Vacuous?

Modern science made its mark by gaining knowledge and understanding in a bottom-up manner: starting with observed phenomena and developing explanatory theories.
 From about the middle of the 20th century, however, reliance on accepted theories became increasingly dogmatic. One indication of increasing dogmatism was a failure to acknowledge phenomena for which no obvious explanation already existed—unidentified flying objects, unidentified creatures (Loch Ness Monsters, yetis, Bigfoot), parapsychological phenomena. Dissatisfaction with ignoring such phenomena led to the founding of the Society for Scientific Exploration as well as other, typically more topic-specialized, groups. A further indication of increasing dogmatism was the continuing adherence in many mainstream matters to explanations no longer consonant with accumulating evidence (Bauer, 2012a).
 Nevertheless, it continues to be widely believed that science is carried on, and should be carried on, as described by the scientific method: The validity of theories is judged by their adequacy in explaining observable facts.
 Lost in Math argues that theoretical physics is no longer a science in this sense, that it has become a playground of purely mathematical speculation, with judgments of potential validity made not by appeal to observables but to such aesthetic values or principles as elegance or beauty.
 The book is enormously informative, extremely well-written, highly recommendable. Honestly and with full disclosure, Sabine Hossenfelder describes in the first person her grappling with the dilemma that her profession, theoretical physics, appears to be determinedly wrong-headed, at an impasse, a dead end, going nowhere, for instance producing 193 models for the early universe and 500 theories to explain a spurious signal (p. 235).

The Disappearance of Arthur Nestor: Parafiction, Cryptozoology, Curation

This paper considers Beneath the Surface: The Archives of Arthur Nestor, a parafictional exhibition that I curated in 2014 with 16 undergraduate students at Western University, Canada. The exhibition depicted the life of Dr. Arthur Nestor, a professor of Biology who had disappeared from London (ON) in 1975, seemingly without trace. Over the summer of 2014, some of Nestor’s files and artefacts had been discovered during university renovations, and this archive was given to students in Museum Studies to organize and catalogue. As we sorted through the files, it became clear that Dr. Nestor was something of a controversial figure, a man who became an environmental activist in Southwestern Ontario because of his belief that cryptids (lake monsters) lived in Lakes Huron and Erie, and were in need of protection from human-made pollution. As the documents in his file overlapped with our research in the wider sphere, the evidence seemed to suggest that Nestor had left London to join Dr. Roy Mackal, a University of Chicago professor of cryptozoology searching for the Loch Ness Monster. This paper weaves together the tale of Arthur Nestor and the curating of Beneath the Surface with a history of the relationship between natural history museums and cryptozoology, ultimately questioning what parafiction can do in both art galleries and museums.

The Victor Perera Papers

The author shares the circumstances that led to his encounter with the personal archives of Victor Haim Perera (1934–2003), an award-winning Sephardic-American writer, journalist, environmental and political activist, and academic born in Guatemala City. Perera published six books on topics as varied as Sephardic history, the Maya Indians, and the Loch Ness monster, and contributed dozens of articles, short stories, and essays to newspapers, trade journals, magazines, and literary anthologies. This paper also provides an overview of Perera’s life and work and shares information about the Victor Perera Papers collection at the University of Michigan Library. It presents a case study illustrating that library catalogers can improve discoverability of and access to library special collections by expanding beyond their core duties and investigating the contexts behind the materials that cross their desks. The article ends with a preliminary bibliography of Perera’s works.

ESSAY REVIEW Disappointing “documentary” about Loch Ness Monsters (“Nessies”) (Can good documentaries be made about such subjects?)

“About the show:Professor Neil Gemmell uses cutting-edge environmental DNA science to unravel the mystery of the Loch Ness monster. Neil’s high-tech monster hunt opens a new chapter in the search for Nessie as he puts the leading theories to the ultimate scientific test.” [i]This description misleads in every important respect. The mystery is not unraveled; the leading theory is not even mentioned, and Gemmell’s reason for embarking on this project — namely, to spread awareness of the potential benefits that can accrue from research on environmental DNA (eDNA) — is not well served, because there is no useful explanation of what eDNA science does, what it can and cannot accomplish, and why [ii]. That lack is all the sadder because the results in this case with respect to Nessies are not only incomplete, they are inconclusive and probably even wrong in an important respect.[i] https://www.travelchannel.com/shows/loch-ness-monster-new-evidence[ii] That eDNA work is not easy or infallible is pointed out in a comment on Roland Watson’s informative and reliable blog: “as with any tests that involve biologicals, there are error rates. And eDNA is not immune to these errors. . . . eDNA testing is also affected by seasonal changes — of how creatures operate in their environment, as well as the quality of the effluent at different times of the year, and so on. . . . [F]or eDNA testing to detect creatures properly there would have to be such testing throughout Loch Ness on a quarterly basis over probably at least two years, and probably have close to 350 to 450 sampling points — and doing this at least at five or six different consistent depths. I think that Roland correctly pointed out that nothing was taken way down deep, and there probably should have been. Also, eDNA actually lasts much, much longer in soils than in water. So taking samples off the Loch bottom might be a fruitful endeavor.” Indeed, there are several clues indicating that Nessies spend most of their time down deep, possibly in the two basins known to be deeper than 200 m (Shine & Martin 1988).