By the cryptozoology author Jonathan Whitcomb
This is in response to a newspaper article in The News & Observer in North Carolina, which was published January 11, 2018: “Are there flying dinosaurs in NC? One woman says she’s seen them 3 times in Raleigh.” I invented the word unicornorism because of a quotation in that article, what was said by Professor Matt Cartmill regarding the possibility that any pterosaurs presently live in North America, including one area of North Carolina: “I’d rank it as being slightly more probable than living unicorns in Raleigh and Durham. But only slightly.” I now define the word I invented on September 30, 2018:
Unicornorism is the process of promoting an idea that has long been popular and dismissing potential evidence that may lead to doubt in the long-believed axiom, by appealing to how long the original idea has been popular or to how popular it is.
The words of Professor Cartmill, in that newspaper article, may appear to be a milder form of unicornorism, if it applies at all, when taken in context with his earlier words:
“I can’t believe that if there were living pterosaurs in North America, three centuries of naturalists, explorers, farmers, hunters, trappers and biologists would never have run across a single specimen, living or dead . . . What do these big flying animals eat? Where do they roost?” [words of Matt Cartmill]
The problem with that, however, is that in the strictest sense he would be presenting himself as having the omniscience of God, otherwise he would have to have personally interviewed every naturalist, explorer, farmer, hunter, trapper and biologist who had ever lived in North American during the past three hundred years. In addition, he would have to have the ability to perfectly determine the honesty and accuracy of all that those countless persons would report to him about what they had experienced and not experienced for all the days of their lives.
I suspect that Professor Cartmill has never questioned even one person who may have witnessed a living pterosaur. After all, he appears to be a professor of evolutionary anthropology, not a cryptozoologist. Keeping all that in mind, we can dismiss his words about three centuries of human inhabitants of North America and see his declaration about unicorns and potential living pterosaurs for what it is: a unicornorism, albeit this appears to be a mild or indirect form of unicornorism. It seems to me to be a better example of foolverism, and his paragraph about three centuries of human inhabitants of North American appears to be a straw man argument.
Encounters With Living Pterosaurs and News Reporting
Part of the problem with that professor’s point of view appears to be this: He assumes that if anyone ever got a clear view of a modern pterosaur in North America the event would get to the attention of a reasonably unbiased news professional or an open-minded scientist and the details of the sighting would be properly published. My fifteen years of investigating eyewitness accounts of these flying creatures leads me to a very different opinion.
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Foolverism and living pterosaurs in North Carolina
In response to a newspaper article, the word foolverism was invented.
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Live pterosaurs in North Carolina
That seems like a fair ending to the article, avoiding any offense to anyone: another interesting story on an average day. I would be delighted if many American newspapers would publish stories like that, for I feel sure that someday, in some town or city in America, some newspaper professional will be struck by the possibility that maybe great blue herons are not playing dress-up. Will that article, whenever and wherever it will be published, fly well enough for a Pulitzer Prize? I’m willing to help that writer make a run for it.