As a practical matter, the situation is worse. Many purported hair samples have been successfully identified, and they definitely do not come from Bigfoot. A large number of them have turned out to be artificial fibers. (David Daegling cites one geneticist’s “tongue-in-cheek report that the likely origin of the sample was from the interior of a couch.”)141 Other samples come from known creatures, including humans and domestic animals. In one widely publicized case in 2005, DNA extracted from hair from an alleged Sasquatch heard in the Yukon woods proved to match that of the local bison.142 In another prominent DNA case, hair taken from a plaster cast of a supposed Bigfoot body print (the “Skookum cast”) turned out to be human.143 Such results are typical.
It is unclear whether DNA alone could settle the Sasquatch controversy under any circumstances. As a working scientist, Meldrum offered these words of caution:
The conventions of zoological taxonomy require a type specimen, traditionally in the form of a body or a sufficiently diagnostic physical body part, to decisively establish the existence of a new species. Whether DNA alone will ultimately satisfy that standard remains to be seen. I am doubtful. I am not aware of a precedent for determining a new species on the basis of DNA evidence, in the absence of a physical specimen.144
Not everyone is so restrained. The Internet had been buzzing about the long-anticipated release145 of a paper purporting to present DNA evidence that “conclusively proves that the Sasquatch exist as an extant hominin and are a direct maternal descendent of modern humans.”146 With DNA sourced, according to the report, from among 111 “samples of blood, tissue, hair, and other types of specimens,” this is the most prominent Sasquatch DNA case to date. Full expert review of the team’s data and methods is not yet available; however, science writers identified several serious red flags within hours of the paper’s release. To begin with, it seems that it was roundly rejected by mainstream science journals. “We were even mocked by one reviewer in his peer review,” complained lead author Melba Ketchum.147 So how did the paper get published? Although Ketchum has insisted that this circumstance did not influence the editorial process, it seems that she bought the publication.148 Indeed, her study is the only one in the inaugural “special issue” of the DeNovo Scientific Journal. Benjamin Radford pointed out that no libraries or universities subscribe to the newly minted DeNovo, “and the journal and its website apparently did not exist three weeks ago. There’s no indication that the study was peer-reviewed by other knowledgeable scientists to assure quality. It is not an existing, known, or respected journal in any sense of the word.”149 Invertebrate neuroethologist Zen Faulkes noted further that DeNovo lists no editor, no editorial board, no physical address—not even a telephone number: “This whole thing looks completely dodgy, with the lack of any identifiable names being the one screaming warning to stay away from this journal. Far, far away.”150
Beyond these irregularities, there are also signs of serious problems with the study’s data, methods, and conclusions. Ketchum and her colleagues found, for example, that all the mitochondrial DNA recovered from their samples tested as “uniformly consistent with modern humans,” but argued despite this finding that anomalies in their nuclear DNA analyses “clearly support that these hominins exist as a novel species of primate. The data further suggests that they are human hybrids originating from human females.”151 This scenario, in which “Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens with an unknown primate species” (as publicized in an earlier press release about the unpublished paper) is not especially plausible.152 As skeptic Steven Novella explained, “It is highly doubtful that the offspring of a creature that looks like bigfoot and a human would be fertile. They would almost certainly be as sterile as mules. Humans could not breed with our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, or any living ape.” He added, “The bottom line is this—human DNA plus some anomalies or unknowns does not equal an impossible human–ape hybrid. It equals human DNA plus some anomalies.”153 These problems have only multiplied with the release of Ketchum’s paper and data. John Timmer, the science editor of the Web site Ars Technica and an experienced genetic researcher, offers the preliminary opinion that “the best explanation here is contamination”:
As far as the nuclear genome is concerned, the results are a mess. Sometimes the tests picked up human DNA. Other times, they didn’t. Sometimes the tests failed entirely. The products of the DNA amplifications performed on the samples look about like what you’d expect when the reaction didn’t amplify the intended sequence. And electron micrographs of the DNA isolated from these samples show patches of double- and single-stranded DNA intermixed. This is what you might expect if two distantly related species had their DNA mixed—the protein-coding sequences would hybridize, and the intervening sections wouldn’t. All of this suggests … that the sasquatch hunters are working on a mix of human DNA intermingled with that of some other (or several other) mammals.154
HOAXING
The great problem for Bigfoot research is that hoaxing definitely occurs. Worse, it is common and has been so throughout the evolution of Bigfoot mythology. Most of the foundational cases probably were fabrications, and hoaxes definitely comprise a large percentage of overall footprint cases and eyewitness accounts.
In the absence of a type specimen, the Sasquatch can be supported by (and defined by) only two pillars: star cases and everything else. If either level of the database is contaminated by hoaxes, this is a catastrophic problem for Bigfoot proponents. They face stark choices: give up the Sasquatch hypothesis, rely on outright guessing or faith, or make a serious effort to purge hoaxes from the database.
The third option, sadly, gets little traction. Partly, this is because the practical problem is so daunting. As John Green noted forty years ago, it is one thing to know that hoaxes occur and another to identify them: “Things have reached a point where it is to be expected that some people will make up such stories in hope of fame or even financial gain, and I have no doubt that there are people doing so. It is hard to weed them out with any certainty, because there is ample information in print now to give anyone the details for a convincing story.”155
But members of the Bigfoot subculture defend reports that they should reject. Indeed, it is a given for cryptozoologists to promote famous cases long after a possibility of deliberate fraud emerges. Evidence “discovered” by long-known hoaxers continues to feature in even the newest and best-respected pro-Bigfoot books. For example, both the “Cripple Foot” tracks found by film hoaxer Ivan Marx156 and the handprints discovered by admitted footprint hoaxer Paul Freeman157 are presented as strong evidence by Jeff Meldrum.158 In such circumstances, the cryptozoological project is revealed as partisan advocacy rather than objective inquiry. In any scientific or rigorous discipline, a serious suggestion of fraud places a claim in a kind of intellectual quarantine. Bigfooters are very reluctant to set aside questionable evidence.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman agrees that some cases persist beyond their expiration date, although he disagrees with my assessment of the health of cryptozoology. For example, he writes that the “story of Jacko—that of a small, apelike, young Sasquatch said to have been captured alive in the 1800s—is a piece of folklore that refuses to die,” despite the discovery in 1975 that news accounts busted the yarn in 1884.159 I grew up regarding Jacko as a major discovery and not surprisingly: it is prominently featured in virtually all Bigfoot books, without disclosure of the evidence that it was a hoax. Nor am I alone in having considered this case to be stronger than it is known to be. As Coleman writes, “Unfortunately a whole new generation of hominologists, Sasquatch searchers, and Bigfoot researchers are growing up thinking that the Jacko story is an ironclad cornerstone of the field, a foundation piece of history proving that Sasquatch are real. But in reality Jacko seems to be a local rumor brought to the level of a news story that eventually evolved into a modern fable.”160 This state of affairs strikes me
as a very bad sign for the methods and integrity of cryptozoology, but Coleman is more upbeat. He told me that the persistence of the tale “says more about the transmission of information and the lack of available outlets to publish our findings.” According to Coleman, “Self-correcting occurs all the time in cryptozoology, although it may take years to transmit the information.”161
A Taxonomy of Mischief
Why would anyone go to the trouble of concocting a Bigfoot hoax? The Bigfoot world seems to approach this question from two contradictory positions. On the one hand, proponents often argue that most Bigfoot evidence must be real because perpetrating a hoax is a prohibitive hassle. On the other, anyone who spends time on Bigfoot’s trail learns early, and through bitter experience, that hoaxing is extremely common. A wide range of people independently fabricate tracks and sightings for a variety of idiosyncratic reasons. Some of these hoaxers are Bigfoot investigators.
The sheer quantity of Bigfoot evidence is surely impressive. To account for that “mountain of evidence” by hoaxing, proponents argue, we would have to posit a conspiracy of global reach and Machiavellian cunning. According to a rather fishy back-of-the-envelope calculation by Grover Krantz, faking all the Bigfoot tracks would require “at least 1,000 paid professionals,” whose efforts would not come cheap: “During the last forty years well over a billion dollars must have been expended on this project.” Either that, he argued, or we must imagine an unpaid horde of “something like 100,000 casual hoaxers who go out for a weekend of track making one or two times a year.” Or, finally, we could accept what Krantz proposed as the most parsimonious explanation: an undiscovered species of giant primate stomping all over North America.162
Krantz’s math—which was based not on the number of tracks that have actually been discovered, but on his own estimate that 100 million mostly unknown track-making events must have occurred—can be safely ignored. But what of his basic arguments? Would independent hoaxers have the wherewithal to create persuasive tracks? And what would they have to gain? Luckily, we do not have to guess on either question. Many hoaxers have run rings around Bigfoot investigators, and in many cases their motivations are also a matter of record.
Noting “a tendency among Bigfoot pundits to assume that any potential hoaxer is, by virtue of their poor character, also laughably inept,” skeptic David Daegling pointed out that dishonesty does nothing to diminish the intelligence or creativity of hoaxers.163 For a stunning demonstration, consider a case shared by Krantz himself, in which Bigfoot tracks ran up a steep slope in inhumanly long 8-foot strides: “It was later found that a high school athlete had made the tracks; he wore fake feet that were put on backwards, and he ran down the slope. Whenever a new account is recorded of incredible feats of footwork, I try to remember this case and wonder how the new one might have been faked.”164
From the most dazzling feats to the most pedestrian fibs, hoaxing comes in many forms and is undertaken for many reasons. Some deceptions are intended to increase the stature of the hoaxer (as when Bigfoot investigators regularly discover evidence that is too good to be true). Others are simply gags. Some are meant to make money (a proposed motivation for the probable film hoax by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin). Another not uncommon class of fabrications might be likened to guerrilla gardening, flash mobs, or certain types of graffiti: anonymous works of art defined by their audacity and their ability to baffle onlookers.
Many hoaxers deliberately attempt (destructively or constructively, depending on your point of view) either to make paranormal researchers appear foolish or to expose flaws in the methodology of researchers or media. A widely cited example of this genre is the “Carlos” hoax of 1988, in which Australian news media were presented with the arrival of a supposed New Age channeler from America—actually a performance artist who was recruited for the role by skeptical author James Randi.165 Although media coverage of Carlos was skeptical in tone, none of the major Australian news media that featured Carlos undertook any sort of due-diligence background check on the psychic performer—which easily would have revealed that he was a completely fictitious recent invention.166 This proved very embarrassing when Randi’s collaborators on the Australian version of 60 Minutes revealed the hoax on national television—to the outrage of many.167
This testing type of hoax (what we might think of as a “secret shopper” or “believer-baiting” hoax) is very common in the Bigfoot world. It does not require the resources that Randi brought to his “Carlos” stunt. Recall that bricklayer Ray Pickens laid fake Bigfoot tracks on several occasions in 1971, using nothing more than wooden feet attached to boots.168 (This was minor revenge. When a Bigfoot researcher described Pickens and his friend as “hicks,” Pickens was provoked to create his first fake tracks.)169 In a more recent instance, a young filmmaker named John Rael produced a fake Bigfoot video and seeded it to YouTube in 2010—only to reveal the hoax in an intentionally juvenile sequel in which Bigfoot literally gets kicked in the groin. When I asked Rael about this, he told me that he hoped to “trick the ‘true believer’ into believing something that can be shown, unequivocally, to be fake” in order to “inspire the true believer to begin questioning some of their other beliefs.”170
THE PARADOX OF BIGFOOT
At the heart of the mystery of Bigfoot is a paradox: many people see Sasquatches, but no one can find one. This is an extremely uncomfortable dilemma for Bigfoot advocates. Either Sasquatches are too rare to locate, in which case they should also be too rare to see; or the common and widespread sighting reports are by and large accurate, in which case science should long ago have located a specimen.
Proponents are aware that the absence of a carcass is the central problem for their field—a problem that grows more severe with every passing day. At the dawn of the Sasquatch era, it was sensible to ask skeptics to be patient. As John Green reflected forty years ago, “The most likely way for the Sasquatch question to be settled is for some deer hunter to down one—and I believe that becomes more probable each year as more and more people learn that the things are real, that they are not human, and that the first man to bring one in is sure of fame and perhaps fortune.”171
But after decades of fruitless patience (and unclaimed rewards of hundreds of thousands of dollars),172 Bigfooters have to explain why no one has yet located a species of animal that is supposed to be as large as a Kodiak bear. “The mantra among career Bigfoot pursuers is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” explains anthropologist David Daegling, “which is a point well taken, but the skeptic can still reasonably ask why the evidence that should be there isn’t.”173 The most common response is an argument of necessity: Bigfoot hunters cannot find the creature, but they should not, after all, be expected to find it. Sasquatches are rare and clever, and after they die their remains are quickly erased by posthumous predation and weather. According to Bigfooters, that’s just how nature works. This was the argument of cryptozoology pioneer Ivan Sanderson: “Ask any game warden, real woodsman or professional animal collector if he has ever found the dead body of any wild animal—except along roads of course, or if killed by man. I never have, in 40 years and 5 continents! Nature takes care of its own, and damned fast, too.”174 This idea was taken up by Grover Krantz, a pro-Sasquatch anthropologist, who asked, “If bears are real, why don’t we find their bones?”175 In Krantz’s opinion, “We should expect to find a dead sasquatch about as easily as we find a dead bear (assuming they occurred in the same numbers and had similar life spans) … and dead bears are almost never found.”176
Skeptics are in the business of soberly considering strange claims—such as pyramid power, alien abduction, or the psychic ability to cause someone to urinate against his or her will177—as though they were perfectly plausible possibilities. But even by that standard, and with all the goodwill in the world, I cannot consider the “no dead bears” argument to be anything but foolish. The reason is simple: dead bears are found (figure 2.7). Often.
Figure 2.7
The skull of a grizzly bear in the collection of the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria. (Photograph by Daniel Loxton)
Indeed, many members of the tiny fraternity of Bigfoot researchers and skeptics have themselves come across dead bears! Pro-Sasquatch wildlife biologist John Bindernagel told me that he has found bear skulls—twice.178 Bigfoot skeptic David Daegling came upon a “cranium of a black bear, beautifully preserved,” from which he wryly concludes that “perhaps you can appreciate that, based on my personal experience, I find Sanderson’s and Krantz’s declarations to be rather hollow.”179 I agree that the “no dead bears” argument is hollow and for the same reason: I found a bear carcass myself, during my career as a shepherd near the Alaska panhandle. Similarly, my brother Jason stumbled across a bear carcass while doing geochemical sampling in the far Yukon. The skull of that bear now sits on his bookcase.180
The “no dead bears” argument is special pleading and worse: it is wildly, laughably wrong. But there is no amount of special pleading that cannot be rescued by still further special pleading. Bigfooters hasten to emphasize the “except by human actions” clause of their argument. Krantz insisted, “I’ve talked to hunters, many game guides, conservation people, ecology students, and asked them how many remains of dead bears have you found that died a natural death? Over twenty years of inquiry my grand total of naturally dead bear bones found is zero!”181
There are two problems with this “natural death” stipulation. To begin with, cause of death usually cannot be determined from a skull or old bones. As Bindernagel told me, “I really don’t know how the two bears whose skulls I encountered died—‘natural’ death or otherwise.”182 Nor can my brother account for the death of the bear whose skull graces his bookcase, although he found the carcass in an extremely remote and uninhabited, boat-access-only area. But just for the sake of argument, let’s grant the highly dubious assumption that all locatable remains are those of bears that were killed by humans. Why would Bigfoot be immune to the same cars, trucks, and guns that kill bears?
Abominable Science Page 9
