Friday, August 19, 2011

Sasquatch, science, and confusion

I read some of the sasquatch literature, and I hold it to be very unlikely but not entirely impossible there's an unclassified North American primate, but sometimes it seems it IS impossible for the whole business to be handled in a way "mainstream" science could respect. Sasquatch hunters and researchers range from people with relevant Ph.D.s (only a few, but they ARE there) through a wide range of people who are dedicated and sincere, and then on down to people who are, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy. I respect all the sincere researchers, but they don't seem able to entirely disassociate themselves from the hoaxers and the deluded. Maybe that's an impossible task in the Internet-enabled world. Anyway, I post this link for Dr. Ketchum's comments about how she is in fact following the rules in analyzing purported sasquatch DNA and has a peer-reviewed scientific journal paper in process. I will look forward with great interest to that paper. But note the DNA enterprise is no exception to the rule that sasquatch researchers eat their own. There are competing projects, hoaxers, wild tales of dead sasquatches, and much more in this article and the comments thereto. If sasquatch exists, here's my advice to his entire species: run.

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