When we spoke last year with anthropologist Jeffrey Meldrum about his research on Bigfoot, not all of our listeners were impressed. Among them was science writer Brian Switek who says that focusing on fantastic tales comes at a cost: it blurs the line between belief and scientific method and it distracts us from the astonishing species that do exist. Well, Sasquatch is in the news again and Tuesday, Switek joins us to explain why rumors of Bigfoot DNA don't impress him either.
• Also with us is Utah State University Folklore Professor Lynne McNeill. We'll ask her why belief persists despite a lack of incontrovertible evidence.
• Brian Switek blogged about our interview with Jeffrey Meldrum here. Switek is the author of Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
• Utah is featured in the Discovery Channel program "Finding Bigfoot" - Season 2, Ep. 9: Holy Cow, It's Bigfoot

How does it really hurt if someone believes in such things as Bigfoot or the Three Nephites. The belief in myth lowers the standard of evidence.

How is a belief in Bigfoot any different than the claim I have an invisible dragon in my garage?

Did you find a scale from that dragon on the bagel you left outside, and then DNA test it to make sure that it mated with humans 15k years ago!?!?

lol, I'm totally kidding, BUT the DNA evidence for Bigfoot is based on that exact thing. They found a hair on a bagel, and for some reason they were convinced that the hair came from a bigfoot (I still don't understand that part, and they are being purposefully vague about it) and when they tested it they found a section of DNA they claim shows that this hair came from a creature that at one point had at least 1 human ancestor (again, I don't understand this part, & they are purposefully withholding the evidence [or even the DNA sequence] which makes me assume it is a hoax)

That settles it for me.

There's no possible way a hair on a bagel could have human DNA unless it was bigfoot.

What do all the skeptics say NOW?

This is even more exciting than the Bigfoot carcass that was found back in 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCCrHREL9l0&NR=1

yeah, the first time I saw that "corpse" I said, "Isn't that just a chimp suit with some animal guts on it?"
...and sure enough that's what it ended up being.

If you're gonna do a hoax, at least do a good job ;)

I've always wanted to do some elaborate hoax (a-la war of the worlds), get a bunch of "believers" and then come out and show them exactly how I tricked them and say "Now that you know you are gullible, please don't believe things like this in the future."
...but then I remember how lazy I am, and I just surf the net instead.

Wait, isn't Big Foot Cain? Who never dies, but is destined to walk the earth forever?

If this thing in the bathtub is really bigfoot, doesn't that mean that Cain is dead? The same Cain that can't die?

In 2011, I was in Utah and I found an arrangement of rocks that looked like a human footprint and photographed it... I told everyone it was the footprint of a rare rock Yeti. Then I lost the picture...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2012 05:37PM by John_Lyle.