Bigfoot's Science Beat Down.

My Essay and Speech posing the possible issues with how the media and technology may compromise  their mother practice, scientific fact/honesty. I chose bigfoot because of its wide-spread, long-lived media prevalence and because it's one of the few biased popular claims pertaining specifically to science.

Works Cited available upon request.

"The most fantastical, far-fetched flamboyantly false legend of our modern era is the proposed existence of Sasquatch. The impossibility of a great ape living in our country’s backwoods is being ignored for the sake of interesting television. This newfound interest has inspired a new generation of believers, although scientific evidence disproving him has never been more valuable and abundant. We, as media consumers, are no strangers to buying half-truths and sensational exaggerations; however, the possibility of an extant, boreal-dwelling primate isn’t a political, spiritual or social matter. These claims disregard science’s sacred law and threaten its honorable reputation. It’s become a worthy battle to inspire critical thought, thus protecting the sanctity of scientific truth: 98% of bio scientists don't believe it's worth the effort dispelling such a silly myth. This means academically competent information from experienced professionals isn’t nearly as publicized - or even compiled - as the cross-platform content argued for by pro-existence people.

Sasquatch skeptic and author John Napier explored the differences between both the believer’s evidence and evidence pertinent to skeptics. His evidence for the former was categorized as “cultural evidence”, and the latter’s he categorized “scientific evidence”. While scientific evidence doesn’t require culture’s approval, cultural evidence is worthless if there are absolutely no comprising aspects able to be scientifically recognized. This means for every thousand of arguments made for Sasquatch’s existence, it takes only one tried and true fact to discredit it.  I will explore and assign value to both scientific and cultural types of evidence by beginning with how the Bigfoot’s myth gained popularity, as well as presenting examples of the poisonous desperation that his believers  (and the TV channels that profit from airing believers) experience because of a lack in tangible evidence,

The media barrage of cleverly organized falsities resulted in Bigfoot’s stardom. He has been spotted in every state on America’s mainland, making him a pervasive and accepted figure because of this accessibility. Kids and adults alike have all experienced their native home’s wilderness, meanwhile inspired by an enchanting hope to catch a glimpse of our nine-foot forest brother. Witness accounts like these were responsible for Bigfoot’s first steps into our consciousness. The collection of reported sightings (the largest belonging to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization of Colorado) remain the core of any Bigfoot advocate’s “cultural evidence”. Belief in Bigfoot has survived brilliantly on this insubstantial web of testimony and a commitment to defending irrelevant detail.

Irrelevant detail, like buttocks muscles, armpit gaps and the inability to see a zipper, is Animal Planet’s current method for assaulting science. I’m referencing the hilariously ironic, yet convincing and honest T.V. show, “Finding Bigfoot”. The use of technology is the key to Bigfoot’s existence, and this program is telling of technology’s ability to perpetuate a myth like this. But, technology’s place in our societies are still very vague, it’s an inconceivable idea to fully consider it’s powerful prevalence culture-wide with its equal importance in our personal lives.

Jankowski 5

Sitting down on a Sunday night to catch the new episode is very, very interesting. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, or “BFRO”, teams up with a spunky, skeptical wildlife biologist named Rene to review sightings and conduct investigations around the U.S. The BFRO’s website, as I’d stated, is used as a the country’s database for all reported evidence for Bigfoot’s existence. They use this information to pinpoint where based on witness’ reports would be the most “Squatchy” (where they’d have the best chancing of seeing a Bigfoot). So, the team packs up and takes every spy gadget money can buy with them on investigation nights: motion detectors, night vision surveillance, and infrared thermal imagers, even renting a baboon from a nearby zoo in hopes it’d pique bigfoot’s curiosity. Yet, the Bigfoot Finder Crew is reduced to digitally enhancing an image to re-examine the only piece of Sasquatch footage on the planet; the1967 Patterson-Gimlin film immortalized by anyone with a television or Internet. How on earth can we use technology to enhance the image quality of a 45-year-old film clip, and consider the babblings of  “experts” who insist on using trivial details to fabricate their certainty of Bigfoot’s existence? A believer will take the time to scrutinize how this purported Bigfoot’s toe bends as it hits the ground, and furthermore, convince himself that this toe bend is too inhuman looking to be human, concluding that an 8 foot bipedal primate is the only logical perpetrator of a toe bend. The reasoning is not only faulty, but also exhausting. Instead, I’d encourage them to take the time to consider all the other technology invented since that old fuzzy clip. Trail Cams blanket America’s woodlands by the hundreds of thousands, and every phone in every pocket is now equipped with a camera of 5 times the Patterson-Gimlins’ film’s image definition.

Another example of bigfoot-er’s desperation for any evidence that can appear scientific, regardless if it applies to scientific rule or not, in hopes they’d boost belief in bigfoot’s possibility. An explanation of his possible origin occurred when a television network used its generally credible reputation to air a program that violated one of science’s most important rules: if the facts are outdated, they aren’t facts anymore. The clip I investigated from Animal Planet’s “The Lost Tapes Revelations: Bigfoot” episode aired in 2009 and featured one of the only paleoanthropologists ever to believe in Bigfoot, Dr. Grover Krantz of Washington State University. The clip was intended to

legitimize Dr. Krantzs’ theory that the modern Bigfoot descended from Gigantopithicus, a Pleistocene Primate that we only know existed through teeth and fragments of jaw excavated from Korea.

Upon first viewing of the footage, I got the feeling that there wasn’t anything fishy about Dr. Krantz’s information, and his proposition that because it only went extinct 10,000 years ago, it’d have lived with early humans. “It’s a fair presumption that [the gigantopithicus] was an erect, bipedal animal.” Dr. Krantz explained. “It stood perhaps 8 feet tall, weighed about 800 pounds, and was presumably covered with hair.” I could see how believers could buy into the theory and dismiss the video’s content as the scientific, gospel truth. As Gigantopithicus is a critical piece of evidence (and the only evidence bigfoot-related that is tangible enough for scientists to explore) that Bigfoot believers hold dearly to their case for his existence, I sought more information about this creature and did some research on Dr. Krantz.

A blog from Smithsonian’s “Hominid Hunting” website was an updated and more factually substantial illustration of the mysterious Gigantopithicus. We now know that Gigantopithicus was the size of a 12-foot-tall polar bear, and too massive to ever move as a bipedal animal. A lot like the Panda, this ape ate exclusively bamboo making his migration to mainland North America impossible. Perhaps Dr. Krantz would’ve liked to learn about and participate in a revised version of the episode in lieu of our newfound understanding, but unfortunately, he had passed away in 2002. Seven and a half years after Dr. Krantzs’ death, Animal Planet aired his already disproven hypothesis.

Indisputable scientific truths, and violations of those truths like these are being improved upon and exposed every day. The only evidence remaining for Bigfoot believers is witness testimony: about 1500 unreliable and imaginative sightings from California beaches to Maine’s harbors. Not one sighting, nor any other piece of the cultural poppycock I discussed, can be proven in the distinguished name of science. Every scholarly primate and paleoanthropology journal, hundreds of thousands of trail cams & camera phones, and an increased participation in outdoor recreation, when pitted against self-anointed hominid experts attempting to legitimize armpit gaps, flat feet and top-heavy gaits as induplicable evidence, there is no contest for logic.

We live in corruption and are lied to every day of our lives. How comforting to know that for the past 300 years, science has enforced laws to keep facts updated and employed a system of observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. People living by “scientific evidence” created an impenetrable fortress of knowledge that allowed for new technology to be invented at a rate never experienced by our planet’s history. Our technology’s misuse (the BFRO’s gadgets, Animal Planet, and all misleading journalism) isn’t currently a threat to the big fortress walls protecting resolute fact, but these myths become dangerous when they alter the public’s definition of truth and the amount of proof needed to claim it. "