The story of two Gorgia men who claimed to have captured Bigfoot is a little old now, but I couldn’t keep the geekdom inside me any longer. Besides, such master pieces should not be kept from the world~! My original idea was not in comic form–I would love to see a wookie costume frozen in a block of ice in a fake press conference video posted on YouTube to spoof the Bigfoot hoax. But, I’m a mangaka so all I’m (barely) useful for is drawing silly pictures.
One of my favourite podcasts, SETI’s “Are We Alone”, had an episode about the hoax, Skeptical Sunday: Bigfoot Press Conference. What I like most is how the hosts, Seth Shostak and Molly Bentley, explain a lot about what good evidence is and why what was presented at the press conference is considered poor evidence. They also did an excellent job of pointing out how the man speaking to the press was setting up the story so that what would be presented might seem more credible.
Personally, I don’t think it’s absolutely absurd to think there might be a creature lurking in the forests of North America that we don’t know about. However, I think it’s most likely that there’s plenty of alternate explanations for these sort of sightings which are far more probable. I do have a beef with cryptozoology, though. This term for the study of hidden animals triggers my woo-alarm. I can’t see how one can investigate a claim, like a Sasquatch sighting, and be unbiased if they are calling themselves a cryptozoologist. You are naming yourself after your desired result: hidden animals. Don’t regular, plain-old, everyday zoologists find new species? I betcha they do…probably by coming across evidence that suggests there might be a new creature. But, since they aren’t exclusively in the search for undiscovered creatures, they should be less likely to overlook an alternate explanation for what they’ve found.
As for myself, I’m just a mangaka and part-time cryptoboyfriendologist.
