Last week, the Huffington Post UK declared that “Science has just killed bigfoot“
This is unlikely to be true. The only thing that’s as rare as a bigfoot is a pseudoscience believer ready to change his or her mind after being presented with evidence.
Someone once advised me that you can’t use reason to win an argument with an irrational person. Philosopher Karl Popper came up with something similar when he explained that pseudoscience is generally not falsifiable.
That doesn’t mean scientists can’t have a little fun trying to debunk some of the more concrete manifestations of nutty claims, which is the nature of the story that broke last week. Apparently a number of people around the world own bigfoot hair samples. British geneticist Brian Sykes collected a variety of such samples, and after ruling out the plant fibers and materials of non-biological origin, he applied DNA analysis to 37 and found they all came from known animals. Most were bears but there were several cows and a porcupine.
(In case you’re unfamiliar with the claim, here’s a brief description from Wikipedia: a large hairy ape-like creature, in a range of 2–3 m (6.6-9.8 ft) tall, weighing in excess of 500 pounds (230 kg).)
Sykes’ analysis led to a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
It’s reasonable to assume many of our readers are rational, don’t believe in bigfoot, and therefore won’t learn anything from the overall conclusion of the story. That presents a challenge for the writer in presenting something that won’t make such readers feel you’ve wasted their time.
As a representative of the non-believers among the readership, I found most of the stories offered too little in the way of entertainment or enlightenment. They tended to belabor the obvious, with the refreshing exception of this story, Bigfoot Samples Analyzed in Lab by Sarah C. Williams at Science. Here’s the heart of the story, which managed to get the whole thing into three, compact, entertaining paragraphs, which I shortened slightly:
In 2012, researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the Museum of Zoology in Lausanne, Switzerland, put out a call for hair samples thought to be from anomalous primates. They received 57 hairs from Bigfoot enthusiasts and museums around the world, including samples from Washington, Texas, Oregon, Russia, and India—a few as old as 50 years. Some “hairs” immediately turned out not to be hairs at all, but rather plant or glass fibers; others were too worn to study.
The researchers, led by Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, focused on the remaining 37 samples, isolating and cleaning a 2- to 4-centimeter segment of each hair, many of which have been extensively handled by people, contaminating them with foreign DNA….
Ten hairs belonged to various bear species; four were from horses; four were from wolves or dogs; one was a perfect match to a human hair; and the others came from cows, raccoons, deer, and even a porcupine.
The story works because there’s an implicit assumption that readers are intelligent. And she tells the tale in a way that brings out the humor inherent in the situation.
The paper did contain one surprise, sort of. Sykes said one sample matched a species of polar bear that had been assumed extinct some 40,000 years. When attempting to dispel dubious claims, it is a good idea not to spread new dubious claims. A few diligent reporters did check that out with experts on bear genetics, who were doubtful.
Here’s a skeptical treatment by James Owens for National Geographic:
Robert Rockwell, a biologist and research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, remains unconvinced. Rockwell confessed to being “a bit shocked and dismayed” to see that the prehistoric polar bear match was based on just 104 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA—a shortcoming that the study team itself admitted.
…The amount of DNA sequence examined is so small, especially for a conserved region [DNA that remains very similar across many different species], that I am not certain [the type of bear] can actually be concluded.”
Charlotte Lindqvist, a molecular biologist at State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, echoed those reservations.
Repeated in many stories was a bizarre quote, which may have come with the press release:
“I thought there was about a 5 percent chance of finding a sample from a Neanderthal or (a Yeti),” said Bryan Sykes of Oxford University, who led the research, the first peer-reviewed study of Bigfoot, Yeti and other “anomalous primates.”
5%? Could a non-crackpot put the odds up that high? Where does Sykes get those odds? Is he just pulling it out of thin air because it would be hard to justify the project if his statement better reflected the scientific view, which would put odds of such a thing closer to 0%?
Other stories: Huffington Post UK: Bigfoot “Proof” Refuted.
Science News, Erica Engelhaupt, Finally, some solid science on bigfoot
AP, Marcia Chang, with Seth Borenstein, Bigfoot Hair Samples Mostly From Bears, Wolves
Daily Mail, Mark Prigg: Moo-ve along, Bigfoot, nothing to see here: Genetic test of 30 different hairs claimed to be from sasquatch finds they are from bears, wolves and even a COW
Guardian, Grrlscientist: DNA analysis indicates Bigfoot may be a big fake
Time Melissa Hellmann DNA Analysis Debunks Bigfoot Myth, Points to Unknown Bear Species
National Geographic must be going with the inquiring minds want to know philosophy, as the outlet ran not one but two blog posts on the topic. The other, by Ker Than: Is the Abominable Snowman a Bear?
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