Eyewitness Accounts

Bad Yeti Science from Ben Radford

Benjamin Radford, who is called LiveScience’s “Bad Science Columnist,” lives up to his title in a new posting about Yeti in which he spreads more bad science. I understand that newspaper writers are often not to blame for their headlines, but in this case I wonder if Radford dreamed up the headline for his own column? Entitled “The Truth About the Abominable Snowman,” it sounds dangerously close to stating an absolute and true believer stance, if you ask me. That Radford would think he has the “truth” about anything seems a bit much. He has stumbled in this attempt. The [...]

Yeti on Fox + New Gates Video

Fox News, December 4, 2007: The Yeti exchange unfolded routinely, as per what has come to be expected for such two-minute-moments on news programs. When Patrick Huyghe (correctly pronounced “Weeg” with a soft “g”) is off-interview, the “Fox news hosts” then tried delivering their debunking humor points, as usual. I congratulate Fox News for running a full credit to artist Harry Trumbore for his drawings of various types of Yeti taken from our cryptozoological field guide. Parts of the Joshua Gates news conference footage has turned up on two YouTube videos:

Updated Yeti Footcast News

Joshua Gates (R) displaying alleged footprint of Yeti. Despite the fact that the new Yeti cast found by Joshua Gates closely mirrors the one he found in Johor, perhaps I was wrong about the first image floating out of Asia of it being a stock picture. I have confirmed that it sounds like it, indeed, is a different cast. Neil Mandt of Mandt Brothers Productions who produced year one of “Destination Truth” but is no longer associated with the program just told me: “That’s definitely a new photo of a new cast. It is not a copy of the Johor [...]

MonsterQuest: Mutant Canines

In the summer of 2006, during the investigation of the “dead animal on the Turner road,” which was blamed for the killings and injuries to dogs and livestock in central Maine for the last decade, an interesting piece of evidence turned up missing. It was the mystery creature’s skull (above). Having the skull would have clearly told us the animal was a dog, without going through all the DNA testing. Now the skull has surfaced again for television. The carcass that Mark LaFlamme and I examined (below) only a few days after its discovery was headless. But we knew the [...]

Cryptozoology in the Medieval World

I have been in New York City for two days, but I have left various items to be posted in my absence, as you have been seeing. I could not be away without, at least, leaving an intellectual contribution to be posted at the start time of my talk at the American Museum of Natural History. For those looking for an extremely thoughtful discussion of the history of cryptozoology, you may download the following paper here: Cryptozoology in the Medieval and Modern Worlds.