Hoaxes

Seeking Searle: Nessie Hunter

Frank Searle and Lieve Peten For years I searched for Frank Searle, the Loch Ness Monster hunter. Finally, I found him, but it was too late, and instead, had to write an obituary, noting “Nessie Seeker Frank Searle (1921-2005) Dies.” Recently, repeats of a documentary The Man Who Captured Nessie, directed by Andrew Tullis and released on December 29, 2005, have been broadcast on Scottish television. While trying to relocate my obituary on Frank Searle, I have discovered it has disappeared from the Internet. So here, to revisit the legacy of this man, I republish my look at Searle, who [...]

Mega Hog or Mega Hoax?

The new season of “MonsterQuest” airs on Wednesday night, May 28, 2008, with their lead-off program, “Mega Hog.” (Check your local listings.) Here is the program overview: “Do wild hogs in the United States grow to monstrous sizes? Many think so. In Georgia an 1100 pound hog was shot and killed, and in Texas beasts almost as large have been reported. But are these creatures raised and fattened up in a pen, or are they wild hogs, naturally more aggressive, that have somehow reached gigantic proportions? A MonsterQuest examination meets victims of vicious wild boar attacks, looks at the existing [...]

Hobbit Hoax Claim: “Complete Lunacy”

You may have heard that recently the Hobbit fossils, technically Homo floresiensis, were in the news due to the remarkable claim that they were hoaxes because the teeth showed dental work. What was incredible, as I read this, was that this new debunking was done on the basis of the skeptic’s visual examination of only the photographs of the teeth and other such non-first hand evidence. It sort of reminded me of claims about the Patterson-Gimlin footage being bogus based on bad published image prints that were enlarged on a photocopy machine, something that once did happen. I was waiting [...]