- Most of the time I write about science, but sometimes
I write about "science."
-
- "Science" topics have a scientific veneer,
but a little scraping and sanding reveals there's nothing underneath. UFO's,
crop circles and the Loch Ness monster are all perfect examples, but my
favourite is Bigfoot, although this man-ape of the Pacific Northwest has
just taken a shot that might put him down forever.
-
- A man with a skeptical bent, Greg Long, has published
a book, The Making Of Bigfoot - The Inside Story, in which he claims to
have found not only the man who wore the gorilla suit in the famous 1967
film of a female Bigfoot but also the guy who supplied the suit.
-
-
- There is no doubt that the film has been the best - although
not the only - piece of evidence for the animal. It is about 60 seconds
of hastily shot footage of a female Bigfoot ambling across a clearing in
northern California. Two men, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, claimed to
have stumbled across the creature as they wandered through the woods.
-
- The odds against acceptance of the film should have been
pretty high. After all, the two men had announced in advance they were
out looking for a Bigfoot and no other convincing visual record of the
animal has turned up since. But even though there were plenty of people
who immediately dismissed it as a hoax, the film is still taken seriously
by many.
-
- This is where the "science" comes in: An endless
number of self-proclaimed experts has analyzed the film (each asserting
that his analysis has been "frame-by-frame," each using the latest
technology) and found evidence that the creature in the film must be the
real thing.
-
- The movements of the muscles underneath the skin can
be seen clearly, something that would be impossible for a man wearing a
loose-fitting suit.
-
- The timing and length of the strides are not human; the
rotation of the torso as the animal glances back at the camera couldn't
be accomplished with a suit; the arms are too long to be human - the list
goes on and on.
-
- These analyses have been muddied by the fact that Patterson
wasn't sure whether the camera was set to film at 16 or 24 feet per second.
-
- One of the best studies, decades ago, claimed that at
24 feet per second, the movements were human, but that at 16 feet per second,
they couldn't be. How handy for the perpetuation of the story that there
was this uncertainty!
-
- Nonetheless, had this been a subject with no passion
involved - something that didn't feed what some have called the "Goblin
Universe" - the film would be gathering dust in somebody's basement
by now.
-
- But with stories like these - "science" stories
- belief precedes evidence.
-
- When things are in that order, believers can see muscle
movements in what might be the loose folds of a costume or analyze stride
length and somehow make the results come out on the non-human side.
-
- Author Long argues that the man in the suit, Bob Heironimus,
just walked like that. He claims to have taped Heironimus, put that tape
side-by-side with the Patterson film, and they matched.
-
- Admittedly, there are inconsistencies in Long's account.
Heironimus remembers the suit being a three-piece affair, while the man
who purportedly made it and supplied it, claims it had six pieces.
-
- Why the breasts, which didn't come with the suit? Why
did Heironimus remember the suit having a terrible smell when it was an
off-the-shelf gorilla suit? What eventually happened to the suit?
-
- All these questions, however incidental to the story,
will of course allow believers to soldier on. (If you don't believe me,
check out the customer reviews of the book at http://www.amazon.com). Remember,
it's belief before evidence, not the other way around.
-
-
- In the end, that's what makes stories like this so fascinating.
It's not the big, undiscovered primate that somehow continues to elude
discovery in the Pacific Northwest - it's the people who still search for
it.
-
- And you know, a little part of me goes with those people.
-
- I confess to disappointment that the whole Bigfoot saga
seems to have come down to some guys wanting to make a lot of money from
a gorilla suit. It's so unromantic.
-
-
- Jay Ingram hosts the Daily Planet show on the Discovery
Channel.
|
