Attitudes towards cryptozoology (science article)

[uair01]

I like to browse science databases for Fortean subjects. This is a nice article. Since I'm too lazy to type I present a few excerpts as images:

Attitudes of Physical Anthropologists towards reports of Bigfoot and Nessie
J. Richard Greenwell, James. E. King
Current Anthropology,
Vol. 22, No. 1, Feb. 1981, p 79-80

Interesting statistics:

And I would like to read more about the abusive comments. The authors promise to publish the best examples in another paper:

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

This is all a result of the deplorable state of 21st century science. Science has reached the point where it no-longer inspires people to explore and discover but will rather sit back in its biologicaly isolated laboratories and dispence its pontifical bulls.

The scientific establishment is all too ready to consign anything that isn't easy for them to the waste-basket of 'paranormal phenomona'.

 

[oll_lewis]

it is encourageing that such a low percent of those questioned find nessie and bigfoot too bizare to consider in the 1981 study. I wonder what the results of a simmilar study would be 25 years on.

Although the question of the paper should be "what the buggering f*ck is a physical anthropologist going to know about nessie?"

One of the current most likely thorys to explaine such a beast is that it might be a giant eel which dosen't really fit the field of experties of a physical anthropologist. It's the equivelent of asking a research chemist what they think of Hamlet. They might have picked a bit up about the play but unless they have studdied it and watched it they are likely not to know a great deal about in and base their opinions mearly on the scant information they may know already. not exactly an informed or meaningful survay then.

It's symptomatic of the 'rent an expert' culture you see on tv. A fertillity doctor presenting a program on cavemen for example, Robert winston may know about the human body (in fact being a doctor you'd hope he did) but human ancestors???

The sorts of people to ask to get a more meaningful result would probably be ecologists.