The RELICT HOMINOID INQUIRY 1:72-80 (2012)
Book Review
Searching For Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads, and Cryptozoology. By Brian Regal. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2011. 249 pp. ISBN-978-0-230-11147-9. $85.00 (hardcover).
Searching for Sasquatch is Bigfoot, the Minnesota Iceman, the Patterson- an important, entertaining, Gimlin film, the Bossburg tracks – where the but at times confusing new two groups frequently engaged each other. book by Brian Regal, an The “traditional heroic narrative of monster Associate Professor of the hunting,” he says, “situates mainstream History of Science at Kean scientists (the eggheads) as the villains University. The book rejecting the existence of anomalous primates essentially deals with the and cryptozoology as something unworthy of hunt for Sasquatch – more study. The narrative gives a privileged place specifically, the hunters of Sasquatch, to untrained, but passionate amateur scientists and amateurs alike – beginning in naturalists (the crackpots) who soldier on the late 1940s. As such, it joins the ranks to against great odds, including the unwarranted some degree of Robert Michael Pyle’s obstinacy of the mainstream against bringing elegantly written and surpassingly wise Where knowledge of these creatures to light.” He Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide further plots the basic template of the (1995) and Joshua Blu Buhs’s Bigfoot: The frequently hostile dialogue between the two Life and Times of a Legend (2009) as studies camps, with the egghead/academics of those seeking to find the creature. Through dismissing the claims of the crackpot the use of books, archival materials, private naturalists as scientifically unacceptable, and correspondences, and other research sources, the crackpot/naturalists firing back that the Regal is able to provide vivid and insightful egghead/academics are all armchair skeptics depictions of many of the major figures who’ve not bothered to even examine the involved in the hunt for Bigfoot and he raises evidence. But Regal aims to show that this an important cluster of questions regarding traditional narrative is too simplistic by a science and scientific methodology along the considerable degree, arguing that “numerous way. academically trained scientists in the United In his Introduction, Regal states that his States, United Kingdom, India, and Russia not narrative will concern the “relationship only seriously believed anomalous primates between the academic scientists and amateur existed, they actually pursued them, examined naturalists who hunt them [Bigfoot],” and he their physical traces, and worked out elaborates this relationship throughout the theoretical and evolutionary explanations for book by focusing on significant events in their existence.” Thus, “while the Bigfoot (and to a lesser degree, Yeti) lore – eccentricities of amateurs and the conflict the 1954 Daily Mail expedition to find the between amateur and professional model Yeti, Tom Slick’s similar expeditions to the dominate the discourse, a record exists of Himalayas in the late 1950s, Slick’s 1959- cooperation between them.” The nature of this 1962 Pacific Northwest Expedition to find “cooperation,” though, will often prove most
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WILLIAM POTTER 73 rocky, as the subsequent narrative reveals. In the course of the book, Regal presents, Also in his Introduction, Regal asserts that with some deviation, a roughly chronological his narrative “exists outside of whether history of the search for Bigfoot (and other Bigfoot is a biological reality, a piece of cryptid hominid forms as well), commencing indigenous performance art, or a creation of (in Chapter Two) with the two “godfathers” of pop culture…this book is unconcerned with cryptozoology, Sanderson and Heuvelmans, whether Bigfoot is real or not. I leave that who loom over the later scientists and Bigfoot burden to others. I am concerned with what hunters as Locke and Newton did over the motivates scientists to look for such Enlightenment thinkers. The two scientists – creatures.” In stating this (and the book’s though friends and colleagues who influenced much the better for his neutrality, which leads each other – could not be more different. to thumbnail sketches and descriptions of his Heuvelmans, the author of the ground- characters – major and minor – and significant breaking On the Track of the Unknown Bigfoot events that are sharp, detailed, and Animals (published in the original French in quite fair), Regal relieves himself of the need 1955 and translated into English in 1958), is to either explain away or accept as true the presented as a highly serious scientist whose often ambiguous data as they turn up in his work is distinguished by his “methodology of narrative. Rather, his concern is with depicting eliminating obvious misidentifications and the personalities and interactions of the hoaxes in order to find a core of reliable various characters that drift in and out of his descriptions.” Heuvelmans, Regal tells us, story, and out of these depictions gradually believed that the search for cryptids “must be emerge some important questions: who or rigorous and scientific, since the object is to what shall mediate the physical world, and look not only for physical animals in the field whence the authority for this? Which topics but also for the folkloric nature of such are worthy – or ought to be worthy – of creatures. Heuvelmans insisted the scientific examination, and which topics are cryptozoologists must plow through the not? Is science – specifically zoology – mountains of artwork and legends that primarily a theoretical or empirical endeavor? wrapped the animals like cultural In the ensuing pages we meet a very diverse camouflage.” and entertaining dramatis personae: the But just as significant, Regal argues, is that tirelessly peripatetic and always financially Heuvelmans injected a note “of intellectual strapped Scottish nature writer Ivan conflict with the [scientific] mainstream” into Sanderson, the former Nazi POW, French- his writings, and herein we see the beginnings Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, the of the eggheads versus crackpots model. delightfully irascible Swiss-Canadian Bigfoot According to Heuvelmans, sometime in the hunter Rene Dahinden, the curmudgeonly, nineteenth century science became entrenched long-suffering Washington State University in a theoretic/dogmatic stance not unlike a anthropologist Grover Krantz, the suave and religion’s, and beholden to its own theories worldly Irishman Peter Byrne, and the quietly and truths (what Sanderson called “the whole sagacious Canadian journalist John Green gamut of orthodoxies”), it remained deaf to (none of whom, Regal tells us, ever actually alternative possibilities. (Regal devotes a good saw a Bigfoot). Many other significant figures part of the book to presenting the speculations – scientists and amateurs – play smaller roles put forward by such scientists as Krantz and to be sure, but Regal concentrates his Sanderson as to what Bigfoot/Yeti could be discussion on the often contentious interplay [relic Neanderthal or Gigantopithecus] and of these main players. the swift rejection of these theories by
REGAL – SEARCHING FOR SASQUATCH 74 mainstream science, since these explanations denied. For Sanderson, this leads to what run counter to theory.) The maverick scientists Regal describes as nothing less than “an (who choose to investigate the Bigfoot erosion of our democratic society.” phenomenon) and amateur Bigfoot hunters are But the stakes were even greater. In an thus confronted with a monolithic, unyielding unpublished tract entitled “The Race for Our intellectual community (what Heuvelmans Souls” (which Regal characterizes as called “the dictators of science”) that regards “apocalyptic vision and shaky logic”) the subject of their pursuit as absurd. Sanderson argues that the Soviets are way By contrast, Sanderson is presented as a ahead of the West in the search for much more complicated figure: brimming Bigfoot/Yeti – “they appear to be a lot more with sunny confidence, enthusiasm, and even pragmatic and a lot less squeamish than we arrogance on the one hand, while full of deep are” – and that it is imperative for Western resentments and insecurities (due to his lack of scientists, and the West in general, to stop graduate degrees and academic affiliations, being close-minded about the subject. The and the fact that many in the mainstream Soviet scientists were backed by their considered him a mere popularizer) on the government and had much more funding for other. He seemed to be always in a state of their effort than did the brave Western near-financial disaster and thus had to individual scientists, who had to find their frequently take on writing assignments that own backing. (This argument is essentially the were somewhat peripheral to his true interests same one made by the American chess player (such as Bigfoot) and which were sometimes Bobby Fischer throughout the 1960s as he published in magazines and journals tried to take on the mighty phalanx of Russian somewhat lacking in scientific prestige (one of Grandmasters alone in his quest for the top the major and ongoing difficulties for the position in chess; of course, he eventually maverick scientists confronting the monolithic succeeded, becoming World Champion in scientific community lay in trying to get work 1972.) The problem for Sanderson lay in the published in respectable venues). He was a fact that the Soviets could possibly find a tireless campaigner for cryptozoology, always manlike creature first, which would “rock the rallying on the troops – it was largely through entire religious and ethical pyramid [of the his efforts that the Patterson-Gimlin film was West] to its very foundations.” Mainstream screened for so many scientists in the months science’s rejection of relic hominids thus after it was made – and became as such a became a matter involving the very particularly vocal and bellicose foe to the groundwork and security of Western scientific status quo, taking Heuvelmans Civilization. “intellectual conflict with the mainstream” to Though Heuvelmans and Sanderson figure extreme lengths. According to Regal, in throughout the book (especially the latter), Sanderson saw mainstream science’s rejection Regal’s chief protagonist is Krantz, whose of Bigfoot as an abdication of its true role, dogged effort to legitimize Bigfoot research in which was to serve the needs and desires of the eyes of the scientific community and “The People.” “When ‘The People’ call for subsequent professional woes resultant of that something, like investigating manlike effort (“Having lost this battle almost totally, I monsters,” Regal writes, “scientists [according am reluctant…to pursue this line any further,” to Sanderson] are supposed to respond to their Krantz wrote toward the end of his life) serve will.” Instead, science rejects this request, and, as an overarching structural device for the as Sanderson wrote, “the court [of public book, which begins and ends with Krantz. opinion] was subjected to a tirade.” Motion Krantz, Regal argues, “stood at the crossroads
WILLIAM POTTER 75 of monster hunting, where the interested thinking. Regal states that “his students loved public, elite amateur naturalists, and scientists him…for engaging [them] with thought come together.” provoking questions [and] challenging them to In the first chapter, Regal depicts Krantz at think harder,” that they “considered him the site of the famous Bossburg, Washington brilliant and quirky in a charming way” and footprints found in 1969 which purport to “banded together and sent petitions to the show, in a trail of over a thousand individual department chair and the dean, encouraging prints, a creature whose right foot is severely them to support” Krantz when he‘d crippled (this specimen is commonly referred encountered problems getting promoted, and to as “Cripplefoot.”). For Krantz, who had finally that “his classes often ended in characterized himself as a doubter up to that standing ovations.” point, this was a watershed moment; Regal The picture of Krantz that gradually emerges writes that “bending down to look at the is that of an uncompromisingly pragmatic man Cripplefoot tracks in the snow, Krantz found steeled by a righteous sense of the correctness himself as much as he found Sasquatch,” and of both his thesis and his interpretation of the in in his own book Big Footprints (1992), data he had collected through the years. He Krantz wrote that his “analysis of the apparent saw his work as a calling “that has to be done” anatomy of these tracks proved to be the first (as he remarks in the documentary Sasquatch convincing evidence [for him] that these Odyssey) and felt a high degree of contempt animals were real.” The knowledge of the for those of his colleagues who ignored or anatomy of a primate foot necessary to present dismissed his conclusions (in one paper he a pathology such as the prints presented submitted for publication, he wrote, “Just seemed to Krantz well beyond the capabilities because others don’t think clearly doesn’t give of hoaxers. (Regal quotes Krantz as saying me an excuse not to”). His pragmatism carried that a hoaxer “had to outclass me…and I don’t him in many directions. Having discovered think anyone outclasses me…at least not since what he determined to be dermal ridges in Leonardo da Vinci.”) The trouble now would plaster casts of footprints (one of his major be convincing the academic/scientific com- contributions to Bigfoot research), he sent the munity, a group with whom Krantz would casts to Scotland Yard for examination, and often lock horns until the end of his life. was told they were “probably real.” He also Regal presents Krantz as a rebel from the presented casts (purportedly of a Bigfoot start (“as a teen he already exhibited the hand) to a palm reader for inspection. In tendency to go against the mainstream”), another case, he took out ads in newspapers, rejecting his immigrant Swedish parents’ asking for anyone who may have killed a devoutly held Mormonism in favor of science, Bigfoot – by accident or on purpose – to telling his mother that “while he tried to contact him so he could obtain body parts. follow a basic Christian philosophy of Pragmatic to the end, when he died, he had behavior and morality, he favored logic and arranged to have his body sent to a body farm reason over superstition and dogma.” Even as at the University of Tennessee Anthro- a boy, he seemed driven to find knowledge pological Research Facility so that its gradual based on his own authority, rather than that decay could be studied for purposes of imparted by others, and this trait would serve forensic investigation. him well both in his studies and in the But all, apparently, was for naught, as his classroom, where he was, as Regal points out, work received scant attention from the exceedingly popular with his students for academic scientists, and rejected by encouraging and inculcating independent mainstream science, he was forced into an
REGAL – SEARCHING FOR SASQUATCH 76 often contentious alliance with what he observations, spewed out in his trademark sometimes referred to as “the lunatic fringe” – heavily-accented English, as he was for his amateur Bigfoot hunters and naturalists, own research. If Krantz didn’t suffer fools Sasquatch enthusiasts, and marginal types well (and he didn’t), Dahinden didn’t suffer attracted to the mystery – which left him quite them at all. Of Jack “Kewaunee” Lapseritis, a uneasy. Like Heuvelmans (who decried the Bigfoot enthusiast who believed Bigfoot to be neglect of the academic scientists even as he “one-dimensional…star people” and who sought their approval) Krantz wished only for published a book entitled The Psychic his work to be seriously evaluated by his Sasquatch and Their UFO Connection (Blue professional peers, and having little otherwise Water Publishing), Dahinden said: in common with the amateurs, he regarded We know all about Lapseritis. And oh, them, at times, with scorn. As Regal remarks, he had 235 or 500 by now Sasquatch an underlying “subtext” to Krantz’s work was encounters…IN HIS MIND! I’m not his desire “to take the study of manlike interested in Sasquatch in his goddamned monsters out of the hands of amateurs…and mind. I’m interested in Sasquatch on the place it firmly in the hands of anthropologists ground, in the bush. How many Sasquatch like himself.” But as Regal points out, Krantz encounters he’d had in his mind – look, I also seemed at times indifferent to the work of don’t want to hear about it! Well, he heard his peers, and one reason many of his papers footsteps out [sic] the tent, or whatever. were rejected, according to Regal, was Well, that’s just like saying you had 235 because they showed scant familiarity with sexual encounters but NEVER GOT recent theoretical developments in his field. LAID. Among the non-scientific individuals with whom he gradually became aligned was the If Heuvelmans and Sanderson were both man Regal calls his “nemesis” and “the Anti- friends who were very different from one Krantz,” the stubborn, brusque, short- another, then Krantz and Dahinden were tempered, splenetic, but colorful and highly enemies (at least Dahinden thought so) who amusing Rene Dahinden, a self-taught Swiss- were actually very similar in many significant born Canadian whose pursuit of Bigfoot took ways. Both were fiercely independent men on a single-minded focus and devotion that driven by a singular mission that held their surpassed even Krantz’s. Having first heard lives hostage to some degree (Krantz was about Bigfoot shortly after moving to Canada married four times, while Dahinden left his in 1951 (he’d initially been interested in the wife and son so that he could pursue Bigfoot) Yeti, after reading about the proposed Daily and which led each to become increasingly Mail expedition, until informed by the owner frustrated and embittered as the search went of the dairy farm on which he worked that on year after year without a find. Dahinden, there was a similar creature in North whom Regal calls “a naturally talented and America), Dahinden, who referred to Bigfoot intellectual man…whose upbringing kept him as the “big hairy bastard,” worked out a way from the type of career he would have of life whereby, living at a bare minimum excelled in,” hated the scientific community level (he earned his living collecting buckshot with a vengeance (he called them “deadheads” at a firing range on which the trailer in which and referred disparagingly to “them Ph.D.s”) he lived sat), he could devote all his time to and loved to ridicule its presumptions, pursuing the anomalous ape. A huge favorite assumptions, and gullibility. Krantz became at conventions and other gatherings, he was as representational in his mind for much of the much noted for his salty and profanity-laced that community, and he thus became
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Dahinden’s pet target (Dahinden once sent tracks, a few strands of hair, and animal Krantz a plaster footprint he knew to be fake, droppings.” But more important, it “aroused and was delighted when Krantz dubbed it the interest of many amateurs,” one of whom genuine). In one of their many contentious became a major figure in the Yeti/Bigfoot exchanges, Dahinden wrote to Krantz, “every legacy, the Texas millionaire Tom Slick. Slick time you open your mouth to the press you financed several expeditions to find the Yeti in make a bunch of stupid statements…[Roger] the 1950s and also the Pacific Northwest Patterson called you an opportunist years ago, expedition to find Bigfoot in the early 1960s, and I guess he was right. I will pull you down and Regals’s depiction of these expeditions and blackball you in the Sasquatch research.” wavers from the tragic to the highly comedic. (For his part, Krantz called Dahinden a “nut A strange, curious, and mysterious man who case” in a letter to a Canadian law firm was an alumnus of Yale (and a member of the involved in suits over the ownership of the Skull and Bones fraternity) Slick’s interests Patterson Gimlin film.) They fought over and passions reflected his eccentric nature. He ownership of plaster casts, royalties for had an interest in both monsters and the showing the Patterson-Gimlin film, and paranormal and was fascinated with Nazi seemingly anything else, despite the fact that memorabilia (having traveled in Germany and they had initially been friendly and did even Russia in the late 1930s). He harbored grand have “years of relative calm,” according to political ideals (he published a book entitled Regal. Permanent Peace (1958) in which he Regal’s discussion is rounded out by his advocated, in Regal’s words, “for the United examination of several other significant events States to join other nations, including those of and individuals associated with anomalous the Communist bloc, to create a kind of world apes, wherein the egghead/crackpot model is police force to help ensure peace and stifle further elaborated. The 1954 Daily Mail war), and, it has been suggested by some, expedition to find the Yeti and especially Tom “worked for the CIA in some capacity.” Slick’s several similar expeditions to the Slick’s eccentricities became manifest as the Himalayas in the late 1950s, both of which are expeditions were planned. Having contacted dealt with in Chapter Two, establish a pre- the guide Peter Byrne (who of course would Bigfoot dynamic for the model (since they later become famous as one of the major preceded the hunt for Bigfoot, which really Bigfoot hunters), he had Byrne vetted by one didn’t start until the very end of the 1950s). of his mistresses. As the date of the expedition Eric Shipton’s 1951 photographs of what are came closer, Slick suddenly “decided to pare purported to be Yeti footprints and the 1953 the operation down so that only he and Byrne ascent of Mount Everest focused the world’s and a small team of confidants” – none of attention on the Himalayas in general, and the whom were scientists – would actually Yeti in particular. Regal tells us that “many participate. The expedition had originally scientists wanted to begin investigating the planned to carry several scientists along, Yeti immediately after Shipton published his including the Harvard trained anthropologist famous photos,” and what resulted were and part-time CIA employee, Carleton Coon, several ill-conceived and indecisive who’d been hired by Life magazine to spy on pilgrimages to the austere summits of Nepal Slick – the magazine was trying to mount its and Tibet by adventurers, explorers, scientists, own expedition and may have wanted to “keep and journalists to find the elusive creature. an eye on Slick and his efforts” for that The fifteen-week long Daily Mail expedition reason. However, Regal also notes that Life’s found “little more than some inconclusive founder Henry Luce was “an anti-Communist”
REGAL – SEARCHING FOR SASQUATCH 78 who may have taken exception to Slick’s who worked together for many years, grew to “peace activism” and possible attempt to try despise Byrne. It was also a crucible of sorts “to establish contacts in Communist China” for the search for Bigfoot, and attracted to it, while searching for monsters. But the intrigue aside from Byrne, Dahinden, and Green, such ran deeper, and Regal’s narrative enters the figures as Sanderson and Agogino (neither of realm of farce as he notes “The Soviet whom actually participated), the tracker Bob government in Moscow noted the intelligence Titmus, who would be a major figure in the connection with Slick’s operation [Coon and hunt for Bigfoot, and Ivan Marx and Ray another scientist, George Agogino, both of Wallace, who would both years later be whom served as consultants to the expedition, accused of faking evidence (the had CIA/OSS connections] and saw it as ‘a aforementioned Cripplefoot tracks found at diabolical anthropological maneuver aimed at Bossburg have never been fully accepted as the subversion of Communist China.’” Regal authentic because it was Marx who discovered wonders “who was not working for the CIA,” them). and remarks at one point, “they all seemed to Having access to so much archival and be watching each other.” personal material, Regal presents a narrative The real tragedy of the Slick expeditions full of quirky and amusing facts and odds and was that a possible opportunity was botched, ends. Aside from the exceedingly bizarre and largely due to the ill-fated decision to omit comical CIA connection to the hunt for the scientists from the actual search. Coon, Yeti (“The details are murky, but it seems Agogino, and a few other scientist-consultants clear that at the very least a Western who remained behind were constantly intelligence element existed alongside the frustrated and disappointed with the evidence search for the Yeti”), the reader also learns the expedition sent them to examine, and they that Bernard Heuvelmans worked as a jazz began to distrust Slick and his motives musician and comedian (!), the Smithsonian (Agogino even created “a private file of his scientist John Napier, whose Bigfoot: The Yeti dealings with Slick ‘in the event that Tom and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (1972) was Slick misquotes anyone or breaks away from one of the first book-length scientific me [Agogino]’”). Initially the two parties – examinations of the phenomenon (Napier’s scientists and amateurs – were to have worked quite open-minded about the possibility together on these expeditions, but they didn’t, anomalous apes exist) “loved to perform as a and as Regal observes, the experience of the magician,” that Peter Byrne once punched scientists left them wary of the amateurs Rene Dahinden out in the parking lot of a thereafter. As Sanderson would remark, “all Macdonalds, that the love of an Irish his [Slick’s] troubles stem from his pure lack wolfhound named Clyde actually saved of knowledge” of scientific method, and “most Grover Krantz’s life, that Carleton Coon told of his money was spent on pure trash Krantz that he once “accidentally passed wind research.” in the face of Theodosius Dobzhansky [an These problems became further entrenched evolution theorist] at a dinner,” and that so in the adventures of the Pacific Northwest pervasive was the belief that a large dinosaur Expedition, Slick’s 1959-1962 attempt to find species still existed in remote areas of Africa Bigfoot which, Regal says, “began with great (the so-called Mokele-mbembe – reports of enthusiasm but deteriorated quickly into name sightings persevere to this day) that “the calling and internal squabbles.” This governor general of the Congo put out an edict expedition first brought together Byrne, during World War I requiring any dinosaurs Dahinden, and John Green, and the latter two, traveling at night to carry warning lights” to
WILLIAM POTTER 79 ensure public safety. do. In the end, hoaxers do not really need to Sadly, Regal’s narrative is not without some do much at all. That way, someone looking at relatively minor problems and confusion, the artifact will fill in the blanks themselves. much of which is due to the sprawling nature No super cunning or technical expertise is of his topic. There is a degree of repetition at needed by a faker of evidence” (my emphasis). times that can grow wearisome – we are told There are too many examples to deal with on three occasions, for example, that Grover here, but suffice to say that much of the Krantz read the respective works of Ralph physical evidence would require a very high Von Koenigswald and Franz Weidenrich order of technical sophistication and skill to regarding Gigantopithecus, the gigantic produce. Footprints, for example, are much prehistoric ape many feel could be the clue to easier to imagine being faked (“I’ll just slip on Bigfoot’s existence, and Ivan Sanderson’s a pair of carved feet and hop around in the antagonism toward the scientific community is wilderness”) than to actually fake. Using made quite clear early on, but is continually many documented footprint trails as examples, drilled home to the reader throughout, as we would be forced to envision a hoaxer who though the reader might forget this important would have to be freighted down with enough fact. There is also some degree of confusion as weight – 100, 200 pounds? More? – to leave to who it was that first made the an imprint deeper than a human’s, who would Gigantopithecus-Bigfoot connection. Credit is wear some kind of modified boots or strap-on given (or seems to be given) at times to planks (which would actually diffuse the Carlton Coon, Bernard Heuvelmans, Ivan weight of the wearer), and so encumbered, be Sanderson, and John Green. In a discussion of nonetheless capable of leaping foot by foot, the Patterson-Gimlin film, we are told that four to five feet through the air, landing Patterson “dismounted” his horse to film the soundly on the ground surface (no slippage, alleged Bigfoot, whereas Patterson and Gimlin which would blur the print), and all this for described how Patterson’s horse had reared up sometimes nearly a mile in rough terrain and and thrown him off when it first sighted the in very remote areas while leaving no creature. There are also some points where the evidence of human activity. (And isn’t it narrative structure becomes a little uncertain, strange that although there are hundreds of chapters where subjects and topics are yoked Bigfoot sightings every year, there are no together that don’t necessarily mesh (a chapter reported sightings of hoaxers perpetuating entitled “The Problems of Evidence” begins their pranks.) Regal’s comment here seems to with an examination of some of Krantz’s me a bit easy. theories but somehow becomes a discussion Through its depiction of maverick scientists on Russian and Mongolian scientists’ quest and Bigfoot enthusiasts, Regal’s book raises for the Alma and Almasti [two anomalous several important questions for consideration. apes of Mongolia and the Caucasus, Perhaps the most important has to do with the respectively] amid pressure from the Soviet nature of science itself: is science primarily government). theoretical or empirical, or is it something that Regal doesn’t deal much with the actual data exists between the two? Pertaining to Regal‘s concerning Bigfoot (which is not really his discussion, the skeptical academic scientists concern), but when he does, I am not sure I tend to be theorists, while the amateur can agree with him when he says that “what is naturalists and scientists actually working in often forgotten in the ‘hoaxers could not do the field tend to be empiricists. What is this’ argument is that too much emphasis is implicitly understood in this arrangement is placed on what hoaxers could and could not that it has always been the former who have
REGAL – SEARCHING FOR SASQUATCH 80 held power and authority in the scientific naturalists and monster hunters working with community; until they – the academic/ the actual data do. Moreover, the discoveries theoretical scientists – deem something to be of the amateurs have not always been accepted true, it isn’t. by the mainstream: the platypus, for example, In post-modern terms, theoretical science is was not discovered by a scientist, and when a metanarrative, an attempt to unify and the first specimen was shipped to England by totalize a view of the world through a single the aptly-named John Hunter, several British story or theory (another example might be academic scientists, including George Shaw religion, a comparison several figures – and Robert Knox (the latter achieved immense Heuvelmans and the 21st Century English notoriety for his involvement in the infamous Richard Freeman – make in Regal‘s book). Burke and Hare case) were doubtful as to the But metanarratives don’t possess a self-critical creature’s authenticity. Regal has shown that agent; they derive their power from self- many scientists have been interested in affirmation. As Regal observes, there’s a good anomalous apes from the beginning; but there degree of truth to the complaints of nonetheless has always been a hierarchical Sanderson, Heuvelmans, Krantz, and others structure in science that affirms itself through against the scientific establishment. Their its theories – Heuvelmans “dictators of works were dismissed a priori by people science” frozen in Sanderson’s “gamut of whose research had been conducted in books, orthodoxies.” rather than in the field, and who were Regal’s book brings many of these ideas to therefore utterly in thrall to theory. “I won’t the fore, and it will be a valuable contribution look at your data,” these people seem to say, to the history of cryptozoology. Sadly, though “because my theory already tells me your the big question remains unanswered: does it interpretation of them is wrong.” (It should exist? also be noted that some scientific disciplines – At the end of all the Sasquatch mystery – physics or astronomy, for example – are when all else is pared away – we are left only perhaps more theoretically driven than others with the physical evidence and two equally – say, zoology or biology or other organic improbable scenarios to account for it: the sciences. In physics, many things can be presence of apparently subhuman relic apes predicted based on theory, but this doesn’t that have survived in sufficient numbers to always happen in zoology. An eclipse can be remain a living species, and the absolutely predicted, but not always a new species. superhuman capabilities requisite for hoaxers Empiricists, many of whom are amateurs and to have created so much physical evidence non-scientists, have greatly contributed to our through the years knowledge of the physical world – we owe a There is no third. good deal of our understanding of the oceans to Jacques Cousteau.) William Potter Ph.D. Academic scientists also don’t make many Santa Fe Community College zoological discoveries, whereas the amateur Santa Fe, New Mexico