Posted on 11/10/2006 8:04:06 AM PST by presidio9
Jeffrey Meldrum holds a PhD in anatomical sciences and is a tenured professor of anatomy at Idaho State University.
He is also one of the world's foremost authorities on Bigfoot, also known by the native name Sasquatch, the mythical smelly ape-man of the Northwest woods. And Meldrum firmly believes the lumbering, shaggy brute exists.
That makes him an outcast - a solitary, Sasquatch-like figure himself - on the 12,700-student campus, where many scientists are embarrassed by what they call Meldrum's "pseudo-academic" pursuits and have called on the university to review his work with an eye toward revoking his tenure. One physics professor, D.P. Wells, wonders whether Meldrum plans to research Santa Claus, too.
Meldrum, 48, spends most of his days in his laboratory in the Life Sciences Building, analyzing more than 200 jumbo plaster casts of what he contends are Bigfoot footprints.
For the last 10 years, he has added his scholarly sounding research to a field full of sham videos and supermarket tabloid exposes. And he is convinced he has produced a body of evidence that proves there is a Bigfoot.
"It used to be you went to a bookstore and asked for a book on Bigfoot and you'd be directed to the occult section, right between the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs," Meldrum said.
"Now you can find some in the natural-science section."
Martin Hackworth, a senior lecturer in the physics department, called Meldrum's research a "joke."
"Do I cringe when I see the (cable television) Discovery Channel and I see Idaho State University, Jeff Meldrum? Yes, I do," Hackworth said.
"He believes he's taken up the cause of people who have been shut out by the scientific community. He's lionized there."
"He's worshipped. He walks on water."
"It's embarrassing."
John Kijinski, dean of arts and sciences, said there have been "grumblings" about Meldrum's tenure but no formal request for a review.
"He's a bona fide scientist," Kijinski said.
"I think he helps this university. He provides a form of open discussion and dissenting viewpoints that may not be popular with the scientific community but that's what academics is all about."
On campus, Meldrum - himself a hulking figure, with a mop of brown hair, a bristly silver moustache and a black T-shirt with a silhouette of a hunchbacked, lurking Bigfoot - receives funny looks and the silent treatment from other scientists and is not invited to share coffee with the other science professors.
Over the summer, more than 30 professors signed a petition criticizing the university for hosting a Bigfoot symposium where Meldrum was the keynote speaker.
He pays for his research with a US$30,000 donation from a Bigfoot believer.
Still, Meldrum has a distinguished supporter in Jane Goodall, the world-famous authority on chimpanzees. Her blurb on the jacket of Meldrum's new book, "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science," lauds him for bringing "a much-needed level of scientific analysis" to the Bigfoot debate.
"As a scientist, she's very curious and she keeps an open mind," said Goodall spokeswoman Nona Gandelman.
"She's fascinated by it."
Bigfoot is sort of the Loch Ness Monster of the Pacific Northwest. The legend dates back centuries. native folklore includes murmurs of a man-ape that roams the hidden hollows. "Sasquatch" is a Salish Indian word meaning woodland wildman.
Newspapers began recording sightings of Bigfoot in the backwoods during the 1920s. But skeptics have challenged the accounts and practical jokers have staged elaborate hoaxes, including grainy film footage of someone in a monkey suit and phoney footprints stamped into the ground with giant moulded feet.
Meldrum said it was a decade ago in Walla Walla, Wash., that he first discovered flat 38-centimetre footprints in the woods. He said he thought initially they were a hoax but noticed locked joints and a narrow arch - traits he came to believe could only belong to Bigfoot.
"That's what set the hook," Meldrum said.
"I resolved at this point, this was a question I'd get to the bottom of."
When not in the lab, he loads his Chevy Suburban with tents and forensic gear and heads for the woods of Washington state and northern California, where he has collected what he says are footprints, hair and feces from the ape-man. He tests hair samples and uses physics to produce charts that purport to show how Bigfoot would walk.
Meldrum wonders aloud how much longer he will be on the Idaho State faculty. But he said he also dreams of one day bringing back a bone or a tooth or some skin and silencing the "stuffy academics."
"Is the theory of exploration dead?" he asked.
"I'm not out to proselytize that Bigfoot exists. I place legend under scrutiny and my conclusion is, absolutely, Bigfoot exists."
Well I heard 'something' howling in the woods about 5 or 6 times during the 2 years I lived in WA. It was usually in the early morning (3-5am) and it wasn't the coyotes or any dog.
Those professors at the U of I are mostly complete idiots.
If there were bigfoot, the wolves would have killed them by now.
So, do you believe in black holes? Neutrons? Electron orbitals?
No one has seen them, either. Their existence is reasoned from other evidence.
I was not aware Neutrons and Electron orbitals were described as seven feet tall and walking in our forests.
If Bigfoot doesn't exist, how can the author call him "smelly"? :)
Oh man. Don't get started. There is no such thing as Bigfoot. I'm always getting into arguments with people here in the Rockies about that. I can't believe how there are so many people who actually believe in it.
I'm agnostic on the subject, leaning skeptical.
I guess one of my biggest blocks is: how, in America, where every square foot has been trampled by some idiot with a cell phone, can such a large, distinctive creature still have neither been captured nor killed even once?
"Dont get started" should be
Don't get me started.
That may be true - I work there - but this guy works at Idaho State University.
Could be a nocturnal animal which hibernates during the winter and detects human presence from miles away through a heightened sense of smell or hearing. Maybe he's been discovered many times by hunters who don't live to tell the story. Something has to explain the feces Meldrum keeps bringing back to his laboratory.
Of course there's no Bigfoot. Scuzzlebutt, however, is a different story.
How do you know there are no Bigfeet? I realize that you have never seen any but does that mean they can't exist? I have never seen one either but I remain an agnostic on the subject. I have read alot on the subject and, so far, my conclusion is I just don't know...
What's the down side?
Ever heard of Darwin???Evolution???
and your evidence against it is.....?
That's what I thought.
Nothing. Just your blind belief it can't exist.
Bigfoot kin of reminds me of Ward Churchill
Aw common, guys. Haven't you ever seen the dogs on Janet Rhino. They say they're size two and a half -- as in two cowhides and half a keg of nails.
And how about the mug on Helen Thomas?
Put the two together and I'd say you have proof positive that something primitive still lurks in the deep dark woods, and escapes from there to Dee Cee from time to time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.