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."
Ha, ha, ha, ha! Good one there atheist! If he has the "hair" of a bigfoot/yete/abominal snowman/sasquatch he could prove it's existence with a DNA test. Did you used to go by A+ Bert? Yer killin' me!
Not to worry, there's plenty of room at one of our fine institutions here in California....Berserkeley perhaps, or maybe Santa Cruz.
....Yer killin' me!.....
Twist, twist, twist.
The needle is in him good now just a twist or two for max effect..
I don't recall ever seeing the sentence with reference to Ward Churchill.
I believe that there is a better chance that there is a bigfoot, than there is that Churchill is a scholar.
What do Moonbats smell like?....
I always thought the Bermuda Triangle and Gods from Outer Space were more interesting fantasies.
>>If he has the "hair" of a bigfoot/yete/abominal snowman/sasquatch he could prove it's existence with a DNA test.
I know that the field of DNA analysis is changing fast but I thought that DNA analysis on hair required the root of the hair. Even yet as many people as claim to have Bigfoot hair, you would have thought that at least one of them would have been the result of a snag and pulled out of the creature, leaving a root. If someone could produce a DNA sample of unknown primate from one of these samples, I'd be pretty convinced that a Sasquatch exists.
There was a documentary on National Geographic channel of a professor from MIT who is leading an expedition to try and discover an unknown, bipedal primate in Samatra. It has been described as a mini-sasquatch.
I'm skeptical of all these sasquatch stories but I find them somehow tantalizing. I am not compelled by some of the "pat" answers offered by the scientific establishment to discount some of the sasquatch observations. Not so put off however to become a believer.
I'd also find it believable if there were SOME kind of evidence. It is much like the chubacabra in Mexico/Latin America or extraterrestials--lots of "stories", but NO evidence.
Don't know aabout the Hair Root thing regarding DNA.
He was taught to hunt by a local Indian and knew the woods well. He was a large man, about 6'3" and said the creature stood over 7'. He is one of many in the Pacific Northwest who have seen the creature.
Hearing was enough for me. The few times that I did go into Gifford Pinchot national forest I always got a case of the creeps. I made sure to be out of there by dusk. The old, deserted campgrounds weren't much help either.
Well, the wildlife folks in Kansas had been arguing for years that there were no mountain lions in Kansas. Folks who lived on farms said otherwise, reporting numerous sightings. Wildlife folks said that these people, who had lived in the country all their lives and hunted and trapped, were seeing dogs, bobcats, whatever. It went on and on.
Finally did DNA analysis on some reputed cougar scat from University of Kansas campus in October 2003. It was a cougar. Joe Collins, an "adjunct herpetologist" with the Kansas Biological Survey opined that "he didn't really think they posed any danger to adult people." Guess he didn't know about the what's for breakfast jogger cases in California and Colorado.
I'm a bigfoot agnostic, but cases like this make me inclined to try to look at all the evidence.
He could tell students he is an expert on Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, U.F.O.'s, and E.S.P. and still be doing less damage to student's minds than a lot of professors.
*snicker*
>>I'd also find it believable if there were SOME kind of evidence.
There is some evidence but unfortunately for the Sasquatch crowd, what is there is weak and easily refuted.
For full disclosure, the late Grover Krantz, the physical anthropologist and Sasquatch enthusiast from Washington State University was an acquaintance of mine. (We shared a passion for Irish Wolfhounds.) Over the years, I spent a few hours talking Sasquatch with him. He was not troubled by my polite skepticism but he was a true believer. I still have a plaster cast of the Sasquatch footprint that Grover claims convinced him. You can clearly see dermal ridges which he claimed had minute details that only a few hundred people in the world would know. I asked him if a Sasquatch print could be faked by taking a human footprint and scaling it up. He told me no because the structure of the foot would have to change to support the great weight of a Sasquatch. The footprint in this cast had the proper anatomical measurements, again something that only a handful of people in the world would know how to fake.
Grover also showed me lots of casts that he said were clearly fakes. I had to admit that some of the fakes looked awfully convincing to me but each had something that showed him they were fake.
Fascinating conversations. Given all the crap Grover had to take from his colleagues, I'd always hoped that someone would obtain undeniable evidence of a Sasquatch before Grover passed away. But I'm still skeptical of Sasquatch.
Pretty underhanded, if you ask me.
One physics professor, D.P. Wells, wonders whether Meldrum plans to research Santa Claus, too...AFAIC, Wells and Hackworth are embarrassments to Idaho State University.
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."
The Bigfoot science conference
The Scientist | September 8, 2006 | By David Secko
Posted on 09/08/2006 2:31:59 PM EDT by aculeus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1697943/posts
Smithsonian home to WSU prof's bones ... best friend's, 2
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003112749_bones08.html
Posted on 07/08/2006 1:13:17 PM EDT by Grendel9
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1662408/posts
We can assume when you write "mostly complete idiots"...we are talking about 98 percent?
You can tell I never attended huh? I'm not so sure how many idiots, but I have met a few of them that were pretty wierd. I know they are not all bad.
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.