Brian Regal was a speaker at this year’s Fortean Times Unconvention. He said he feels himself to be part of the “loyal opposition” and that he doesn’t think Bigfoot exists, although he does think we should be searching for cryptids and wants the search to continue. OK, fair enough. What’s your explanation for the pretty consistent pattern of sightings, then? It will be mega science-y, right?

I asked him what he thought could be triggering the reports that continue to this day. His answer? “I don’t know.” He went on to say that he’s a Jersey boy, not a woodland type, and he thought they might be sightings of bears.

Mystery solved! It’s bears, guys! Crafty bears conspiring to deceive us dumb rural types, probably.

I kind of couldn’t believe that the dude wrote a book on this theme, is employed as a scholar and yet had apparently given very little thought to what ELSE could explain the existing data before concluding that these things don’t exist. That is not usually what is meant by academic rigour. I gave him an opening to drop some kind of opposing-theory bomb on the phenomenon, but no. We got bears instead.

He also claimed that Grover Krantz went into Bigfoot research because he knew he wouldn’t be hugely successful in the main streams of his academic field. Does anyone know if this is true (if anyone ever sees this late comment)? Seems like a rather uncharitable thing to say unless you’ve got good sources to back it up. Maybe he does, but if finding out would involve me reading his book, I think I’ll just have to live with the uncertainty.

Now if many scientists are too squeamish to get involved because of all the shennigans that go on or until super proof is presented to them on a plate then they are failing not the mostly amateurs that get most of the criticism. Brian Regal is just following a well beaten track in much of his criticisms. It is scientists who should be asked for science, which is available from certain experts, unfortunately they tend to get ignored.

The Regal article seemed to be based on what happened on the recent Russian expedition. I am not sure the hyperbole in the news papers whas the fault of the Russian researchers as their work seemed to have been hijacked for business purposes? In any case cryptozoology in general did not countenace the reports and quickly put them in the sin bin, at least until more imformation comes to light. So the inference of the guardian article seems to be an unfair one.

Dimitri Bayanov and his fellow researchers are a real cryptozoological treasure and do not seem to be fully appreciated outside of russia. They do have a wonderful chance in that vast country to come up with news of at least one relic homonid and I hope thay can bring it off. I can understand his complaints thay do unfortunately make sense but perhaps not full justified by the guardian article.