Why We Can’t Rule Out Bigfoot

I recently got an email from an anthropologist commenting on a new report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The topic of that report was Bigfoot—or rather, a genetic analysis of hairs that people over the years have claimed belong to a giant, hairy, unidentified primate.

The international collaboration of scientists, led by University of Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, found no evidence that the DNA from the hairs belonged to a mysterious primate. Instead, for the most part, it belonged to decidedly unmysterious mammals such as porcupines, raccoons, and cows.

My correspondent summed up his opinion succinctly: “Well, duh.”

This new paper will not go down in history as one of the great scientific studies of all time. It doesn’t change the way we think about the natural world, or about ourselves. But it does illustrate the counterintuitive way that modern