Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, tells TMZ Bigfoot finding such a popular foothold in pop culture is a double-edged sword … 'cause it does poke fun at those who truly are investigating its existence … but the silliness also encourages more people to ask questions.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00You're giving me the opportunity to go to use it as a springboard to have a more rational discussion instead of just a wink, wink, nod, nod, elbow in the ribs, you know, which is usually how the media treats it.
00:15It's usually the little wrap up human interest story.
00:19It's never a topic of serious, you know, scientific consideration by the popular press, or at least only on very rare occasions.
00:29So an event like this, if it provides an opportunity to have a conversation like we're having, then I'm all for it.
00:35It's fine. It's no foul, no harm.
00:38And it gives me an opportunity to teach people, to educate them, and to hopefully inspire them to be more critical and discriminatory in their discriminating, in their evaluation of evidence that's out there.
00:54But it is, you know, back to that two-edged sword, the other blade that cuts under our feet is that the skeptics that I would hope would at least have an open mind sufficient to seriously and objectively consider the evidence.
01:16They point to things like this and say, ah, see, you know, every time something like this is in the news, it's readily dismissed as just another prank, another, you know, take hair, for example.
01:28We've had interesting hair samples that defy identification.
01:32Do those get any attention? No.
01:34But when someone plucks a hair, well-intentioned, off of a fence near a spot where they thought they had an encounter, and it turns out to be some common form of wildlife, then that makes the headlines, you know, because it's just, it supports the narrative that readily dismisses things that do not align with the orthodox point of view.
01:59And that's unfortunate. So I don't like to see that perpetuated. No.