Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum - America's "Bigfoot Professor"

[AlaskaBushPilot]

I was a practicing Catholic PhD for a long time, so I understand compartmentalization. The difference I think is that I don't know any Catholic scientists who actually believe in the stuff. (I jettisoned mine ~13, as I was preparing for my Confirmation.) My still-practicing colleagues are culturally Catholic but that's about it. My experience with Mormons, however, is quite different. They seem to be in lock, stock, & barrel or completely out. We know that Meldrum is in deep, as several papers he claims on his CV are actually Mormon stuff.

How he got promoted to full professor with that crap is beyond me.

I am happy to acknowledge he did peer-review science (non-bigfoot) and taught like he was supposed to, so he earned a PhD legitimately. But he's used it illegitimately in the validation of bigfoot. He could have gotten away with the same strategy at a lot of Universities. Not Harvard, okay but many.

That was the plan all along: earn the PhD legitimately. Then use that PhD to legitimize bigfoot and become the bigfoot professor.

I think we're making significant progress here with Catholic vs Mormon and the mind-skills required to BLAARG for dollars.

That's a good term: Cultural Catholic. I married into Catholic, I attended Mass with friends growing up, and they aren't like Baptists screeching fire and brimstone, casting demons out, and so forth. Very ritualistic, mindless "and also with you" repetition.

It seems to me the more restrictive the religion is being about the minute-to-minute conduct of the flock, the more the flock has to practice compartmentalization. Mormons police their flock moreso than Catholics. Catholics forgive everything, just confess and say Hail Mary whereas in Mormonism excommunication is a much more credible threat among the flock.

You have to practice more cognitive dissonance.

 

[DennyT]

How he got promoted to full professor with that crap is beyond me.

I speak from regional academic experience:
Its ISU for gods sake
LDS
He was a good foot soldier teaching classes and the like
He had some papers crap or not
He brought in some money and money is money
He threatened to unleash the LEGAL (as opposed to scientific) version of discovery on ISU and probably the individual faculty. It is not at all difficult to imagine what would have come out re previous tenure decisions and also documentation of ill feelings. Nor is it difficult to imagine that civil liability might attach.
Granting tenure was a small stink compared to what they feared he would do.

 

[River]

Someone with the time and interest should write an official rebuttal to Meldrums paper on the PGF footprints/casts. These footprints were hoaxed. It has been proven. http://pgfhoax.blogspot.com/

Some proponents argue that the footage of Patterson making a cast was practice footage and shot elsewhere. This is made up by those proponents. This footage was shot by Bob Gimlin (allegedly by his own claim) at Bluff Creek that same day that they claimed the patty walk took place. Proof. http://werd.us/riv3r/yeah.mp3

Also of note:

Some proponents (and skeptics alike) have a hard time identifying the casts from each other, claiming the right is the left and so on. This is easily solved by looking at the toe region of the casts, and the shape of the top or flat part of them. The right foot cast has a flat or rounded toe area, where as the left has each toe shape showing slightly on the top. This is easily a positive identification of those casts. This is not speculation. It is proof those footprints/casts were hoaxed. If anyone wants to claim differently I challenge them to debunk the claim.

 

[DennyT]

“I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and they wouldn’t care”. —-Infant in chief
We all have our favorite flaws in the “evidence” and we all think what we have should be enough. However:
I would say that a successful debunking of the PGF requires (other than a confession by one of three persons or the suit appearing)
-1. a very straightforward simple proof based on evidence from the film itself
-2. Reliance primarily on stuff other than Gimlins many past contradictory statements
-3. Material strong enough that it will
a. be suited to a scientific journal
And
b. choke at least one of the three strongest proponents of the film.

 

[River]

It's simple. It's also right there on the film they presented. The missing footprint/s. This explains WHY proponents like to separate the "2nd reel" from the walk sequence. They were presented as proof of the event, but ended up being proof of the hoax. This might also explain why this 2nd reel footage magically disappears as well. No one took this seriously for good reason. The beard growth is another huge give away as to their shenanigans.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's fine to analyze and discuss the PGF, but I maintain that there is no burden on skeptics to debunk it.

The burden is not on us skeptics regarding the PGF, imo.

It's on those who believe it's real.

 

[The Shrike]

It's fine to analyze and discuss the PGF, but I maintain that there is no burden on skeptics to debunk it.

Concur. There is no justification to publish a paper debunking the PGF as there is no paper claiming its legitimacy. Something must be bunked before it can be debunked.

As is my wont, however, I did a little more digging this morning. Interesting stuff. First, Kim et al. 2008 illustrate how hominin ichnotaxonomy should be done. Note evidence for a lovely mid-tarsal break in Homo sapiens from Fig 2 attached.

Next Pine et al. 2016 actually do refute Meldrum's ichnotaxon. Their reasoning also attached. Translation: "The prints were hoaxed, dumbass."

 

[HarryHenderson]

Concur. There is no justification to publish a paper debunking the PGF as there is no paper claiming its legitimacy. Something must be bunked before it can be debunked.

As is my wont, however, I did a little more digging this morning. Interesting stuff. First, Kim et al. 2008 illustrate how hominin ichnotaxonomy should be done. Note evidence for a lovely mid-tarsal break in Homo sapiens from Fig 2 attached.

Next Pine et al. 2016 actually do refute Meldrum's ichnotaxon. Their reasoning also attached. Translation: "The prints were hoaxed, dumbass."

I hope it's finally clear to anyone on the fence about this guy that he does every bit of this stuff fully aware of the deliberate deception he's perpetrating. The infamous mid-tarsal break, his dubious claim to fame that is coincidentally completely counter productive in a bio-engineering sense to such a bipedal beast, was never intended to be something that really happened. How could it be, he was ascribing it to a fake animal. It was just "science" pablum for his faithful followers' consumption. It didn't have to be right, it just had to sound right. Then he gamed the taxonomy system. That's so "scientific".

To me, more than anything else he's done or said, his dissonance/duplicity in his approach to [the society changing discovery of] Bigfoot (himself) is the real tell to his scam. I'm talking beyond the blatant lies and illogical stupidity that is the 'thinker' Don Meldrum. Here's a guy who is undoubtedly scorned, ridiculed and laughed at by a countless number of colleagues/peers and likely millions of other people, and in some circles is probably even looked at as a science douchebag, yet he doesn't seem to give a single **** about any of that. And he isn't out personally chasing down Bigfoot to prove himself right. It's potentially the greatest biological discovery by mankind in the last thousand years and he could become one of its greatest (and richest in both money and chicks) scientists for doing it, but eh horse pucky, he's got more important things to do. Like preaching Bigfoot to groups of overweight middle aged people at his GOB (Gospel of Bigfoot) luncheon seminars. $24.95. Per person. Plus Tax. All you can shovel. In a 2½ star hotel meeting room. In Washington. State. Somewhere. Next week. Be there!

 

[River]

Concur. There is no justification to publish a paper debunking the PGF as there is no paper claiming its legitimacy. Something must be bunked before it can be debunked.

As is my wont, however, I did a little more digging this morning. Interesting stuff. First, Kim et al. 2008 illustrate how hominin ichnotaxonomy should be done. Note evidence for a lovely mid-tarsal break in Homo sapiens from Fig 2 attached.

Next Pine et al. 2016 actually do refute Meldrum's ichnotaxon. Their reasoning also attached. Translation: "The prints were hoaxed, dumbass."

I was referring specifically to this. Has anyone written a formal rebuttal? Surely if we can prove the tracks to be hoaxed, we can prove this paper to be nonsense. I would love to dismantle the bigfoot mythology at least on the scientific level.

 

[The Shrike]

I was referring specifically to this. Has anyone written a formal rebuttal? Surely if we can prove the tracks to be hoaxed, we can prove this paper to be nonsense. I would love to dismantle the bigfoot mythology at least on the scientific level.

That's what Pine et al. 2016 refutes as a hoax: the PGF prints on which Meldrum's arguments rest.

 

[HarryHenderson]

Wouldn't a tenured science professor who was deliberately trying to do an end around on the 'scientific method' be up for some kind of increased scrutiny, questioning, debriefing, something, from somebody? His never enlightened employer maybe? No? He can just go right along his way and never have to answer to anyone as to why he was being a real douchebag?

 

[DennyT]

Know him by the company he keeps:
...Bigfoot researcher Judy Carroll recounted the evolution of a months-long “discussion” she’d been having with a supposed tribe of Sasquatch near a favorite hiking area, conducted with a kind of fluid symbolic glyph-based “language” of rock, stick and food arrangements.

Jeff Meldrum, a professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University, dissected key frames of the famous 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film, espousing at length and in great detail the specific scientific observations made possible by the contentious short and its importance in the history and lore of Bigfoot research.

Rich Germeau, a former sheriff’s deputy in La Push, recounted a dramatic personal Bigfoot interaction and discussed the possibility that the creatures may be able to “project” psychological power somehow, even manipulate humans for their own ends.”
https://www.bainbridgereview.com/li...p-sasquatch-symposium-draws-seekers-skeptics/

 

[DennyT]

Concur. There is no justification to publish a paper debunking the PGF as there is no paper claiming its legitimacy. Something must be bunked before it can be debunked.

As is my wont, however, I did a little more digging this morning. Interesting stuff. First, Kim et al. 2008 illustrate how hominin ichnotaxonomy should be done. Note evidence for a lovely mid-tarsal break in Homo sapiens from Fig 2 attached.

Next Pine et al. 2016 actually do refute Meldrum's ichnotaxon. Their reasoning also attached. Translation: "The prints were hoaxed, dumbass."

“Anthropoidipes ameriborealis
[ichnospecies and ichnogenus ascribed to presumably faked “bigfoot” tracks]”
Then there is a blank for “current accepted name” implying that someone has made a decision not to accept the name

 

[DennyT]

A footnote says:
“†Original ‘tracks’ in sand not stabilised and saved. Name excluded from provisions of the Code because if the tracks were legitimate, they would be the work of an extant kind of animal—names for which are excluded if published after 1930—(Art. 1.3.6.)”

The article is mainly about mammals and is a commentary/opinion piece with recommendations for reform.

My problem is I don’t know who is calling the shots. Did some official body or board really ever issue some formal opinion on that name or not. Or can Meldrum just keep on saying what he’s been saying, rejecting the various objections.

 

[River]

That's what Pine et al. 2016 refutes as a hoax: the PGF prints on which Meldrum's arguments rest.

I read the pdf. (and saved) While the paper does refute those specific references, it does not show evidence of the hoax or back up his position with hard evidence that discounts those particular casts/prints other than to say basically we need a holotype, or dna. I guess I seek someone willing to show in an official paper proof of that specific hoax.

I get that his paper covers any missing specimen story, with the same premise.
I'd just like to see Meldrums paper get shredded with something no one can deny. (like positive proof of those specific prints being hoaxed -- which is available now)

 

[DennyT]

I read the pdf. (and saved) While the paper does refute those specific references, it does not show evidence of the hoax or back up his position with hard evidence that discounts those particular casts/prints other than to say basically we need a holotype, or dna. I guess I seek someone willing to show in an official paper proof of that specific hoax.

I get that his paper covers any missing specimen story, with the same premise.
I'd just like to see Meldrums paper get shredded with something no one can deny. (like positive proof of those specific prints being hoaxed -- which is available now)

River
While your work certainly “indicts” that short sequence of film, Meldrum does NOT use that as part of his “holotype.” It is a disconnected fragment claimed by some to be authentic but is not central to the dogma. ....a proof of fakery would have to depend on debunking the 12 specific casts linked to the PGF as used by Meldrum in his paper.

It is possible to prove every single prominent bigfooter a liar. It is possible to prove by ordinary standards that the timeline is impossible. It is possible to prove by ordinary standards that Bob Heironimus was at Bluff Creek. On and on. All this is the sort of stuff that might go into a book about what probably did and didn’t happen...an update to Greg Longs book if you will.

What I am saying is that Meldrum can easily retreat to the “so what?” position if that clip isn’t Patterson casting the PGF trackway.

 

[DennyT]

The “m word”?!?

By the way, use of the word “Mormon” is out according to the 93 year old boss of that particular large group of cultists. Read your N.Y. Times.

 

[The Shrike]

Indeed, what we consider to be the debunking of the Surgeon's Photo of Nessie was not the model in the photograph, it was copping to the story from someone involved. For the PGF, we already have that from Bob H.

 

[DennyT]

I read the pdf. (and saved) While the paper does refute those specific references, it does not show evidence of the hoax or back up his position with hard evidence that discounts those particular casts/prints other than to say basically we need a holotype, or dna. I guess I seek someone willing to show in an official paper proof of that specific hoax.

I get that his paper covers any missing specimen story, with the same premise.
I'd just like to see Meldrums paper get shredded with something no one can deny. (like positive proof of those specific prints being hoaxed -- which is available now)

River
While your work certainly “indicts” that short sequence of film, Meldrum does NOT use that as part of his “holotype.” It is a disconnected fragment claimed by some to be authentic but is not central to the dogma. ....a proof of fakery would have to depend on debunking the 12 specific casts linked to the PGF as used by Meldrum in his paper.

It possible to prove every single prominent bigfooter a liar. It is possible to prove by ordinary standards that the timeline is impossible. It is possible to prove by ordinary standards that Bob Heironimus was at Bluff Creek. It is possible to prove by ordinary standards that clip is not showing the casting of the PGF trackway. All of these things could go into a book but it wouldn’t debunk the crucial elements, which are the 12 Patterson and Titmus casts linked to the Patty film.

 

[DennyT]

Do not take my comments to mean that such a debunking is impossible.