Dr. Regal thinks "Finding bigfoot" is far from finding anything!

Dr. Brian Regal speaks out on the trend for television programs to discount actual scientists and learned experts in order to hype speculative shows like Finding Bigfoot that contain NO science or carry any value beyond entertainment (and even that is questionable). The current crop of (un)reality shows follows a trend of shows that glorify the amateur over the professional.

Where’s the science in the search for Sasquatch? | NJ.com.

Sasquatch-like creatures may actually exist — they are some of the only mythical monsters to have an evolutionary and biological plausibility — but stumbling around the woods claiming every blip on an infrared scope or twig snap is a “‘squatch” isn’t helping the searchers’ case. There are a number of intelligent, capable, trained individuals who do scientific work searching for cryptozoological creatures, who ought to get more coverage. Unfortunately, good-natured and quirky amateurs, like the guys on “Finding Bigfoot,” are better for ratings, despite the fact they never find anything.

These programs glorify amateur investigators, who have little knowledge of the fields they “study” while often disparaging the work of professional scholars. Genuine experts — physicists, evolutionary biologists, historians, classicists and others — rarely make it to the screen because they might explain why there are no mermaids, ghosts or sasquatches, that there is no evidence aliens have visited the earth, and why our lives and our history should be valued as more than just junk sold for a couple of bucks to a pawn shop.

Source: NJ.com

Some readers may know that not only do I have a pet peeve with these shows for the reasons Regal points out (people watch and BELIEVE them as truth), but my dislike comes from an in-depth investigation into amateur groups. At the same time that Dr. Regal was working on his book Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads and Cryptozoology, I was completing a thesis on nearly the same subject. AND, we independently reached very similar conclusions. You can read my conclusionshere.

The bottom line is, these shows portray a “sciencey” view but not a scientific one. It’s a Hollywood view, not accurate. Want the truth? Do actual research. The running around, yelling, guessing and hyping stuff that goes on in these self styled investigative shows about ghosts, Bigfoot and UFOs do nothing at all to get us any closer to explaining nature. They are a good example of what NOT to do.

ORIGINAL FOUND HERE