Ethics, by Kathy Strain

Article by Kathy Strain

Is there ever a time where “trying to do the right thing” for the sake of bigfoot research outweighs behaving ethically?

Bigfooting has never been perfect. We have had our share of researchers committing hoaxes or outright fraud (Ivan Marx, etc.). Recently though, we seem to have had an unusual amount of blatantly unethical behavior that has harmed researchers, Native Americans, and bigfooting as a whole.

Seemingly always in the news, Tom Biscardi (Large Skeleton Unearthed) recently received an email from a guy in Texas who, while looking for arrowheads in a prehistoric Native American site, found a skeleton. The skeleton was somehow linked to bigfoot and Biscardi went to the site, dug through Native American artifacts, measured the disarticulated bones, and declared it to be over nine feet tall. He then took “a few bones,” including the jaw bone and teeth, and subjected them to DNA analysis. Biscardi posted both the DNA sequence from the bones and photographs of the burial on his website.

On the surface, Biscardi did everything correct….bones, DNA samples, careful photographs and measurements, field report, lab report…this is science right?

However, it was very clear from the pictures that the burial was obviously human. The artifacts destroyed while digging were burial gifts. The DNA sequence was an exact match to human DNA.

It goes without saying that had Biscardi had a scientist present or at least consulted one prior to the excavation, a human burial would not have been desecrated. However, even without a scientist present, any reasonable person would have clearly recognized that the skeleton belonged to his own species. Any decent human would have quickly covered the grave, whispered an apology, and walked away. However, for some odd reason, the need to find a bigfoot skeleton or prove bigfoot’s existence outweighed common sense.

I wonder if Biscardi returned the bones he removed to the site or if he just threw them away. Does he care that Native American religious beliefs dictate that all bones be kept together and the mere removal of one bone has a consequences to that owners soul?

I could list countless laws that Biscardi broke in excavating and removing human remains, both Federal and State, but what he did is so wrong, those laws don’t even need to be mentioned. Someone so callous as to desecrate a human burial should be isolated from the rest of us humans, least we be contaminated by him.

Another lapse of judgment was recently committed by M.K. Davis. I've already made my feelings known about ‘digger indians’, digging sticks, and Patty being human, and in the long run, although I don’t feel his hypotheses are well thought out, he has the right to his opinion. Being wrong is not unethical; not seeking the advice from professional scientists is, again, unwise, but forgivable in this case. However, there is another level to this whole incident.

M.K. produced a very interesting .gif file that links individual photos of the Patterson/Gimlin film into a moving but stabilized format. It is very impressive and you are left with the impression that the very clear photos used in the .gif were produced directly from John Green’s copy of the film by a brilliant M.K. But, that isn’t true. The photos used where painstakingly digitized by Rick Noll on behalf of John Green. Rick had the permission of Patricia Patterson to produce the stills in an effort to see if any further details could be found of “Patty.”

So, what happened? Rick did not give the photos to M.K. to use, nor did M.K. ask Rick to use them. We now know that M.K. got them from Chris Murphy. We also know that Chris asked M.K. not to mention him as the source. However, at no time was M.K. told not to give credit to the person who produced them or to give the impression that he had done the work himself.

While M.K. has done some good work in the past and the .gif is certainly cool, that doesn’t outweigh the fact that it is simply unethical to claim work as your own when it isn’t. Would it have been so hard to say, “The photos used in this stabilization were produced by Rick Noll”? The only one who would have questioned how M.K. got the photos would have been Rick and it would have been between them, not the rest of us.

I understand that M.K. felt he was helping the cause, but what he did was wrong, plain and simple. I am sorry that his friends have felt the need to attack those who have publicly condemned the behavior and I’m sorry that M.K. is deeply wounded. However, it didn’t have to happen and it doesn’t have to continue. A public apology is warranted, and the sooner the better.

At the start of this I asked, “is there ever a time where ‘trying to do the right thing’ for the sake of bigfoot research outweighs behaving ethically.” The answer is no, and we’d all do well to have those words engraved on our souls.

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