Sasquatch Science / Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry (essay and book)

[jdog]

Sociologists Andrew Bartlett and Jamie Lewis researched Bigfooters, or those who search for Bigfoot, producing a book (Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry: On the Borderlands of Legitimate Science (2026)) and a shorter essay by Lewis in Aeon titled Sasquatch science: The hunt for Bigfoot sounds like the opposite of good science, but those pursuing the creature are often serious empiricists

How do you go about capturing a monster? The search for Bigfoot, or Sasquatch – often referred to as Bigfooting – may sound like a whimsical endeavour: an activity of tall tales and cartoonish representations. Yet if you spend time listening to what Bigfooters themselves have to say, you discover a different picture.

We did exactly that. To research our book, Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry: On the Borderlands of Legitimate Science (2026), we conducted more than 160 interviews, mostly with classical Bigfooters, who spend time in the forests of North America, collecting evidence and, as they see it, acting responsibly, rationally and scientifically.

As sociologists of science, we began with a simple premise: whatever one thinks about whether Bigfoot actually exists as a biological creature, Bigfooting undeniably does. If Bigfooting is a community – or set of communities – that are collecting, analysing, sharing, validating and contesting evidence, then Bigfooting is a suitable object of sociological enquiry....

I stumbled across this on File770, didn't see a prior reference to it on Metabunk, and thought it was appropriate given our lengthy Is there a "UAP phenomenon" worth studying? discussion, though this topic being Bigfoot I thought it didn't quite fit the thread.

It touches on similar questions to the "are UFOs something?" debate:

Bigfooters have collected thousands of witness testimonies, cast hundreds of footprints, recorded scores of howls, and have even captured the occasional photograph or video. Of course, none of these are convincing if starting from the position that Bigfoot does not exist as a biological creature.

Bigfooters are thus faced with an evidential challenge that cannot be resolved with witness testimonies, photos, footprints or recorded sounds and groans. Implicitly and explicitly, both the general public and the scientific community make a simple request: Habeas corpus. Show the body.