Strong medicine

Pleo-FORT, Pleo-QUENT, Pleo-NOT, Pleo-STOLO, Pleo-NOTA-QUENT, and Pleo-EX are all names of homeopathic "remedies" that are being sold as cures for infections of various kinds.  All of them are made from extracts of molds from the genus Penicillum, which is then (as is typical with these remedies) diluted until there's basically none of the original substance left.  As an example, here's what the site Natural Healthy Concepts has to say about Pleo-QUENT:

Pleo QUENT (Quentakehl) Drops 5X is a homeopathic decongestant medicine indicated for supporting the temporary relief of congestion due to colds and minor respiratory infections*.

• Supports the temporary relief of congestion due to colds and minor respiratory infections* 
• Quentakehl is indicated for acute, chronic and latent viral conditions* 
• Quentakehl, extracted from the mold-fungus Penicillium glabrum, is not an antibiotic and produces no antibiotic substances. Therefore, there are no side-effects which could occur during an antibiotic treatment, such as allergies, liver damage, destruction of the intestinal flora and the formation of penicillin-resistant strains.

You could, of course, change the line about "no side effects" to read "no effects whatsoever" and the sentence would still be true.  A 5x serial dilution means that you now have 9,999 parts water added to 1 part of the original substance -- a dilution which would render far more dangerous substances than mold extract completely harmless.

[image courtesy of photographer Casey West and the Wikimedia Commons]

So imagine my surprise when I found out that Terra-Medica, Inc., the company that manufactures the various Pleo-WHATEVERS, is voluntarily recalling 56 lots of the "remedies."  Here's part of the statement from Terra-Medica:

Terra-Medica, Inc. is voluntarily recalling 56 lots of Pleo-FORT, Pleo-QUENT, Pleo-NOT, Pleo-STOLO, Pleo-NOTA-QUENT, and Pleo-EX homeopathic drug products in liquid, tablet, capsule, ointment, and suppository forms to the consumer level. FDA has determined that these products have the potential to contain penicillin or derivatives of penicillin.

If you're wondering if you read that right, you did:  Terra-Medica is recalling these remedies because they have actual medically active ingredients in them.

Just reading the headline in the Patheos article I linked above, which says, and I quote, "Homeopathic Products Recalled Because They Might Have Actual Medicine In Them," made me choke-snort an entire mouthful of coffee.  This might, in fact, be the best headline I've read in years.

Because, let's face it: we wouldn't want anything potentially effective sneaking into our homeopathic remedies.  *brief pause to stop guffawing uncontrollably*

Terra-Medica is, I have to admit, doing the right thing; if there really is penicillin in the "remedies" they're selling, then some poor misguided soul, who evidently failed high school biology and thought he could cure his cold by taking drops of water, could be killed if said poor misguided soul was also unlucky enough to have a penicillin allergy.  But that the chemical they suspect of having contaminated their "remedies" is an actual medicine is a circumstance that brings the term "poetic justice" to whole new levels.

You have to wonder how much longer the homeopaths will be allowed to remain in business, what with admissions like this one (not to mention an increasing number of websites devoted to debunking the whole thing, including What's the Harm, which is devoted to stories of people who were injured or killed by taking a homeopathic remedy instead of seeking conventional medical care).  There is no scientific support whatsoever for this practice; it is pseudoscience at its worst, because not only is it ripping people off, it's putting lives and health in jeopardy.  By not taking proven, effective, safe medications for treatable diseases, people are risking protracted illness, complications, and death, not only for themselves but (worse) for their children.  Simply put, a sugar pill or a bottle of water from which virtually all biologically active molecules have been removed will not treat disease.

Which makes the strong medicine that Terra-Medica is having to swallow taste pretty sweet to me.

Lost and found

Every once in a while I'll run across something and think, "Yeah, I remember hearing about that," but even after thinking about it, I can't bring back to mind much in the way of detail.  So it was today when a friend of mine, who is a loyal reader and frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, sent me a link along with the message, "Take the bait, little mouse... take the bait."

Of course, I couldn't let something like that just sit there, so I clicked on the link.  Which is just what he intended.  And the link turned out to be about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.  And I thought, "Don't they have something to do with the Babylonian Captivity?  And Mormons?  Or something?"

So before I tell you what the link had to say -- which is truly stunning, and for which I should give you a while to prepare either your mind or else a strong drink -- let's look at what I found out when I did some research on the Ten Lost Tribes.

Apparently the idea is that of the twelve tribes of ancient Judea, ten of them were overrun by the Assyrians somewhere around 722 B.C.E. and deported, presumably because they had done something naughty in god's sight, which always seemed to be what kicked off these kinds of mass genocides.  In any case, the whole lot of them were killed or else sold off into slavery, and were never more seen or heard of.  Except that (1) a good many reputable historians seem to think that the whole thing is a myth, and (2) now everyone and his next-door-neighbor is claiming descent from them even though there seems to be no hard evidence of any of it.

We have the Chinese (Kaifeng) Jews.  We have the Bnei Menashe of India.  We have the Igbo Jews of Nigeria.  We have the Pashtun of Afghanistan.  We have the Cimmerians of the Caucasus.  We have the Beta Israel of Ethiopia.  Further afield, we even have a few wackos who think the Japanese are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes.  And further afield yet (in fact, given the spherical nature of the Earth, about as far afield as you can get) are the Mormons, who think that the Native Americans are actually of Ten Lost Tribes descent, despite no archaeological, genetic, or any other kind of support for the contention.

So a great many people are of the opinion that the Ten Lost Tribes aren't really all that lost.  In fact, if you believe half of the tales out there, you'd come away with the impression that you can't swing a stick without hitting a Ten Lost Tribesman.

What may come as an even greater surprise, though, is that I haven't told you the wackiest theory on record about these Palestinian Hide-and-Seek World Champions.  Because the website that my friend sent me claims that the Ten Lost Tribes are actually...

... inside the Earth.

And I don't mean underground, as in caverns or something.  I mean that the Earth is hollow, and the Ten Lost Tribes vanished because they found a big hole up at the North Pole and went down there and haven't come out since.  And they're not the only ones down there, either:

What is Our Hollow Earth like?

It is a terrestrial paradise,
...where the original Garden of Eden is located today
...where the Lost Tribes of Israel live
...where the Political Kingdom of God is located
...where the Lost Viking Colonies of Greenland migrated to
...where vanquished Germans migrated to after World War II
...where flying saucers come from
...where people live to be hundreds of years old in perfect health
...where peace and prosperity exists for everyone
...where Heaven is located (the inner sun)

Well, with all of that inside the Earth, no wonder they stayed lost, although you have to question how nice it would be given the presence of Vikings and Nazis.  But maybe if everyone has been living for centuries in peace, prosperity, and health, there's no reason for the Vikings and Nazis to engage in rape, pillage, plunder, and mass executions any more.

I dunno.  But on the website there are all sorts of testimonials from people who claim to have been inside the Earth, so I took a look at the first one, which was written in the 19th century by one Willis Emerson, who was (he said) recording the narrative of an Olaf Jansen of Sweden.  Jansen claimed to have sailed north into the Arctic and ended up going down some kind of hole into an "inner land" inhabited by giant beautiful people who spoke "something like Sanskrit."  The whole thing sounded like Jules Verne on acid, so I can't say I was all that impressed.

We also have Phoebe Marie Holmes, who claims to have visited the Sun.  Yes, the real Sun, not the "inner sun" that the Hollow Earth people claim is where the Earth's core should be, along with the stars and galaxies and all:

Note: diagram not to scale.

Holmes wrote all about it in a book called, surprisingly,  My Visit to The Sun, in which she claims that the New Jerusalem is being built there for us by Jesus and all the Saints, in the interior of the Sun, because apparently it's hollow, too.

How she got there, being that the Sun is kind of hot and all, I'm not sure.  Perhaps she went at night.

In any case, the whole site reads like an Encyclopedia Wingnuttica, so I spent most of it torn between laughing and looking around for the footnote that said, "Ha ha.  This is a satire."  But no, however bizarre it seems, these people are sincere.

What did sort of impress me, though, is that the header for the site says that the information contained therein qualifies as "WORLD TOP SECRET."  So secret, in fact, that you would never find it unless you Googled "World Top Secret Hollow Earth."

Or else had a friend who knows just how to bait you just right to get you to open a ridiculous link.

Elegy for an unpredictable universe

I was asked not too long ago how, as an atheist, I cope with tragedy.

"I don't see how you could possibly find a way to understand loss and grief," my friend said, "without some sense that there's a larger meaning in the universe."

In some ways, of course, I don't.  Not only do I not believe there's meaning in the universe (at least not in the sense he meant), I don't understand loss and grief at all.  I experience it, all too deeply -- I've lost both parents and a beloved grandmother, not to mention friends and colleagues.  It's impossible to live 53 years without going through the sorrow that comes with knowing that you will never, ever see someone you care about again.

But it is when the magnitude of the loss is amplified -- as it was yesterday with the announcement that Malaysia Flight 370 was almost certain to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board -- that we struggle hardest to wrap our brains around what has happened.  How could the world be so built, we think, that something like this could occur?

It brings back one of the formative books of my teenage years, Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.  This book chronicles the search by the 17th century Franciscan monk Brother Juniper, who is shocked when a bridge in his Peruvian village collapses, killing six people.  He is a devout man, and is certain that god must have had a reason for bringing those six onto the bridge, and no others, in time to die when the cable holding the bridge aloft snapped.  So he traces the life history of each of the six, trying to see if he can discern a pattern -- to see if he can read god's mind, determine what it was that led those particular six people to die when hundreds of others crossed the bridge daily and survived.

In the end, of course, he fails; and he concludes that either god's mind is too subtle, too deep to parse, or else there is no pattern, and things simply happen because they happen.

 It is a devastating conclusion.

Brother Juniper's search for meaning in apparent chaos is the genesis, I think, of religion, not to mention other worldviews perhaps less sanctified.  When you think about it, conspiracy theories come from the same place; a desperate need for there to be a reason, even a dark one, behind all of the bad stuff that happens in the world.  It seems that many of us would rather there be an explanation -- even if, in Christopher Moore's vivid turn of phrase, it involves "heinous fuckery most foul."  Better that than the universe being some kind of giant pinball game.

And in extremis, even we atheists still look for explanations, don't we?  Faced with tragedy, the first thing I've asked is, "Why me?", as if there is some answer to that question that is even possible given my philosophical worldview.  But it's a natural inclination, and seems to be universal to the human condition.  It is this aghast recognition that the world could treat us this badly that was captured in the starkly beautiful painting by Eugène Delacroix, depicting a Greek woman looking at the ruins of her home after her town was sacked by the Turks:

Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi, 1826 [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Sometimes there is no reason, no pattern; the world's machinery seems to work much of the time without any regard to us at all.  I flew Malaysia Airlines a year and a half ago, from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, and arrived there safely; two weeks ago, a similar bunch of passengers, expecting (as I did) nothing more than a few hours of tedium, ended their lives in the turbulent waters of the Indian Ocean.  And if you think that the phrase "there but for the grace of god go I" hasn't gone through my head more than once in the last few days, you're sorely mistaken.

Of course, for an atheist, that phrase is only a metaphor, and perhaps not even a very good one.  I don't have the recourse of falling back on "they're with god now" or even "god has a plan."  All I'm left with is a sense that the universe is a strange, chaotic, and unpredictable place, full of beauty and goodness and love and pleasure, and pain and danger and fear and death, sometimes meted out in unequal parts and in ways that I will never really comprehend.  But I do know one thing: we need to be more conscious, right now, about the gratitude and compassion with which we treat the people around us.  None of us have any idea how many minutes we will be given; none of us have time to waste.  Hug your loved ones, your friends, your pets -- hell, hug total strangers if you want to.  There is nothing certain about tomorrow, so you damn well better make every second of today count.

As Thornton Wilder put it in the last line of The Bridge of San Luis Rey: "There is a land of the living and a land of the dead; and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

Fair and balanced nonsense

I suppose by now that I should have expected something like this, but still, I was surprised when I heard that the creationists are now asking for airtime for their views, so that the media can be more "fair and balanced."

It's another jab at Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos again, of course.  Tyson is, as I mentioned in a recent post, unabashedly supportive of the evolutionary model, as well he should be; if you accept the methods of science at all, the amount of evidence in favor of evolution (and the complete dearth of evidence for any other competing model) leaves you little room to escape.  But that doesn't stop people from disbelieving, and it certainly didn't stop folks like Ken Ham from squalling like mad when Tyson called creationists simply "wrong."

What I didn't expect, though, was that the creationists were going to turn things around and demand that they have equal air time for their views, in the interest of fairness.

The idea jumped into public media a couple of days ago when Danny Faulkner of Answers In Genesis and the Creation Museum appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show.  Mefferd opened the topic up by asking if Cosmos will "ever give a creationist any time," and Faulkner answered that "creationists aren’t even on the radar screen for them, they wouldn’t even consider us plausible at all."

Mefferd said in response that Tyson and the writers of Cosmos weren't playing fair.  "Boy, but when you have so many scientists who simply do not accept Darwinian evolution," she said, "it seems to me that that might be something to throw in there, you know, the old, 'some scientists say this, others disagree and think this,' but that’s not even allowed."  (To listen to an audio recording of the interview, go here.)

There are two problems, of increasing seriousness, with this statement.

First, would you care to name for me the "so many scientists" who do not accept evolution?  There might be a few non-biologists, perhaps.  Amongst biologists, I think you'd be hard pressed to find more than one or two serious doubters -- and I would argue that even those, if they indeed exist, inhabit some sort of fringe-y twilight zone of biological research.  I.e.: I suspect they're cranks, not serious researchers.  At this point in the game, a biologist doubting evolution would be a little like a chemist doubting the periodic table.

A second, and more troubling problem, is that Mefferd and Faulkner think science needs to be "fair."  Wherever did they get that idea?

Now, don't get me wrong; in many circumstances, fairness is a good thing.  I try to deal with my students fairly; I expect to be treated fairly in business; I expect politicians to engage in fair dealings.  In any kind of human social interactions, fairness forms a good base guideline for behavior.

But science... science isn't fair at all.

Why not?  Well, partly it's because the universe isn't fair either.  There is absolutely no reason why the universe has to behave in such a way as to make me happy.  On a simplistic level, I would love it if magic was possible, if there was life after death, if there were friendly aliens who paid us visits periodically (I'm thinking of the wonderful final scene in Star Trek: First Contact).  Hell, while I'm wishing, I wish I could fly.  But there is no reason to believe that just because I'd like something to be a certain way, that the universe must conform to my wishes.  And more to the point, if science finds out different -- e.g., if controlled studies show that my magic wand can not make my dog levitate -- then science isn't being unfair to me.

It's simply showing me how things are.

[image courtesy of photographer Des Colhoun and the Wikimedia Commons]

So in a way, I misstated the fact; it's not that science isn't fair, it's that it's kind of above considerations of fairness and unfairness.  It deals with what is demonstrably real, and leads our understanding where the evidence takes us.  If that's a different place than where we'd hoped to be, well... too bad, so sad.

And there is no reason in the world that any responsible media outlet should feel compelled to give the creationists equal time, any more than I should be encouraged to teach the Theory of Magical Dog Levitation in my science classes.  Creationism and Magical Dog Levitation are both supported by equal amounts of hard evidence (i.e., zero), and therefore to give time to either one wouldn't be fair, it would be idiotic.

But of course, the media is not controlled by what is scientifically sound, it's controlled by what gets viewers (and therefore, what gets sponsors and makes money).  Witness what has happened in the past few years to the This Really Has Nothing To Do With History Channel.  So I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see a series coming down the line called The Six Days of Creation.

At least I can feel some joy in the knowledge that whoever they'd get to narrate it wouldn't be nearly as badass as Neil deGrasse Tyson, because he seems to have cornered the market on badassery these days.

Throwing the first stone

Occasionally I hear about someone doing something so simple, powerful, and admirable that it makes my jaw drop a little.

It also often makes me wish I'd thought of doing something like it first.

Some of my readers may have heard about the Atlah World Missionary Church of Harlem, New York, whose pastor, one James David Manning, put the message "Jesus Would Stone Homos" in front of his church last week.

This isn't the first time that Manning's church has posted homophobic messages.  Two weeks ago, in what may be a world record for the number of different groups offended by the fewest words, he simultaneously pissed off feminists, atheists, LGBTQ people, non-racists, and liberals with the sign, "Obama has released the homo demons on the black man.  Look out black woman.  A white homo may take your man."

He even had a YouTube video -- now removed -- in which he said, "Stoning of the homos is now in order.  Stoning is still the law."

It's an open question how reasonable people should respond to this sort of thing.  Being that here in the US we're guaranteed free speech, it is Manning's right to post stuff like this.  But a lot of us feel a sense of impotent rage that he can get away with it.  Shouldn't there be a way to shut down his message?

Jennifer Louise Lopez found one.

Lopez showed up at Manning's church, and while someone videotaped, she told the person who answered the door that she was a lesbian, and was there for her stoning.

In what may be one of the most wonderful exchanges ever recorded -- and which you can watch on the link above -- the following conversation took place:

Lopez: I saw your sign.  And I'm here for my stoning.  I'm a lesbian.  You guys are going to stone me?   ...Is it you that's going to stone me?"

Man at church door:  No, I don't have any stones.

Lopez:  Are you going to send a person to stone me?

Man at church door:  He's not here.  Come back tomorrow.

Lopez:  So, you're not going to stone me?  All right, thank you.

To which I can only respond:

Time to call the biblical literalists' bluff.  You want the United States to function under biblical law?  Fine.  Here is my list of offenses against the laws in the Book of Leviticus, or at least the ones I'm willing to admit publicly and in print:

• I'm a nonbeliever
• I'm married to a nonbeliever
• I've actively worked to convince people to question their religion
• I was a stubborn and rebellious son
• I work on the sabbath
• I eat shellfish and pork
• I have tattoos
• I wear clothing made of mixed types of thread

There, I think those should be enough.

Dear biblical literalists: I'm standing with Jennifer Lopez, and with, I think, a great many other Americans.  We admit our transgressions against biblical law.  We're all here to be executed.

Go ahead.  Pick up a stone, and throw it at us.

I dare you.

Infinite stars, important dust, and light's vacation home

I get the oddest emails sometimes.

I guess it's an occupational hazard.  Some of them are very earnest, trying to get me to see the error of my ways and just believe in (circle one: homeopathy, astrology, auras, psychic energy fields, ghosts, Bigfoot, chakras, god).  Others are angry at me for not believing in any of the above, and call me all sorts of names, sometimes giving me anatomically impossible suggestions as a bonus.

The most puzzling ones, though, are when someone simply sends me a link.  What am I supposed to do with this?  Is it an appeal to believe whatever the website is claiming?  Is it a suggestion for a future blog post?  Is the sender trying to convert me?  Or is it a case of trolling -- sending me something intended to raise my blood pressure to near aneurysm levels?

I got one of those types yesterday -- an unsigned email from an address I did not recognize, with a link to the site "Scientific Proof of the Bible."  Clearly I couldn't see a site with that title and not click the link.  If the individual who sent it was fishing for skeptics, (s)he hooked one on the first try.

The site has the following header:

The Bible is estimated to have been written between 1450 B.C. and 95 A.D. This chart shows scientific facts and principles referred to in this ancient Bible, but not actually discovered by humankind until later centuries. Dead sea scrolls, historical documentation, and word of mouth all confirm the authenticity of the Bible. Since people had no official knowledge of these scientific facts until more than a thousand years after the Bible was written, is this scientific proof that the Bible was inspired by God?

There follows a list of scientific facts and claims, the bible verse that allegedly predicted them, and the year that the scientists finally discovered them (proving the bible right after the fact, is the implication).  For instance we have "Light is a particle and has mass (a photon)," which I think is supposed to be some kind of description of the wave/particle duality of light (I'm being generous, here).  The scientists discovered this in 1932 (says the website), but it had been predicated thousands of years earlier, in Job 38:19.  So I looked up Job 38:19, and it says: "Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof?"

Well, I don't know about you, but as far as I can see, that has fuck-all to do with photons.  Other than the mention of the word "light," that is.  And it implies, incorrectly, that light dwelleth somewhere, as if light had a vacation home in Palm Beach or something.

So I thought, okay, maybe that was just a bad example.  So I tried "An infinite number of stars exist," which was supposedly predicted by Genesis 15:5.  Here's Genesis 15:5: "And he brought him [Abraham] forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be."

Well, the number of Abraham's descendants isn't infinite.  In fact, it isn't even close to the number of stars in our galaxy alone (currently estimated at about 300 billion).  So this one isn't so much irrelevant as it is simply wrong.

[image courtesy of NASA and the Wikimedia Commons]

So then I looked at "Dust is important to survival," allegedly discovered by scientists in 1935.  And it's true, I suppose; dust storms carry minerals out over the oceans, and have a great effect on oceanic productivity.  But the quote that allegedly should have told those silly scientists all they needed to know about the phenomenon millennia ago is Isaiah 40:12, which says, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of Earth in a measure, and weighed out the mountains in scales, and the hills with a balance?"

Well, I certainly haven't, but the preceding verse seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with dust being "important for survival."

Then we have "Radio astronomy (stars give off signals)," which brings us back to the Book of Job -- Job 38:7, to be specific.  And that verse is: "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

By this point, I was thinking, "Oh, come on.  Is that really the best you can do?"  Because a lot of the rest of them were patently ridiculous -- like claiming that it took scientists until the 19th century to realize that blood was necessary for life, that oceans have currents, and that thunder and lightning were related (hell, my dog figured that last one out). 

Oh, and supposedly it wasn't until the 17th century that the scientists realized that both a man and a woman are necessary to make a baby.

How exactly stupid do these people think that scientists are?  I mean, I know that sometimes we nerds can be a little hopeless in the romance department, but even we understand how sex works.

So at this point, I kind of gave it up as a bad job.

I guess I should be, in a way, heartened; that the biblical literalists are feeling threatened enough even to try to create a list like this means that they're recognizing the inroad that rationalism is making.  But man, you'd think if they were going to try to craft a cogent argument, they could manage something a little more convincing.

Of course, this still doesn't answer my initial question, which is whether the person who sent it to me meant it as a suggestion, a criticism, or a dubious attempt to anger me into a coronary.  I'm taking it as the first-mentioned, which is at least the nicest of the three.  And if the person who sent it reads this, please let me know in the Comments section if I'm right, just to satisfy my own curiosity.

But do try to avoid any anatomically impossible suggestions.  Those are kind of off-putting.

Calling all cryptids!

Calling all people who have found a Bigfoot bone!  Or a Tatzelwurm tooth!  Or Huaychivo hair!  Or a Chickcharney claw!

The International Cryptozoology Museum wants to talk to you.

Loren Coleman, of Cryptozoonews, has put out an all-call for anyone who claims to have hard evidence of... well, of anything of cryptozoological note.  To quote Coleman's article:

A reputable serious  British TV production company is working with the scientific nonprofit International Cryptozoology Museum to gather promising cryptozoological organic samples (particularly hair shafts, teeth, skulls), suitable for DNA testing by qualified genetic scientists, for a potential future documentary project and the related publication of the results in a scientific journal.

The chosen samples will be tested at the company’s cost and the detailed results will be shared with the donor. Well-known, world-renowned genetic scientists will be working with this project. The scope of the project is international. The range of cryptids being surveyed encompass the entire realm of cryptozoology, from the standard organic samplings of Yeti, Yeren, Yowie, Sasquatch, Lake Monster, Mapinguari, Globsters to biological indications of new populations of Coelacanths, Thylacines, Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers and more. All evidence will be considered and screened open-mindedly.

All of which is at least approaching the topic the right way.  So if you think you might have some random chunk of cryptid in your closet, consider sending it in.  To see what your chunk might be from, you might start by checking out the canonical guide to cryptids on Wikipedia, which reads like a veritable petting zoo of animals that probably don't exist.

I say "probably" because if I am trying my hardest to be a good skeptic, I have to admit that there's something to the aphorism that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."  I would add, though, that absence of evidence is at the same time highly suggestive.  There is no evidence of Bigfoot -- but realize that there is also no evidence of unicorns or centaurs or dragons or the Giant Carnivorous Flying Bunny of Upstate New York.  And if you try to claim that it isn't significant that these exhibit an absence of evidence, especially the last one, I am pretty likely to laugh directly into your face.

Still, I'm open to having my views revised, and there's nothing for that like hard evidence.  I'm hoping that when the inevitable flood of hair and bones and teeth start to pour in, the International Cryptozoology Museum will get someone reputable to do the genetic testing, and not some crank with an agenda and a dubious grasp on reality (I'm looking at you, Melba Ketchum).

So it sounds like the whole thing has more scientific merit than the continuous stream of eyewitness accounts and blurry photographs that is all we've had up to this point.  So see what you can find, and send it in.  As I've said more than once: I'm a doubter, yes, but this is one case in which I would be beyond delighted to be proven wrong.  I mean, really -- I'm a biology teacher, and my area of specialization is evolutionary biology, so how could I not be thrilled if someone finally proved the existence of a proto-hominid, or a holdover from the dinosaur era, or even some animal thought to be previously extinct like the thylacine, or sabre-toothed tiger, or moa?

Man, that would be cool.  I would, however, prefer not to have moas stomping around in my general vicinity.  If you don't know what those are -- or, more accurately, were -- they were like badass ostriches on steroids.  They were, in a word, scary.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Be that as it may, it would still be way cool to find evidence of any of them.  So I encourage you to participate, if you actually have anything in your possession that you think might be relevant.  Who knows?  Maybe someone does.  It reminds me of what Michio Kaku said about UFO sightings: "You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by an advanced civilization, a civilization far out in space, a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology...  When you look at the handful, the handful of cases that cannot be easily dismissed, this is worthy of scientific investigation.  Maybe there's nothing there.  However, on the off chance that there is something there that could literally change the course of human history, so I say: let the investigation begin."

Exactly, Dr. Kaku.  So despite my standing as a skeptic, I want to go on record as wishing the International Cryptozoology Museum all the luck in the world.

Let the investigation begin!