Cryptozoology, Ghosts, Aliens and other mysteries

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This is one radio interview and gives some perspective to it, how pseudoscience tv-shows edit things and make their best to twist statements from people doing real and serious scientific research. It is over an hour, but quite interesting, not only what comes to pseudoscience, it opens up also quite good things concerning dna-tests.

https://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/7/0/2/7021b8f2df6f167e/001_Monstertalk.mp3?c_id=1862982&cs_id=1862982&expiration=1595603091&hwt=d7cf50206f6d55ce9125bdc531f7df05

If someone doesn´t have interest or patience to listen whole thing, there is one interesting part starting from 59:16 concerning pseudoscience tv-show MonsterQuest. Interesting to learn how much effort producers are doing to get results they want to hear and how they twist things. There is a lot of interesting things here and there, so my recommendation is to listen whole thing.

Interviewed person is Dr. Todd Disotell, who appears in some pseudoscience tv-shows and is legit scientist.

Quote: 
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DR. TODD DISOTELL JOINED US for our first MonsterTalk episode to discuss his various appearances on cryptozoology television shows as the DNA expert. He holds a PhD from Harvard, and a BA from Cornell. Dr. Disotell is currently teaching at NYU and his expertise is in primate evolution. His full professional biographical information can be found on his NYU webpage.

Dr. Disotell’s background in primate studies made him a logical choice for cryptid-TV, though we noticed his screen time was usually short and all of his analysis thus far has turned up no evidence of an unknown ape.

His appearance on the television show Monster Quest was somewhat controversial among Bigfoot enthusiasts in that after his lab found no DNA, a second lab’s results were characterized by The History Channel as suggestive of “non human primate” DNA. (See clip below) In our interview with Dr. Disotell we discuss the Monster Quest claim and get his surprising take on the second lab’s findings.

Questions in this episode include:

• How did Todd get involved in cryptid DNA analysis?
• How does DNA get culled from contaminants?
• What have Todd’s findings been so far?
• What was his take on the DNA from the Monster Quest “Sasquatch Attack” episode?
• What would Bigfoot DNA actually look like?
• How big was Giganto and what does a primatologist think of the “Giganto Hypothesis” to explain Bigfoot?
• What does “unknown” mean in DNA analysis?
• What about grant money for Bigfoot research?
  

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