The Bible Code has not experienced the quiet demise it so obviously deserves. Most recently, there has been a second History Channel feature on the topic (History Channel 2005), and it has been featured in several newspapers. For example, in December 2002, the U.K.’s Daily Mail printed a series of three-page regurgitations by Michael Drosnin of the code’s accuracy. Drosnin is not simply a by-line journalist but rather the leading public proponent of the Bible Code, having reaped the rewards of multiple best sellers on the topic (Drosnin 1997; 2002). The Bible Code is purported to reveal predictions of future events embedded in a matrix representation of biblical text. This is a particularly disturbing form of nonsense since it cloaks itself in a patina of mathematics while apparently embracing a fundamentalist perspective, all overlaid by the stock-in-trade of the prognosticating mentalist: namely, under-specification before the event and great claims to accuracy and premonition after the event has occurred. Playing on the religious convictions of some, the credulity of others, and the math phobia often endemic in the general population, the Bible Code represents a highly seductive idea to many. This hydra-headed fallacy must continually be debunked.

Drosnin recently claimed that the code foretold the attack on the Twin Towers (why was this not reported before the event?) and predicts nuclear war in four years. In retrospect, Drosnin claims the Bible Code predicted virtually all major events of the last century, ranging from the assassination of John F. Kennedy through Watergate to the Gulf War. The Bible Code may be particularly appealing to fundamentalist Christians whose convictions center around the literal truth of the Bible. After all, Drosnin’s ideas entail that the Bible Code predicts the future as well—a seductive prospect indeed.

Because of the complexity of these overlapping assumptions and fallacies, the Bible Code continues to proliferate. The Bible Code provides an interesting guide to unraveling the complex nuances of similar claims employing obfuscation to hide deception (see Wiseman 1997). The Bible Code invokes a ferociously powerful level of combinatorial mathematics without sufficient care for the explosive increase in explanatory degrees of freedom that such numerical computation releases. A second deception lies in the areas of pattern matching and wish fulfillment in distilling “messages” that an individual has primed himself to find. Embedded within these overarching concerns are specific problems. For example, one which we have previously examined in detail is the increased frequency of word possibilities in Hebrew letter combinations as compared to English, a fact which is never evident when proponents convert their matrix pronouncements into plain English text (see Koltko-Rivera and Hancock 2005). Beyond these empirically addressable issues, Drosnin, among others, invokes the respected authority fallacy. For example, he cites the claim that Sir Isaac Newton also proposed that there was a code embedded in the Bible, but that despite his (Newton’s) genius, he was unable to decode it. He then attributes his present “success” in decoding it to his use of computers and to a “self-effacing but highly respected figure” (a man named Eli Rips); these aides have allowed him to reveal that which has “eluded man for millennia.”

These obfuscations are not open to obvious experimental attack. This is because Drosnin and other proponents are fundamentally creating the problem and then producing the Bible Code as the necessary solution. The problem thus created has now become an ‘issue’ that has “eluded us for millennia.” Philosopher David Hume was very aware that by the act of naming a concept we give a form of reality to that concept. Drosnin abuses this function by championing a spurious code which he then claims has been so elusive. To this conjured brew, Drosnin adds a dash of great names (Newton), a soupçon of respected authorities (Rips) and finally the almighty power of the computer to reinforce the reality of the issue and the authority of his study. Simply stated, the problem is that with a text the size of the Bible, one can retrospectively conjure virtually any message. With sufficient time and computing power, one can constantly search the database of the text and derive an almost unlimited number of conjunctions which prove sufficiently psychologically intriguing so as to appear non-random.

In general, the Bible Code (although not the Bible itself as plain text) is an example of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). In Drosnin’s specific case, it’s a little more seductive as it’s WIWO (words in, words out). One can ask a computer program to search text (i.e., engage in a degree of pattern matching) for one keyword or a series of word-phrases and then print out the perceptually most intriguing pattern matches. This is why the retrospective aspect of the code is so problematic—the readers of the Code see what they wish to see. The keywords (essentially world events) are input, and the close matches are used to represent output. Of course predictions never appear as an exact match using continuous colloquial English (Hebrew, Aramaic, American?) sentences, the reader has to add all the conjunctions themselves, which of course naïve individuals are very ready to do. In the Daily Mail article, Drosnin shows a matrix emphasizing the spatial proximity of the keywords twin, towers, and airplane. Although appearing in arbitrary locations in a matrix, Drosnin arranges them in the order above, not twin, airplane, then towers. Why? Because it is perceptually more appealing to link twin and towers together. Note that the final word is not even airplanes, (plural). No, with the under-specificity so critical to success, Drosnin leaves the reader to fill in these critical gaps.

Drosnin also gets tied up in the highly problematic issue of free will and determinism. For example, he observes that:

Long before September 11, I had been warning world leaders that the ancient prophecy of the Apocalypse was about to come true. [But when?] I told them that, according to the Bible Code, we were already in the ultimate time of danger, the End of Days and that within a decade [plenty long enough to forget this time!] we might face the real Armageddon [presumably and logically then we also might not]—a nuclear world war starting with an act of terrorism in the Middle East [or presumably near the Middle East River?] It was a message I had given to the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Israel and the leader of the Palestinians. I told them all that we might [there’s that might again] have only five years [five or ten?] left to save the world—but no one would heed the warning.

But there is a problem here. How can The Bible Code, which is derived from a fixed and fundamentally deterministic text, now warn us about opportunities for change? There can, by definition, be no present behavior which can change current events since such events are already, in Code terms, determined and have been now for many centuries! This is a difficult problem to solve. However, I am quite sure that Bible Code proponents can (and will) subsequently find other matrices in the text to counter any awkward, unfulfilled observations. However, using different parts of the text to provide contradictory information depending upon one’s own particular wants of the moment has already been done. Indeed, this is evident from a straight reading of the Bible which in almost every case provides its own contradiction to any positive pronouncement made (perhaps this being one of the principal reasons for its success and longevity). Thus, these so-called leaders that Drosnin cites, if they then truly believed Drosnin’s Bible Code, would be perfectly justified in ignoring any such observations since, after all, their actions are already preset. Like most of these forms of prognostication, and it is evident that Nostradamus acts as the poster boy here, one finds they are a priori sufficiently indeterminate to allow all interpretations—and again this is the fundamental error of the Bible Code. In purporting to be able to predict everything, the code reveals its fatal flaw of actually predicting nothing.

What Drosnin also has to justify is the level at which the pattern matching is made. By this I mean the choice at which the pattern match is made within the text. One could, for example, derive a code at the chapter level. However, merely rearranging each whole chapter of the Bible in a different order gives us virtually no combinatorial room for new, revealed messages. Rather than chapters then, we could use sentences, phrases, or words, but again even though these rearrangements are possible, the number of new combinatorial possibilities are comparatively limited. In invoking the code at the level of an individual letter search, Drosnin has sufficient combinatorial freedom to generate any new message. However, he must champion an absolute and unchanged original of the Bible. To do this he cites a “Textus Receptus.” Of course, if there is any question about the veracity of the version chosen, the code is immediately discredited. Needless to say, true Bible Scholars still search and research such “authenticity,” but if the chosen text is altered in any way, the code must change. Drosnin could claim that like the Genetic Code much text is vestigial and only specific parts are ‘active’ but discounting parts of the text would lose him the support of radical fundamentalists and thus much of their patronage. Perhaps those better versed in Bible scholarship might be better to comment on the text changes over the years and the claims made in this area. However, the point about the level at which the pattern matching is made is much more important. Why should we stop at the level of individual letters? We could use the level of the individual pen stroke, which collectively constitute each discrete letter. Fortunately, this level is much more powerful and includes a virtually endless combination of possibilities. With such a powerful brush, what pictures could not be painted, what events not predicted—but only in retrospect, of course. Please note, I constructed the whole of this article by a pattern-based rearrangement of only twenty-six letters and even more impressively only four basic pen strokes: forward, back, up, and down!

The rest of Drosnin’s pronouncements are the usual hodge-podge of unspecified hand waving of the sort so beloved of astrologers and politicians. For example, Drosnin’s final pronouncement is that “The Bible Code is not a prediction that we will all die in 2006. It is a warning that we might all die in 2006, if we do not change our future.” By using an ineffectual word like might Drosnin produces the usual tired, old, vacuous and underspecified general prediction of the sort found in any of the less informative of the supermarket tabloids. Fortunately, in being skeptical of the Bible Code we are not alone. The British Magazine Private Eye, known for its realistic and satiric view of life, took on this issue:

meanwhile, for an entire week in December the Mail ran extracts from the latest book on the Bible Code, a fantasy dreamed up by American hack Michael Drosnin to prove that a hidden code in the Bible foretold the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. The cipher, Dragon revealed, was created by extra-terrestrials thousands of years ago: “There were clear references to what can only be called ‘UFOs’ in the unencoded text of the Bible—most notably in the Book of Ezekiel, which tells of a flying chariot in the sky from which few living beings emerged. This drivel, no less bizarre than the Raelian’s beliefs, prompted no mockery or scepticisim from the Mail far from it: “Dare we ignore this message?” it demanded! Can it be long before [the] editor bows to the inevitable and renames his paper the Daily Rael?

Amazingly, Drosnin promises that the Code reveals where Bin Laden is hiding, so by the time of my original writing in early March 2003, I assumed he would no longer be at liberty! But of course, by this reckoning, the Bible Code has revealed where Bin Laden is hiding since before Bin Laden was born!

Perhaps comedy and invective is the best response to the The Bible Code. As such, we should applaud the observations of the British magazine Viz (not always known itself for following societal norms). In their September 2004 Issue (No. 138), they also lampooned the Daily Mail’s inclusion of the extended coverage of the Bible Code. The headline of the segment read: “Science Reveals Shock New Daily Mail Code.” The article went on:

Mathematicians at top boffin coffin Oxford University have uncovered a secret code in the pages of the Daily Mail. Close study of the text has shocked the egghead community—revealing a series of cogent, legible messages, cunningly hidden within the rambling paragraphs of the unreasonable right-wing rabbit hutch liner. . . . Scholars have looked for sense in the Daily Mail for thousands of years, but it is only in the last two decades that computers have made text searches inevitable.

In the end, Drosnin’s “drivel” is simply yet another version of the astrologer’s flummery, now obfuscated by the use of a computer program. Little wonder that the series also bought a howl of adverse comment from Mail readers (see Daily Mail, December 5, 2002, letters page). Regardless of one’s spiritual beliefs, Drosnin’s actions are an abuse of one of the most revered of human texts. I hope that, if only on this one issue alone, the skeptical and the fundamentalist communities (never the easiest of bedfellows), can join together to reject what at the very best can only be regarded as misguided nonsense and at the very worst . . . well, on this I will defer to higher authorities.

References:

• Drosnin, Michael. 1997. The Bible Code. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• —. 2002. Bible Code II: The Countdown. New York: Viking.
• History Channel. 2005. Bible Code II. Apocalypse and beyond. http://www.historychannel.com
• Koltko-Rivera, Mark, and P.A. Hancock. 2005. The plausibility of the ‘Bible Code’ as a statistical artifact of differences between English and Hebrew. Paper submitted.
• Thomas, D.E. (1997). Hidden messages and the Bible Code. Skeptical Inquirer, 21 (6), 30—36.
• Viz. 2004. Percy Edwards/Dennis Publishing. Cleveland Street, London (Vol. No. 138).
• Wiseman, Richard. 1997. Deception and self-deception. Prometheus Press: Buffalo, New York.

National Geographic Channel, with whom I have worked on numerous projects for their Is It Real? series, asked me to look at the Hutchison Effect for one such program on the Bermuda Triangle. I shared the assignment with my longtime colleague at the Center for Inquiry, Thomas Flynn, whose relevant expertise will become apparent.

Background: the Bermuda Triangle

Also known as the Devil’s Triangle, the Triangle of Death, and other appellations, the Bermuda Triangle is an area of the western north Atlantic approximately bounded by imaginary lines drawn between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and the tip of Florida (figure 1). It has achieved legendary status for the mysterious vanishings of countless airplanes and ships—even two nuclear submarines. Various “theories” (or fanciful notions) have been conjured up to explain the disappearances (Berlitz 1974; Winer 1974; Nickell 1992).

However, in 1975, investigator Lawrence David Kusche published his monumental The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved, a classic example of paranormal investigation at its best. Rather than merely passing along the legends published in secondary sources, or sources at even greater remove, Kusche—a librarian and experienced pilot—searched out and scrutinized original records.

Take, for example, the case of a vanished tanker. In early February 1963, the S.S. Marine Sulphur Queen, a 523-foot tanker on a voyage from Texas to Virginia, disappeared. Its last message was a routine one on February 4 as it approached the Straits of Florida. Four days later, when it was a day overdue at Norfolk, officials launched a sea and air search but found neither the tanker nor any of its crew of thirty-nine. Two life preservers were all that were found, according to Charles Berlitz in his bestselling The Bermuda Triangle Mystery (1974, 56—57), who adds that “the weather was good,” and a Coast Guard investigation offered “neither solution nor theory concerning this disaster.”

In fact, as the Coast Guard Board of Investigation report made clear, there were “rough seas” and the ship had structural flaws caused by the removal of bulkheads to accommodate large storage vats. These held the ship’s cargo, some fifteen thousand tons of molten sulphur, either the fumes or steam from which offered the possibility of an explosion. This possibility is underscored by the fact that during prior voyages, tons of molten sulphur had leaked into the tanker’s bilges. Besides the life preservers, much “additional debris” was recovered, including part of a name board bearing the letters “ARINE SULPH” between its shattered ends. Thus, as investigation demonstrated, the Marine Sulphur Queen’s fate was not a mysterious disappearance but obviously a tragic accident instead (Kusche 1975, 206—216, illustrations pp. 166—167).

One by one, the other major casualties of the Bermuda Triangle came under Kusche’s scrutiny. The Sandra, a freighter which “disappeared” in “peaceful weather” (Gaddis 1965, 202), was actually lost at sea during hurricane-force winds. The Freya, which was supposedly found mysteriously adrift in “The Triangle area” (Berlitz 1974, 54), was in fact abandoned (probably during a storm as indicated by its condition) in the Pacific Ocean! And so on, and so on (Kusche 1975, 59—61, 182—184).

Flight 19, a group of five U.S. Avenger aircraft, which allegedly disappeared under what Gaddis (165, 191) termed “ideal flight conditions,” was really a training mission plagued by malfunctioning compasses and weather that was “‘average to undesirable’ for a training flight,” as Kusche notes in a book devoted to this mystery, The Disappearance of Flight 19 (1980). Investigation demonstrated the probability that the crew became disoriented, flew far out to sea, and were lost at night in rough water. The disappearance of a Mariner plane that was subsequently lost searching for the Avengers becomes less the mystery Triangle promoters make of it when we learn that such planes were nicknamed “flying gas tanks” (due to a chronic problem with fumes) and that there occurred an explosion—just where the Mariner would have been—approximately twenty minutes after takeoff (Kusche 1980, 119; Nickell 1992).

As the U.S. Coast Guard states concerning the legendary Triangle: “there is nothing mysterious about disappearances in this particular section of the ocean. Weather conditions, equipment failure, and human error, not something from the supernatural, are what have caused these tragedies” (quoted in Winer 1974, 207—208). One might add that it is also human error on the part of paranormalists that has helped perpetuate the pseudomystery.

The Hutchison Effect

Nevertheless, Gian J. Quasar is determined to resurrect the “mystery” with his credulous Into the Bermuda Triangle (2004). He takes seriously the work of one John Hutchison and his Hutchison Effect—actually a series of effects—mostly captured on videotape. Hutchison has crammed a room of his Vancouver home with various electromagnetic-field-emitting devices (radio frequency transmitters, Van de Graaf generators, Tesla coils, etc.) and turns them on to produce what Quasar gushes are “astonishing effects”: objects that suddenly appear, disappear, or levitate; liquids that spontaneously swirl; and other wonders (Quasar 2004, 126—132; Solis 1999).

States Quasar (2004, 128):

Some of these results give us an alarming view of the potentiality of electromagnetic effects on matter, its destruction, and transmutation. Metal turns white hot (but does not burn surrounding flammable material), 1-inch metal bars split, shred at the fracture point, wriggle like a worm, and flutter like a rag in the wind; fires start around the building out of nonflammable materials like cement and rock; metal warps and bends and even breaks (separating by sliding in a sideways fashion), and in some instances it crumbles like cookies.

Such effects on metal provoke comparisons of the Hutchison Effect with an earlier alleged “Geller Effect” (Solis 1999), the term conjured up as an explanation for Israeli magician Uri Geller’s “strange powers”—a hodgepodge of purported wizard’s feats that include bending metal by only looking at it, as well as reading minds, projecting pictures through a camera’s lens cap, and other wonders (Geller and Playfair 1986; Randi 1982).

Videographer Thomas Flynn compares a claimed levitating-object effect (left), allegedly relevant to the Bermuda Triangle “mystery,” with one he and the author created (center). The screen at the right shows Flynn and the author creating the replication. (Photo by Henry Huber and Thomas Flynn.)

Geller has been challenged and his feats exposed by various stage magicians, many of whom perform his effects much better than he. Notable among them is James Randi whose The Truth About Uri Geller (1982) is the definitive work on the Geller Effect. Randi posed as an editor of Time magazine when Geller performed in the Time offices. Randi says he saw Geller using simple tricks to accomplish his apparent wonders: For example, although pretending to cover his eyes while a secretary made a simple drawing, Geller actually peeked, thus enabling him to appear to read her mind and reproduce the drawing; also, instead of bending a key “by concentration,” as he pretended, Geller bent the key against a table when he thought no one was looking (Randi 1982, 90—97).

Quasar seems entirely credulous as to Hutchison’s claims, when there is every reason for skepticism. Using words like “inexplicable,” “extraordinary,” and “unusual and hitherto ‘impossible’” to describe the alleged phenomena, Quasar (2004, 126—127) appears oblivious of the maxim that “incredible claims require incredible proof”—that is, that evidence should be commensurate with the extent of the claim. Suspicions are heightened when we are told that “Sometimes one must wait for days for something to happen, and 99 percent of the time nothing happens at all” (2004, 129).

Despite Hutchison’s use of pseudoscientific terminology—he bandies about made-up terms like “cronons” and “gravitons”—his work seems anything but scientific. He does not use proper methods or controls, produce replicatable results, or publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Instead, many of his alleged phenomena are dubiously “authenticated” by videotape and film (Hutchison 2004, 126). Moreover, observers of Hutchison’s feats “have uniformly expressed astonishment at the weak electrical power that seems to be sufficient to produce very stupefying results” (Quasar 2004, 129). Such conditions could certainly be consistent with trickery.

Nevertheless, Quasar (2004, 130) likens the supposed Hutchison Effect to certain reported phenomena in the Bermuda Triangle—not only disappearances and wrecks but also an “electronic fog” that some boats and planes have supposedly sailed through. Hutchison has produced this grayish metallic-like mist in his “lab”—or so a videotape purports to show.

Replication

Producer Owen Palmquist (2006) of National Geographic Channel sent me some videotapes of Hutchison’s so-called experiments asking for my opinion. Not unexpectedly, perhaps, Hutchison’s dial-spinning shenanigans for National Geographic’s camera had produced nothing but a minor fire that he rushed to extinguish (Is It Real? 2006). Therefore, Hutchison’s own tapes were all that could be studied.

Because evidence available only on film or tape can easily be faked, I enlisted the help of Center for Inquiry colleague Thomas Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry and an experienced photographer and videographer. We decided that what we were seeing might easily have been staged. One video sequence showed an empty one-liter plastic soft-drink bottle wobbling, then shooting suddenly upward. Tom laughed at the suspicious fact that the handheld camera did not follow the flying object, an indication that there was perhaps something up there that the camera should not see.

We concluded that the movement of the bottle was consistent with it having been controlled by an “invisible” thread—or rather threads: frame-by-frame study showed that two attachment points would be required. We then reproduced the effect on a similar bottle using the necessary two lengths of monofilament line with which we caused the bottle to wobble and then soar. I was the hidden puppeteer to Tom’s camera. (See figure 2.)

Of more interest to National Geographic was Hutchison’s production of “electronic fog.” Tom and I were unimpressed with this effect which we readily simulated by jiggling a jumble of metallic wire, backlit by a suitable lightbulb, before the video camera’s lens.

Our videotaped results—along with clips showing us making our experiments and commenting on them—subsequently aired on the National Geographic Channel (Is It Real? 2006). The similarity of our effects to Hutchison’s are readily apparent. We see no need to give the supposed wizard further attention—certainly not with regard to Gian J. Quasar’s mystery-mongering and ridiculously pseudoscientific speculations about the Bermuda Triangle.

References:

• Berlitz, Charles. 1974. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Gaddis, Vincent. 1965. Invisible Horizons. Philadelphia: Chilton.
• Geller, Uri, and Guy Lyon Playfair. 1986. The Geller Effect. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
• Godwin, John. 1968. This Baffling World. New York: Hart Publishing Co.
• Is It Real? “Bermuda Triangle.” 2006. National Geographic Channel, aired September 25, 2006.
• Kusche, Laurence David. 1975. The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved. New York: Warner Books.
• —. 1980. The Disappearance of Flight 19. New York: Harper & Row.
• Nickell, Joe. 1992. Nature’s mysteries; in Robert A. Baker and Joe Nickell, Missing Pieces, 1992, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 261—267 (the present discussion is adapted from this source.)
• Palmquist, Owen. 2006. Personal communication, March 22.
• Randi, James. 1982. The Truth About Uri Geller. Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
• Solis, Mark A. 1999. The Hutchison Effect—an explanation. John Hutchison’s Web site, accessed March 3, 2006.
• Winer, Richard. 1974. The Devil’s Triangle. New York: Bantam.

Supporters of the film disagree. Jeff Meldrum, who seemingly has been able to see more than other viewers, writes, “Also discernible were unmistakable breasts that gyrated with each running step.”

But what is certain is that the Memorial Day footage met popular science (or less than that) in the forensic examination of the footage. As Meldrum explains in his book, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, a companion to the television program of the same title: “this was perhaps the most high-tech [and costly] analysis of any film purporting to depict a sasquatch.”

To many who have viewed this short videotape, the figure looks like a man in a gorilla suit. And at about 5 feet 3 inches in height and a gait strikingly like that of a man, suspicion should be quick to set in. That the on-site forensic examiners didn’t get suspicious right out of the gate is surprising. What they should have done is place a man of the same height in a gorilla suit going over the identical route for comparison.

Instead, they used a man taller than the subject dressed in running apparel. The comparison wasn’t apples to apples. The test subject, Derek Prior, easily outran the subject over the same pathway. Prior, an accomplished athlete, sped the course at 17.1 mph, while the Memorial Day video subject lagged along at 8.56 mph—a little more than half the speed. Nonetheless, narrator Stacy Keach for S:LMS offered a complete contradiction: “The Memorial Day footage suggested that the creature was running at speeds across this rough terrain beyond human capabilities,” when in fact this was never the case.

Fortunately, the filming site, near Chopaka Lake, Washington, remains relatively unaltered from eleven years ago, and a man-in-a-costume experiment might answer a lot of questions about the alleged reality of the filmed subject, and should be done.

New evidence damaging to the validity of the videotape has come to light: an experiment recently conducted by M.K. Davis, a Bigfoot buff from Mississippi. Davis comments: “In regard to the Memorial Day footage: I don’t have the highest quality version of the footage, so I approached the problem from a color-scheme perspective. A little-known fact about synthetic fiber, such as many inexpensive ape suits contain, is that when it is dyed brown, there is a base coat of green. My computer imaging program has the capability of restoring faded photographs to their original vibrant colors. It is very sensitive to even very faint colors.

“When such inexpensive fibers are subjected to strong light, the base coat of green often shines through. This would be almost imperceptive to the naked eye, but the sensitive program does often pick up the faint green undercoat. Working with this principle, I assembled some of the frames in the Memorial Day footage to see if green would come through, and apparently it did. [To see these images readers are referred to the Web site: Bigfoot Forums.com.] Finding the green base coat in strong light is not always definitive. The process only works on some brown dyes. In some cases there may be bleed over onto the subject from surrounding vegetation. What I found with the subject running in the Memorial Day video, however, changes as the light and shadow does. This strongly indicates an inexpensive fiber that has been dyed brown.

“While not conclusive, it is enough to make me not want to go through a lot of expense and time to look at other points of interest.” Rick Noll, writing on the Bigfoot Forums Web site, charged back, “As far as a color shift in the subject, more information is needed. Like control tests showing that video tape doesn’t impart this characteristic on its own.”

Bobbie Short, a San Diego, California, Bigfooter, e-mailed me: “During the early Internet discussions of that film footage (circa 1996—1997), someone asked Dr. Krantz if he was going to address the Memorial Day Footage issue in his updated version of Big Footprints. He fired back with both guns drawn, saying he wouldn’t waste ink on that footage.”

Additional adverse testimony comes from Larry Lund. Owen Pate called Lund, perhaps the first Bigfoot investigator to hear about the videotape. When I spoke with Lund on November 19, 2006, he said, “Pate told me their primary interest was to see if they could get their Bigfoot videotape aired on television and how much money they would be paid.” After viewing the videotape, Lund stated it looked “pretty terrible” and did not encourage Pate.

The Pates were eventually compensated for their videotape when they agreed to have it aired on S:LMS. According to the producer, Doug Hajicek, “Owen [Pate] would have let us air the footage with or without the very small compensation [we paid].”

But why was the audio from the videotape left out of S:LMS? In S:LMS Paul Freeman’s alleged Bigfoot video is shown with sound, yet when the Memorial Day footage is displayed, the audio is silent without any narrative explaining why. If the producers of the program felt the remarks made on camera were racist, they could have bleeped the questionable dialog. The real reason, I believe, is that the audio is both illuminating and revealing.

Here are excerpts of the audio:

“He was right behind that small pine tree, right?”

“I’m freak.”

“Yeah, I’m scared.”

“I could make a million bucks.”

“That’s a guy with a big hair cut. . . .”

“Sure is ambitious, running a lot. . . .”

“It’s a Bigfoot.”

“That’s not a Bigfoot. . . .”

“It’s a Dickfoot.”

“It’s all on video!”

“I’ve only had two drinks.”

“Me, too, two too many.”

And somewhere in the audio, as the subject comes into view is this: “looks like a white boy to me,” a statement made without a doubt by the late Fred Bradshaw, an avid Bigfooter from Elma, Washington. Having known Fred Bradshaw since 1995, his voice is easily recognizable. Isn’t it convenient, or too convenient, that a Bigfooter would be present when a camping couple just happens to film a Bigfoot? What was Fred Bradshaw’s connection to Owen and Lori Pate? And why has the couple never acknowledged Bradshaw was there? Their reluctance to be interviewed or questioned on the matter speaks volumes.

In the end, the Memorial Day footage will probably always be controversial, but these latest revelations make it very questionable evidence for Sasquatch. A lot of time and money has been spent on this footage, and perhaps that is the real reason talk it might be a hoax only falls on deaf ears when it comes to its supporters.

What we see here is simply the reappearance of the ancient philosophical doctrine of idealism, this time arising from misinterpretations of certain quantum phenomena that strike many people as weird because they are not part of everyday experience.

In 1800, Thomas Young passed light through two narrow slits in an otherwise opaque screen. He observed alternating bright and dark bands of light on the surface illuminated by the light from the slits. This was interpreted as the pattern of interference between light waves emerging from each slit. Since then, science has treated light as a wave phenomenon.

In the early twentieth century, it was discovered that light also seems to be composed of localized particles called photons. In addition, objects such as electrons, which we normally think of as particles, also were seen to exhibit the interference behavior associated with waves.

Where does the mind come into all this? Well, it seems at first glance that whether an object is a wave or a particle depends on what you decide to measure. If you measure a wave property such as interference, then the object is a wave. If you decide to measure a particle property such as position, then the object is a particle.

For example, suppose in the double-slit experiment that we put a photon detector behind one slit. If the detector is on, then we know which slit the photon passed through and we get the two bright bands on the wall expected for a localized photon passing through either slit. In this case, the light is particle-like. If the detector is off, we get the interference pattern, and the light is wavelike.

Furthermore, we can set up the experiment so that the decision to measure a wave property or particle property is made after the object leaves the source. That source can be light from a galaxy thirteen billion light-years away. Some take this to mean that the mind not only can control the reality of whether an object is a particle or a wave, but it can do this over a distance equal to the size of the visible universe and thirteen billion years back in time.

At least, that’s the snake oil that Chopra and the Bleep and Secret crews are trying to sell us. In fact, it is easily shown to be bogus. We can set up a double-slit experiment in which the surface illuminated by the light from the slits contains an array of photon detectors sensitive at the one-photon level. Even with the slit detector off, we get individual, localized hits just as expected for particles. But as you accumulate data, a fascinating thing happens. The pattern of hits takes the shape of the same diffraction pattern first observed by Thomas Young in 1800!

So, the photon is not the wave; the wave is the statistical distribution of multiple photons. In quantum mechanics this wave is called the “wave function,” a mathematical tool used to compute the probability for finding a particle at a particular position.

Suppose we start out not knowing the position of a particle. Then the particle’s wave function is in some sense spread throughout the universe. It has the same magnitude at every spatial point. Then when a measurement is made, the particle’s position is found to be in some small region the size of the detector, and the wave function is therefore localized. Physicists say that the wave function has “collapsed” as the result of the measurement. Einstein called this a “spooky action at a distance,” since the collapse happens instantaneously throughout the universe. Again, it would seem that the act of conscious measurement has reached out in space at infinite speed to the farthest corner of the universe.

But there is nothing spooky about it. Suppose you are a resident of a planet in Alpha Centauri. Back on Earth, a friend enters your name in a lottery in which your chance of winning the prize of a million dollars is one in a million. If you win the lottery, your probability of winning collapses instantaneously to unity, and your wealth increases instantaneously by a million dollars. But it takes four years for the news, traveling at the speed of light, to reach you and your Centauri bank. You can’t start spending the money until that happens. That’s how it is in quantum physics. The collapse of the abstract wave function is just a mathematical artifice. Even though this happens at faster than the speed of light, any signal and other practical result will be limited by relativity and the laws of conventional physics.

In short, nothing in quantum mechanics requires that our minds be able to act across great distances and back in time to control reality as part of some cosmic consciousness. As Philip K. Dick put it, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”