Being a Cryptozoologist
Posted by: Nick Redfern on August 22nd, 2013
Over at Mysterious Universe, Lee Arnold has a 2-part article that is titled “What Qualifications are Required to be a Cryptozoologist?”
Part 1 can be found here, and starts like this:
“Going into my conversation with Cryptozoologist Scott Marlowe, I expected him to spend half of the call defending the reliability of eye-witness accounts, and claiming the volume of cryptid sightings is evidence enough that something undiscovered is out there. That wasn’t the case at all. Marlowe is a staunch advocate of real science being used to answer the questions posed in cryptozoology. So when I asked him to help me understand what a cryptozoologist does, what the requirements for becoming a cryptozoologist include, and what impact television cryptozoology has on the crypto community, he was more than happy to oblige.”
And here’s part 2, which begins as follows:
“The image of cryptozoologists we’re fed by television is colored with successful hunts for clues, mysteries at every turn, and multiple sightings over short periods of time. The claims made by some of these TV-created experts are so outrageous the average high school biology class could flex enough scientific knowledge to discredit them. The problem for cryptozoologists is it only takes one of these unqualified TV-cryptos to use his pearlescent smile and snarky, ‘Kiss Me, I’m a Cryptozoologist,’ name tag, to attract a swarm of media for a very public display of very bad information, thus giving everyone in the cryptozoology community a black eye.”
About Nick Redfern
Punk music fan, Tennents Super and Carlsberg Special Brew beer fan, horror film fan, chocolate fan, like to wear black clothes, like to stay up late. Work as a writer.
A cryptozoologist is a zoologist with her eyes open.
(Karl Shuker. Great example. Sanderson and Heuvelmans, two more. Meldrum and Bindernagel, not the precise discipline but their breadth and depth of scientific training; its direct applicability to the question; plus their curiosity about using it more than qualify.)
You grandfather in folks. The likes of Loren Coleman and the folks at NAWAC and John Kirk and his buddies right here on Cryptomundo more than grandfather in; their curiosity is keeping the field alive.
No one has come up with a better way than the scientific method to address the questions of cryptozoology. My hunch is that no one will anytime soon.
A cryptozoologist? HAHAHA. What’s THAT?