View from the North 40: The science of killing myths

The believers, conspiracy theorists, wanna-bes and want-it-to-be’ers are waiting, as the saying goes, on tenterhooks as a researcher pits modern genome science against the myth of the Loch Ness monster.

New Zealand’s University of Otago professor Neil Gemmell told The Associated Press that in June he and a team of researchers will be traveling to Scotland to collect hundreds of water samples from the famed Loch Ness. These samples will come from multiple sites and depths to get a fair array of samples for testing.

Once the samples are collected, debris will be filtered out and DNA extracted from the water. Gemmell said the DNA comes from the skin flakes, feathers, scales and urine left behind by any creatures that have been using the water.

Side note: Yes, you read that right. The filtered water still contains skin, feather, scale and urine particles. The article doesn’t say, and I haven’t asked any science-y people, but I think it’s fair to assume that this is true of any water.

Just makes a person ache to go swimming this summer, eh?

Moving on. The whole process is basically the same one by which researchers in Montana are testing for aquatic invasive species. Identifying invasive species in Loch Ness is his primary goal for this project. The results will be compared to a database of known species. The Loch Ness monster, aka Nessie, is not one of these known species – and this is not a side bar.

In fact, Gemmell said in the article that he is intrigued by the romance of the Loch Ness monster, but he does not expect to find traces of any DNA that can be linked to the mythical creature, even blurry specks of DNA.

Realistically, it is quite possible Gimmell is doing this project only to pay for a summer vacation on a beautiful lake in Scotland while New Zealand is experiencing winter. Which is a pretty clever plan. But Gemmell did say that he’s also hoping the project will give him some street cred with his pre-teen sons. This, however, could come back to haunt him.

I can easily envision scenarios in which this project may come back to bite him in the backside.

Let’s just say that he and his team account for every shred of DNA evidence and logically conclude that Nessie is a fallacy. This is the age of instant messaging, trolling and various rabid, illogical online and social media behavior.

I think experience tells us that people who choose to believe in a thing beyond all reason and evidence do not take lightly any attempts to discount those beliefs. He will get hated on, then he’ll have to explain to his children that he has, in fact, “earned” the hate mail because his lakeside summer’s work has killed the dream of one of the most fantastical beasts.

Ironically, he should have the results of this Loch Ness DNA study by the end of the year, just in time to kill Christmas by bending the full weight of his science to start proving that Santa doesn’t exist, so he can make all the other children cry, as well.

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Watch out Sasquatch, he’s coming for you at [email protected].