Extensive Loch Ness search by BBC team yields no monster - News and Comment

In July 2003, a team commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation to search Loch Ness for its fabled monster concluded that Nessie could not be found.

Though the lake has been searched repeatedly over the past seventy years, the investigation is the most thorough to date. The BBC team surveyed the waters using 600 separate sonar beams, and used a satellite navigation system to make sure that the entire lake was searched.

Ian Florence, one of the experts who participated in the investigation, was emphatic that the lake holds no monsters. "We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch." Another investigator, Hugh MacKay, told the BBC that, tar from being skeptical, the team began the search expecting to find the creature. "There was an anticipation that we would come up with a large sonar anomaly that could have been a monster, but it wasn't to be."

It is important to note that for the creature to exist, there would have to be a breeding population of the monsters--perhaps a dozen or more. Out of all those giants supposedly swimming in the loch, not even one was found.

Having failed to find Nessie, the BBC team explained why people continue to see monsters where there apparently aren't any: witnesses see what they want to see. As an experiment, the researchers hid a fence post beneath the waterline and raised it in front of a party of tourists to see how they would interpret what they saw. When asked to describe what they had seen, several drew monster-shaped heads instead of the actual square post. Expectation influences observation, and clearly the suggestion that lake creatures might be lurking in the deep waters can transform mundane objects into monsters.

Interest in the Loch Ness monster was fueled earlier in July 2003 when a fossil vertebrae said to be of a plesiosaur (an extinct animal thought to be a possible candidate for Nessie)was found along the shores of the loch. In late July National Geographic News reported that scientists had concluded that the fossil find was a hoax. It was a legitimate fossil, all right--but not from Loch Ness. The fossil was embedded in limestone, which is not found in the area. Most likely, says National Museum of Scotland paleontologist Lyall Anderson, the fossil was planted there to be later discovered and touted as part of a Nessie skeleton. (One of the arguments against the existence of lake monsters is the total absence of bones or skeletons.) Even the president of the local Nessie fan dub admitted it was almost certainly a hoax.

The BBC report has angered many around Loch Ness, which is economically dependent on tourism. Some residents are afraid that fewer visitors will come to the lake if the monster is revealed not to exist. The findings will be broadcast later this year in a program titled "Searching For the Loch Ness Monster." Despite the new findings, of course, the sightings and search will continue.

Benjamin Radford wrote on the Lake Champlain monster in the July/August 2003 issue of SKEPTICAL INQUIRER.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group