SUNY Cortland Teaches a Course About Bigfoot and Other Pseudoscience Claims
A Southern Tier college has gained some attention after offering a course on the psychology of pseudoscience, exploring things like why people think Bigfoot exists.
According to an article by Craig Foster for the Associated Press, he'll be teaching a course at SUNY Cortland titled "Psychology of Pseudoscience." The course will feature research into things like why people believe Bigfoot exist, the flat-Earth conspiracy theories, creationism, anti-vaccination, ghosts, and a variety of other things.
Foster will teach the course at SUNY Cortland, and hopes to teach students how people are sucked into conspiracy theories, especially with the dawn of social media giving conspiracy theorists an outlet to express their thoughts in a closed environment with like-minded individuals.
As for assignments, students will start the course by writing a paper developing their own bogus scientific claims, and then write another paper trying to convince people that their claims are legitimate.
Sign me up for this class right now. I know that Bigfoot doesn't really exist, but if you were looking for a way to make me actually engage in school, you can't do any better than forcing me to write a paper on Bigfoot existing. And of course along the way I'd learn about how people are drawn into conspiracy theories because they don't properly vet the sources of their supposedly trustworthy information and exist in a social media echo chamber that doesn't allow alternative opinions.
But the real treat of the class would be writing a thesis on Bigfoot that would force the United States Government to start combing through the woods for any sign that I was right and sasquatches might be real. And don't tell me "we would have found him by now." Sasquatches are notoriously good at hide and seek.