You know how science is basically a conspiracy to keep the public from finding out unsettling truths, including those proving the existence of cryptozoological curiosities like the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot? Neither do scientists; most would like nothing better than to be the one who discovered such a thing.

But the entire field of "creature sightings" has become such a swamp of poor practices, nutball theories, and outright frauds that most scientists retreated from it long ago. With "anomalous primates" in particular, the evidence is weak; no bodies have ever been found, and scientists have largely judged the question of their existence provisionally closed. This has led those who believe that massive and mysterious creatures are hiding in the world's woods, mountains, and lakes to claim that they have been "rejected by science."

To dispel this belief—and to scrutinize old evidence with the most modern techniques—five scientists from Europe and the US joined forces back in 2012. Their focus was on the creature known variously as a yeti, sasquatch, or bigfoot. In a May 14, 2012 press release, they asked for hair samples of said creatures from anywhere in the world—and received 57 from museums and private collectors.

The variety was incredible. Hair sample 25025 "came from an animal shot by an experienced hunter in Ladakh, India [circa] 40 years ago who reported that its behaviour was very different from a brown bear Ursus arctos with which he was very familiar." Sample 25191 came from a "high altitude bamboo forest in Bhutan and was identified as a nest of a migyhur, the Bhutanese equivalent of the yeti."

The 57 samples were subjected to "macroscopic, microscopic, and infrared fluorescence examination to eliminate obvious non-hairs." In the end, the 30 most promising samples were chosen for genetic analysis. Since samples, especially older ones, are often contaminated with human DNA (among other things), they were carefully cleaned before having their DNA sequences read.

(If you care about the details, the samples "were thoroughly cleaned to remove surface contamination, ground into a buffer solution in a glass homogenizer then incubated for 2 h at 56ºC in a solution containing proteinase K before extraction with phenol/chloroform/isoamyl alcohol. PCR amplification of the ribosomal mitochondrial DNA 12S fragment corresponding to bps 1093–1196 of the human mitochondrial genome was carried out.")

The resulting sequences were then fed into the massive GenBank database of previously characterized sequences. Two of the samples—those from India and Bhutan—had sequences matching those of fossilized polar bears. Every other sequence matched extant animals including racoons, sheep, black bears, cows, and even a porcupine.

In other words, no yeti.

This week, the scientists published their results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. "While it is important to bear in mind that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and this survey cannot refute the existence of anomalous primates, neither has it found any evidence in support," they conclude.

"Rather than persisting in the view that they have been 'rejected by science,' advocates in the cryptozoology community have more work to do in order to produce convincing evidence for anomalous primates and now have the means to do so. The techniques described here put an end to decades of ambiguity about species identification of anomalous primate samples and set a rigorous standard against which to judge any future claims."

Proceedings of the Royal Society, 2014. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.0161 (About DOIs).