Heroes Sunday - Rob Mariano

NBC will be showing all three Heroes episodes back-to-back this Sunday. So all you Johnny-Come-Latelies have a chance to get caught-up on the series up to now. And it's getting good. Next week's episode is going to start bringing the characters together, and give "the one clue" on which the entire story hinges.

I may have been a little hard on Rob Mariano last week, saying the only reason he was on Sci-Fi Investigates is to boost ratings. He really put his all into the Bigfoot search and attempts to hoax. But I don't see how he and Debbie could say they successfully hoaxed anything. There's no way anyone would believe the "evidence" they manufactured -- not for a moment.

It was a good attempt, and I guess they proved it could be done, but I don't think anyone ever doubted that. The question was whether or not they could pull it off in the time allotted with the materials they had -- and they had access to some pretty impressive stuff. I mean that Bigfoot face mold and all that was a professional job and Mariano is obviously in good physical shape, so that right there ought to have told them that it would take some really dedicated hoaxers with access to some pretty sophisticated materials to pull off something like that. And most hoaxers do not have access to the materials with the level of sophistication they did, though they have more time to prepare.

Still, the fact that evidence can be hoaxed does not disprove the evidence that has been collected. After all, counterfeit money doesn't prove that real money is worthless. Of course, it does make real money less valuable if enough of it is made, and it definitely makes you more wary of the money you receive. But these are positive things in such cases as Bigfoot, because once researchers become experienced at detecting the frauds, it makes the real evidence that much easier to spot and that much more exciting to find.