Why my brain amuses me

I don't know what this means, but I know it contains a typo:

"pour croire à Lamarck, me disait-on aux Etats-Unis, if faut vraiment être Français."

I'm pretty sure that should be il faut. Why? I don't really know...

And now back to being a volunteer research assistant. 17 citations explored, 34 yet to explore. Thank heavens I'm only doing a first-order retrieval and not recursing down into this stuff...