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I agree Norse, definitely politics involved. Here in Minnesota, we have more wolves than the rest of the lower 48 states combined. The moose population has plummeted at the same time as the wolves have exploded. F&W have declared climate change as the culprit for low moose numbers. During this same time frame, 20 miles from shore out in Lake Superior on Isle Royale, they are near a record number of moose and were down to just 2 wolves. This lead the to recently, and controversely, reintroduce more wolves. Somehow Isle Royale is not affected by climate change, again only 20 miles of shore. My friends that deer hunt in northern MN see wolves all the time but it’s been slim pickings for deer hunting. Also hear rumors that the vastly under report the number of wolves so as to keep the wolf hunting season off the table.

Haven't uploaded on any post, only to my avatar. Give me a minute!

I'm not convinced it began as a hoax, so not "ill conceived". I think it started with good intentions which drifted. In the end, I'm not sure her benefactor was defrauded because I'm not sure he was unwilling. I'd have to get into things (religion) we're not supposed to talk about if I try to back that up. I'm not convinced of that. It may not prove existence but it might make a strong enough case for science to finally take a properly funded look at it with intent to find rather than intent to preserve the status quo. In any event, though, I'm interested in DNA because I'm curious about what it could tell me, not because I'm motivated to prove existence. My motivation changes the viability of DNA providing desired results. MIB

Little off topic about the DNA, but Matilda looks alot like the Bigfoot I saw through my binoculars standing up on a peak in the Sierra's on a very cold day back in 2013, very similar. Even though the Mono Lake Bigfoot isn't very clear, it also has the look of my 2013 sighting as far as the fluffy head and body. At first I thought maybe both of my sightings were of the same Bigfoot, but they aren't, totally different types of Bigfoot's. The Bigfoot I'd captured on video during the same month in 2016 about a quarter of a mile from the 2013 sighting appears to be a Neanderthal type Bigfoot and looks nothing like Matilda or the Patterson footage. Because of my sighting back in 2013, I would have to say Matilda is real. Between Matilda, Patty and the 2016 Bigfoot footage of the Neanderthal looking Bigfoot, there appears to be three different types of of Bigfoot's.

I would not say that. What I know about the samples' background is sparse / incomplete, but adequate to say with personal certainty that some of the samples were bigfoot and some were not. Ketchum reported 109 out of 109 testing positive. If so, the testing was flawed. The full data of the 3 complete nDNA sequences has never been released by Ketchum. What she released with the paper uses less than 1/10th of a percent of the storage necessary to actually save the data she claims that it is. She made some feeble excuses for that discrepancy, hedging her earlier claim with something to the effect that though incomplete, it included whatever was needed to prove her point. I do not believe she will ever release the full data set because it will clearly invalidate her claims. As a matter of record, that portion of her data which has been released was indeed examined / interpreted. Two BFF members, Haskell Hart and another guy whose screen name escapes me, examined the data and found it lacking. Certainly the subject matter experts peer reviewing the paper she submitted found it lacking. MIB

You know me and where I stand on things like that. I do not believe that happened here. Ketchum was selling snake oil and got caught. And for the record she is one of these no kill “forest shaman” types. At least for me? The hunt continues....

Except that when they mapped the genome of the Denisovan? There was no Denisovan holotype to compare to? I see no way a good lab would sequence a Bigfoot sample and say its a human. They would most likely say its a “unknown primate”, place it into the family tree in relation to other known primate species and try and name it.

Sure, but thats why science has a peer review process.....that Ketchum choose to ignore and circumvent. And instead started her own DeNovo website and then charged people to look at the “results”. And this is keeping the Matilda debacle out of the discussion, which in reality is a huge part of the fraud. Lets put it this way....if Ketchum was JUST a scientist that happened to be WRONG? Hiflier would have never heard about her or her work. Science would have cut her off at the pass when she attempted to get her results published. Melba Ketchum is not a “ignorant” scientist. She is NOT a scientist at all. She was very calculating in her unscientific approach to display her DNA results. Which gained her stardom and notoriety but destroyed her credibility. She is a showman, no different than Rick Dyer...its just a different approach. Instead of a big game hunter and tracker.....her persona was that of a lab coat scientist trying to buck academia.

Exactly. The choice of extraction/replication methodologies were too harsh and broke the DNA segments into fragments too small to normally be useful. Basically what you do with segments is look for segments that are long enough that, when laid side by side (by computer), they match with high reliability. This doesn't work with shorter segments. Ketchum reported matching strings as short as 300 base pairs, far too short for conventional methods. To get around this, Ketchum used a new / novel "next generation" sequencer which is supposed to reliably assemble the shorter fragments into a coherent whole. This seems to have failed leading to the "angel DNA" comments ... essentially something that looked like a mix of primate, common mammals, various birds, and virus segments. Ketchum claims high accuracy/repeatability but the outcome seems to belie her claims. Unfortunately, the extraction / replication processes destroy the original sample so none of the samples provided to Ketchum can be retested unless the person providing the samples held some back. This is why Ketchum's request, which Justin Smeja recorded and is, or was, available to listen to, for him to destroy the rest of his "steak" sample with bleach, etc to degrade the remaining DNA in the sample to an untestable level is particularly damning. Never mind that when retested independently it came up as black bear, exactly what should have been found at the kill site since it was a location used by hunters to gut and skin their game before returning to town. MIB

If this were the case then this is not possible. If it tests human it is human, not from some other branch. Basic science. If you aren't on board with that, you might as well be promoting alchemy and phlogiston. MIB

HiFiier, you're too good a guy / BFF poster to carry water for the questionable antics of a veterinarian of unknown sanity. I follow her on FB, she really likes her Coco Puffs. Edit for clarity: referring to Ketchum.

Gigantor-this feels like the right time to relate the following, even tho, as a new member I may not have much cred yet. First, I am a native calif guy born in southern cal beach area. Heres my anecdotal story. In 62-65 I was in the US army, half of which was spent at ft bragg, nc. I met a fellow trooper named William Bailey & we became friends. He was from No. cal. & told me that he worked at logging mills/camps during the summers of high school. He was about my age, ie 19-21 at this time in the army. He told me how the local indians at the mill told him how the sasquatches came into the camps at night and destroyed equipment & threw 55 gallon drums of oil around. He told me he wrote a story about these 'antics' & titled it BIGFOOT & had it published in one of the mens magazines of the time.(Argosy or True come to mind). I know what your thinking--too similar to the Jerry Crew story! Before this, I had never heard of bigfoot. I was more interested in the field of the paranormal & reading about the Duke University investigations etc. This was a long time ago so I don't remember a lot of details; but it began my interest in bigfoot, obviously, to this day.

^^^ Agreed Norse. There are more things that point to non-human than human in my opinion. Going the route of human based on hand/thumb or foot adaption is jumping to conclusions. Means of adapting limbs has more to do with environment and effectiveness than it does geneology.

^^^^ Have to agree with that "rant." What we're expected to believe defies logic, defies statistics, defies Occam's Razor ... and I'm not buying it, either. Either BF is barely distinguishable from human and only then with great effort or there's an active conspiracy to suppress the actual test results. MIB