Erickson Project

[Guest billgreen2010]

wow the updates are getting greater here to be continued but im realy looking forward to seeing these sasquatch filmfootages

[Guest]

I considered going back among the 40 pages of this thread looking for an answer, but figured it would be easier just to ask.....

Does anyone know what the ETA is on this project? During the Winter, I heard/read that it would be Springtime.... Then i heard/read "end of May".... and ummmm ???

So what's the hold up ? Is it the DNA stuff still ? or????

I want to SEE SOMETHING !!!

(hoping to not be totally disapointed this time either!)

ART

[Guest gershake]

It's recently gone out for peer review; Ketchum expects it published somewhere by November (although Saskeptic makes the point that she can't possibly know that).

[Guest billgreen2010]

hey art all got say about this ongoing situation to be continued....indeed

[Guest billgreen2010]

http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2011/08/erickson-project-more-leaks-about.html new updates about the erikson sasquatch project to be continued

[Guest]

Thanks Mr. Stubstad for your comments. Very, very interesting. I appreciate your understanding of others in trying circumstances, something not always seen in this field.

On your website you imply on the side, while defending the time it takes to get published, that the Ketchum paper is under review by the journal Nature, ". . . TO LEND SUFFICIENT CREDIBILITY TO A DNA STUDY IN ORDER TO PASS PEER REVIEW, PARTICULARLY IN THE PREMIER JOURNAL “NATUREâ€."

Is that the journal that the paper is being reviewed for? (apologies if this has been covered) Henry Gee, Nature's Senior Editor for Biological Sciences and a zoologist has been interested in cryptic hominids for a while now, and I'm fairly sure this would fall in his bailiwick. If this all pans out, it would be fitting in several ways for this to be published in the, arguably, world's most respected scientific journal.

Gershake: "It's recently gone out for peer review; Ketchum expects it published somewhere by November (although Saskeptic makes the point that she can't possibly know that)."

If Ketchum has said it will be published in November, the paper may already have been accepted after review and adjustments, thus her knowing the time. The que for publishing for a lot obscurer journals than Nature can be months after acceptance. Just a guess for what it's worth.

[Guest Stubstad]

Thanks Mr. Stubstad for your comments. Very, very interesting. I appreciate your understanding of others in trying circumstances, something not always seen in this field.

On your website you imply on the side, while defending the time it takes to get published, that the Ketchum paper is under review by the journal Nature, ". . . TO LEND SUFFICIENT CREDIBILITY TO A DNA STUDY IN ORDER TO PASS PEER REVIEW, PARTICULARLY IN THE PREMIER JOURNAL “NATUREâ€."

Is that the journal that the paper is being reviewed for? (apologies if this has been covered) Henry Gee, Nature's Senior Editor for Biological Sciences and a zoologist has been interested in cryptic hominids for a while now, and I'm fairly sure this would fall in his bailiwick. If this all pans out, it would be fitting in several ways for this to be published in the, arguably, world's most respected scientific journal.

Gershake: "It's recently gone out for peer review; Ketchum expects it published somewhere by November (although Saskeptic makes the point that she can't possibly know that)."

If Ketchum has said it will be published in November, the paper may already have been accepted after review and adjustments, thus her knowing the time. The que for publishing for a lot obscurer journals than Nature can be months after acceptance. Just a guess for what it's worth.

I lost my post, now for a THRID time, so here goes again:

I honestly don’t have a clue about the when’s or if’s of the publication of the Ketchum (et.al.?) peer-reviewed SCIENCE Journal (or other) submittal.

It was my understanding, however, to “make the grade†requires not only a well substantiated and properly referenced submittal, but also one that shows widespread collaboration between several or many highly respected coauthors – sometimes even from more than one country. This is especially true for discoveries made primarily on the basis of DNA, and also especially for primates—let alone extant hominids. While such collaboration may well be in-place with Dr. Ketchum’s current “teamâ€, that was certainly not the case when I was one of the six planned coauthors for the paper.

In fact, it was my observation at the time that there was but a single highly qualified geneticist—coauthor No. 2 at the time. This coauthor was so good in fact that I once suggested to Dr. K that he or she should be the primary author—simply to give us a better chance of passing peer review, regardless of who was doing the most work. Well, that particular suggestion went over like a lead balloon; in fact, it wasn’t long thereafter that both the geneticists and I were summarily “dismissed†from the project.

Since I was author No. 6 (out of six), I didn’t matter much—except for the fact that Dr. K and I were far and away doing the most work on the data analysis and truly collaborating on the experimental design of the project and the ongoing and incoming data and analysis results. There is no doubt that Dr. K was doing the most work of all of us, but in fact she was getting paid for what she was doing. I also paid for some of the sequencing costs, and some of these I paid for I never received the data from. I was working for free, as was the highly qualified geneticist I mentioned.

So I could be wrong—and indeed I hope I am wrong – but I think this peer-review process is more difficult than anyone on this (or other) bigfoot forum could possibly imagine. Even the recent Denisova Cave discovery was highly suspect, scientifically, which resulted in a year-long study by no less than 28 coauthors across a half-dozen countries before NATURE accepted their paper in that Journal—thus establishing the undeniable fact that the Denisovans actually existed up to around 40,000 years ago, and that they were very significantly different from other hominids at the time—at a minimum Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis.

Meanwhile, the Denisovans are arguably extinct now, whereas the sasquai (Homo sapiens sesqueqiensis) are not—a huge and VERY controversial difference between the two.

Perhaps Mr. Gee can override all of the above—we can only hope. Good luck with that indeed!

Richard Stubstad

PS: I heard from Dr. K about a year ago—when I was still involved—that we would achieve peer review by the end of the year—2010 that is. I thought that was more than a bit optimistic, and maybe Dr. K thought so too. I guess I’ll never know.

[gigantor]

I believe, but of course do not know since I've never met Biscardi in person, that he was hoaxed by the Georgia cops involved, and wasn't personally in on the hoaxing. ...

Richard Stubstad

You are gullible RS, very gullible. Makes me question your judgement...

Edited August 5, 2011 by gigantor

[Guest]

Richard- Why don't you ask for an account statement of any money you have invested? Maybe the one you are blaming isn't really the one at fault. I may be really off here, but you come across as someone who isn't specifically motivated by money, might have a limited amount of time left because of health issues, and you seem to want to leave something behind. You come across as a prime target for a con artist.

I know that many have questioned how Dr.Ketchum could author a paper of this magnitude and depth but as another poster on here pointed out, one does not need a special degree to do research. However, one does have to have a degree in the specialty to even be taken seriously, and you do not have that. Statistical analysis of a genome, when you aren't using a standard program, can not be accomplished accurately with an excel spread sheet, I'm sorry. You even admitted that you weren't very computer savvy when you first started posting here. This is not a criticism in anyway but don't you think you might have over estimated what your actual intellectual contribution was to the project?

As interesting as I found your initial impressions of the DNA to be, the way they were derived were questionable at best in my opinion. I'm not sure how much more you would have been able to contribute to Dr. Ketchum's research. You have said repeatedly that you think Dr. Ketchum is in over her head and that this kind of research can only be done at certain labs. How could you have continued to contribute in all of this if you are even less qualified? I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Gigantor, maybe you are a victim, but maybe you need to start questioning who it is that is victimizing you. You seem to be wasting a lot of time grieving over an opportunity lost that might never have come to fruition or ever really existed.........

[Guest Stubstad]

This DNA project should be carried out by a more credible group of folks, other than either Dr. K or me. However, our work has been and still is a good start, but it isn't the be-all and end-all of sasquatch DNA research.

The only advantage I have over Dr. K is that I have done A LOT of research before; it just wasn't in the field of DNA. I know the scientific method quite well, and I have applied it in this case to a "T"--as far as I can go. Still, I need more data to be conclusive about my own data analysis, which isn't flawed as you think it is. I know how to use the "standard" GenBank program called BLAST, but this program isn't designed to do the job at-hand: Identify a new hominid; possibly even a hybrid. If one BLASTS any of the first three mtDNA genome sequences, one gets some relatively poor matches that are, at best, misleading because BLAST assumes you are looking for a haplogroup belonging to a modern human, not a "feral human" or a hybrid subspecies. Of course, EXCEL didn't have to be my program of choice, but it was and it works just fine, having "only" 16,569 pairs to match up (or not). It is easier to identify polymorphisms in this manner, some of which may or may not be shared by other modern humans on the planet.

I have a document submitted to both Dr. K and her previous co-author, a geneticists with VERY GOOD credentials, which outlines all of the above; however I don't think it would do any good to post it, because practically no one on this blog would understand it, plus I would have to hide the actual polymorphic pairs to be fair to Dr. K.

I won't go more into the problems with BLAST, but it was my clear sense that Dr. K did NOT understand the underlying problem of BLAST--that it was designed to search out relatives of modern humans, not new or ancient hominids. The Max Planck institute folks, for example, would NEVER have missed this one, because they do this kind of thing for a living, and they are FAR better known to do so, and them and their world-wide associates have FAR more credibility than either Dr. K or me, to be sure.

In actual fact, I could have contributed a whole lot more to the "Ketchum" project, but no where near as much as the geneticists that was involved (and also subsequently "released") or a couple dozen other world-wide TRUE experts on new hominids and even more sophisticated statistical analyses than I carried out on behalf of the "team". Probably, something like SAS would be more appropriate, but I'm not very well versed in that program, nor do I (or the company I work for) own it. So I had to use a program that was readily available and legal to use (in this case, EXCEL). BLAST was useful but not as a stand-alone tool to complete a proper analysis.

Still, I wish her the best of luck on finishing the project successfully. And no, you are right, I don't want my money back, although I would appreciate the rest of the sequencing I paid for (for example for the sample supposedly submitted by Mr. Johnson from the four corners area).

I'm sure, too, that Adrian Erickson would appreciate his DATA back that he paid for--to the tune of some $70,000 by the way.

In any event, a follow-up or parallel study will be needed.

Richard Stubstad

[Guest]

Hi all. Interesting read! I'm not sure if I'm alone on this, but I have spent most of the evening reading about the whole matter on various sites and am more confused now, than when I started lol. If possible could I ask Richard. In laymans terms, am I correct in saying that the 2 samples have come back as 100% human on the female line?

If so, have we got any information on the male line from the samples? And if not, could this not very likely just be 100% human DNA? In short do we have any info on the male line, or an ETA on this?

Apologies if I have missed something. I really hope something comes from this

Edited August 7, 2011 by Zen

[Guest Stubstad]

Hi all. Interesting read! I'm not sure if I'm alone on this, but I have spent most of the evening reading about the whole matter on various sites and am more confused now, than when I started lol. If possible could I ask Richard. In laymans terms, am I correct in saying that the 2 samples have come back as 100% human on the female line?

If so, have we got any information on the male line from the samples? And if not, could this not very likely just be 100% human DNA? In short do we have any info on the male line, or an ETA on this?

Apologies if I have missed something. I really hope something comes from this

Zen:

I LOVE your screen name!

Actually, I have three complete mito sequences, not just the two I reported on, and all three were 100% homo sapiens sapiens, most likely at least 15,000 years old that have been passed down, daughter to daughter, maybe through 600 generations or more.

All this proves is that there were two (not three) female "humans" or stone-age humans involved on the female side way back when.

The entire answer, then, will lie in the nuclear DNA, both on the male and female side from the direct PARENTS (and Grandparents) of a particular sample, whether 100% human or otherwise.

Dr. Ketchum never shared much nuDNA information with me (although I did see data from a single gene), but I do know her well enough that she wouldn't be messing around with the nuclear testing for the last eight months or so if it actually came out 100% modern human on BOTH the mitochondrial and nuclear sides of the DNA. Ergo, the key to this will be mainly on the male lineage, which I'm pretty sure is either ancient human (meaning probably well over 15,000 years ago) or another hominid.

For various reasons, I'm pretty sure that ancient hominid male, or males, were not Neanderthal. Still, they may have been; I just don't think so.

I'm not as sure about Densiovan; that's more likely, but really I just don't know because I have very little data.

The timeline? Last time I talked to Melba, it was "by the end of 2010". Go figure.

Really, I don't have a clue. She may or may not have problems due to the mixture of science, fame and fortune -- mixtures not generally looked upon very favorably by peer-reviewed Science journals.

But who knows?

Richard Stubstad

[Guest]

Richard, I think you are greatly overestimating the impact of bigfoot world. I wouldn't exactly define being well known in this community as being famous.

[Guest vilnoori]

I suspect that the really interesting genetic work will happen AFTER the paper comes out, once other people who have more expertise get their hands on it. I just hope there is enough sample left to go around quite a few more scientists.

I hope it does go to NATURE. I love that paper.

My guess is that since the mito DNA came back human Dr. Ketchum concentrated on Y-chromosome testing and came up with something interesting. That would definitely be within her level of expertise and doable. But lets hope that a team gets on with the nucDNA unravelling because that is where the really interesting conclusions will lay concerning exactly where on the family tree BF's originate. And as for proof, I suppose Y-chomosome DNA results would be sufficient. It could tell us that they are real, but might not tell us exactly what they are. I think probably nuDNA would be required for that, IMHO.

Part of the problem is that most of the extinct lineages on the Homo tree are not known via DNA but rather by bones, only Denisovans, modern humans and Neandertals have been sequenced in DNA studies along with the non-human primates, to compare to. That leaves out a great many other recognized extinct species. To really try to fit BF into that family we would like to have bones and especially teeth so that we could compare morphology with what is known. Even Denisovans could be (probably are) one of the already known Homo species, but we don't have a skull, only a finger bone and a single tooth which doesn't give us enough.

Certainly the next important step would be trying to find remains. At least it would become a top scientific priority once there was DNA verification of the species. I just hope people don't fix on a kill as a quick solution but are willing to search for remains, which must be out there, probably deposited over thousands, maybe 100's of thousands of years.

Best of luck with your health Richard and I do hope you are recognized for the work you have done. I certainly appreciate you coming on here and giving us a glimpse of what we have to look forward to. I can hardly dare to hope, never mind wait until November. Sigh.

Edited August 8, 2011 by vilnoori

[Guest]

Zen:

I LOVE your screen name!

Actually, I have three complete mito sequences, not just the two I reported on, and all three were 100% homo sapiens sapiens, most likely at least 15,000 years old that have been passed down, daughter to daughter, maybe through 600 generations or more.

All this proves is that there were two (not three) female "humans" or stone-age humans involved on the female side way back when.

The entire answer, then, will lie in the nuclear DNA, both on the male and female side from the direct PARENTS (and Grandparents) of a particular sample, whether 100% human or otherwise.

Dr. Ketchum never shared much nuDNA information with me (although I did see data from a single gene), but I do know her well enough that she wouldn't be messing around with the nuclear testing for the last eight months or so if it actually came out 100% modern human on BOTH the mitochondrial and nuclear sides of the DNA. Ergo, the key to this will be mainly on the male lineage, which I'm pretty sure is either ancient human (meaning probably well over 15,000 years ago) or another hominid.

For various reasons, I'm pretty sure that ancient hominid male, or males, were not Neanderthal. Still, they may have been; I just don't think so.

I'm not as sure about Densiovan; that's more likely, but really I just don't know because I have very little data.

The timeline? Last time I talked to Melba, it was "by the end of 2010". Go figure.

Really, I don't have a clue. She may or may not have problems due to the mixture of science, fame and fortune -- mixtures not generally looked upon very favorably by peer-reviewed Science journals.

But who knows?

Richard Stubstad

Thanks for the reply. Looking forward to this panning out. Best wishes with your health! PM me your email address if you would like a free relaxation MP3 emailed to you. They can help with pain control for some people and I appreciate the time you have taken here.