The Sykes / Sartori Report - Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project

[Guest]

Can someone refresh my memory on Sykes? Is he the guy with the DNA test from years ago on the Yeti hair that came back as unknown, or goat or something?

Every time I read the name, I can only think of the one armed man from The Fugitive.

Yep, that´s him!

He´s also the one that extracted the first ancient DNA 1989 (from memory)....and not the one armed man from "The Fugitive"

^So was I...hair is NOT the optimal source of DNA. In fact it's a pretty poor source much of the time. Blood, skin, etc are far better DNA sources than hair is.

Yeah, but you are not addressing the contamination issue, which is specially important, if we are looking into something potentially close to Hss, relatively speaking.

And looking at Dr. Sykes CV I´m confident, that he has chosen in his view the best method for the task.

Like I said above, I was only correcting a factual mistake in my original post. I know you like to derail any comments from anyone you think is a non-believer (yes I´m guilty), and you´re welcome! After all it´s mostly semantics as long as we don´t have any scientific results yet. Although we already know more about the Sykes/Satori study, than we know about the Ketchum study - and it´s public http://www.wolfson.o...ic/GBFs-v/OLCHP

Sorry the software keeps mergeing the posts, if I write more than one

Darwinist

Edited May 24, 2012 by darwinist

[Guest craichead]

Just something I wanted to add to the thread. Forgive me if it's already been mentioned, but I didn't have a chance to read through the whole thing.

Anyway, I was thinking about the Meldrum/Sykes timeline as compared to Dr Ketchum's and there's something very interesting here I think.

Likely one of the reasons that Ketchum's study has taken so long has been the necessity of developing PCR primers to use in the sequencing and analysis of her DNA samples. Since Meldrum and Sykes are going so quickly, this leads me to believe that the two of them have been in fairly close contact with Ketchum, have seen at least preliminary results and are likely using her primers to analyze their samples.

If that is in fact the case, that means Sykes the DNA expert has reviewed her data and that it's compelling enough for him to go ahead with his own study.

Again, this is all speculation, but otherwise I'm not really sure how they could go so quickly with what they're planning to do.

[Guest Particle Noun]

I don't think so. Seeing correspondance from Sally Ramey, it seemed like she didn't have any more info on the Sykes study than the rest of us, and she is close to the vest for the Ketchum study. I don't think, at least at a top level, there is any communication between the two.

[Guest]

^The NDAs would make sure of that.

[southernyahoo]

Are you channeling the capture action plan with the spring loaded container door?

Could be.

I think Sykes might need some help from Ketchum though, so hopefully if her paper publishes before he takes off in this project, he will know exactly where to look for the gold. It would be a shame if samples got waisted because Sykes had to work through the same technical hurdles to get there.

[Guest spurfoot]

Technology continually advances. It is possible that Sykes has developed better means of DNA extraction from hair. That is speculative.

What is not speculative is that new commercial machines for doing fast genome sequencing are recently available. If he chooses to go that route, it is now less expensive.

In any case, if there is enough material, he will probably use the Ketchum probes to pre-qualify specimens for further whole genome sequencing.

[Guest Shaun]

It'd be very odd for two similar studies to take place and for neither party to contact the other, wouldn't it?

[bipedalist]

Actually, it would not surprise me to see "zero" sharing. Knowing how competitive "science" is and knowing how the "first" in this field is going to be historical and revolutionary, it would not surprise me if people held their cards close to the vest, if for no other reason than to give the air of independent investigation. It's all speculation at this point, and it would be nice to have considerable cooperation. Dr. Meldrum with his visit to Sierra Kills site and membership with the Olympic Project would certainly be privy to whether results were positive, negative or ambiguous/inconclusive. Perhaps that was the impetus for contacting Sykes (or Sykes contacting him, however it came down) perhaps they wanted to clean out the desk and get some samples screened and sampled for posterities sake. It's all speculative at this sample collection phase.

Edited May 25, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest slimwitless]

Dr. Meldrum with his visit to Sierra Kills site and membership with the Olympic Project would certainly be privy to whether results were positive, negative or ambiguous/inconclusive.

Bingo (speculatively speaking).

[BobbyO]

It'd be very odd for two similar studies to take place and for neither party to contact the other, wouldn't it?

I think as Mulder pointed out, the Ketchum NDA's would need to be taken into consideration on a lot of that i'd guess.

[Guest]

_{Meanwhile the beat goes on -}

http://news.yahoo.com/bigfoot-yeti-dna-study-gets-serious-160603973.html

[Guest BFSleuth]

_{Meanwhile the beat goes on -}

http://news.yahoo.co...-160603973.html

Great quote from Sykes:

"As an academic I have certain reservations about entering this field, but I think using genetic analysis is entirely objective; it can't be falsified," Sykes said. "So I don't have to put myself into the position of either believing or disbelieving these creatures."

I'd give that a +1 if he posted that on this forum.

[Guest]

To the mods:

Could we please get this right?

The official name of this project is: Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project and the two lead authors are Sykes and Sartori, which could be used for an abreviated name of the project. There is no mentioning of Meldrum in the official anouncement of the project and neither in Meldrums Journal, which also carry the anouncement. This is not a Meldrum project!

Do I think Meldrum will participate? Sure! Meldrum and Sykes had a meeting in late April - and i don´t think they were discussing the weather! I`m quite certain Meldrum will turn up as a co-author along with a string of other scientists, but he hasn´t been mentioned yet.

[BobbyO]

Great quote from Sykes:

"As an academic I have certain reservations about entering this field, but I think using genetic analysis is entirely objective; it can't be falsified," Sykes said. "So I don't have to put myself into the position of either believing or disbelieving these creatures."

I'd give that a +1 if he posted that on this forum.

Yeah i very much agree..

[southernyahoo]

To the mods:

Could we please get this right?

The official name of this project is: Oxford-Lausanne Collateral Hominid Project and the two lead authors are Sykes and Sartori, which could be used for an abreviated name of the project. There is no mentioning of Meldrum in the official anouncement of the project and neither in Meldrums Journal, which also carry the anouncement. This is not a Meldrum project!

Do I think Meldrum will participate? Sure! Meldrum and Sykes had a meeting in late April - and i don´t think they were discussing the weather! I`m quite certain Meldrum will turn up as a co-author along with a string of other scientists, but he hasn´t been mentioned yet.

Meldrum would likely be able to channel some samples to Sykes, not all of them his, but some given to him in the past and expecting him to test them "eventually".