Ketchum Bigfoot Dna Update

[southernyahoo]

jayjeti: Thank you very much for posting that link. It contained some info I've wanted for a while, but couldn't find, plus a bonus.

 

In the summary there is a micro photo of one of the hairs in #26 that Dr. K examined. That photo was made to show the hair's cuticle. There is a micro photo of a hair from the "other" portion shown alongside her's, but it was made specifically to show the medulla of that hair. (Of course the second photo shows the blurred edges of the cuticle, but it's not definitive.) Do you know whether or not she has a photo of the medulla of a hair from her samples that she would share?

 

Here's my reason for asking: The cuticle of the hair she examined does NOT match that of a black bear, although the medulla in the other split of #26 does in fact match that of several animals, feral and domestic, including black bear.

 

A good micro photo of the medulla of the hair she worked with would certainly show whether it came from a bear or not. The one problem with that is if the non-bear hair is black like some BF is, and very heavily pigmented, photographing the medulla might be difficult. (There is a way to get around that but it is danged tricky process.) Of course the hair in the bulk sample she had does not look black, and should yield a very good view of the medulla.

Thanks for any help that you can provide.

Regards

 

Branco, I think the micrograph photo of sample 26 in Ketchum's study of it's medulla did look consistent with black bear hair.  It shows what is called a uniserial ladder pattern which looks like lighter colored globular patches intermixed with the darker channel (hollow air space) of the medulla.  I've noted that when looking at a broken hair under the microscope and using an emulsion fluid, the hollow channel of the medulla can fill with the fluid and become translucent. So part of the difficulty of seeing through dark hairs can be that they have a wide medulla.

[chelefoot]

 

Also, reading at the link the Dr. says he's not a peer-acknowledged authority on genetics himself. 

And Ketchum is?

 

To be honest, I find it incredibly amazing that anyone can support Ketchum or believe a word she says! I followed every step of the whole fiasco and read every post of the Ketchum threads. There were others here (who are authorities on genetics) who debunked her findings - it's all there in the threads.

 

I think we should just wait to hear from Dr. Hart. And wait to hear from the labs who are supposed to be validating her findings. If I'm wrong, I'll be happy to admit it.

[jayjeti]

If we're going to personalize it, I find it amazing that some people can only see red on anything related to Dr. Ketchum; so yes, let's see the results of this other lab that is supposed to be validating her findings.

[Branco]

 

The only micro photos of the medulla of a hair referenced in the link provided by Jayjeti are those done on the portion of samples submitted to other labs by someone other than Dr. Ketchum. If I am wrong about that, please reference which one of the medulla photo's were made by Dr' K's people. 

(I'll comment on the other part of your post later.)

[southernyahoo]

 

 

The only micro photos of the medulla of a hair referenced in the link provided by Jayjeti are those done on the portion of samples submitted to other labs by someone other than Dr. Ketchum. If I am wrong about that, please reference which one of the medulla photo's were made by Dr' K's people. 

(I'll comment on the other part of your post later.)

 

 

You would need to go to this link,,,,,,,,,http://sasquatchgenomeproject.org/sasquatch_genome_project_002.htm ,,,,,,then click on the "Download DNA study here" link at the top of the page. Then scroll down to figure 5 exhibit B.  

[Bonehead74]

<p>

Branco, I can't really help you with that. Maybe you could request that at her facebook page. But as far as the hair from sample # 26 the article I linked to made this statement:

• Dr. Ketchum also removed several hairs with follicles from Sample 26 and sent it to Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences (Dallas, TX) for analysis. The hair was determined not to be human or any other known animal. The hair was consistent with the Bigfoot control sample and determined to be from a Bigfoot.

Wait... Whaaa?

Does that last statement not strike anyone else as odd? Where did this "Bigfoot control sample" come from, and why not use it to prove bigfoot's existence?

[southernyahoo]

I don't think there was a control sample. I think there was some common characteristics among the samples "according to my memory" that they identified which was accordant with the human mito results. Black bear hair is most like human hairs among the fauna in North America, so bear is most likely to get past a screening that is biased towards a morphology that is producing a human mito DNA result.

 

FWIW......My sample produced a human mito result, and I still don't think it came from an "ordinary" human.

[ShadowBorn]

Here is some info on hair DNA: http://www.hartnell.edu/sites/default/files/u276/dnadegradationinhair.pdf You can take it the way you want too

[Guest]

The radio interview on Coast to Coast which started this thread is another attempt by Melba Ketchum to validate her study through the efforts of others. Even if the purported independent study does turn out to support the existence of sasquatch, it will not validate her invalid study. Her nuclear genomes are from a black bear (Sample 26), a human (Sample 31) and a dog (Sample 140). I proved this conclusively by matching multiple databases and two additional research papers' black bear data for S26. See my blog www.bigfootclaims.blogspot.com. I am also aware of an ongoing independent study, but do not know if it is the one Melba refers to. I am in contact with one of the researchers. Like her, I cannot give out any information about it for ethical reasons and common decency. Plus, I said I wouldn't. Alas, Melba and I agree on something!! I wish these new people well, and hope they will find something worth publishing. Hopefully they have better samples than Melba did. In science you have to prove your own points before you can claim consistency with another study. Just coming to a common conclusion validates neither study. She failed to do this in so many ways. I've had near 6,000 page views on my blog and over 16,000 on my Google page, which links the same material. NOBODY has refuted my work with counter searches and species matches or proof of no match. I even explained on my blog how to do these searches. It's not rocket science, and it's free through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. I welcome all comers. Haskell Hart (not a pen name)

[JDL]

 

<p>

Branco, I can't really help you with that. Maybe you could request that at her facebook page. But as far as the hair from sample # 26 the article I linked to made this statement:

 

• Dr. Ketchum also removed several hairs with follicles from Sample 26 and sent it to Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences (Dallas, TX) for analysis. The hair was determined not to be human or any other known animal. The hair was consistent with the Bigfoot control sample and determined to be from a Bigfoot.

Wait... Whaaa?

Does that last statement not strike anyone else as odd? Where did this "Bigfoot control sample" come from, and why not use it to prove bigfoot's existence?

 

 

Or better yet, let's use it to actually control a bigfoot so we can catch one.

 

^Just kidding

[chelefoot]

The radio interview on Coast to Coast which started this thread is another attempt by Melba Ketchum to validate her study through the efforts of others. Even if the purported independent study does turn out to support the existence of sasquatch, it will not validate her invalid study. Her nuclear genomes are from a black bear (Sample 26), a human (Sample 31) and a dog (Sample 140). I proved this conclusively by matching multiple databases and two additional research papers' black bear data for S26. See my blog www.bigfootclaims.blogspot.com. I am also aware of an ongoing independent study, but do not know if it is the one Melba refers to. I am in contact with one of the researchers. Like her, I cannot give out any information about it for ethical reasons and common decency. Plus, I said I wouldn't. Alas, Melba and I agree on something!! I wish these new people well, and hope they will find something worth publishing. Hopefully they have better samples than Melba did. In science you have to prove your own points before you can claim consistency with another study. Just coming to a common conclusion validates neither study. She failed to do this in so many ways. I've had near 6,000 page views on my blog and over 16,000 on my Google page, which links the same material. NOBODY has refuted my work with counter searches and species matches or proof of no match. I even explained on my blog how to do these searches. It's not rocket science, and it's free through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. I welcome all comers. Haskell Hart (not a pen name)

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

So the independent lab is not going to validate Melba's findings at all.  Melba is just saying they will. They are not testing any of her samples.

[Guest]

This was just posted on Facebook by Dr. Haskell Hart. I've invited him to join this conversation. Hopefully, he can drop in soon.

 

See my latest blog on www.bigfootclaims.blogspot.com :

"Sunday, September 20, 2015

"The Ketchum File IV: A Reassembly of Ketchum Raw Data: Can You Turn a Bear Sow’s Ear into a Sasquatch Silk Purse?"

It's too long to repeat here, but contains news and views of the latest attempt by Melba Ketchum to revive her study by reassembling her nDNA sequences. My opinion is that it will not change my conclusions that Sample 26 is a black bear, Sample 31 is human, and Sample 140 is a dog, wolf or coyote (all genus Canis). If you hear anything official, it will come out of Washington University of St. Louis, McDonnell Genome Institute, but they wouldn't confirm (or deny) that they are involved.

 

If Dr. Hart does join the conversation he needs to be aware that sample 26 that Bart Cutino had tested, that turned up black bear, is not the same sample 26 that Dr. Ketchum tested because her sample had a completely different haplotype.  The source of sample 26 was the same person, Justin Smeja, but the sample he gave Cutino was not the same as what Dr. Ketchum tested.  There are conspiracy theories surrounding that, that Smeja was fearful of being prosecuted for murder if it turned out to be human and that he sabotaged it.

 

As far as some of the samples turning out to be known animals, Dr. Ketchum did preliminary tests on lots of samples that were matched to GenBank to see if they were known animals before preceding with more in depth testing.  According to her study, the three entire genomes that were sequenced are from an unknown hominin species.

 

For those interested here is a break down of sample 26.

 

http://bf-field-journal.blogspot.com/p/ketchum-dna-study-sample-26.html 

Jayjeti, I am well aware of your claim (also made by Scott Carpenter, who sounds a lot like you) that the haplogroup of S26 in the Ketchum paper is not the same as the one reported in the independent analysis funded by Bart Cutino. I address this issue in my blog of November 26, 2014, "Sample 26, the Smeja Kill: Independent Lab Reports (on www.bigfootclaims.blogspot.com). In my blog I compared the Ketchum paper to the Cutino report and the Tyler Huggins report. For the Important HV1 region (all that was analyzed by Huggins) the following mutations were found by these three studies:

Compared with rCRS (revised Cambridge Reference Sequence), the extra HV1 mutations are:

Huggins 16126C 16187T 16294T 16296T 16304C

Cutino 16126C 16187T 16294T 16296T 16304C

Ketchum 16126C 16187T 16294T 16296T 16304C

16313T

As you can see, they are the same except for the 16313T, WHICH IS NOT FOUND in any of the over 20,000 individual mitochondrial DNA sequences in GenBank. But ignoring this one difference, all three of these samples would be called haplogroup T2. Cutino also measured HV2 region and agreed with Ketchum except she had one extra mutation 384G, which is also extremely rare in all reported mankind. Ketchum measured the entire mtDNA genome and came up with a haplogroup for S26 of H1a, with "one novel SNP", or mutation. Actually it has 16 EXTRA MUTATIONS, so many that it fits nowhere in the human mtDNA phylotree, and so many that it fits H5e equally well (but poorly, also 16 extra mutations). See my "Paper 2" with link on the right of my blog page.

Another discrepancy between the Huggins Report and the Ketchum paper is that in the former a haplogroup is listed in a table as "A" for Smeja and S26. As is subsequently revealed, if you cared to really understand this, SCOTT, the "A" was simply a place holder indicating that the two were the same. Further in the report the actual data supported T2, as mentioned above. This too is explained in my blog.

Don't listen to Scott Carpenter, people. He doesn't understand things deeply enough, though he gives the outright appearance of a self-educated expert (he holds an associate degree in computer technology). I wrote several blogs straightening out his misinformation. As far as conspiracy theories go, they were fostered by Ketchum to attempt to defend her bad results and conclusions against legitimate criticism. Sample 26 is a black bear, as determined by Cutino, Huggins, Sykes, and me (the latter from Ketchum's own data).

I realize that there may be some material above that is confusing. I will answer questions, but PLEASE read my more complete blogs first. They should explain things better.

Haskell Hart (my real name)

[jayjeti]

I'm not Scott Carpenter Mr. Hart.  Thanks for addressing sample 26.  Do you know if sample 26 was one of those used in the three entire genomes that were sequenced?

Edited September 21, 2015 by jayjeti

[Guest]

The radio interview on Coast to Coast which started this thread is another attempt by Melba Ketchum to validate her study through the efforts of others. Even if the purported independent study does turn out to support the existence of sasquatch, it will not validate her invalid study. Her nuclear genomes are from a black bear (Sample 26), a human (Sample 31) and a dog (Sample 140). I proved this conclusively by matching multiple databases and two additional research papers' black bear data for S26. See my blog www.bigfootclaims.blogspot.com. I am also aware of an ongoing independent study, but do not know if it is the one Melba refers to. I am in contact with one of the researchers. Like her, I cannot give out any information about it for ethical reasons and common decency. Plus, I said I wouldn't. Alas, Melba and I agree on something!! I wish these new people well, and hope they will find something worth publishing. Hopefully they have better samples than Melba did. In science you have to prove your own points before you can claim consistency with another study. Just coming to a common conclusion validates neither study. She failed to do this in so many ways. I've had near 6,000 page views on my blog and over 16,000 on my Google page, which links the same material. NOBODY has refuted my work with counter searches and species matches or proof of no match. I even explained on my blog how to do these searches. It's not rocket science, and it's free through the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. I welcome all comers. Haskell Hart (not a pen name)

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

So the independent lab is not going to validate Melba's findings at all.  Melba is just saying they will. They are not testing any of her samples.

Chelefoot, Right on. A+ for paying attention! In her radio interview on Coast to Coast, Melba was asked this very question of whether the independent study is retesting her samples, and she said something like, "No, well, I don't know." I believe her here. But there is a chance that Sample 26 for example could be retested if Justin Smeja left some behind after four previous tests (by Ketchum, Cutino, Huggins, and Sykes).

I hope everybody understands that there is no verifiable connection between Smeja's sample (any of them) and what he says he shot. The sample was collected under two feet of snow five weeks after the alleged shooting. And some of you were worried about "chain of custody"? You should be. Had the sample turned out to be a hominin, but not human, none of that would really matter. But since it turned out to be from a bear, the best explanation is that it is unrelated to the shooting(assuming you believe Smeja's description of what he shot). Smeja's a bear hunter. You either have to accept the above or say he was hoaxing from the start. People who know him well don't believe the latter. I've only met him on Facebook.

Finally, Jayjeti mentioned that I'm not a peer-acknowledged authority on genetics. True, but I have received commendations for my work on this from four who are. But neither are ANY of the Ketchum coauthors geneticists, or Ketchum herself, the Aggie Vet. Her head "bioinformaticist", Fan Zhang has mechanical and aeronautical engineering degrees fro Harbin University in Manchuria. My background is on by blog page, and I believe I am overqualified to compare just four letters (A,G,T,C) in two strings, which is all that my conclusions are based on (using her own sequences). FYI, Melba calls me "just a physical chemist." (with a PhD from Harvard, she omits). She has no scientific counter arguments, so that's the beast she can come up with.

[jayjeti]

Again, I'm curious if you know if sample 26 was one of the samples used for any of the three entire genomes that Dr. Ketchum had sequenced?

Edited September 21, 2015 by jayjeti