Ketchum DNA report revisited

[southernyahoo]

 

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Lesson to be learned too is never dispossess your entire sample and ever expect to see it again (at least on YOUR timeline)..  

 

You got that right BP......That doesn't just go for samples sent to Ketchum. DNA testing destroys tissue, but a sample like Justin's would provide many, many rounds of testing.

 

 

[southernyahoo]

Hiflier, I have a similar view towards the many samples tested, with no nonhuman ape DNA to mention. I don't feel they all were contaminated. Ketchum must have been convinced by the early samples in the study, to have taken the coarse it did. Her testing ( what she normally did in her lab)  was primarily limited to mtDNA and not Nuclear DNA. With Nuclear DNA samples being Hair, tissue , blood and saliva, they each would require a different set of handling and testing procedures. In other words, more chance for results to be different or wrong all together. The next generation machines that do high throughput sequencing are likely indiscriminant towards contamination. Ketchum had this whole community holding high expectations, but this was not a study that could be held in a vacuum until publication. She had to make it known so she could source the samples, The major benefactors had spent a lot of money to get some real answers on the samples, and the major journals would not have published on just hair morphology and human mtDNA as proof sasquatch existed as a definite conclusion to this mystery. So she needed deep ancestry from the X and Y chromosomes which likely was more than her team could handle without a lot more help and higher quality samples with better provenance.

 

 

[MIB]

2 hours ago, southernyahoo said:

You got that right BP......That doesn't just go for samples sent to Ketchum. DNA testing destroys tissue, but a sample like Justin's would provide many, many rounds of testing.

 

Yep, thus the need for bleach to make results that would have contradicted her claims go away.   Without Tyler and Bart to assist Justin with having his piece retested independently, we might not know what a fraud Ketchum truly was.   The ironic thing is, Justin's account of what happened, the timeline, etc. provided Ketchum with an "out", all she had to do was have the integrity to report the results back honestly as bear.  

 

MIB 

[hiflier]

On ‎9‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 8:01 PM, OntarioSquatch said:

Melba only ever provided sequences of one sample, and this one sample was heavily contaminated and degraded. It didn't contain the DNA of a novel primate like she claimed it would. She knows how to analyze DNA, therefore, it seems very unlikely that this was an honest mistake on her part.

 

'Heavily' contaminated by just who exactly? Since everyone in the chain was DNA tested it should be a fairly simple to find that out. But the fact of the matter is that because of the high venom early on that answer will not be forthcoming. I've made the point before and I'll make it again, The BF community succeeded in doing one thing- driving the answers to such questions into oblivion.

 

On ‎9‎/‎9‎/‎2017 at 9:29 PM, MIB said:

Exactly, but hiflier has chosen not to hear the truth when it is spoken, instead he is clinging to her less than honest mistake

 

Not true, I've chosen the middle ground. The questions I've been asking along with the logic of a couple of points are things that I've seen no one ask or reason out. Too busy being angry and jaded and not being thoughtful enough to keep Dr. Ketchum in the loop. Instead? The community drove her away. If the BF community as a whole could possibly at all come to their senses about this then maybe with some effort the bridges could be mended enough to get some straight answers. Doubt it would happen though, to much ego in the community to even think anyone would back off enough to make it happen. Too many years of working so hard at shoving the Sasquatch Genome Project into a mud hole. Too bad really.

 

There's an awful lot of data showing Sasquatch genomes data- http://www.sasquatchgenomeproject.org/sasquatch_genome_project_003.htm Not one (ample number?) but was it ever good enough? Nah, not for this crowd. The first scientist that called the Project bogus, or Sara from Doubtful News and everyone jumped ship. Ironically on that particular article http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/02/ketchum-bigfoot-dna-paper-released-problems-with-questionable-publication/ one commenter had this to say:

 

"David J. Kaplan, Ph.D

February 20, 2013 at 5:21 AM

While I do agree that there could be problems with the content of this publication I would like to make at least 2 points: (A) THE STATEMENT THAT NONE ARE ACADEMICS IS ENTIRELY WRONG: (1) DR. FAN ZHANG (2) DR. ANDREAS K. HOLZENBURG ARE FROM ACADEMIA, (3) AS WELL AS THOMAS M. PRYCHITKO WITH SIGNIFICANT ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE.!!!!!!!
(B) Assuming that there has been no Hocus Pocus in the Sequence paper, the fact that these researchers find that chromosome 11 is conserved definitely serves as a positive internal control to validate the integrity of their sequencing results.

David J. Kaplan, Ph.D , Detroit R & D. Inc."

 

 

So, folks? Live with it. See? I can cherry pick with the best of you. I'll make a deal, open your minds and I'll open mine  But if you choose to think Dr. Ketchum was out to scam everyone then I can't help you. She insists at every turn that she has been totally honest in the entire process, Many say she wasn't totally honest. I will say this though: She ain't no Rick Dyer. So again, live with it. I'm working on getting to the truth regardless. It would be easier if Dr. Ketchum was available but, alas, she isn't. Can't say I blame her.

Edited September 14, 2017 by hiflier

[bipedalist]

Ketchum fabricated a journal, bought it, threw up some stuff to see if it stuck and you expect us to see through the poison cloud and view the professional work leading to a bleach-scrubbed anticlimactic implosion?  

 

Puh leease!

[hiflier]

She did create the Journal but did it properly by following the guidelines outlined by C.O.P.E. which sets the standards for the many scientists who self publish. The use of the word 'fabricated' slants the discussion immeasurably.

 

From here: http://sasquatchgenomeproject.org/.

 

"It has been a long and tedious battle to prove that Sasquatch exists. We have had the proof for 8 years now, but building enough data to convince mainstream science has taken a lot of time. Trying to publish took almost two years. It seems mainstream science just can’t seem to tolerate something controversial, especially from a group of primarily forensic scientists and not “famous academians” aligned with large universities, even though most of our sequencing and analysis was performed at just such facilities.

We encountered the worst scientific bias in the peer review process in recent history. I am calling it the “Galileo Effect”. Several journals wouldn’t even read our manuscript when we sent them a pre-submission inquiry. Another one leaked our peer reviews. We were even mocked by one reviewer in his peer review. We finally found a new journal that accepted our paper and had it peer reviewed using blind peer reviews which we passed. However, we had to acquire this journal when they backed out of publishing our manuscript five minutes before it was to go live in order to keep our passing peer reviews obtained by this journal. We chose to do this rather than spend another five years just trying to find another journal to publish and hoping that decent, open minded reviewers would be chosen. We renamed the journal as per our agreement, DeNovo. The new journal is aimed at offering not only more choices and better service to scientists wanting to submit a manuscript, but also reviewers and editors that will be fair, unlike the treatment we received. Lastly, we have adhered to all of the standards set in the link below for author owned journals:

https://publicationethics.org/case/editor-author-own-journal 

Edited September 14, 2017 by hiflier

[bipedalist]

IIRC, domain registration documentation showed that the url and domain was created by a dummy factor and then the journal was putatively bought?  

 

Fabricated is what it was.  This history is so not relevant to me any longer that I am not even interested in documenting these thoughts further.   Research and the wayback machine may help you here. 

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

Analysis of the DNA sequences Melba provided

 

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If the hybrid model was correct, and these sequences were derived from another homonin, then they should look largely human. But for the first 10,000, most of them failed to match anything in the databases, even though the search's settings would allow some mismatch. Other sequences came from different locations in the human genome; another matched the giant panda genome (and presumably represents contamination by a bear). Similar things happened in the next 10,000, with a mix of human sequences, one that matched to mice and rats, and then a handful of sequences with no match to anything whatsoever. And so it went for another 24,000 bases before I gave up.

Ketchum's team had done the same and found similar results. "We had one weird sequence that we blasted in the genome BLAST, and we got closest to polar bear of all things," she told Ars. "And then we'd turn around and blast [unclear] and get 70 percent rhesus monkey with a bunch of SNPs [single base changes] out. Just weird, weird stuff."

Clearly, the DNA that was sequenced came from a mix of sources, some human, some from other animals you might find in the North American woodlands. (Recently, a researcher who was given a sample of the DNA by Ketchum announced that it was a mix of "opossum and other species," consistent with this analysis.) Clearly, there was human DNA present, but it was either degraded or present in relatively low amounts.

When asked to align this sequence to a human chromosome, the software did the best that it could by picking out the human sequences when and where they were available. When they weren't, it filled the gaps with whatever it could—sometimes human, sometimes not.

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/an-honest-attempt-to-understand-the-bigfoot-genome-and-the-woman-who-created-it/3/

 

The wide variety of different sources (e.g. rats, possums, bears, lemurs) that make up the sample serve as an indicator that this contamination was in all likelihood intentional, and was done to fool individuals that don’t know any better

[wiiawiwb]

Was the hair examined first to determine whether it matched any known animal before sending it out for DNA analysis?  If that is true, wouldn't that analysis have ruled out rats, opposums, bears, and lemurs?

 

[bipedalist]

I was an early supporter of the Sasquatch Genome Project however as several key members jumped ship one of whom was a former blogger on this forum, it became painfully obvious that things were awry.

 

One of her publicists bailed and things became painfully transparent. 

 

I also was an early commenter encouraging self-publication.   Obviously more than one--- and prob. best described as many-- things happened to turn me against the findings and the project.  

 

i did think it interesting that she had a neuropsychologist in her camp, a Dr. Sentell. 

[hiflier]

16 hours ago, wiiawiwb said:

Was the hair examined first to determine whether it matched any known animal before sending it out for DNA analysis?  If that is true, wouldn't that analysis have ruled out rats, opposums, bears, and lemurs?

 

 

The answer to your first question is yes. The answer to your second question is yes. Several hair samples were determined to be non-Human when looked at microscopically. They were outside the average 0.06 - 0.08 mm thickness of Human hair. The hair samples were reported to be even coarser than horse hair which averages about 0.19 mm in thickness.

 

I've also been trying to research from a different perspective. That being if a bear eats an opossum or a deer does the DNA of the prey eaten show up in the DNA of the bear's hair. Believe me that's a tough answer to find even when not targeting bears specifically. But this Sasquatch Genome Subject has developed all kinds of end-run avenues to pursue such as this the more I get into it. Peripheral research is sometimes necessary in order to put things like hair thickness morphology into better perspective. Plus I get to learn a lot about things I probably should know in order to be able to follow any discoveries made by the Olympic Project as they investigate any contents of their nest finds more thoroughly. 

 

So, as you can see, Sasquatch research isn't just about looking for the creature in the woods  

[Branco]

On 9/14/2017 at 11:18 PM, hiflier said:

 

The answer to your first question is yes. The answer to your second question is yes. Several hair samples were determined to be non-Human when looked at microscopically. They were outside the average 0.06 - 0.08 mm thickness of Human hair. The hair samples were reported to be even coarser than horse hair which averages about 0.19 mm in thickness.

 

If those hair samples did not look very similar to human hair when viewed under the microscope, and the hairs were "coarser than horse hair", it wasn't BF hair. It the hair was that thick and from a classified animal, the ID of the source animals should have been easily determined under the microscope.

Never could understand why Dr. S spent the time and money to do DNA analyses on hair from typical critters which could have been ID'ed under a light microscope or SEM. Even the "rare bear's" hair should have shown the animal's class.

 

So, as you can see, Sasquatch research isn't just about looking for the creature in the woods

Seems like sometimes we just need to set back, drink a cold one, take a nap and let the Boogers do the looking. They'll let us know when and if its play time. 

 

[Mendoza]

Call me biased, but I have no hesitation in saying that Ketchum had no credibility with me to begin with.  It was evident from the beginning that she was working with some of the most pathetically disreputable "habituation" hoaxers out there.  With all the garbage going in, I never had any doubt that garbage would come right back out again.

Edited September 30, 2017 by Mendoza

[hiflier]

I haven't been idle on this topic but I'm still on the road and so haven't had the time to stay with the topic as much as I would like. I did find this though and being true to my word regarding maintaining a no-bias approach thought it would be good to post. Do yourselves a favor and please take the time to read the FULL article. In doing so make sure you note ALL of the instances in which words like " might, maybe, possibly, suggests" because as good as the article seems to be a lot is circumstantial. The author went to a lot of trouble to paint the whole thing as a huge hoax. From here: https://apeimmortal.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/melba-ketchums-bigfoot-dna-study-the-questionable-ethics-of-creating-a-journal-to-bypass-peer-review/ 

 

"I suggested in my 3-4-13 update that Ketchum came to her final conclusions as far back as late 2010. I have found additional evidence to support this. First—this one is actually old news—Justin Smeja submitted the bear hide to her for analysis in late November of 2010. [31] Second, her Sasquatch Genome website was first created on February 27, 2011:

Domain ID:D161628849-LROR
Domain Name:SASQUATCHGENOMEPROJECT.ORG
Created On:27-Feb-2011 19:58:43 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Mar-2013 23:02:40 UTC

This is yet another example of Ketchum “jumping the gun” before her research had a chance to be peer-reviewed. Here is the fullest possible timeline to date:

• She appears on the TV show Destination Truth on November 4, 2009.
• She appears on the show for a second time on March 31, 2010.
• She does the first of many radio interviews promoting her study on August 28, 2010.
• She copyrights the book/documentary Sasquatch: The Tribe Revealed on September 16, 2010.
• Justin Smeja submits samples of the bear hide to her in late November of 2010.
• She creates her Sasquatch Genome website on February 27, 2011.
• She copyrights two working titles of her paper on July 19 and September 12 of 2011. [24]
• She creates a “public figure” page on Facebook on February 18, 2012.
• She registers on Zoobank on October 25, 2012.
• She registers the name of her article and the Bigfoot species name on Zoobank on November 18, 2012.
• She announces her findings to the media on November 24, 2012.
• Tyler Huggins posts material that threatens the validity of her study on December 26, 2012.
• She posts a statement about Huggins’ research a few hours later on her old personal Facebook page the same day.
• She creates an online page for the Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Exploration in Zoology on Scholastica on January 4, 2013.
• She tries to create a Wikipedia article on the journal on January 5, 2013.
• She registers the journal on Zoobank on January 9, 2013.
• She registers a webpage for her Denovo Scientific Journal on godaddy.com on February 4, 2013.
• She publishes her paper on Denovo Scientific Journal and claims she “purchased” the original journal and renamed it on February 13, 2013."

My honest opinion- and it is only an opinion- I find it difficult to think Dr. Melba Ketchum, for all that she is accused of doing, would be so devious and brilliant as to be able to actually PLAN this kind timeline. I mean I could see and understand possibly hoaxing samples but it would take a MASTER CON ARTIST to knowingly take the steps listed above- in the order that they are in. Personally I think that the timeline listed above is essentially a blueprint that NO ONE could adhere to. Read it a couple of times and I'm sure that, even if some of it is true, you may agree that it would take a veritable genius to actually plan all of this.

 

All in all it's a good article for those that HATE the Dr. Ketchum. 

[LeafTalker]

Hiflier, you rock. 

 

I so admire 1) that you're doing your own analysis, and 2) how good that analysis IS. And a third thing: that you seem to know that when there's an apparent conflict between what your research is showing you and what someone else claims are the facts, "rolling over" to that person (or persons) would be a kind of betrayal of yourself. 

 

I love it that you are not giving up your sovereignty here. You're not being mean, but you allow no one else to dictate to you what the "truth" is, no matter what tactics they use: Pure supposition; "facts", divorced from their context and denied millions of other possible meanings; or just plain shouting. 

 

This is how we're supposed to be. 

 

Keep on keepin' on!