The Ketchum Report

[Guest]

Oh, okay...good!

[Guest]

Hybrids can be much bigger than either parent.

Hybrid vigor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis.

[Guest]

Bob raises an important point.

These tests of DNA don't generally involve the full sequencing of the nuDNA of the mtDNA. They involve looking at small selected samples at specific points in the sequence. That is why statisticians become involved. If you sample 1% of something, you need a statistician to tell you whether that sample is from something that has been sampled before. This again is another way in which DNA could appear to be something that it isn't....simply by the sampling not showing up any difference.

Mike

Am I misremembering or did Dr Ketchum say at one point that they did in fact do a full sequencing after the initial results came back with a "curve ball"?

[Guest]

If you sample 1% of something, you need a statistician to tell you whether that sample is from something that has been sampled before. This again is another way in which DNA could appear to be something that it isn't....simply by the sampling not showing up any difference.

As I recall, Substadt was brought onboard early as a statistician then cut from the project (before the NDAs were required). I further recall that his education is in enginerring, not stats, and I got the impressive by his language that he wasn't very savvy about stats (which is typical of engineers in my experience). I believe he had access to only a small amount of Ketchum's data. And, I recall Ketchum mentioning that Substadt didn't know what he was talking about.

If the above is true, one of the dirty little secrets of statistical hypothesis testing comes into play -- that it can be very difficult to find a statistically significant difference with a tiny sample size, and one is almost certain to find such a difference with a humongous sample size. For the scenario under discussion, assuming a small sample size, the appropriate conclusion is "I could not discern a difference between human and purported bigfoot mtDNA." This is far different from concluding the two are the same.

[southernyahoo]

Am I misremembering or did Dr Ketchum say at one point that they did in fact do a full sequencing after the initial results came back with a "curve ball"?

We can only speculate on what the cuvre ball is, but certain things can be deduced. I'm sure there is as much DNA sequenced as is necessary, and broad comparative statistics drawn to conclude a new species.

Bob raises an important point. These tests of DNA don't generally involve the full sequencing of the nuDNA of the mtDNA. They involve looking at small selected samples at specific points in the sequence. That is why statisticians become involved. If you sample 1% of something, you need a statistician to tell you whether that sample is from something that has been sampled before. This again is another way in which DNA could appear to be something that it isn't....simply by the sampling not showing up any difference. Mike

I've harped on this many times, and was my first thought years ago when several tests had shown human results. One type of test that might be used is the barcode method using a single mtDNA gene. This article explains it's weakness.

http://sysbio.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/5/729.full The general approach to species discovery with a single-gene threshold is to calculate a metric from DNA sequence data that is collected from n₁ individuals of a newly discovered candidate species and n₂ individuals of a reference species that is its closest relative. These n₁ individuals are flagged as being from a candidate new species if this metric exceeds a particular threshold. The two proposed thresholds for mtDNA that we consider are reciprocal monophyly (Wiens and Penkroft, 2002) and when there is 10 times greater average pairwise genetic differences between the n₁ individuals of the candidate species and the reference species than the average within-species pairwise differences found in the particular taxonomic group (the “10× ruleâ€; Hebert et al., 2004). We explored these two proposed methods of species discovery throughout a range of conditions by employing simulations that are based on speciation theory (Gavrilets, 2003) and population genetic theory (Tajima, 1983). To this end, we report probabilities of false-positive and false-negative errors given these two proposed single-gene species-discovery thresholds (Hebert et al., 2003; Wiens and Penkroft, 2002) and the classical two-locus/single-incompatibility Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller (BDM) model of biological species formation by geographic isolation. Although many models of reproductive isolation are likely to be operative in nature, the BDM model guides our intuition about the general utility of single-gene thresholds. Furthermore, it is well characterized, tractable, and its dynamics captures a range of speciation times implicit across many pre- and post-zyogotic isolation models (Gavrilets, 2003; Turelli et al., 2001).

Edited May 17, 2012 by southernyahoo

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

This is off topic, but there are some interesting stories of human-bigfoot hybrids http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2012/05/bigfootologys-known-hybrid-offspring-of.html

Those aren't the only ones btw^

Edited May 17, 2012 by OntarioSquatch

[Guest gerrykleier]

That's a helpful distinction, Mulder. Here's my pure conjecture: for a certain period of time (perhaps many thousands of years), there was an ongoing regime of interbreeding between HSS females and The Other Primate males, the latter, in most cases, probably overpowering/raping the former, given that the latter were almost certainly MUCH larger. (I mean think about it: if the offspring were 7-10 feet tall, and Mom was 5.5 feet tall, how enormous must Dad have been?! And consider how rarely the mothers would even have been able to survive childbirth.) The offspring were then both physically far superior to HSS and mentally far superior to The Other Primate.

Not far enough out on a limb yet? TOP died out because of male HSS retaliation.

Which is kinda the thrust of THEM AND US, though with Neanderthal in the place of Sasquatch. It's an interesting Book. I recommended it when I read it some time ago and I still do.

GK

[Guest]

The narrative, then, is that the maternal DNA is 100% modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) and the nuclear DNA is not, and this explains the initial confusion as to whether or not Bigfoot is modern human.

Referencing the U.S. Copyright again ("Sasquatch: The Tribe Revealed"), the book (and movie?) would give "the complete Sasquatch mitochondrial genome sequence and nuclear DNA variations" and "the proof that the Sasquatch is not only the closest living human relative but is actually a contemporary living human." "Also discussed is how testing has ruled out ape cross and any ancient contributor and that Sasquatch is indeed a modern human with some genetic mutations accounting for their physical appearance."

O.k., the rejoinder to this by some folks is that Dr. Ketchum changed her mind when additional information was discovered. Isn't that what good science is all about?

Except --- she didn't change her mind about the central issue: The samples were proof of the existence of Bigfoot. Period. Let this sink in please. Even when she had, in her own mind, nothing more than modern human samples, she had Bigfoot! Some advocates here have stated that the samples could not be from modern humans -- yet Dr. Ketchum herself argued via her copyright application, that yes, the samples were from modern humans and indeed these modern humans are Bigfoot.

Why did she believe at one time that Bigfoot is a modern human? Any ideas? She was supposed to run the samples to discover if they were Bigfoot samples. When they came back "modern human" samples, she did not discard them as evidence, she accepted them as evidence. Why?.

Why would folks not accept this? Is it that modern humans with genetic mutations that render them totally haircovered and giant are no longer modern humans?

What are the titles of her subsequent copyrights for text?

First, July of last year: A New Species of Contemporary Feral Homo Sapiens.

Second, September of last year: A New Contemporary Feral Species of Hominin.

Any ideas why a change from Homo sapiens to Hominin?

And how could DNA determine an animal feral?

The idea has been floated that Dr. Ketchum simply applied for copyrights covering various possible scenarios. Please show me the copyright applications that would be titled, for instance, A Contemporary Relict Ape, or any other scenarios not included in the above titles.

[Guest slimwitless]

Why did she believe at one time that Bigfoot is a modern human? Any ideas? She was supposed to run the samples to discover if they were Bigfoot samples. When they came back "modern human" samples, she did not discard them as evidence, she accepted them as evidence. Why?.

Because Stubstad convinced her to a 97% certainty that the mito sequences (although human) were statistically unusual enough that, given the circumstances of the sample collection, Bigfoot must be human. That, and she had just finished Paulides book. But hey, I'm just guessing.

BTW, Stubstad claimed he may have written all or part of the first copyright filing. Notice both of the subsequent filings claim a new species (although the word feral is perplexing).

Edited May 17, 2012 by slimwitless

[indiefoot]

jerrywayne,

Can a hair be excluded from being modern human by physical examination?

[Guest]

I think people would totally accept Bigfoot being completely and totally modern human. . . if a full body of one is submitted as evidence at the same time. It wouldn't be enough to say, "these hairs that are totally modern human are Bigfoot hairs." There is going to have to be some really strong evidence presented with those findings for them to not be discarded. Going off of the supreme confidence Dr. Ketchum has in the results, I'm guessing she probably has something more than that though.

[Guest]

I am officially waiting to see what happens...everything that can be said has been at this point, IMO.

[JDL]

I find it interesting that each of the reported cases of human interbreeding, Zana and the one in the PNW, produces offspring with human hair patterns. If I understand my genetics, this indicates that the human hair pattern is dominant.

What would this suggest regarding the assumption that bigfoot are a hybrid of humans and something else? Why would, say, a human/heidelbergensis hybrid be hairy, and then the offspring of the mating between that hybrid and a human be consistently not? I'm sure there's an answer, but genetics isn't my field.

[Guest]

There is no proof that Zana was nothing more than a ugly, hairy, woman.

[Guest spurfoot]

Since 1 June is the first Friday in June, I'm throwing $5 into the office pool that says the announcement of the paper will be made 31 May. This is just a guess of course. If that doesn't work, maybe we can go with someone's guess of October. Quite likely, the paper will be unusually lengthy, longer than the usual journal limits, and the journal needed to reserve space long ahead of time. Hence, all this is hard to predict.

As for the Meldrum/Sykes project, it seems likely that they are mostly seeking to confirm MSK's results and geographically extend them.

None of the criticism of MSK seems valid to me. She could only obtain multiple specimens by making a public appeal. Inevitably that lead to defensive reactions to the impatient public. Those in the know who have kept quiet have the luxury of not being the bloody point of the spear. Subsequent research such as Meldrum's will not need to be so secretive since the basic knowledge will already be in the public domain. I congratulate Melba for her efforts and especially for her response to the curve-ball. I hope she is not distressed with the curveball pitcher.