Re: The Ketchum Paper - What the experts say.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:04 am

yes, its a big project. But again I don't see anyone was willing to help her.

You may also listen to

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2012/12/23

Joining George Knapp, Dr. Melba S. Ketchum discussed her DNA analysis of possible Bigfoot hair samples, which was leaked to the public before the publication of her peer-reviewed paper. She reviewed her background as a veterinarian, years of research in genetics, including forensics, and her founding of the company DNA Diagnostics in 1985. She also addressed controversies that have been stirred up in the Bigfoot research community about her findings. Part of the problem, she explained, was that some non-ethical people became involved in her project, though none of their research was ever incorporated into her final paper.

While she was not at liberty to discuss all aspects of her Bigfoot DNA testing before her manuscript is published, she confirmed that analysis was done on over 100 hair and skin samples, sent in by eyewitness of the creature, or from researchers in the field. To maintain objectivity, some of the samples were sent "blind" to other labs-- that is they were not identified as possibly being from a Sasquatch. Ketchum outlined how her lab was able to prevent contamination problems, by checking against the DNA of her lab employees and the people who submitted the samples.

Results revealed that the mitochondrial DNA was human, but the nuclear DNA was "unique," – that is there were unknown sequences interspersed with human sequences, she said. This suggests that something non-human mated with humans to create the Bigfoot species. "We don't know what the other side of Bigfoot is-- we know it's not any ancients that are on file, we known it's not any apes that are on file, we know it's in the primate range, but there's no type file for the progenitor," she commented. For more on this topic, check out George Knapp's column, "I'm Dreaming of a Bigfoot Christmas."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tearST_J7Uc

Starz Mon Feb 18, 2013 1:49 pm

-at SG - Unsubstianted primarily because it IS THE FIRST STUDY......duh!!!!
Rolls eyes.....
So besides stating the obvious your point was?

http://bf-field-journal.blogspot.com
A common sense attempt to answer questions for the interested here.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 5:26 pm

Starz wrote: -at SG - Unsubstianted primarily because it IS THE FIRST STUDY......duh!!!!
Rolls eyes.....
So besides stating the obvious your point was?

http://bf-field-journal.blogspot.com
A common sense attempt to answer questions for the interested here.

Nice link Starz

I agree with the Bigfoot Field Journal.
One of the major criticisms is that the genomes were not posted to GenBank so other scientist could review them. GenBank refused to accept it because it had "no species attached". When Dr. Ketchum responded that it is a new Homo Sapien (Human) GenBank refused to post the sequences until they had a "signed release and permission from the subject since it was human" What?!?! how can you get a signed release from a Bigfoot?!?!

Another interesting quote from Dr. Ketchum referring to emails received from one of the labs doing the blind study. "I got an email that said "We got this really weird fragment and we did a BLAST search of GenBank and it did not match anything, what did you send us? did you discover a new species?"

Yep she is finally getting other people to look at the data.
I thought the Coast to Coast interview even how brief it was was good.
I hope she releases all the e-mails and other information she got from the "scientists" who rejected her.

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:48 pm

shes getting other people to look at the data?

how is that any different to what shes previously been doing?

whos gonna be looking at the data if all scientists refuse to look at her work as she claimed?

the wait continues I guess!

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 7:52 pm

treadstone over at Bigfoot Forums posted this. Break Down of coast to coast AM

My notes from recording the C2C show last night.….as near as possible word for word from Ketchum.

1. She thought it would be a piece of cake because the science was good on getting the paper published. She didn’t realized how naive she was.

2. She says that she found a young journal that was leaning towards next generation sequencing. She says the editor of the journal (prior to acquisition by her) sent out the paper for peer review to those who were doing next generation sequencing. She got passing reviews (with revisions) and she was then told that the journal would be published. She had no idea who the peer reviewers were. Then just before she was going live with it, she gets an email from the editor. The editor says his lawyer doesn’t want him publishing this. The lawyer even says within the email to the editor that he will “quit” him if the editor goes ahead and publishes the paper. Also he was scared so bad it would ruin his career. (not positive if she is referring to editor or lawyer). So he back out….then she made acquisitions for the journal as she didn’t want the peer reviews to be lost. She didn’t want to take what she says another two years to get published or wait another five years to go through 100 journals that would be fair.

3. The people from the journal help to make changes to the new journal and get it up and running so she could get the paper out. She says that there are still some changes that need to be done to the journal.

4. She has nothing to do with the publishing. And again she says that the previous people on the journal help her get this new journal up and running.

5. The host of C2C says that MK was hoping that the subject, even if all the i’s were not doted, t’s not crossed or MK not writing the paper that they (they – not clarified) would take a look at the paper and publish it, put it out there so people would evaluate it. He goes on to say that he has read what MK has sent him on the give and take of the paper between MK and the different journals and it’s outrageous. It was from his understanding that some of the complaints were from people who had not even read the paper. She agreed, and said it happen multiple times. She says that one journal ask her to start from the beginning again, make the changes they requested, document the change requests then send it back to them….and it also was by this journal (not hers) ask to get at least one gene-o and she says her team got three (3) from the same species and when they pulled the mitochondrial out and it was same mitochondrial sequences that they had done individually prior to the whole gen-o. She says it was definite proof and when they sent it back, they (journal) wouldn’t even view it. She mentions something about three (3) others (implications of same) of not viewing the revisions.

6. The host says that within the paper that results are consistent, reproducible and novel.
7. The host then asks for details of how the process was done. MK says there were two labs that extracted the samples, the samples were washed, they did all the normal technique, they clean the samples for contamination and there was none. They then went and screen for species with some sort of primers, where it would make any animal show up…even human. She then says all their samples came back human, and this was after all the hair samples had been look at by a forensic hair specialists that does primary human, but also animal. This specialists said the samples were novel, it was not human hair, and it didn’t match any of animals known that he had tested against.

8. ...So she goes on and forwards and outsources because she knew she had good clean DNA and knew she would have a problem if only one or two labs did work. None of the samples that were sent out to these labs were told what the samples were of. She mentions sending out samples that do mitochondrial DNA trees. They got 20 whole gene-o’s, 10 partial gene-o’s and the rest of the samples they just screened because when you get that many samples, it pretty much tells the story. Non-human hair giving human sequence, and she has some none hair samples in with the batch. After getting the results she says the hairs didn’t look human so they went after the nuclear DNA. Then they started getting some “strange” results, talking about weird looking bands and different sizes. She then gets an email from the lab doing the nuclear testing (normal mito was also outsource to same lab) that says that got a really weird fragment, that it isn’t as long as it should be, it’s like 490 some bases..and they was suppose to get 500+ bases. That lab (and she refer’s to the person doing the testing as “she”) blasted it in GenBank (short description of what GenBank is) and it didn’t come out matching anything that has been put into GenBank out of millions of sequences. Then the person wants to know what it was that was sent to them for testing, as they didn’t know what it is…..have you discovered a new species? MK has all this in an email. Mk says she finally had to tell them what they were testing….and none of the labs like it. She says the lab that does the family tree was the only one who was nice about it. She says that one threaten them if MK used their name, so they wasn’t able to publish the name of the lab…and when the lab(s) found out, none of them would take the money for the testing. She says something about getting their pictures out of it, but that was it.

9. MK says she shopped around for accredited labs that had good reputations. They were university labs, state crime labs. She then seems to spill the beans and says Texas A&M backup the results of the lab that she wasn’t able to use the name of. And Texas A&M saw the same strangeness the other lab did.

10. The host and Mk then start talking about the physical appearance of the hair, that it looks animal but has human DNA in it.

11. Next the host goes into the 16 types (assuming he is talking about collected specimens) as he says something about them not all being from the same area. After listening further she goes into the “tree” structure of mitro DNA. Talks about the land bridge, Asia, etc.

12. After commercial break there is talk about this David Paulisits (sp) and his folks help in finding some specimens for testing. Also was mention that the collectors DNA was taken, including DNA from all the lab individuals so they could rule out contamination by the personnel involved.

13. Samples were taken from I witnesses or control areas (Erickson is mentioned where it was being over seen by a wildlife PhD). She goes on and says about using gloves, etc….and paper plates that had sandpaper on it to pickup extra cells. They then would put the paper plate in Tupperware where a hand had to be used to open it. After subject raid the Tupperware, the paper plate would be collected and put in a cooler. It was mention by MK that the subjects (betting the Kentucky area) were not over fearful of the humans watching them…or it was so implied…and was getting use to being fed.

14. The Madelia film is mentioned and is mention as “sample 37”. No further mention has to when any additional footage would be released.

15. Next is the Sierra killings and about who lied concerning the samples. MK goes into details that her sample that is not dried looking, and is pretty fresh meat on it (muscle tissue on it) and subcutaneous tissue on it and that they turned it up to show the hair side and the flesh side of it. Some talk about the undercoat. One of the complaints was the sample was degraded. She says they even used her blood to test to see how degraded tests would look like. Some sort of high-futing (histopathology) test was done and all the tests showed no bacteria and the cells were all intact. She says the samples were pristine.

Then there is mention of a certain blogger ….and the lie” about the “meat’ …..bear… (my term-not hers) sample that was sent to Canada (says something about the pictures of said samples) and that the DNA is different and thus is a different sample. (If I understood correctly, this specimen was the same as MK had- but something doesn’t add up because of >)If it had been the same sample the DNA would have been the same, “she said.” There is talk about taking just 6-7 months to get the results of just a small amount of the DNA (she name the specific type) She talks about the pictures and that you can see the undercoat of the sample sent to Canada. (Off hand- it sounds from my point of view, as lame as it is….there was a switch)

Her opinion is that someone got worried….perhaps...about the repercussions about the creature being almost human. It is the opinion of this writer, she was referring to….well best that I can tell, not the shooter.
16. The host gets back into the GenBank and that it didn’t match anything else. MK says they could keep them or blasted in Gen Bank though the whole paper (individuals and mitochondrial) and got 2.7 million bases. She says she attempted to do (verification to email sent to host of C2C) so with GenBank and ask the host to verify the emails that were sent were GenBank didn’t want it to go into it. MK says when a paper is being submitted that this deposit into GenBank is a rule for other scientists can use the data. GenBank. At first Genbank refused, then came back (documented by emails) If it was to be put in, then MK had to put human as the source, and if you do, you HAVE TO HAVE SIGNED WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE DONOR…..and Mk says good look in getting Sasquatch to signed their DNA over! They also had a couple of other rules in there, of which they couldn’t do…no mention of what these rules were.

The host says you just can’t put these in Gen Bank blind. MK agrees and says that you have fill out all sorts of information on the specimens. When GenBank found out what the subject was….she implies that they said no way Jesus…and if they didn’t then they would have to put it in the paper….which we know she did.

The host acknowledges the whole paper trail of these problems, etc, etc. That MK sent to the host of C2C. And he says he hopes that MK will put out that paper trail for the rest of us curious, nail biting, paranoid and fearful of a hoax types. (Them there are my words)

17. Next up is the breeding of the species as too how the hybrid was produced. Not much really of interest…IMO. She talks about the famous 1800 story about Zana? I guess the female BF who did the mumbo-jumbo with male humans and produced some viable offspring. This was talk about in the chat room last night. This discussing someone can come forth and give more details about, perhaps!

18. She mentions of other scientists now coming forward and taking a hard look at the paper, and is willing to help get the info into GenBank, even though it is in the paper now. She mentions she has the whole thing in a text file.

19. She says it takes a whole year to analysis a whole gen-o.

20. Now their back into the video for having supporting evidence alone side of the DNA from a critic. MK goes into how the critics still would not be satisfied and would scream of hoax. That the answer is in the DNA as it can’t be faked, she says.

21. Then there was talk about the quality score of the next generations of sequencing and she talks about talking to the supervisors of the machine used and possible contamination of the specimens. Those people said sequences should be above 80 and MK’s were above 88 and better, which is considerable to be “outstanding” scores for quality.

22. NOTE: I had a technical difficulty with my recording the show through my Smartphone. I unknowing was not recording for a period of time.

23. It picks up about if the specimens were not mention to the labs as being suspected Bigfoot, there wouldn’t have been such uproar.

24. Talk now about the Bigfoot communities in that some are having fits over the evidence as not being an “ape”. She says she has had threats made upon her. It is hope that now that the paper is out that someone else will pickup the baton and continues on and mentions studies other than DNA on Bigfoot taking place She says her research will still continue and that she has see at least three Bigfoot’s herself.

25. She makes a reference to protection of the species…..from us. Especially the “trophy hunters”.

26. At some point the paper will be made available for free… at some point. The journal does have an editor. The journal is hoping to provide those that want to publish papers for peer review to have an easier route to take, not like the bias one MK had to go through.

….that’s about the best I can give of what I recorded

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:03 pm

The most groundbreaking discoverer of our generation, rewriting all we know about evolution and human history, definately worthy of a late night paranormal show.

DPinkerton Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:06 pm

BurdenOfProof wrote:The most groundbreaking discoverer of our generation, rewriting all we know about evolution and human history, definately worthy of a late night paranormal show.

How does her claim rewrite anything? If anything it fills in a gap. It changes nothing that we already know.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:08 pm

BurdenOfProof wrote:The most groundbreaking discoverer of our generation, rewriting all we know about evolution and human history, definately worthy of a late night paranormal show.

Why are you really here on this Forum?
You obviously have no desire to believe in Bigfoot.
You also didn't listen to the Interview.
You don't see the News when people discuss Bigfoot the anchors rolling there Eyes.

So again tell me where else would she be taken seriously?

But you seem to think its a walk in the park to get "Main stream Science" to accept somthing NEW and different.
Her findings do throw a monkey wrench in Darwins Evolution ... that is hard for many to take.
Its why "Science" is a "Relgion" they are unflexible when it comes to new Ideas.

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:11 pm

You can claim all you want that science is out to get you and theres a conspiracy against bigfoot but that still doesnt mean bigfoot is real.

Replace bigfoot with any other mythical creature and you can say the exact same thing.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:11 pm

BurdenOfProof wrote:You can claim all you want that science is out to get you and theres a conspiracy against bigfoot but that still doesnt mean bigfoot is real.

Replace bigfoot with any other mythical creature and you can say the exact same thing.

Again why are you even on this forum then?

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:14 pm

CMcMillan wrote:
BurdenOfProof wrote:You can claim all you want that science is out to get you and theres a conspiracy against bigfoot but that still doesnt mean bigfoot is real.

Replace bigfoot with any other mythical creature and you can say the exact same thing.

Again why are you even on this forum then?

I am interested in the psychology and the subculture of bigfootery. Its fascinating.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:20 pm

No it seems you are more into just trolling and picking on things to annoy others.

No intrest in anything except being an Internet Jerk

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:23 pm

CMcMillan wrote:No it seems you are more into just trolling and picking on things to annoy others.

No intrest in anything except being an Internet Jerk

Attack my arguements not me. If you struggle to attack my arguments then theres your first clue.

DPinkerton Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:27 pm

BurdenOfProof wrote:I am interested in the psychology and the subculture of bigfootery. Its fascinating.

So the other people on this forum are part of a social experiment to you. Thank you for confirming you have no interest in having a civil and logical discussion concerning the topic at hand. I suggest people refrain from entering into a bigfoot discussion with BoP. It is clear he is not here to have such a discussion....any attempt to do so would be a waste of your time.

As such...with BoP's self proclamation he is only interested in the psychology of the subculture....any comment made by BoP concerning bigfoot is only given to elicit a response by member of this forum in order to examine the members who respond.

BurdenOfProof Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:31 pm

DPinkerton wrote:
BurdenOfProof wrote:I am interested in the psychology and the subculture of bigfootery. Its fascinating.

So the other people on this forum are part of a social experiment to you. Thank you for confirming you have no interest in having a civil and logical discussion concerning the topic at hand. I suggest people refrain from entering into a bigfoot discussion with BoP. It is clear he is not here to have such a discussion....any attempt to do so would be a waste of your time.

As such...with BoP's self proclamation he is only interested in the psychology of the subculture....any comment made by BoP concerning bigfoot is only given to elicit a response by member of this forum in order to examine the members who respond.

I try to have a discussion and I am attacked for being a "troll". Id like to get to the bottom of why people are claiming to see hairy creatures all over the planet, just like you are. I view it as 99.99999999999% not real, but you can never say 100% for anything. If there was any evidence then I would eat crow all day long happily. There isnt though, and it just leaves the proponants with a long list of standard excuses as to why we have no evidence.

Squatchmaster G Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:24 pm

CMcMillan wrote:
Squatchmaster G wrote:
Note that Ketchum tried really hard to claim that her paper had been peer reviewed by some mystery journal beforehand and she's now trying to get a new peer review. Ketchum obviously thinks that peer review is really important. Are you disagreeing with Ketchum as well as me?
you are Infering something into her motives which you have no clue about.

If anyone has any evidence that the paper was actually peer reviewed by any pre-existing journal (other than Ketchum's unsubstantiated claims) I'll be happy to read it, until then I'm perfectly free to speculate on the matter.

Oh and here's a post from Ketchum's own Facebook page back in March 2012 about the importance of getting the paper officially peer reviewed and published in an established journal:

Fact: This paper has not and will not go to a cryptozoology "journal" of any type. Stringent, skeptical review is necessary for the success of this paper, thus the length of time it is taking to get this out. It would have been out a long time ago if we would have chosen to send it to some obscure journal or some type of crypto journal but I prefer the more difficult path because it makes the paper credible to the scientific community.

Starz wrote: -at SG - Unsubstianted primarily because it IS THE FIRST STUDY......duh!!!!
Rolls eyes.....
So besides stating the obvious your point was?

The point of studies is to substantiate claims. Whether it's the first or 1000th is irrelevant. If it's the first (and Ketchum's study definitely wasn't the first attempt to validate Bigfoot DNA, or even the first published paper about Bigfoot) then there's an even greater need to substantiate all the conclusions, not a lower need.

The point about her claims of the paper passing peer review being unsubstantiated is that no journal editor has ever stepped forwards to corroborate that claim and she never published the reviews. The accusation isn't that she invented the peer review but that we don't know which journal performed it, how established they are, whether their editor was established in a related field and had organised a robust review panel, which revisions the review suggested, etc etc etc.. Her claim has no substance. It is unsubstantiated. The fact that she felt that she could cite this peer review as an ethical reason for self-publishing the paper and expect people to take it seriously shows how naive she was.

CMcMillan Mon Feb 18, 2013 9:48 pm

The point of studies is to substantiate claims. Whether it's the first or 1000th is irrelevant. If it's the first (and Ketchum's study definitely wasn't the first attempt to validate Bigfoot DNA, or even the first published paper about Bigfoot) then there's an even greater need to substantiate all the conclusions, not a lower need.

The point about her claims of the paper passing peer review being unsubstantiated is that no journal editor has ever stepped forwards to corroborate that claim and she never published the reviews. The accusation isn't that she invented the peer review but that we don't know which journal performed it, how established they are, whether their editor was established in a related field and had organised a robust review panel, which revisions the review suggested, etc etc etc.. Her claim has no substance. It is unsubstantiated. The fact that she felt that she could cite this peer review as an ethical reason for self-publishing the paper and expect people to take it seriously shows how naive she was.

How is it Unsubstantiated.
She sent e-mails to Coast to Coast what she had. So its not Unsubstantiated. Its just not public Transparency to everyone else.
She doesn't have to show YOU or ME what she did. Or what e-mails she recieved back from the people.
Please feel free to E-mail her and ask for the proof.

Squatchmaster G Mon Feb 18, 2013 10:54 pm

CMcMillan wrote:How is it Unsubstantiated.
She sent e-mails to Coast to Coast what she had. So its not Unsubstantiated. Its just not public Transparency to everyone else.
She doesn't have to show YOU or ME what she did. Or what e-mails she recieved back from the people.
Please feel free to E-mail her and ask for the proof.

Public transparency was absolutely needed. Here's a quote from Ketchum about her justifications for self publishing:

We furthermore have adhered to all of the standards set here in the link below, especially since the entire review and agreement to publish was done at the previous journal:

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

The article she cites says this:

The issue here basically revolves around whether it is acceptable for editors to publish their own work in their journals; if it is, then the review process must be made as transparent and rigorous as possible.

Ketchum did not make the review process transparent in any way.

Once again this is not just my opinion but something that Ketchum herself has said in the past.

Squatchmaster G Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:27 pm

A bunch of genetics PhD students get together to discuss the Ketchum paper. One of them actually got hold of the genome sequence and ran a series BLAST sequences through the Genbank database. The news for Bigfootery is not very good.

The bottom line is that when a competent scientist checks the data it quickly becomes obvious that Ketchum completely botched the science. The paper is junk and was a complete waste of time for everyone involved. These scientists actually had a really good laugh over how inept the paper was, it was embarrassingly bad.

If people are wondering about the panda bear result: Genbank has really good data on pandas but not other bears so if there was any bear DNA contaminents in the genome then a BLAST check would flag 'panda' as the closest match. Ketchum's paper apparently goes on and on about how they avoided contamination but the genomes they cobbled together clearly show contamination from bear and dog DNA amongst other things.

Woodwose Thu Feb 28, 2013 2:06 pm

Dog, cat and bear sequences in the GeneBlast, non-ancient mtDNA, 0% non-human ape DNA and poor methodology (plus all the issues regarding how the paper was published).........if correct it doesn't look good at all.

CMcMillan Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:41 pm

http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html

This is the most facinating Theory
It also explains how SCIENCE is to new theory

CMcMillan Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:42 pm

This was posted on Melbas fb Wall by Timothy Collins. My question is this. If he can figure this out why cant so many others.

This is what I have found so far and I'm just looking for answers to some basic questions like everyone else from your 5 year study and press release.

Prior to Dr. Ketchum's release of the 5 year study, people on both sides of the issue "Is Sasquatch / Bigfoot Real",were unloading opinions before the ink on the paper was dry.

People were jumping to conclusions because they had made up there collective minds without giving the study a chance to present the "FACTS" and "RESULTS" found.

I was looking for any information I could find on the study once released. I'm still looking for a free copy or any real researchers review of the study and will welcome any reference to that data as we all are.

Melba did give a press review of some of the content from that study out of self defense because the paper was being held up by main stream peer-reviewed journals and the reason for that was "The Subject Content" .... I did talk personally with Melba about this (in FB). My understanding was that the paper was not analyzed, and not reviewed because of the subject matter and tossed in the round file without proper consideration and usually without even reading the document a few pages let alone cover to cover.

So far not much information available, so I checked into what Melba said in the press release about the "Next Generation Sequencing capabilities "and the "Quality Scores" provided by the Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing platforms... because any one can check into that and get quality answers to some questions.

I used "FACTS" gleaned from a few people such as Melba Ketchum, Beckman Coulter, Illumina, Scott Carpenter, GenBank, NCBI and others.

I'm NOT qualified as a lay person to discuss the implications of the tests or procedures but I can give information about the instruments used for the results.

This is what I found: 110 samples (tested) were collected from 14 States & 2 Provinces and accepted for the DNA study.

Tests were run on Illumina HiSeq 2000 sequencing platforms and these are "Whole Genome Tests" using extracted DNA.

This sequencing experiment consists of a series of discrete steps that uniquely contribute to the overall quality of a data set.
Sequencing quality provides important information about the accuracy of each step in the process such as "Base Calling".

"Bass Calling" accuracy, measured by the Phred Quality Score ("Q Score" and this is extremely important to remember), is the most common measure used to access the "ACCURAY OF A SEQUENCING PLATFORM" making it the quality SCORING STANDARD for commercial sequencing technologies.

"Q Scores" are defined as a property that is related to the "ERROR PROBILITIES" (logarithmically based) .

In other words "how good is your data" was there any errors, any contamination?

These statements are directly from the manufacturer and any one can check my accuracy by going to the Illumina web site.

For example, if Phred assigns a Q Score of 30 (Q30) to a base, this is equivalent to the probability of an incorrect base call 1 in 1000 times or the accuracy of 99.9%.

AND guess what this is the exact data base, Q30 that Melba was referring to in her study in the press release....THERE WAS NO CONTANAMATION PEOPLE.

OK so how do we know that? Illumina states and I quote "When sequencing quality reaches Q30, virtually all of the reads will be perfect, having zero errors and ambiguities. This is why Q30 is considered a benchmark for quality in next-generation sequencing" end of quote!!!!

The Q30 for the three genomes MK tested were 88.6, 88.4 & 88.7 and according to Illumina a pure sample will have a Q30 score of 80 or more with a average of 85 AND if contamination is present in the sample, the Q30 decreases dramatically as they compete against one another causing the contaminated sample to register a Q30 score of 40 to 50 and considered poor.

With the Q30 scores for the MK genomes sequenced & tested bosted Q30 scores of 88.6, 88.4 & 88.7 therefore rank far above the average using the Illumina HiSeq 2000 Next Generation Sequencing Platform and again I will state there was no contanamation in the MK sampels tested.

OK so there you have it THERE WAS NO ERRORS OR CONTANAMATION so all the critics have it totally wrong PERIOD...they ether didn't read the study or didn't know the quality of the data and expressed an opinion attempting to influence people based on personal bias (this is called conspiring against someone).

In my opinion there seems to be a "conspiracy" against Melba and the research of "undocumented forest people" for some reason. Someone or a group of people do not want this information out and will do any thing to stop it from happening or maybe they are just having fun at someone else's expense because there is no bigfoot.
The question is why, is this for personal gain from another professional who wants the credit for themselves, why are the "peer-reviewed scholarly journals not even reading the document when Q30 proves the science is correct and exact, is the mystique of the "undocumented forest person" too controversial to consider even for GenBank or NCBI? Is the government behind a cover up of some kind or maybe there is no conspiracy at all, just people doing there collective jobs...you decide that one for your self.

Just remember this...Q30 proves the science is correct and exact... a slam dunk for Melba Ketchum

Woodwose Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:15 pm

CMcMillan wrote:http://www.ted.com/talks/elaine_morgan_says_we_evolved_from_aquatic_apes.html

This is the most facinating Theory
It also explains how SCIENCE is to new theory

When the aquatic ape theory first hit the headline I was very enthusiastic about the idea - the logic makes sense. At the time there was no evidence to support or refute it and there were many scientists who thought the hypothesis might be sound.

Over time new evidence came to light and a better understanding of evolution showed that (despite being compelling) the Aquatic Ape theory didn't hold water.

Science didn't outright reject the concept: it took it seriously, looked at the evidence, reserved opinion until more information was available.....and then explained why the hypothesis was flawed.

DPinkerton Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:53 pm

Woodwose wrote:Over time new evidence came to light and a better understanding of evolution showed that (despite being compelling) the Aquatic Ape theory didn't hold water.

Science didn't outright reject the concept: it took it seriously, looked at the evidence, reserved opinion until more information was available.....and then explained why the hypothesis was flawed.

She rebuts that statement at 11:30 into the video. I suspect she would know if it was taken seriously and investigated.

Woodwose Fri Mar 01, 2013 1:51 am

That's rhetoric. The hypothesis was - and is - taken seriously. There is simply no evidence. This isn't down to politics or dogma (it doesn't contradict Darwinian theory) there just isn't any evidence (currently) to back up AAT.

Sponsored content