Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:757 The Science Of Sasquatch

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

John from episode 754 will be returning to the show. John will be sharing his background as a scientist. He spent the last two weeks refreshing himself on Dr. Melba Ketchum's paper. What is wrong with the paper, what is right about the paper and why other scientist refused to accept it. Go to sasquatchgenomeproject.org to get a copy of the paper if you want to follow along.

Imagine for a moment that I pull a golden pin out of my pocket and I'm really showing it off to you. And I say, hey, look, this thing writes in 14 karat gold. It's a solid gold pen. And you say to me, well, Wes, how could you afford such a pen? And I say, well, I didn't buy it. I discovered alchemy. I followed this formula here on this piece of paper and I discovered alchemy. I turned what was once plastic and wrote in black ink into solid gold and now it writes in 14-carat.

gold. You take the piece of paper away from me. You give it to 100 physicists and chemists to have them duplicate what I've done. They work on it for a year. 365 days, 10 hours a day, they work on trying to duplicate what I've done. They're unable to. Am I lying about how I discovered alchemy and created this solid gold pin? Of course I am. They were unable to duplicate what I've done. You'll hear a lot of of these self-proclaimed experts, and especially in the Bigfoot world, talk about the scientific method, ask him to explain the scientific method. What does that mean? The backbone of the scientific method basically states, if it is natural, it'll happen more than once. There is no I got lucky. There are four basic forces in the universe that never change. Gravity,

electromagnetism, nuclear strong force, and the nuclear weak force. That's it. These four forces never change. They're a constant. Gravity, for example, is always the same strength. If I pick up my phone and lift it in the air about five feet and let it go, it's going to drop. If I pick up that phone again, lift it five feet in the air. It's going to happen again. It's going to do the same thing over and over. We know it's going to fall. And he say, Wes, what about the moon? I've seen guys bounce on the moon where gravity wasn't the same as it was on Earth. We know that gravity is not more powerful on the moon. The moon has a different mass, which creates a stronger pull, but the gravity force is always constant. The nuclear strong force and the nuclear weak force

never changed their strengths. That's why we send men to the moon based on those strengths that never change. Natural things happen more than once, and this is thoroughly acceptable. through all the different disciplines of science, whether we're talking about soft science or hard science, natural things happen more than once. When we're talking about hard science, we're talking about things like physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. Those sorts of things. When we talk about soft science, we're talking about things like psychology, history, religion. But even in soft science, they also believe that natural things happen more. more than once.

I'll give you an example. I have a book on my shelf that I read from time to time. You might think I'm a little odd for reading it, but it's the diagnostic and statistical manual. Basically, it lists everything that could go wrong psychologically with an individual. The book's about five inches thick. It's a big book. What's outstanding is with billions of people on this planet,

this book is only five inches thick. There's only so many ways that the human mind can malfunction. Out of billions of people, you would think there would be multiple books, but there's not. Why? Because the brain chemistry has patterns, even though you have a unique brain, and I have a unique brain, and the person sitting, you know, listening to this has a unique brain. They're only off by a very small percentage. And what could malfunction in your brain is, set by parameters. So it can only malfunction so many ways. If I hide in a bush and you're walking by and I sneak up behind you and go, boo, you're going to scream. You know, ah. Now, you might turn and hit me. That's another option. But you're not going to go, well, how do you do? How are you doing,

friend? You know, there's only so many reactions that the human brain will do. And things are out of the norm don't happen because the brain is set with certain parameters. We know this in soft science and we know it in hard science. We can prove it in hard science. So the scientific method when you talk about it, what you're basically saying is this is repeatable. I follow these steps like my alchemy illustration in the beginning. If I had actually discovered alchemy, I could show you a list, give it to you, you could then give it to a physicist or a chemist and they could duplicate what I've done. It comes down to being able to duplicate what someone has done. Again, everything that is natural is repeatable.

And sometimes you hear these Bigfoot experts and researchers go, well, I follow the scientific method. And you ask them, well, what does that mean? Well, I got a plastic baggie every time I find some poop in the woods, I don't touch it with my hands and I put in this baggie and then put it in the first. freezer. Well, we're talking process now. We're not really talking the scientific method. You're talking about collection and the process, the scientific way of collecting samples for the scientific method to be repeatable. It's not really a scientific method. So Melba Kacham comes on the scene, on the whole Sasquatch scene, Dr. Kacham. And I've asked Dr. Kacham to come on

the show and talk about her paper that she created after all these samples that she collected. and her findings. I'm fascinated by it. I'd like to have her on to talk about it, but she's unwilling to come on. Now, I'm not a scientist. I'm far from a scientist. In fact, a lot of times when I read Melvis paper, it's almost kind of like reading another language. I kind of get bits and pieces. I kind of understand what she's talking about here, but, you know, I don't have the education to back up anything I say about her paper. And I don't have a hidden agenda. against Melba. If Melba's right, fantastic. Melba's wrong, let's try again. It doesn't, whether she's right or wrong, and you always hear these guys, and most of these guys haven't finished

high school, and they're Bigfoot experts, and they're bashing Melba because they don't like her. Well, you know, there's a lot of people I don't like, but it doesn't mean that they're necessarily wrong in their findings. I invited John back to the show, and we'll talk about his background in science, and he's going to kind of walk through Melva Cacham's paper and explain his feelings on it, or his findings on what she presented. I have a bachelor's, master's, and a PhD, and my PhD is in molecular biology and genetics. So basically, I've studied, you know, about DNA, DNA replication, chromosomes, transcription, RNA structure, RNA, and translation, protein, and basic cell biology and signaling and all that kind of stuff.

So this is kind of just kind of typical stuff that you learn in molecular biology. It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind. It either heard me or smelt me, and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up. and that shocked me. They don't make people that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life.

They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language, and they were chuntering away back and forward, back and forward, back and forward. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet of what I saw were bears Jesus question

What's on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about 60 foot nine I don't know Is he a now sir? Yes, I'm looking right here This is Google And when we are not spying on you We are listening to Sasquatch Chronicles

Welcome to the show everyone Thanks for being here tonight Got a great show plan for you You know normally I talk to eyewitnesses And they come on and share what happened to them, the encounters that they had. And tonight's going to be a little bit different. We're actually going to be talking about the science of Sasquatch.

About eight years ago, Melba Kacham, Dr. Kacham came into the Bigfoot world and was doing this Sasquatch genome project. She was looking into the DNA. If most of you weren't around back then, she was going to prove Sasquatch and had their DNA. And it kind of fell flat. And even today, you know, there's people that are all four. Melba in her paper, Dr. Kacham's paper, and, you know, they go on and on about how great it is.

And then there's the other side of like anything else in the Bigfoot world, there's a group that absolutely hates her and says she's full of crap. The problem that they have on both sides is I've never actually heard anyone for or against this paper explain their position. They just kind of regurgitate what they've heard from, you know, other people in the community to say and they just go off of that. But no one's actually sat down and said, here's why I don't like the paper. Let me break down the paper and explain it to you and have the credentials to do that. And like I said in the intro, I've invited Melba to come on the show and kind of explain the paper. You know, it's to a

dumb guy like me. You know, I don't really understand portions of the paper and it's helpful to someone with the education and the experience to kind of explain the paper. And I think you can, you can actually still get a copy of the paper on Sasquatch Genome Project.org. I believe it's still up there. If you want to get a copy of it and kind of follow along, I'm kind of a visual guy, but I believe the paper is still up there. On October 1st, 2013, Dr. Kacham and Bigfoot researchers held a news conference in Dallas, Texas. And this will be very short, but it'll just kind of give you a, we'll go back a couple of years and kind of see what they were doing. We'd like to welcome you all to our press conference.

We apologize for the delay and the technical difficulties. We have two forms of internet, and neither one of them are working because we had some other groups that were supposed to be represented here. And our hot spot didn't work and the internet provided here didn't. So we do apologize for that. But we need to go ahead and proceed. My name is Dr. Melva Ketchum. We've done a published DNA study with three whole genomes.

from purported Sasquatch samples. Accompanied me here are various groups that submitted samples, and we're going to have some stories and validation. It's been a lot of question about whether or not there was change of custody in these samples and how we know these samples were from purported Sasquatch. So we're going to give each of them a short moment to explain their samples and talk just a minute about how they achieved collecting these samples. So I'm going to introduce them starting here.

This is Adrian Erickson. He formed the Erickson project. I mean, with all due respect to the Bigfoot researchers, I'm sure you guys don't mind if I fast forward and we just skip the introduction of each Bigfoot researcher. All right, here we go. Finally, then I brought some of the actual samples for you to look at. So hopefully this will help people to understand.

and also we want to address some of the criticism that's been of the study and why. First of all, this study, we didn't plan on doing this study. I didn't believe they existed at all. When the study started, it was just some people wanting species identification. And when word spread, we ended up having a lot of different samples submitted, and it became a project. And with the funding from Wally Hursom and Adrian Erickson, we were able to do extensive genetic testing on these samples.

We had over 100 samples. In the press notification we sent, we have the Sasquatch Genome Project.org website where the paper is free access. You can go and read the paper and see the attachments and the photos that accompany the paper. It also gives you a detailed list of the submitters, what they submitted, and where it came from.

So we ask you go to the those that website and have a look because it will explain a lot of because I can't go into the length of the paper here. We'll just address a few of the issues. We spent five years doing this study. We started out with just simple testing and progressed all the way to whole genomes. You've heard of the Human Genome Project. What we did the same thing the human genome project did except we did it on three samples instead of one. The new technology allows us to sequence efficiently. and quickly we have three terabytes of data from three over the three samples so

about a terabyte of data for each sample then also the new technology allows us to compare it to other animals and human as far as the sequences which we did this University of Texas Southwestern did the sequencing they also did the analysis we've had other groups and other geneticists look at it some of them have supported us some of them haven't the ones that haven't it's because there is very little alignment meaning it doesn't match anything it's novel it's new there's nothing to compare it with you can since a lot of animals and humans will share certain DNA sequences you get a very low yield of matching data and you

can when you play with these genomes you can get a large number of different animals that will show up just in 1% 0.5%. You get human at about 3% on one sample. And this is over the whole genome, not just a portion. So we've got alignment that is not good. It doesn't fit well in the tree of life. And this is the problem that a lot of the scientists have. They expect it that it's an ancient that somehow branched off with evolution. But this creature does not follow the general rule. What it does do is it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's very different. We think it is a human hybrid. That is our theory. Sounds promising.

Sounds like good stuff. But it makes you wonder why it fell flat. Why scientists wouldn't... I'm not so sure I buy into the fact that because it doesn't fit into evolution, science didn't buy into it. I've always struggled with that argument. But again, I didn't know enough about the paper. Tonight, we're going to be chatting with John.

And I had John on episode 754, a member's only episode. he was talking about his encounters and he was telling me about his background and what he does for a living and kind of an impressive resume and by the way melba is a respected scientist too as well i don't want to take away from melba what she tried to do because she actually is a real scientist but i asked john you know after we we did the first interview asked him when we're off the air i said did you ever look at melba catcham's paper the dr catcham the genome study that that she did. And he's like, yeah, I have. I've actually looked at it extensively. And then John started telling me, you know, I review scientific journals and papers and, and it's

something that is normal in the scientific community, but there's issues with her paper. And so I asked him if he would come back and explain line by line her paper and what is wrong with it, what is right with it. And where did this whole thing kind of go wrong? I don't want to say go wrong, but I mean, didn't really take off in the scientific world. What are the issues with it? And so John's going to be going through the paper tonight. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. I'll be back for the members on Sunday. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome John to the show.

John, thanks for coming on. Great to be here, Wes. Yeah, I appreciate you coming back on, John. I appreciate you being here and doing this show. I've always wanted to do a show like this to have someone break down Dr. Kacham's paper to a dummy like me, to a moron. So I can understand.

I'm humble enough to say there's portions of the paper. I have no idea what she's talking about. For the audience, would you kind of give a background of your education? And it'll kind of give an insight to the audience on your thoughts on the paper. Yeah, so I have a bachelor's, master's, and a PhD, and my PhD is in molecular biology and genetics. So basically, I've studied, you know, about DNA, DNA replication, chromosomes, transcription, RNA, structure, RNA, and translation, protein, and basic cell biology and signaling and all that kind of stuff. So this is kind of just kind of typical stuff that you learn in molecular biology.

I would imagine with your background that you have an understanding of Dr. Kacham's paper and kind of where she's going with the paper. And even beyond that, what's right, what's wrong, what should have been different, that sort of thing. I do. And I'm going to try as we go through it. I'm going to try to explain the methodologies. And as you were talking about in your intro, I'll talk a little. little bit about, you know, how to properly set up an experiment, how to do controls and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm excited to get into it, John. If you would as a scientist, and as you start going through the paper, I'll kind of let you take it away, but what are your thoughts as you start to go through the paper from a scientist's point of view? Yeah, and so what I'm going to do is

basically, you know, in graduate school, this is what we would call a journal club. And so if your listeners have a copy of the paper, you know, they can pull it out and we can go through the paper figure by figure. And so what I'm going to try to do is talk about the pluses and minuses of the paper itself, talk about the kind of like the premise of it and the methodologies, and then I'll talk about what's right and wrong about it. So, you know, first off, the paper, I believe it came out in 2012, and the title of the paper is novel North American hominins, next generation sequencing of three whole genomes and associated studies. So now that's a big, that's a big title, right?

What they're really suggesting here is that they have evidence of DNA of these basically novel hominin species from North America. So that's a huge claim. And so what we say in science is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I mean, this is really setting the bar high. Okay. So this, right out of the box, I mean, it's a lot to ask for. The paper is pretty thick.

There's a lot of, you know, a lot of stuff going on in the paper. So if we, you know, it's looking at the figure. you can see in the introduction, you know, she starts off with basically kind of like some background on the folklore of Sasquatch, figure one. That's on this, you know, folklore and history. You know, and that's fine. But keep in mind here that in, you know, in my opinion, this actually detracts from the science because, you know, this is like a separate inquiry that really is not related to the actual, you know, the topic and the title of the paper. So it actually is distracting. So I think figure one is not useful. And figure two is a shot of footprint. And as we know from, you know, there's a lot of studies looking at, you know, footprints and, you know, Jeff Maldrum studies footprints. And this is a meritorious area of study.

But in this part in her paper, she puts in a picture of one footprint. okay, that's not helpful in terms of, you know, conveying anything in terms of trying to convince anybody of anything. So I would say it's also not useful in the paper. So I think figure two could be dispensed with also. Once again, I mean, you could go in and actually measure, you know, do a population study on the footprints on their sizes and different trackways and all that kind of stuff. But that's not what this paper is about. And so that's why that figure is not useful. And in figure three, she has a picture of a stick structure.

We all, you know, have heard of this phenomenon. And, you know, of course, it is interesting. She talks about the fact that there's in this stick structure that they collected some hair samples. But once again, other than the fact that it's a site where some hair was collected, it is also a phenomenon that's kind of tangential to the actual topic in the paper. So in my opinion, if I were the editor for this paper, I would say don't include that because it just distracts the topic. And then similarly, figure four is a picture of what is purported to be a juvenile Sasquatch sleeping in the forest. Once again, I mean, although maybe is it true, not true, don't know.

Is it relevant to the paper? No, it's not actually relevant to the topic. So you can see how I look at this from very scientific point of view, and I'm already feeling like it's not starting well as far as that. So those four figures you don't find compelling or useful. Yeah, I've never written a scientific paper, I wouldn't know, but kind of what I understand what you're saying is in very simple man terms, it's a bunch of fluff, it's a bunch of irrelevant information based on the topic of the paper.

Yeah, and like I said, it actually reduces the livability of the paper because it's not rigorous, right? So that's the problem with that. So I really am going to ignore those four figures, and we'll get right to figure five. which is actually, there is some science here. And this is an analysis of the hair samples which were collected. And so what they actually do have in Figure 5, a comparison of unknown hair collected in the field with human hair. Okay, so they have comparisons of characteristics. And they have some measurements of the hair follicles and all the things.

But, you know, the thing that I don't see, If you're really trying to convince me that this is a novel primate, you need to do an exhaustive analysis of, you know, the diameter of the hairs in comparison with known species, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobo chimps, you know, Suti, mangabe, you know, different primates, and convince me it is either similar or different. I don't see a quantitative analysis here.

So once again, I kind of feel like this, although it could have been useful, it could have been interesting. And even on its own, it might have been interesting, not done correctly because there are no comprehensive comparisons and sort of quantitation, the normal quantitation that you would do in experiments, right? You know, you'd be measuring the diameters and, you know, looking at ratios of the medulla size, you know, and the diameter and that kind of stuff. And that's just basically pretty rudimentary science that you would do. And there are, you know, experts in hair morphology, and those would be the people try to work with on this kind of stuff. For those reasons, I feel like figure five is also not useful. So you see, this is kind of the way this goes for me. I'm looking for the meat in the story.

So then in figure six, we actually get to something which is relevant to the, you know, in other words, it's related to the title of the paper. And that is they have in figure six a map of sites of collection of samples. Okay. So now we're getting somewhere. So they said that they've collected, I think it was 111 samples sites. And so they have a map of North America and sites where the samples were collected. And all of that is good, right? As far as, yes, that's a good figure.

But then it starts to raise some questions. And I'm kind of, you know, since I've done a lot of these kind of like reviewing these kind of papers about science and molecular biology and all that, I look at this very critically and I say, oh, well, okay, so that's where you collected the samples. but how did you collect those samples? It brings up serious questions to me, and that is, you know, was there uniformity of methodology in sample collection? And looking at the paper, it's not clearly stated.

Although they claim that there was uniformity in their sample collection, what I'm talking about here is every single person who's in the field collecting needs to follow a single protocol in sample collection. so that they do not contaminate the samples. So we have to be extremely rigorous about that.

You can introduce variation by collecting small sample size or too big a sample size, right? Or you can introduce contamination. So the extent of contamination is unknown. Potential sources of contamination is unknown. They did say that they washed the samples with ethanol to try to decontaminate them. and in my opinion, that may not be sufficient. Ethanol is used to actually precipitate DNA. In my opinion, I don't think it's sufficient to clean the samples.

And what we're talking about is washing hair samples with ethanol. And again, the second concern with regard to sample collection here is a chain of sample custody. So that is like, how did you collect samples? And how do you know that the samples are preserved safely from where they're collected all the way to the laboratory where they're analyzed? And so that's really essential for believable results, right? And so we don't have any clear evidence that there was a sample custody chain followed. And again, also with regard to whether samples are labeled properly. And the kind of studies that I do, you know, one of the most common mistakes is mislabeling a sample.

for getting to label a sample. That's what happens. Okay, so I have serious questions about this with regard to this study. And John, can I ask you real quick, and I'll save most of my questions for the end, but I never assume everyone knows what we're talking about. Give me an example of something being mislabeled that was sent to a lab. Okay, so let's say you label a sample, and instead of writing sample 172, you write 112, or you forget to label it completely, right?

You don't label it at all. And so that happens. Sometimes, you know, we get samples that come in and they're mislabeled or they forgot to label a couple of them. And so I'm just guessing what is that sample? Oh, I got you. So for me, you know, what do I do with that sample? I have to throw it out.

Okay? I have to destroy it because it's useless. I have no idea. I have no like a chain of custody. I don't know which sample it was. So this is the problem, okay? This happens. You know, and even in pretty good laboratories, it happens.

But in a case where you're collecting, you have different people collecting samples in different places who may not be well trained to do so. They may forget to label something or they may label it wrong and you, that's what happens. So in the paper, they did talk about that the collectors of the samples also provided their own DNA as a control so that they can do comparison for contamination.

So they did actually do that to try to minimize the chance that the collectors of the samples contaminated DNA. That was actually good. They also used two different DNA laboratories to try to ensure that the results were in agreement. That's good also. So, you know, I definitely have questions about it. they did at least try to mitigate some of the pitfalls as far as sample collection. So figure 7 is basically an analysis of the DNA.

And what this is is something that we call an otoros gel. And so what it is is a way to analyze the DNA by running it in an electrical gradient. It's something that we call electrophoresis. So we run the DNA in this electrical field in this sort of gel. It's just like gelatin, really, this gel material. And we're able to separate the DNA on the basis of its molecular weight. And so this is a way of quality controlling the samples to make sure that you have clean DNA, you know, relatively like, you know, not degraded DNA.

and so I'm looking at their quality controlled gel, and to me it looks very not good. It looks very fuzzy. DNA is not resolved. In other words, it's not clear. It's like a picture that's fuzzy, okay? So the DNA does not look well resolved here. Even what they use for measuring the molecular weights of the DNA,

which we call DNA market. The DNA markers are also fuzzy. So for me, I'm not convinced of a thing regarding DNA quality by the gel that they show in figure 7. Can you kind of explain that, John, because I'm lost on what you're talking about. So when you say gel and fuzzy, what is it that you mean? Yeah, so what it is is, I don't know if you've ever seen, like, if paper chromatography, you ever take a, you ever take a piece of paper and it gets wet? And a piece of paper that gets wet and there's like a die front that runs along with the water as it gets wet.

It's the same kind of principle as far as, you know, these DNA gels. Basically, the DNA runs along in the gel. Did that make sense? It runs along in the gel. And the whole point of these gels is actually to separate the DNA on the basis of its molecular weight. Oh, I got, John. Yeah, heavy DNA at the top, light DNA at the bottom. So I can tell the size of the DNA products by looking at this so-called gel.

It's pretty much a very common technique. It's been used for, oh, more than 50 years now, actually. So there's that. So again, my bottom line on figure 7 is that it's too fuzzy. the samples DNA does not look clean to me. I don't feel like it looks very clean, so I don't

like figure 7. And then on to figure 8. So they have a single microscopy image. So they basically did a microscope section on a slide. And what they're looking at here is a

sample of unknown tissue. And so what I mean by that is it's like some kind of skin or tissue that was collected in the field and it's mounted on a slide and then they have it stained with counterstained so that you can see the structures. There's a couple of problems with this and one of them is they don't have anything labeled as to what the structures are in the picture. okay, that's one thing. The other thing is it's only one picture,

so there's nothing to compare it to. So in other words, there are no controls here. So let's say that this is an unknown piece of tissue from a Sasquatch. How does that compare with a piece of human tissue? I don't know, because they didn't provide a comparison.

That's where the science comes in, because I look at this and I go, oh, maybe that's interesting, but I can't tell. what I'm looking at, the orientation of the sample is unknown, and I have nothing to compare it to. Is it a piece of tissue from a bear or a fox or something? So it really, you know, as an image, it just tells me that they did some microscopy and they saw some tissue.

That's it. Yeah, that makes you wonder why they would leave that out. I mean, it seems like something so important to have in there, because how do you know really what you're looking at? if you're not comparing it to a human, a bear, a fox, you know, whatever. So is the paper more or less saying, like, take our word for it, that sort of thing? Yes. So, I mean, what they are able to say is we have some tissue. Here it is. You know, like, there's some really, maybe some interesting things to look at here.

Like, for example, the thickness of the epidermal layer. So there may be differences in thickness between the epidermal layer between, the putative Sasquatch tissue versus human. It's not that hard to get human tissue to put on a microscopy slide, right? Or you could put some bare tissue on there. At least you could compare and do some quantitative measures to figure out what the, like, the depth of the tissue is. So they, again, kind of like lost opportunity here because they didn't do any of that. And we don't know what we're looking at here.

So that's the problem with figure eight. And at that point, we actually do start getting into some molecular science in the paper. And in this part of the paper, they started looking at mitochondrial sequences. Okay, so basically, I'm not sure if your viewers remember from high school, but the mitochondria has. its own DNA. It has a circular DNA in it. And that's separate from the nucleus. Okay, the nucleus has 23 chromosomes in it, right? The mitochondria has a circular DNA. And you guys remember that the mitochondria is inherited maternally. So that comes from your mother. So everybody, each person's mitochondria are from their mother. So it's an important way to be able to tell inheritance and also relatedness.

And so they took these mitochondrial sequences from these samples and tried to sequence them. And what I mean by sequencing them is that they read the DNA sequence of those mitochondrial DNAs. Now, this is important. Okay, this is very important because the approach that they used to read those sequences was by using what we call primers. to amplify the DNA, which are homologous to human DNA. So let me explain what I'm talking about here. Okay? So, you know, when you do this kind of work, you have to amplify up the DNA.

And the way you do that is by something called polymerase chain reaction, PCR. And so polymerase chain reaction is the way to amplify up DNA. And it doesn't matter what the DNA is. like it could be anything. But you must have primers. These are basically small pieces of DNA that are your starters. They start the reaction, okay? So the primers are specific for a certain piece of DNA.

And what I'm telling you here is that the Ketchum lab did this experiment trying to look at these mitochondrial DNAs. But the way they did it was only looking at human DNA. You see? So the problem with that is that what if, you know, there were really a different sequence that could be like a Sasquatch mitochondrial DNA, you would never see it because all you're looking at is only human DNA. And, of course, their results reflect that. All of the sequences that they found reflect human mitochondrial DNA.

And so what they have in their table two is they have listed the mitochondrial DNA, what we call haplotypes. And the haplotype is basically, it's just kind of like your, kind of like, it's like an identified chromosomal type, you know. And probably the most noteworthy thing about that part of the experiment was just, you know, that they found some evidence of European mitochondrial DNA

and African-American and Native. and Native American, I think. Yeah, so they found those. But once again, my problem with this is this is what we call a biased approach, okay? Because it's kind of like if you only ever wear rose-colored glasses, all you're going to see is rose-colored things, right? So they put on the pair of glasses that allows them to see only human DNA. But if you wanted to discover something new, you have to do it in a non-biased way.

So let me ask you real quick, John. And I understand that the, I understand a little bit about the PCR technique. I'll throw some videos up on the blog that are very simple explanations of what we're talking about. But my understanding of it is, so you have your DNA sample, and then you take DNA primers and you run it through that sample to amplify portions of the DNA. that you want to look at. You mentioned it was biased. What process should they have used to not have such a biased result, in your opinion? Okay. So yeah, that's great. I'm glad you said that. So the approach that are using is what we would call a biased amplification approach. Okay, so they're biased entirely for human mitochondrial sequence, right? The right way to do it,

if you want to discover something novel, is you use unbiased, primers. So that would be random sequences that allow you to amplify unknown DNA. So you have to use that approach. It's the only way to discover something that's novel. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah, what I was going to say, so if I wanted to find a

chimpanzee, I would use chimpanzee primers. And I could come back and say, you know, in the mother's side, it's a chimp is basically what you're saying. That's what they did. Exactly. So you use like, use, if you know what you're looking for, you use primers specific for it. So like chimpanzees primers or, you know, human primers, nobody has a Sasquatch primer, right? As far as we know. So, so the, but that's because the sequences is, you know, not, not known. So could you do it without primers, John? In this situation, would you do it with, I mean, and again, I might be, might be a really stupid question I'm asking,

but if it's unknown, would you even want to use a primer? Well, so you can use, like I said, use these non-biased primers, and what they are is random sequence. And because they're random, they will randomly bind to different locations and start amplification. The point being that it will work. And so you could do it that way. You could also try to directly amplify, you could directly isolate the mitochondrial DNA, although that's pretty tricky. Most of the ways to do it that would be successful would be requiring amplification.

So using non-biased primers, the other term they use in science is universal primer. Okay. I got you. Yeah. So that's it. And this is so common. It's just, it's very typical. And I think the reason why they went and used these human mitochondrial primers is that that's what they have in the laboratory.

because their laboratory is a forensic laboratory. So they're looking at human stuff, right? So they're going to, you know, that's the approach. And I, you know, it's not that everything about that is bad. It's just that you've got to understand that they're missing something. They may be missing something, which is novel. And the other thing is, you know, again, because you're only looking at human, you could be amplifying up contaminants.

And in fact, it's much more likely that they're contaminants. So I hope everybody is starting to understand the idea of PCR in amplification, because this is like the most common tool now. So again, so I think that they really clouded their paper once again, because we're talking about mitochondrial DNA. And they even went so far as to suggest that there was hybridization between human women, human females and Sasquatch, okay? And really, they don't really have any evidence of that. It's just that they detect some human mitochondrial DNA. But that doesn't mean that it's all in the same cell with the other unknown DNA. You just don't know that, okay?

And so they jump to conclusions. It's pretty far-fetched. And you really can't rule out contamination. So that's why I think Table 2 doesn't help us. Okay. So the next part, actually, they turn to look at actually not the mitochondrial DNA, but the nuclear DNA. Okay. And so that's actually kind of somewhat useful.

And so they used an essay, which is called PowerPlex 16, made by a certain company. And basically what it does is it's again PCR, it's amplifying DNA, but it's looking at these, you know, sequences of genes, and they're looking at 13 different genes, and we call them loci. These are 13 different loci in the genome. And what they're looking at is these kind of repetitive sequences. They're called short tandem repeats or STRs. All it is is what we call like, you know, kind of changes from person to person like, you know, the word that we use is polymorphisms. So these are mutational difference from person to person. And so this method is good for tracking differences between person to person.

Once again, it's a method used in a forensic laboratory. So they've listed out a bunch of genes that they use, and one of them is this gene called a melogenin. That experiment worked, and they did some nice results on that. So once again, the problem with the assay here is that it's only looking at human. DNA. You know, it's kind of like the drunk man loses his keys and he goes over and looks

where the light at the bedside table is because that's where the light is. He doesn't look in the dark area. See? You're only looking at one little piece, you know? So once again, with this assay, what you want to use is a

non-biased approach. Once again, universal primer. You want to use a you know, non-reed, like basically non-biased PCR. John, let me ask you real quick, and I apologize. I'm really trying to save my questions for the end, but I have to ask you. Otherwise, I'll forget. So my understanding of it, on the mitochondrial DNA, it came back as human, female mother.

And on the nuclear DNA, it came back as unknown. Did they not use the same primers when they were trying to figure out the nuclear DNA as opposed to the mitochondrial DNA? I don't know if that question's even an intelligent question, but I'm just curious why it would come back unknown. Well, okay, so the primers that they used for this, what they call PowerPlex and also for the sequencing were human primers. So for all of the data that they've shown, they're using human primers. Now, I understand what you're saying, that part of her paper is talking about that some of the DNA sequence was unknown. The point about that, though, is that it's, here's the thing that's weird about it.

Okay, so let me pull up the, okay, yeah, so it's in table four. And so table four is exactly what you're talking about. And actually, we're looking at that mellogen and gene. And so they have some areas of the gene that match human. and then there are other areas where they say unknown. But the thing is we're trusting them that these are good pieces of DNA sequence because I can tell you from my own experience that sometimes you get jumbled up DNA results because it's poor quality sequencing.

And so I'm saying that it's possible that what they're calling unknown is just poor sequence, right? And so what I see from their results is they got, Here's the very important thing that I noticed about it, is that there are areas of this amelogenogenogen gene where they are able to amplify up human, and you see human. But here's the thing, is it's not consistent from sample to sample. If it were really just that the human sequences were interspersed with putative Sasquatch DNA, it should be consistent from individual to individual. But we do not see consistency. In other words, a sample has a slightly different alignment of human versus unknown DNA. So that suggests to me more strongly that it's likely that it's just poor sequencing results.

So some of it's sequenced as human and other parts of it are pretty shabby sequencing. Yeah, I get what you mean, John. I guess it goes back to the core of what we're trying to do or any scientists would try and do is repeat or duplicate the result. And you're saying because it's not consistent, therefore it can't be repeated or duplicated. Exactly. It should be repeatable. And it is not repeatable. And I mean, they've shown it from their samples that it's not repeatable. A lot of what they have shown, and if you look at the table, table four, you'll see that a lot of it shows that the PCR and the sequencing failed. So, you know, you're talking about you must have bad samples if it failed, okay? That's one thing.

And why did it fail? You're probably not using the right primer. That's another possibility, okay? Because what we saw is amplification of some of it with human primers. And then a lot of it didn't work. Maybe more than 50% of the samples, parts of the sample did not amplify. And then the other parts that are calling unknown. But, you know, they did not present the sequences themselves.

because they didn't present the sequence, I can't look at it and say whether or not they're real or they fake or what. So I have no idea what the status of the so-called unknown DNA is. So the other thing I'm going to say about this is they only ever looked at the DNA level. So you can do something which we call basically looking at the product of the sequence, and you can infer what the protein sequence would look like by looking at the DNA. So this is valuable. If you're able to translate the sequence into protein, you can do a protein alignment of the sequences to look for similarity between other organisms, you know, gorilla, chimpanzee, you know, that kind of thing. And of course, unfortunately, they did not do that.

Okay, so, you know, maybe they have sequence. And I've not really, from their paper, we don't see any actual sequence. None of that is actually shown, and they did not show any alignments of the sequences. All they've shown is a table. So it's not very compelling on that part. So, yeah, so, yeah, my conclusion on that one was that, there's no congruity between the different segments that they sequenced. The other thing is I noticed in that table that actually one of their controls failed.

They used human DNA and a big chunk of their control samples. Let's see how many what was. It was, yeah, it was like five out of six of the segments failed. So their own control failed. So what is that? That gives me no confidence that what they showed was correct. And when you say failed, I mean, explain that in, in, Okay, so.

Dummy terms for me. When you say, like, it failed, what does that mean? Yeah, so when, you know, we're talking about, like, amplifying up the DNA, kind of like you're photocopying the DNA, making a thousand copies, you know, or whatever, right? If it worked, you'll get, like, a thousand copies of DNA or more, right? But if it fails, you get little copies, right? you get none. And so you can tell that by just by running the gel and looking at the DNA or, you know, measuring it. So the assay that they use uses like, you know, fluorescent dyes to

identify the products. But it really doesn't matter. The point is unable to detect even the control DNA, the one that's supposed to work. All right. So that's a sign right there. There's no good. So I'm wondering, is that why it came back as unknown because the sequencing failed? And so the quick answer is it's unknown. Is that kind of what's going on? Well, you know, she's actually getting some sequence, right, on the unknowns. But the point here is I happen to know, like I've done enough of the sequencing to know that it's possible to get some pretty jumbled, crappy looking sequence results.

right? And if you don't know any better, you might say, oh, that's unknown sequence. Or it just could be really crappy results because you had dirty DNA. See? I got you. I understand what you're saying. So in a lab setting, if I run through and it's poor sequencing and it comes back as I'm giving everyone the answer, it's unknown, in a lab setting, are those samples now ruined they can never be used again? Well, yeah, the part, well, I mean, I don't know if they have archived more of the DNA or not, but the point is that it's, I'm not convinced that they're truly unknowns. And you see, as a scientist, you're taught to be skeptical on less proven otherwise. You know, I need the evidence.

Show me the evidence and then I'll change my mind, you know? So that's kind of the way that works. So the table 7 is actually looking at DNA isolated from hair samples. And so once again, using a melogenin, which is a nuclear DNA gene that they're following. And then they also looked at some mitochondrial genes, melanchortin, myacin, and something called tap. Okay, so three different genes there. But once again, they're showing the results, and they're saying they're saying, saying that they've identified, you know, the sequence in two out of four of the samples

for the amelogen and four out of the four samples in the mitochondrial. They identified the tap gene, but they don't show any sequence. So I have to trust that they're telling me the truth on that, you know. So that's, again, that doesn't help me much. In figure 10, they're moving on to something that we call whole genome sequencing, okay, WGS. It's a good method, right, and it's a very high-tech method. It's a, I really, I call it like x-ray vision, right, because you can sequence all of the DNA in a given sample. Now, but the problem, once again, is that they used human primers only.

And so the primers, that means that you're, only going to sequence human DNA. If you had some Sasquatch DNA in there, you'd never know, because you only, only if it actually was, it overlapped a little bit, and who knows if it does or doesn't, you know. So they, they did this kind of sequencing, and what they found was very poor amplification results. The amplification results were about 53% to as good as 89%, but not very good. And I look at the gel that they show on figure 10, and the DNA looks degraded. But once again, I would say this gel on figure 10, it's useless, irrelevant. It doesn't help me

analyze the result. And so, onto the figure, onto the what they're called table 8, and that's just a summary of the amplification products. You know, if I found a little bit, and then they ran the products on a gel. So in figure 11, they run it on a gel. It's not telling us anything on the figure in figure 11. They saw some DNA, but it doesn't tell us what it is. It just tells us, oh, yeah, we got some amplification. There's that. So maybe they got amplification for some of these. We're not sure what those products. are, but once again, keep in mind that the amplification or basically the sequencing that they

used here, whole genome sequencing, was with human primers, not with the so-called universal primer or the non-biased primer. So therefore, there's no way to discover something novel. So that same problem throughout the paper, right? And then in figure 12, figure 12, they're looking at electron microscopy, it doesn't, all it really is is they're looking at the actual DNA that they've isolated from the samples. And what they're looking for is, is the DNA intact or is it broken? And they find it looks like there's some broken DNA, right? But I mean, it's, in my opinion, it's entirely not useful to do this. It's a lot of work just to show some tiny fragments of DNA. It really is not useful at all.

It doesn't convince me whatsoever. And that sounds, maybe that sounds a little funny or maybe, but I look at it and I don't find it useful because normally if you want to analyze the quality of the DNA, you're going to

run it on a gel. You don't need to do electron microscopy on it. Okay, so figure 12, oh sorry, figure 13. And that is basically the sample hair and muscle. Okay, so, you know, I look at that picture and I go,

oh, wow, that could be an interesting sample. It actually has some hair on it and looks like kind of maybe, you know, white or blondeish kind of hair. But once again, they did actually provide a, you know, ruler so we could see the size of it. It looks like it's about four inches long. But again, we have no. comparison with anything else.

It's only one picture. I don't really know what the origin of the sample is. In figure 14, they show a piece of sandpaper on a paper plate, and this is what they're calling a sample trap. I don't know why this is shown as figure 14. If you're going to show that, you want to show it earlier in the paper because that's kind of part of your methodology. I don't find it compelling whatsoever.

It's distracting, not useful. If I'm the reviewer, I would say, take it out, you know. And so you see how this is going? Like, they actually made the paper kind of so choppy that it's hard to even follow. And so in figure 15, they show a rain, like a rain downspout that had been chewed on. So it's got holes in it. and so they use this to collect some samples. And while this is interesting,

it's also once again kind of irrelevant to the topic at hand. So it's distracting, in my opinion. Yeah, and a ringgoder seems like a bad sample to use, a bad example of something to try and get DNA from. I would imagine the thing is contaminated to hell by the time you even get to it. Absolutely. See, Wes, we're going to make you into a scientist.

I'm far from one, man. Good call, though. That's exactly right. So once again, I mean, it's, you know, and you're trying to prove something here. And so the problem is that it, you know, you're throwing in all this other stuff that's not quite relevant. So it's not helping. I would really throw that out. And then figure 16.

in figure 16 is a phylogenetic tree. This is basically like a family tree created from sequence, from what we call nucleotide sequence from their unknowns. And they show the tree of where their unknown fits, which looks like it's close to human according to their sequences, if you believe what result they've recovered using human primer sequence. right? So there's that. Take it for what you will. But again, I'm going to be critical here with regard to they showed sequence and basically this, you know, this tree based on alignment of DNA sequences,

but I want to look at protein alignment sequence. I want to see if you have the translated protein product, I want to see the alignment with, with like chimpanzee protein, like a melogenogen, gene, with orangutang, with gorilla. That's what I would love to see. And more positive controls, negative controls, we didn't have enough of that. So, you know, in essence, I look at this paper as, you know, they may have had good samples. We might never know. It was really a lost opportunity.

So in that sense, it was kind of unfortunate. it. Again, if we were to simplify, the right approach here is to use these non-biased sequencing approaches, non-biased primers. The other thing is we want to look at the protein sequences also. So, yeah, so this, oh, and so here's the other thing is you don't need to make it so complicated, right? So what you want to focus on is one or a few genes, just like choose a melogenes. and choose hemoglobin and analyze those genes and provide an alignment with gorilla, chimpanzee, gibbons, orangutans, humans, and your unknown. That's the right way to set this up.

Keep it simple. This is where they really got off in the weeds because I think they went into this paper thinking that they were going to solve the, you know, this is going to be the big, coup de grace and it will answer everything. And no, actually what you want to do is start really small, you know, and do something with a lot of clarity and simplicity. And if you do it that way, you're much better off. Yeah, can I ask you with regard to proteins that you're talking about in our paper,

is it like a deep level look at DNA? The reason why I ask, I know if you take amino acids and they're like Legos, you put them together and it makes a protein. But for the longest time, science couldn't explain why we grow old and why we actually die because our bodies, it makes no sense. It's never made any sense to science. And it wasn't until recently a scientist came forward and said the reason why we grow old and die. He kind of figured out the code and had to do with the protein. I don't want to regurgitate what he said because I'll sound like a moron if I try to. But with regard to her paper, When you're talking about proteins, is it that deep level look at the DNA?

Yeah. So what I'm talking about there is you can use the information directly from the DNA, which we call the sequence of the DNA. So as you might be aware, the DNA has four bases. It's AG, C, and T. Those are the DNA bases, right? So the actual sequence of the DNA codes for a protein. okay so we can use that sequence to in the computer translated into protein sequence and so now i can take the protein sequence you know methionine asperaging lysine glutamine we could take the sequence

and i can use this the protein the basically translated protein sequence to align with other sequences like, let's say, the same thing in Gorilla, Gibbon, you know, D.C., right? So, in other words, the DNA can be used itself to create the translated product of the, the putative translated product of the protein, you see? And so she did not do that. And because she didn't do that, we can't really analyze it. But as far as what you said about aging, you know, Yeah, what happens with your proteins is they do oxidize. You know, they get old. They, you know, they become oxidized and they decay.

You know, that's what happens to them. And so you want to eat your vegetables. Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating when I was watching a scientist talk about it. You know, he was saying that's why they don't, they stop. It's kind of like when you get a cut. What happens when you get a cut? Your body repairs itself.

And he was saying over time that the body stops repairing itself. and stop creating new cells. It's a long thing to go into. But I found it fascinating that scientists actually kind of have to figure it out why we grow old and die. Yes.

And that's pretty much it for the paper, isn't it? Yeah, that is it. Can I ask you about the hair in the paper? Was there anything unique about the hair? I realize it was a jumble mess, but was there anything unique about the hair she was showing in the paper compared to like human hair?

Yeah, I'm just going to pull it up here and look at it again. Yeah, the human hair has more of a scaly appearance to it on the surface, right? And so we see the unknown hair. You know, it has, you know, like an inner, like an inner shaft or like inner part to it. Medulla, I guess. So it does have it. It looks like it has different features, right? So you could say that much, but again, my criticism here would be you have a perfect opportunity here with this unknown hair to line it up with a bunch of other primate hair samples.

Why in the world wouldn't you do that? So you go to the zoo and get some gorilla hair samples, right? And you could do that, and it would make the paper so much better. That's why that's my criticism of it. Yeah, and that actually makes a lot of sense. And I really appreciate you going over the paper. I actually understand the paper way more than I did before. And for the audience, some people are getting lost on some of the different terms.

Go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com. I'm going to throw up a couple really simple, quick videos to kind of give you an idea of what John's talking about. Let me ask you, John. So I understand why science didn't really jump on board and, welcome this with open arms now that you've gone through it and kind of picked it apart. My question, though, is the other lab she sent it to that came back with the same results, were they using, they must have been using the same process that she was using? They had to. They had to use exactly what procedure she prescribed, because that's the only

way to make it consistent. So, you know, I think there was an attempt to try to keep their it results consistent. And you know what's funny because I was looking up in other papers to see what they had said about this paper. And I happened to see exactly my same criticism that they did not use non-biased sequencing. So I might have said before when we talked over the phone that, you know, this also, I kind of think it hurts the feel too again because there's always this feeling of like this thing keeps on falling flat.

You know, this story keeps on getting, you know, buried. And so it's too bad. I mean, if at least somebody would come out with some good-looking data, then it would be, it might be good. Yeah, I get what you mean. Instead of trying to shotgun and answer for everyone, more care should have been taken. And I completely get that.

You know, one of the questions I wanted to ask you was, I think it was a Monster Quest. Dr. Meldrum, the cabin that got attacked up in Canada. And I can't remember if it was Dr. Meldrum or the homeowner. They put down a piece of board and had nails coming up out of the board. And the creature had actually stepped on it. And so they had gotten DNA from the blood and the tissue that were on the screws that it stepped on.

And it was weird. It went up to a lab and they basically came back and said unknown primate, which is odd. They think you'd have more tooth than that. But anyway, my question is, so if I'm out there and I get a piece of a sample that I want to be checked, I want someone to do DNA on it, and let's say I screw up, I'm touching it, I'm contaminating it. And I know you said ethanol isn't really what you would use to clean the sample, but is there a way to, let's say I bring a sample, I screw it up, I contaminate it. Can they wash my DNA from that sample? Well, let me be clear about that. So what we're talking about is actually washing the outside of the sample.

So if it's a piece of hair, you can wash the outside of the hair sample. And then also, if it's a piece of tissue, you might be able to wash the outside of the tissue. But like I said, the problem that I see with that is that ethanol is also used to actually, to, to, to aggregate DNA, to like help isolate DNA. So I'm just saying that I don't think that it would really sufficiently wash the sample. And I know this from some experience because the kind of work that I do, you know, amplifying human sequences from human samples, it's very easy to get some contamination, which you can amplify by PCR. So it's so easy.

contamination. And we've even in the laboratory, we've seen situations where you can get contamination from the air. You know, if somebody's talking and they're not wearing a mask, they're talking, then sometimes they can contaminate a sample and their own DNA ends up in the sample, see? I got you. So even using ethanol, you could be amplifying my DNA in that sample. Exactly. So that's the problem with it. And, you know, It's just not sufficient. And because of the fact that they only really amplified human DNA in this study, you know, it really, as far as unique DNA, it doesn't really make the point.

And if I'm going in on something like this about unique sequences, I want to look primarily at the unique sequences. And I'm going to, what I want to do, here's another really important point, I want to look at the polymorphisms. In other words, the single nucleotide changes that there are between the human hemoglobin gene and the, let's say, like, unknown Sasquatch DNA, let's say, or like that, the same thing for chimpanzee. So we want to look at the single base changes, and that's what tells us whether things are really related or not, see, are the polymorphisms the same or. different. So this is the nuance that they need to look at and that was not done or they didn't show any results like that. It's kind of a shame really because I think even doing this type of science

cost a fortune, doesn't it? Well, yeah, it is expensive. But the good thing is that we have tremendously better sequencing now than we had even like five or ten years ago. We have methods that are really excellent now for sequencing. So if anybody really did it the right way, you could maybe find something. And that's where we get to the part about, like, is the public ready to know this? You know what I mean?

And would they still not believe it? And I think failed studies like this one, they don't help things with regard to, you know, preparing people to believe in this phenomenon. Yeah, and I'm really glad that you looked at it, John. You know, and for the audience, you don't have a hidden agenda. It's not like Melba owes you money. And so you're going to come on here and talk about her paper. You know, you looked at it, very neutral, looked at it just from your background. And I appreciate it a lot because, you know, I've always kind of stuck up for Melba

because most of the arguments I hear about the paper or people just don't like Melba, you know, because they can't talk on the level of what you're talking about, John, and explain it. So it's more or less like, Melba's crazy. Well, I always struggled with that because it's like, you know, there's a lot of people I don't like. But if their science is right, I have to accept it. But in this situation, the science is wrong. And, you know, I don't know her. And I think here's my assumption is that she's a very good forensic scientist.

But the issues here with the paper relate to it's more than forensic science that needs to be done to analyze these samples. So this is the issue here. But, you know, like I said, I mean, there was potential here, this potential, right? So that's kind of what we're left with. Yeah, you know, DNA is kind of a tricky thing. It's, I've struggled with DNA and I'll tell you why. You know, it seems like everything on this planet, we're all made of the same. genetic material. I always have the smart-ass remark that, you know, a banana is 50% of our DNA.

We share the same DNA. And so, I mean, and I'm being more of a wise-ass when I say that. But there's so many problems with DNA. There's so many issues, roadblocks that you can run into with DNA. And one thing I will say, I always give Bigfoot researchers crap. But one thing I will, that does impress me is they do try. They do try to go out. and collect samples in a scientific way. They're trying. Now, does it cut it on a scientific level? No.

On an amateur level, it's impressive, some of them. But, you know, my question to you is, do you think this will ever be proven just through DNA? So, you know, it's a really good point. I mean, so would DNA be sufficient? And, you know, what you were saying about relatedness between, you know, let's say humans and chimpanzees. That's true that there's a lot of relatedness even between all mammals.

We even know sequences similar between mice and humans, right? But there are these differences, okay? And these are these polymorphisms, which we can point to, which are basically markers for evolution over time. So this is what scientists look at to see the differences between organisms. We know that chimpanzees have 99% similar DNA to us, but they have very important mutational differences. And these are differences in these master control genes, which control a lot of developmental things, right?

So the point is that this is why even small, single, base pair changes are informative. That's why I was saying, I mean, you got to keep it simple. Choose a gene that you want to look at. Look at the mutations in your unknown versus human versus gorilla versus chimpanzee. Keep it simple. And if you look at the polymorphisms, that will lead you to some maybe informative things about the relatedness. So the answer to answer my question is, yeah, you could do a lot. But I think on more of like the philosophical and the political level, you know, whether or not the public is ready to understand this or to get to wrap their minds around it is another thing, you know. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

And, you know, as far as samples go, I was always under the impression that hair is not a great sample to turn in for DNA. There's only so much you can do with it. And so, and I could be wrong. But if people are, what's kind of the best samples, if you were to come across evidence in the wood, some, you know, and then Scott's another one. I don't think Scott is a great sample for creating DNA. I could be wrong again on that. But as far as samples go, what kind of samples would you encourage people to get, obviously, outside of cutting a head off one? Right.

So that's a great question. So skin sample, tissue sample, blood sample, even saliva would be good. Hair is pretty good. It's like my understanding is it's a follicle. If you get the follicle, then that'll work. Even the hair itself can work. You know, a little bit tougher to extract that DNA though. But, you know, the kind of stuff that my lab does is, you know, we do a lot of like

skin samples and you know we're able to amplify up a gene with only in some cases seven copies of the DNA which is incredible right that's like a very small amount of DNA but we're able to amplify it so would you encourage uh bigfoot researchers to stop collecting poop in the freezer how much poop do you need anyway right yeah i've talked to some of these guys man they have like six, seven bags of, I'm like, yeah, I, you know, you don't have a wife. I get it. You can get away with that. Once you get a wife, there's no way you're getting away with that. Yeah, right. Well, what if the freezer breaks down? Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I guess the thing is, well, I don't, maybe keep it, but, you know, you got to know what to do with it after you collect it, right?

I mean, there's a lot of science you could do with it without actually doing DNA. I mean, you can, you can look at the, what's in there. You know what I mean? There's a lot of people that do analyze, you know, animal poop for, you know, what the organisms, what the animals are eating and, like, what kind of parasites they have, right? What kind of bacteria they have? You know, there's a bunch of science involved with that, you know? I guess so. I think the moment I start digging through poop to find out what these things are eating, I'm going to be questioning what I'm doing with my life, but I get what you're saying. You know, John, I really appreciate you coming on and, you know, with your background and your education, explaining this paper,

because I've always, I don't think anyone's ever sat down and really explain this paper. Maybe they have, and I just haven't heard it, that could be possible too as well. But I really appreciate the fact that you would take the time to kind of explain this paper to, you know, a moron like me. So thank you so much, man, for coming on and taking the time. I'm happy to do it, and it was very interesting. And I also really want to thank you for everything that you do. I mean, you know, especially that you help people through these traumatic experiences without prejudice or judgment.

And I think that's really important. You're kind of like the cryptotherapist, you know, having people, asking people, how tall was that hairy monster that you saw? I really, I think that's really good that you're doing that. Honestly, it's really helping people. And also, you're such a modest guy, too. I mean, everybody says that about you. So you're really doing a great service for your listeners. And, you know, if I can do anything to help support the channel, you know, I'd be happy to do that.

I mean, one thing I wanted to mention is I want your listeners to buy some merch, you know, to keep the channel running. I think that's the least we can do. Anyway, so, yeah, I really appreciate it. It was fun to do the, the, uh, show. Yeah, man, I appreciate your time and people don't have to go buy merch, but thank you for the kind words. And thanks again, John. Yep, you bet. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatchronicles.com. If you get a chance, check out Sasquatchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows.

Until next time, everyone. Oh.