Photo of an unidentified animal the Bigfoot Research Organization claims is a “juvenile Sasquatch” “Jacobs Photos” . . Retrieved 2009-09-16 . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well, urban legend has it that Sasquatch aka American BigFoot, the name given to an ape-like creature apparently inhabits forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America and it has been some decades that people have been arguing about its reality. Last year in September 2012, Dr. Melba S. Ketchum announced with some big fanfare that she and her team from DNA Diagnostics Inc. have sequenced the genome (mitochondrial and nuclear) of sasquatch from all the alleged samples people have collected from some time. However, instead just verifying that Sasquatch is nothing but an urban legend they issued this press release:
“Our study has sequenced 20 whole mitochondrial genomes and utilized next generation sequencing to obtain 3 whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples. The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to modern Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, unknown hominin related to Homo sapiens and other primate species. Our data indicate that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.
Hominins are members of the taxonomic grouping Hominini, which includes all members of the genus Homo. Genetic testing has already ruled out Homo neanderthalis and the Denisova hominin as contributors to Sasquatch mtDNA or nuDNA. “The male progenitor that contributed the unknown sequence to this hybrid is unique as its DNA is more distantly removed from humans than other recently discovered hominins like the Denisovan individual,” explains Ketchum.
“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is incredibly novel and not at all what we had expected. While it has human nuclear DNA within its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We describe it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence. Further study is needed and is ongoing to better characterize and understand Sasquatch nuclear DNA.”
So, one would immediately say -Yay science proved it exists, right? The answer however will be a big emphatic NO. The prime reason is that science doen’t work on hearsay but on repeatable, well-designed experiments with no ambiguity in either the way its conducted or how samples are gathered. And this is where this so called genetic evidence fails big time.
One of the biggest red flags to this whole study is: How did she get her samples? After all, if she was working from a well-reliable source, that alone might be a big sensation because no physical evidence of Bigfoot exists on record. As it turns out, Dr. Ketchum says her DNA sample was obtained from a blueberry bagel left in the backyard of a Michigan home that, according to the owner, sees regular visits from Sasquatch creatures.
And if the sample gathering itself is in doubt, then how can anyone believe the results ? Another face-palm statement: Fully human mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from your mother, so she assumes that all Sasquatches had human women as relatively recent ancestors, but at the same time, the nuclear DNA is some bizarre menagerie that includes non-ape sequences? And frankly speaking, any biology student would tell you its hogwash !!
But all of this was from last year, and ever since then she has been trying to publish it in a scientific journal and recent news suggests that she has been unable to clear the peer-review stage. So, in response to this, she has decided to start over – recollect samples, do the whole sequencing again, and re-interpret the results…..Naaaaaaa, thats what any other scientist would have done. What she has done is to buy a journal !! The Journal of Cosmology was available she bought it and renamed it to De Novo. One glance at the website and you are reminded of your art school classes in grade 8. The icons are mis-matched, the colour is horrid and the overall design is completely unprofessional. PZ Myers in is blog Pharyngula has it better:
Then she came out with a special edition. It’s Volume 1, Issue 1. It contains precisely one paper, hers.
You should be laughing by this point.
The online journal is a mess. The layout is funky-ugly, it’s difficult to figure out how to actually get to the paper, and when you navigate to it, it’s got a wretched little “Buy Now” button imbedded in a couple of intersecting blocks of color in a hideous table-like layout. It reminds be of the esthetics of JoC.
Anyway, it’s $30 to buy a paper so bad they had to build a custom journal around it to get it published. Not interested.
So, seeing all this mess i wish to bid adieu to Sasquatch !! May it continue to relive in our science fiction movies…
- Sasquatch is ill-served, Pharygula, 2013.
- What I really want to see is the DNA sequence of an alien Grey, Pharyngula, 2012.
- Bigfoot in popular culture, Wikipedia.
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Is this Bigfoot … or is it a bear with bad skin?, Daily Mail, 2007.
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