Excuse me but we were talking about obtaining primate DNA. I've worked with primates before and although I did not perform the actual DNA testing to determine the genetic line of the individuals being tested, each test was accomplished by drawing a blood sample from the subject.
I don't believe you. If you'd done DNA work you'd know that blood degrades. If you were drawing blood from a specimen directly, sure, it's an okay way to do it--not fantastic by any means (cheek swabs, for example, would be FAR superior), but drawing blood is easy.
Here's the thing, though: if these researchers were drawing blood from a specimen directly
they would have a specimen. This entire conversation would be pointless; they coulud simply photograph the specimen and be done with it. They haven't, so any alleged experience you have with sampling primate DNA is irrelevant here. We're not talking about sampling a chimp ina zoo; we're talking about obtaining DNA from an unknown source with unknown contamination and degredation.
There were and are other informations that can be gleened from such samples, but DNA test samples were never taken from the fecal material, only the blood.
This is a lie. I've demonstrated that they are. You can say that YOU'VE never done it, but to say it's never done is to reject clear-cut scientific evidence. This, by the way, is why I don't believe you've done any research. Again, your refusal to actually acknowledge scientific data has destroyed your credibility. Your failure to apply basic scientific analysis to the problem at hand further erodes any remaining shreds of it.
When you actually care to treat this as a scientific discussion, let me know. I'm not going to waste further time on you otherwise. You obviously are not willing to admit errors, even when they are conclusively demonstrated to be errors, and there's no point talking to people like that.
LTC8K6 said:
I think that taking bigfoot seriously enough to devote valuable resources to it, hanging around with prominent footers, being on a bigfoot "team", etc., are all reasons to question a scientist's objectivity.
It's actually pretty sad to see scientists start down that road. I hope Sykes gets off the bus in time.
Not necessarily. Bigfoot believers have a lot of money, and the complete lack of results doesn't cause them to cut funding the way it does for the NSF or other grant-issuing organizations. That means that, if you're careful, you can use them to fund research that would otherwise go undone. I still like the idea of training a hoard of believers to identify mammal fossils and have them pay to volunteer at museums, identifying their collections (with quarterly refresher courses, $150 or three easy payments of $50/month!). They're happy, because they're looking for bigfoot; the museums are happy, because someone's sorting their collections; I'm happy, because I'm filthy stinking rich.