Mary Rodwell’s 3,000 Cases Suggest Ongoing Genetic Manipulation |423|

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Mary Rodwell’s 3,000 Cases Suggest Ongoing Genetic Manipulation |423|
by Alex Tsakiris | Aug 13 | Others
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Mary Rodwell is a trained therapist who’s 3,000+ cases suggest an ongoing genetic manipulation experiment.
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photo by: Skeptiko
Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris. Now, today I know is going to be a tough show for a lot of people, because even if I tell you that during the more than six years I’ve known returning guest Mary Rodwell, that I’ve always found her to be among the most forthright, open, honest researchers in the UFO and the ET non-human intelligence contact kind of field, that’s not going to amount to much. And even if I told you, which I will, that Mary has always been among the first people to look for a scientific understanding of what she does, for academic verification of what she does, and that that’s why she collaborated with the folks from the FREE Group to compile the first academic survey of contact experience. And even if I told you that she’s world-renowned and recognized as an expert in this field and that she’s authored books, like the one you can see on the screen, The New Human: Awakening to our Cosmic Heritage. I can tell you all that stuff and in a lot of ways it just isn’t going to matter, because unfortunately the result of Mary’s research, the inevitable conclusion that she’s come to is really going to shake you to your core. It shakes me to my core still and I’ve had all of this time to marinade in it and talk with her and interview her multiple times and debate with David Jacobson, all the rest of it that we’ve done, it’s just hard stuff to take. But if anything, that’s what gives me even more respect for this woman and this amazing researcher who has stuck by her guns, stuck by her methodology and year after year has just compiled more and more evidence of this rather remarkable astonishing story that we are really part of a cosmic heritage and part of a genetic engineering, ongoing genetic engineering project that we’re really not in control of. So Mary, it is so great to talk to you again and welcome you back and thanks for joining me.
Mary Rodwell: [00:02:36] Alex it’s always a pleasure. What can I say and thank you for the intro. You’re already preparing people to have their paradigm just slightly shaken and stirred.
 
I'm really not as keen on this forum as I once was and I'm not sure why I even know so many of your political affiliations (how is that relevant to the topics we discuss here?), but oh boy oh boy, if Mary Rodwell is the guest I would looooooove to get notified on every comment in this thread. Let em rip! I'll go finish the interview now.
 
It would be interesting if she could relate sociological trends to what her research is showing and make testable predictions about future trends.

As far as fixing human DNA, I am all for it. A glance at the daily news is enough to tell you it needs major renovation.

I have little doubt humans are a created species because all species were created. Someone had do to it, why not space aliens? You would need entities that can interact with the physical universe but are not stuck around one planet.

I'm not sure it is possible for us to tell who are the good aliens and who are the bad aliens, or if their interventions are good or bad. You have to understand things from the point of view of the spirit realm to really understand what is happening on the earth plane. What might not seem to be in your personal interest might be for a higher good we know nothing about and cannot understand. Just the fact that we agree to incarnate here where there is so much suffering shows there is a huge difference in perspective about what is good for us in the spirit realm compared to the physical realm.

I think some kind of intervention in our civilization is necessary because human civilization is degenerating. People today don't understand the history of why things are they way they are and in their ignorance they want to change things that will result in us repeating the forgotten horrors of the past.

Adam MacLeod wrote in Undoing the Dis-Education of Millennials
http://newbostonpost.com/2017/11/09/undoing-the-dis-education-of-millennials/

I teach in a law school. For several years now my students have been mostly Millennials. Contrary to stereotype, I have found that the vast majority of them want to learn. But true to stereotype, I increasingly find that most of them cannot think, don’t know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.

This is from a video that is no longer on youtube...
4:25
Camille Paglia: “It’s really started at the level of public school education. I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public school education in the classroom.”
...
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”

https://www.nbc26.com/news/national...ok-at-effects-of-cell-phones-on-kids-national
Study on effects of cell phones on kids reveals stunning results
Doctor says internet addiction is like heroin

http://nypost.com/2016/06/18/our-cellphones-are-killing-us/
A few years after Steve Jobs died, reporter Nick Bilton revealed that the Apple co-founder wouldn’t let his own children use the iPad.
...
“We have seen the dangers of technology firsthand,” then-Wired editor Chris Anderson said. “I’ve seen it in myself. I don’t want to see that happen to my kids.”

Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, said
https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-2508036343.html
... The thought process that went into building these applications ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you more likes and comments.
It's a social-validation feedback loop it's like exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators - it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people - understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
...
God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.

These Tech Insiders Are Shielding Their Children From The Technology They Work With
https://www.sciencealert.com/tech-insiders-are-shielding-their-children-from-the-tech-they-work-with
 
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Although Mary's research with over 3500 people is extensive, the number is not large enough for the Earthbound, ignorant masses of millions to begin to believe such people are not crazy. But very slowly this is changing as more and more are having encounters with the unexplainable. One man was able to begin a religion based on his encounter with beings he called Elohim. Have you ever heard of the Raelians?
 
The data are interesting and I am open minded to what she describes, but as someone who worked for five years in genome research I cringed at her ignorance of the science - it does her no service. Francis Crick (the "co-founder of DNA", whatever that means) was absolutely not a believer in intelligent design, as the full quote at https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Francis_Crick makes clear (the first part is often mined by creationists to give the opposite impression, so perhaps she only saw that). And I don't know what she meant by the 223 genes that occur in homo sapiens and no other species. That's pretty unlikely, if only on the grounds that our genome is 99% identical to chimpanzee and 223 genes would be 1% of our genome. There was a claim in the original human genome sequence paper in 2001 that 223 genes appeared to have been acquired by horizontal transfer from bacteria (i.e. from other species) but even that now appears highly dubious (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1214-2). And the idea that the vast majority of our genome is "junk DNA" and that nobody knows what it does is decades out of date - there is now considerable understanding of the roles of much of what used to be seen as "junk", see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA. These things are not hard to check, and if she's going to make claims about genetics she needs to do her homework to be taken seriously by people with some knowledge of the science.
 
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The data are interesting and I am open minded to what she describes, but as someone who worked for five years in genome research I cringed at her ignorance of the science - it does her no service. Francis Crick (the "co-founder of DNA", whatever that means) was absolutely not a believer in intelligent design, as the full quote at https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Francis_Crick makes clear (the first part is often mined by creationists to give the opposite impression, so perhaps she only saw that). And I don't know what she meant by the 223 genes that occur in homo sapiens and no other species. That's pretty unlikely, if only on the grounds that our genome is 99% identical to chimpanzee and 223 genes would be 1% of our genome. There was a claim in the original human genome sequence paper in 2001 that 223 genes appeared to have been acquired by horizontal transfer from bacteria (i.e. from other species) but even that now appears highly dubious (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1214-2). And the idea that the vast majority of our genome is "junk DNA" and that nobody knows what it does is decades out of date - there is now considerable understanding of the roles of much of what used to be seen as "junk", see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA. These things are not hard to check, and if she's going to make claims about genetics she needs to do her homework to be taken seriously by people with some knowledge of the science.

Welcome to the forum David!

I agree, Mary seemed disappointingly unaware with those comment about junk DNA. However, T.E.S has raised the issue of those extra genes, here:

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/behes-argument-in-darwin-devolved.4317/page-5

It sounds as though you may have quite a bit to say on that thread in general. I read Michael Behe's book and started that thread as a result because I think he has a very strong argument that simply rules out macro evolution by natural selection.

David
 
If we are the result of alien experimentation (I don’t subscribe to this idea but certainly do not rule it out), an interesting question would be, “how does this square and harmonize with the metaphysical information we get from channeled sources, NDEs, OBEs, religious saints and sages etc, which all tell us about our purpose here?”

On one hand, according to many metaphysical sources, we are here to love, grow, experience and learn. Would these “creator aliens” be in line with this purpose? Or is the aforementioned purpose unrelated to the creator aliens purpose? It seems strange to me that our creators (creators of our physical body of course) might have created us though some ulterior motive, while we (spiritually inclined folk) are totally engaged in something different which has nothing to do with our creators purpose. OR, perhaps our purposes are more closely linked than we would think.

Similarly one could ponder the metaphysical implications and purpose of the domesticated dog. We separately wonder what the spiritual purpose of a dog might be while at the same time we engineer them for a specific purpose of our own. But (those of us who spiritually aware) even if we breed a dog for a certain purpose of our own, we would likely simultaneously hold the idea that the dog has its own metaphysical right, implication, and purpose of existence which is separate from our implied physical purpose. But again, maybe these two separate purposes are more linked than I would think.

I’m imagining a scenario where aliens are creating physical vehicles for some unknown purpose. And on top of it I am imagining conscious beings saying, “these creatures (what we call aliens) are creating these physical vessels for some purpose. Let’s incarnate into these physical bodies which they are creating (for whatever purpose) so that we may learn, grow, and experience.” That seems odd to me. But if Mary is right, and all the metaphysical data we got from experiencers and sages alike are right, there’s may be some truth to this scenario.

Going to listen to the interview now
 
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The data are interesting and I am open minded to what she describes, but as someone who worked for five years in genome research I cringed at her ignorance of the science - it does her no service. Francis Crick (the "co-founder of DNA", whatever that means) was absolutely not a believer in intelligent design, as the full quote at https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Francis_Crick makes clear (the first part is often mined by creationists to give the opposite impression, so perhaps she only saw that). And I don't know what she meant by the 223 genes that occur in homo sapiens and no other species. That's pretty unlikely, if only on the grounds that our genome is 99% identical to chimpanzee and 223 genes would be 1% of our genome. There was a claim in the original human genome sequence paper in 2001 that 223 genes appeared to have been acquired by horizontal transfer from bacteria (i.e. from other species) but even that now appears highly dubious (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1214-2). And the idea that the vast majority of our genome is "junk DNA" and that nobody knows what it does is decades out of date - there is now considerable understanding of the roles of much of what used to be seen as "junk", see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_DNA. These things are not hard to check, and if she's going to make claims about genetics she needs to do her homework to be taken seriously by people with some knowledge of the science.

Hmm. First off, there's a difference between creationists and those who believe in ID (incidentally, I wouldn't call myself an IDer; but IMO, quite a lot of what IDers say bears serious consideration). Second, why are geneticists latterly saying that junk DNA (I note the scare quotes you use, almost as if they never ridiculed the idea) isn't a thing? Why did they resist the idea, first put forward by the ID people, that there might be no such thing as junk DNA? I think it's because it didn't fit in with dogma, and now they're attempting to disown the very idea that they ever thought differently.

Thirdly, the chimp genome probably isn't 99% similar the human genome (and some geneticists now admit this, though aren't falling over themselves to disabuse the general population about it). For a discussion of this, listen to the podcast interview of Ann Gauger here, and if you object to something from the Discovery Institute, go search the web for non-IDer estimates of 96% and less -- you will find them with a little perseverance. Ann Gauger herself estimates around 92% similarity. The other related podcasts to this can be found, in order, here, here and here, if anyone's interested.

Whatever the precise percentage is, it does indeed appear there's quite a lot of similarity in the genomes of chimps and humans, but then there are varying degrees of similarity between even relatively primitive organisms and humans:

A study discovered that about 60 percent of genes are conserved between fruit flies and humans, meaning that the two organisms appear to share a core set of genes. Two-thirds of human genes known to be involved in cancer have counterparts in the fruit fly.

-- You will find many other interesting facts and figures in the article.

Only a few cranks (and I'm not one of them) are denying genomic similarities, or asserting that evolution doesn't occur, at least in the sense of progressive change over time; but that doesn't say much about how evolution has occurred.

The fact that there are similarities doesn't prove Darwinistic random mutation coupled with natural selection is responsible for profound phenotypic differences between taxa (macro-evolution), at any rate much above the level of genus. It might well be responsible for differences at or below that level (micro-evolution), but not, I would suggest, above it. We simply don't know how the many body plans of different kinds of organisms came about, and I think it's hubristic to suggest we do.

With all our accumulated knowledge and expertise in non-natural, purposive selection (e.g. in cattle, dogs and cats), plus Lenski's long-term experiment with 66,000 (as of 2016) generations of E. coli bacteria, we have never succeeded in generating a new species. Indeed, as Michael Behe suggests, it might be that RM+NS only works at lower taxonomic levels through degradation of genes, leading to occasional, accidentally fortuitous, outcomes.

To me, the genome is a way of storing coded information about protein sequencing and various other functions such as for regulatory purposes in cells. Since all cells have things in common that they need to do, it's hardly surprising that there are many similarities between the genomes of organisms that can nonetheless lead to widely varying phenotypic expressions.

Whatever the agency of macro-evolution is, it appears to me to be able to build on (has "memory" of) what has gone before, and to that extent, I believe that intelligence in some way, shape or form is involved in it. In my view, it's silly to think that RM+NS could have had the dominant role to play in that. And I'm not alone, witness what the The Third Way of evolution people have to say. They bend over backwards to dissociate themselves from Intelligent Design, but can't resist using the word intelligence in some of their book blurbs.

Now: if intelligence in any form is involved, then how that intelligence appears to us could vary. As most people here probably know, I'm primarily an objective Idealist, that is, I believe there is such as thing as objective reality (comprised of noumena), but that we can only observe it in ways that are circumscribed by our perceptive capacities. There's a significant number of phenomena (how certain noumena appear to perception) that we can all agree on, because we observe them in closely similar ways.

That said, there may be certain noumena that only some people (albeit sometimes most) can observe (a very simple example is a clear distinction between red and green). It may be that there are some noumena that can only be observed by those with certain perceptive capacities. They may be quite similar in appearance to different people, or quite dissimilar. What one person perceives as an intelligent spirit may be interpreted as an intelligent alien by another, and so on.

How they are perceived may, at least in part, be influenced by conditioning or culture -- and yes, sometimes what is perceived may sometimes be illusory. But I baulk at saying they are always illusory. Some of them may be perceptual representations of genuinely existent noumena. But whatever they are, because they don't fit in with culturally conditioned understandings, interpretation within such frameworks becomes necessary.

And, this may lead to more or less literal readings of what people say they can perceive, together with conflation with characteristics of literally-taken facts, beliefs or opinions about the things perceived. If people say they perceive aliens, the latter are often perceived to be humanoid in form, fly in spaceships, etc. Even nuts-and-bolts phenomena such as a purported piece of a crashed spaceship is open to interpretation.

That there is something that people can perceive, even sometimes many people (including sensory evidence in the form of photographs and motion pictures), seems to me to be very likely, and nowadays even governments and mass media acknowledge this. So I don't think that Mary Rodwell could be taken to task for taking seriously the reports of experiencers, so much as for taking them too literally. As Donald Hoffman says: you needn't take the train bearing down on you literally, but you'd better take it seriously.

So it's not that I need to be convinced about the reality of all the things she researches; rather, if there's anything to question, it's her interpretation -- not that my interpretation would necessarily be any better.
 
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Have only started the interview but there seems to be an issue here which may not have been directly addressed... what is the importance of the physical body as compared with the soul?
I am assuming that we have both and that they have different origins. And that genes apply only to the first.
 
Hmm. First off, there's a difference between creationists and those who believe in ID (incidentally, I wouldn't call myself an IDer; but IMO, quite a lot of what IDers say bears serious consideration).

Yes - and I think this is worth saying even more clearly. Hardly anyone here is a Christian in the conventional sense, and I don't think any are Fundamentalist Christians. However, even the Discovery Institute has members who are atheist or agnostic. The opponents of ID want to pretend that consciousness/intelligence was involved in the creation and development of life is something that only religious fundamentalist believe.

It isn't - ID research is basically about exploring the limits of evolution by Natural Selection(NS). Its proponents do research (for example) to determine the sensitivity of proteins to the replacement of one or more amino acid residues This is crucial because NS can only operate when a protein is close enough to a potential target that it shows at least some useful function - there has to be a functionality gradient. Such a project involves a lot of painstaking research, but the results look desperately unpromising for evolution by NS.
The data are interesting and I am open minded to what she describes, but as someone who worked for five years in genome research I cringed at her ignorance of the science - it does her no service.
Please remember that Alex interviews a whole range of people, and they don't always come out as well as one might hope. Also, people who make paranormal claims don't usually know much science, but that does not immediately devalue what they are trying to say.

I'd very much like Alex to interview someone from the DI - these people are absolutely fascinating. In the meantime, David C, I'd strongly recommend this debate between two prominent ID researchers and two critics of their work:


If you can find serious fault with what Stephen Meyer or Richard Sternberg have to say in this discussion, that would be really interesting, faulting someone like Mary Rodwell on her grasp of science is like training to climb Everest by walking up and down the stairs a few times!

Finally, it is worth pointing out that conventional evolutionists more or less expected junk DNA, and they (I think) coined the term. It was supposed to be a strong argument against ID and for RM+NS - the latter, would be expected to generate a huge clutter of useless DNA. Perhaps it is a bit unfair to criticise Mary for picking up the once orthodox concept of junk DNA.

David
 
I have to respect Mary's enthusiasm for her cause, and I know she claims her approach is 'scientific', but she also said she didn't interpret - so she takes her informants at face value, so it seems. Here is my first problem. Science is not only collecting data, but interpreting it. By 'not interpreting; she is interpreting - and not in a useful way.

I don't pretend to know squat about genetics. It is way too complex a field these days, so I can't critique Mary's claims or remarks on the subject. I don't think her assertions are invalid in a general sense. I do accept that humans are evolving, and I do believe there is a metaphysical ground to DNA, which is being 'tweaked'. But, for me, Mary made what I'd call a 'materialist's error' in that she seemed to equate DNA and spirit - as if the capacity to express 'powers' has a physiological foundation and not a spirit one. This may simply be a lack of precision - but its not 'scientific'. She did not back this claim up.

The stuff about 'star children' I get it, but let's put that in perspective. A 77 year old friend of mine insists she is from X, and I do believe her for complex reasons I won't go into detail here. So its nothing new. What may be new is that more kids are claiming this, but given this is maybe the first time this kind inquiry has been undertaken we really can't say that there is an increase - there is no baseline measure.

I have had 'abduction' experiences, I have written in several scripts that were unknown and which came upon me unbidden. So my interest in Mary is predicated upon personal experiences she describes. While I think she is on to something, she has, I believe, a duty to interpret.

As an adjunct to my day job I chair a Disability Employee Network for a substantial organisation. I can attest to the remarkable quality of character that is crafted by living with a disability. There is no doubt that the expansion of the movement to accommodate disability has a potent transformative impact on our cultures. As part of some spiritual plan? Maybe.

But Mary talks about kids with ADHD and who are on the ASD as if her observations are case closed. The reality is (because I have worked 18 years in disability services administration I think I can say this) that these kids also bring deeply challenging, disruptive and destructive potentials as well. It may be that this reflects a divine intent to transform families (those at ground zero) and communities by requiring that we care for these people. I am okay with that. But what I hear from Mary is more puppies and sunshine. She can't say its only the select 'mild' kids with disability who are star children, and those who are nightmares to work with are not. For me, if I accept the idea of a 'contract' of a life before incarnation (which I do) is real, the heroes must be the really hard case. Why the hell would you agree to be born with such a profound level of disability unless it was an act of deep service to humanity?

If I was born now Mary would call me one of her star children. I have had psi experiences since the age of 4, so long as I recall - and I fit a lot of her other descriptors. Maybe she's right. I have less concern with whether she is right than I do with how she conveys her message. If I fit the 'star child' description - its a shit life. I have a nephew with Auspergers. He's smart guy and I like him a lot, but I am not sure he cares. These days he's a carer for his parent. Maybe one day he will be remarkable. Who knows.

I do think Mary is dealing with something very real. People say this stuff to her and she reports it. Maybe she is doing a good service too. But when it comes down to 'sketpical' assessment of what she is on about there are a lot of holes.

I have been reading on claims hybridisation between humans and ET for ages. Apparently its very difficult. It seems to have been going on for a hell of a long time too. If you can rid yourself of the idiocy of Darwin's theory of human evolution and get back to what our culural legacy actually says - humans were created. Somehow the Darwinians have manage to convince us that being more monkey than god is preferable. Pause a moment. That's stupid. We humans are so far beyond primates the idea that we 'evolved' from them, courtesy of a series of environmental and cirucmstantial fortunate accidents has to be the most ludicrous notion - especially when our ancestors say that just ain't so.

Mary is more on the money than it seems she is. She's a messenger who is not as hyped as she thinks she is. She's like the first bloke to turn up in London with a preserved platypus - accused of deception and fraud.

I am okay with the thrust of Mary's message. I entirely get those who are not.
 
Have only started the interview but there seems to be an issue here which may not have been directly addressed... what is the importance of the physical body as compared with the soul?
I am assuming that we have both and that they have different origins. And that genes apply only to the first.

This was the main thrust of my entire post. It becomes really complicated when you begin to think about how multifaceted purpose can be. And it appears that there are “purposes within purposes within purposes.” It’s impossible to make sense of.
 
This was the main thrust of my entire post. It becomes really complicated when you begin to think about how multifaceted purpose can be. And it appears that there are “purposes within purposes within purposes.” It’s impossible to make sense of.
Sorry...did not read your post carefully.
 
And I don't know what she meant by the 223 genes that occur in homo sapiens and no other species. That's pretty unlikely, if only on the grounds that our genome is 99% identical to chimpanzee and 223 genes would be 1% of our genome. There was a claim in the original human genome sequence paper in 2001 that 223 genes appeared to have been acquired by horizontal transfer from bacteria (i.e. from other species) but even that now appears highly dubious (https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1214-2

223 genes would be 1% of our exome, not our genome. There are an estimated 20,000-25,000 human protein-coding genes (exome). But you are correct, we have mistakenly frothed over this rather small and perfunctory segment of our genome. Protein interactions, post-synthesis, intron influences and epigenetics are much more important factors in speciation and ordination.

Our genome overlaps with Chimpanzee, via LUCA, save for thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements. So we differ in genome (not 'genes'), about 1.2-1.4%, depending upon how you tally the latter two categories of variances. However, most science communicators also forget that ~7.5% of our human genome has not been sequenced.

Also, we must be aware that a critical portion of this differential is wound up in 43+ Human Accelerated Regions of our genome. These are not shared with any other species in GenBank.

Horizontal genomic transfer by virus (not prokaryotes) was popular in the early 2000's (Darwin's Radio, etc.). It remains an interesting topic, but does bear the burden of deductive evidence yet to be produced. However, to say that such as thing has been dismissed by comparative matrix 'bit scores', is a layman's approach to DNA comparatives. One frameshift shared between low-LUCA species, 'in context' will be white-crow falsifying in terms of horizontal transfer, but will not bear a high bit score and subsequently not pass Salzberg's bit score test (Plus, Salzberg also calls this 'horizontal gene transfer' and uses a Wittgenstein incoherency as the very basis of a scientific study - not good science, especially in a modus absens claim).

The issue would now be horizontal replication of single nucleotide polymorphisms and replication of the following. The phrase '223 genes appeared to have been acquired by horizontal transfer from bacteria' is not a coherent statement of genetics - and agreed - not even possible. The following variances are coherent potential transfer mechanisms, and not 'genes'.

Base Substitutions:​
Silent - single nucleotide (letter) change, does not materially alter the amino acid expressed​
Missense - single nucleotide (letter) change, alters the amino acid expressed​
Nonsense - single nucleotide (letter) change, results in insertion of a codon stop or methionine start​
Jibberish - single nucleotide (letter) change, results in a chemical coupling which is not A, C, T nor G​
Base Mispairing - any form of anti-parallel base coupling which does not conform to the Watson-Crick rule (A-C, T-G)​
Structure Changes:​
Insertion - increases a contiguous number of codon bases inside a gene, at a specific edit location​
Deletion - remove a contiguous number of codon bases inside a gene, resplice the new regions on either side​
Duplication - an insertion which is an exact copy of another codon segment of DNA​
Frameshift - an insertion or deletion which does not adhere to a triplet (3 letter) codon basis, thereby changing the frame of codon reference​
Repeat Expansion - an insertion which replicates one codon which is adjacent to the insertion point, a number of times​
Direct Repeat - replication of an identical codon sequence in the same orientation (5' to 3'), inside the same gene​
Codon Substitution - a non-frameshift segment of DNA is deleted and an insertion is placed into the splice where it resided​
Inversion - a segment of DNA is rotated from its 5' to 3' orientation, by 180 degrees​
 
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I think you have to be somewhat tolerant of a lay person being confused about this issue when it was published in Nature and The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/18/...-hotly-debated-by-rival-scientific-camps.html
The finding, one of the most surprising in the consortium's report on the human genome this February, was that 223 of the 30,000 human genes appear to have been acquired directly from bacteria.

http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/05_01/Gene_transfer.shtml
"Researchers Challenge Recent Claim That Humans Acquired 223 Bacterial Genes During Evolution
...
The conclusion of that study in Nature is that humans have acquired 223 genes from bacteria, some of which may have been transferred to vertebrates during bacterial infections. "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11358996?dopt=Abstract
About 40 genes were found to be exclusively shared by humans and bacteria and are candidate examples of horizontal transfer from bacteria to vertebrates.

How is a lay person supposed to know which scientists to believe?

According to this article the number 223 is disputable and are not bacterial transfers, but some are from a fungus. So far bacterial gene transfers to humans have only been identified in cancer tissue.
https://www.the-scientist.com/featu...ns-have-been-swapping-dna-for-millennia-32779
...
In 2001, the first draft sequence of the human genome was suggested to have 223 LGT-derived regions that were not present in other species’ genomes that had been sequenced at that time.4 Some researchers quickly disputed this number as an overestimate, even suggesting that all of the proposed LGTs were more likely explained through alternative mechanisms such as gene loss or convergent evolution.5 A new analysis published last year by Alastair Crisp of the University of Cambridge and colleagues found more than 130 traces of possible LGT events in the human genome—including the presence of fungal hyaluronan synthases, a fat mass and obesity associated gene (FTO), and the gene responsible for blood types (ABO). But most, if not all, of the identified events predate the human and primate lineages and were identified because the researchers chose to no longer limit the results to LGTs that exist only in humans and not in other animal species.6
...
In both the AML and STAD cancer samples, we only identified evidence of bacterial 16S and 23S rRNA fragments integrating into the human genome.

During the evolution of eukaryotes mitochondrial genes have transferred to the nucleus.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728854/
 
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Here is the Nature article. It looks like it is in the first publication of results of the sequencing of the human genome.

https://www.nature.com/articles/35057062
Nature​
Published: 15 February 2001​
Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome
International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium​
Nature volume 409, pages860–921 (2001)​
...​
"An interesting category is a set of 223 proteins that have significant similarity to proteins from bacteria, but no comparable similarity to proteins from yeast, worm, fly and mustard weed, or indeed from any other (nonvertebrate) eukaryote. "​
 
How is a lay person supposed to know which scientists to believe?

I think one problem lay people have is that there is so much disingenuous skepticism (much of it coming from scientists) and politicization of science, that they have a legitimate reason to distrust science when it contradicts their beliefs.

Some lay people make stupid mistakes, but some scientist who should know better also spread misleading information sometimes due to cognitive bias sometimes deliberately.
 
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Although Mary's research with over 3500 people is extensive, the number is not large enough for the Earthbound, ignorant masses of millions to begin to believe such people are not crazy. But very slowly this is changing as more and more are having encounters with the unexplainable. One man was able to begin a religion based on his encounter with beings he called Elohim. Have you ever heard of the Raelians?

What is the protocol? Her research looks like accepting every letter she gets as generally true if it hits some of the same "alien" narrative. I also suspect it suffers from the same problem as Michael Newtons work where a handful of more thoroughly documented cases are blown up as representative of thousands of others.
 
I think one problem lay people have is that there is so much disingenuous skepticism (much of it coming from scientists) and politicization of science, that they have a legitimate reason to distrust science when it contradicts their beliefs.

Some lay people make stupid mistakes, but some scientist who should know better also spread misleading information sometimes due to cognitive bias sometimes deliberately.

So, Jim, what's your take on Rodwell? I personally have an issue with lay people weaving what they think is science into their arguments, without actually knowing what the hell they are talking about.

There is a big problem with this approach. It is fundamentally intellectually dishonest, and because of that dishonesty it weakens what might be a legitimate argument. Rodwell, I think, errs in evoking scientific terminology to back up what is essentially an ethnographic inquiry. She didn't need to bring genetics to the table at all.

What we call 'science' has a well established place in our culture, but we too often are induced to believe that 'science' is the only means of validation knowledge and/or experience - which is so manifestly untrue. I think this is the trap Rodwell fell into. She could do an ethnographic inquiry and interpret it legitimately using a form of discourse analysis. Instead she switches between modes and gives reason to discount her work.

For example, her reference to genetics has distracted us already.

TESXC will, no doubt, frame this concern of mine in an eruditely technical fashion.
 
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