Bonnie Schrack's A00/Cameroon project -- what happened?

[GTC]

Project funding of $9,000 was raised in November 2013, but the page has not been updated since and I haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere.

Anybody know what happened to this project?

https://experiment.com/projects/whic...haplogroup-a00

[VinceT]

Good question. A lot of people had put up money for that, including myself. Why not e-mail her some encouragement, or tweet her @greenleafy

She's on Facebook as well: https://www.facebook.com/A00.Cameroon.Project

Thomas Krahn did mention to me in an e-mail recently that she is working with him to clean up a ton of the A00 SNPs on Ybrowse. It would be nice if she posted an official A00 Project update on the original fundraiser site, once in a while.

[GailT]

It took her a long time preparing the proposal for ethics approval, I think she struggled with getting the application together. I also heard that Ted had recruited some people to try to block the research. Unfortunately politics and ethics concerns make this a difficult study to carry out.

[GTC]

She's on Facebook as well: https://www.facebook.com/A00.Cameroon.Project

Thomas Krahn did mention to me in an e-mail recently that she is working with him to clean up a ton of the A00 SNPs on Ybrowse. It would be nice if she posted an official A00 Project update on the original fundraiser site, once in a while.

Thanks for the Facebook link. I think she ought to put that link on the fundraiser site.

[GTC]

It took her a long time preparing the proposal for ethics approval, I think she struggled with getting the application together. I also heard that Ted had recruited some people to try to block the research. Unfortunately politics and ethics concerns make this a difficult study to carry out.

Who is Ted?

[VinceT]

Ted Kandell, genetic genealogy enthusiast, co-founder of the so-called "Open Genomes Foundation" with Nancy Grossman (which appears to be a front to forward a personal agenda), and as of the past several years, general trouble-maker for several other genetic genealogists and citizen-science endeavors, for reasons that are inappropriate to divulge on a public forum.

But one only needs to look at the last 30 micro-donations to https://www.justgiving.com/DNAforum/ to see that Ted and Nancy aren't quite "normal". I mean seriously, using micro-donations to a crowd-funding site as a soapbox?

[GTC]

But one only needs to look at the last 30 micro-donations to https://www.justgiving.com/DNAforum/ to see that Ted and Nancy aren't quite "normal". I mean seriously, using micro-donations to a crowd-funding site as a soapbox?

There are some rather bizarre statements among those donations.

However this statement is interesting. I've not yet heard of any other 'citizen scientist' group gaining such access to PoBI data:

The Wellcome Trust (UK) have granted us access to new whole genome data, and we are currently extracting and analysing the Y chromosome variants from the first release of data.

[VinceT]

There are some rather bizarre statements among those donations.

However this statement is interesting. I've not yet heard of any other 'citizen scientist' group gaining such access to PoBI data:

Technically speaking, this study is not sourced from the PoBI dataset, but a different project called UK10K (http://www.uk10k.org/)

And the levels of bureaucracy that Dr. Andy Grierson's team at the University of Sheffield needs to surmount with the Wellcome Trust in order to work with us citizen scientists is a somber reality check as to why these types of studies literally take several years to conduct even before a manuscript is prepared.


Bonnie has to deal with an entire country. :O

[Scarlet Ibis]

But one only needs to look at the last 30 micro-donations to https://www.justgiving.com/DNAforum/ to see that Ted and Nancy aren't quite "normal". I mean seriously, using micro-donations to a crowd-funding site as a soapbox?

Wow. Paying 3 Euros or so just to make some strange rants. It looks like a virtual cuss bank/swear jar.

[Bonnie]

Friends, Vince and Gail and all, thank you so much for your understanding. Gail and Vince have done a great job of explaining the kinds of challenges I've been facing. I have zero experience with preparing a detailed, formal Research Protocol for submission to an Ethical Review Committee -- equivalent to an IRB -- especially in an African country. It took me forever -- I finally submitted it in October of 2014. They then responded with 30 tough questions we are required to answer to their satisfaction. A few are easy, but many require deep and painstaking thought and rewriting of our protocol, indeed the way we'll carry out our work. The committee is not at ease with the fact that I don't have an institutional affiliation. Of course, that is not by my own choice, I only wish I knew an academic in a related field who would like to support this project. There are a number of legal technicalities involved in the Materials Transfer Agreement, which Blaine Bettinger was incredibly kind in drafting for us. With some brilliant help by Blaine, and Thomas Krahn, we are now very, very close to re-submitting the protocol.

For all the justly concerned donors, your funds are safe, and have not been used up or wasted. We don't plan to ask for more funding until we have quite a few samples collected and tested, so you can see we're serious and actually producing results.

I humbly apologize for not having kept everyone better informed. It has been hard for me to know how to say, "I'm struggling with this." Sometimes I got pretty discouraged. But things are looking better now, much better. There are still mountains to climb... Please bear with us, and we'll welcome your help and support.