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Comment by davidvaughan | Hacker News Reader

I confess to some scepticism. The lady concerned seems to be a dedicated big cat believer, with seven sightings already[0]. If other witnesses had been present, I would be more accepting of the claim.

[0] https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/19808796.cumbrias-sharon-...

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Isn't that a little like saying archaeologists seem to find a suspiciously large number of historical objects, or tornado hunters seem to have a suspiciously large number of tornado sightings?

I think the problem os being only a single witness claiming to have sighted them? The Loch Ness monster has more reported sightings, so a single witness, imo, is not enough to say with a large degree of certainty that there is a big cat roaming around.

I’m not saying I believe there is a big cat roaming but it’s still unfair to say there’s only been one witness when this is something frequently reported on by multiple unrelated individuals.

Both of those cases tend to have significant evidence and is generally verifiable by others. Although there have be archeological frauds too.

Indeed — but with the caveat of assuming accurate journalism and that this really is a good DNA test and result and no caveats were removed in the reporting.

Newspapers are like LLMs: when I'm not already a domain expert I have no way to determine their accuracy, but when I am they're often at least a bit wrong in some important way. This is also known as the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

Non-archaeologists find historical objects, and as a former midwesterner, I can assure you that you need no particular background to be able to see tornadoes. It would, indeed, be very suspicious if _only_ those interested in archaeology or tornadoes claimed to observe these.

Agree, it reminds me a bit of the guy who was really obsessed by the mh370 mystery and happens to have found more pieces of the plane than anyone else. It’s certainly possible, but I remain skeptical

I mean, several of those parts has matching serial numbers with the corresponding parts installed on MH-370. I'm not sure how one could fake that without a lot of nonpublic information.

And didn't the dude in question walk along the entire coastline of Madagascar looking for washed up debris? That's certainly a plausible reason to find them.

Very skeptical. I would also like more detail in the article, what was the DNA collected from? Hair? Saliva? How was it stored, collected and tested? Who sent it in? This website has a bit of detail around what can be tested: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/research/archaeobotany...

My partner has seen them twice from close up (<10m), in the Cambridgeshire area. But this was in the late 90’s.

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