4 ms·

I'll definitely take the paper from Nature Medicine over the article by someone associated with Steve Bannon. I simply do not believe it is plausible that this

by mathw 6y ago

I'll definitely take the paper from Nature Medicine over the article by someone associated with Steve Bannon. I simply do not believe it is plausible that this many scientists are in on the massive cover-up that would be required to hide such evidence.

chrisco255 6y ago
Wait, you don't think people in China would be afraid of outing their government's nefarious deeds? Even in the U.S. our whistleblowers like Snowden have to run to Russia and face exile at best. How many people work in the NSA that could have said something but didn't? Now add that China isn't afraid to jail hundreds of thousands of people if it has to to get compliance. It's not afraid to harvest the organs of prisoners either. Add that they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall.
- roca 6y ago
  The conspiracy theory presented in this paper is that mainstream medical journals around the world are "strictly censoring" evidence that COVID19 was developed in a lab.
  - drran 6y ago
    Yep. It's strictly censored by everybody around the globe. Nobody wants to see scientists hanging on trees.
- yorwba 6y ago
  > they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall. I think you have a bit of an idealized perception of the Great Firewall if you think it allows controlling all communication. That's certainly the goal, but in practice, the implementation is far from achieving it. Well-known historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests can be censored because they're so well known, so the censors know what kind of content to block. (But people who want to talk about them anyway also know which keywords to avoid to evade censorship. It's a cat-and-mouse game.) New scandals become known all the time and cannot be censored until the news has spread far enough to reach the censors. For example, when Li Wenliang warned his friends about SARS infections in his hospital, the censors didn't know they had to censor screenshots of that conversation or his name until it was too late. When Ai Fen gave an interview to Renwu, the censors didn't know they had to censor it until it was too late. In the end, the Chinese government had to honor Li Wenliang as a martyr and Ai Fen as a hero to somewhat calm the waves of public opinion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to successfully suppress the information if the virus was lab-made and someone blew the whistle on that.
jerome-jh 6y ago
The Nature article only underlines the similarities between Sars-Cov-2 and viruses in the wild. It uses that as an evidence that the virus comes from natural selection. The similarity absolutely IS NOT an evidence of natural selection, neither guided selection or straight genetic engineering. Although I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon, many scientists self-censor to preserve their carrier, funding, link with chinese labs. Only those in favor of the natural selection publish in well known journals.
- singemonkey 6y ago
  > Although I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon, many scientists self-censor to preserve their carrier, funding, link with chinese labs. Only those in favor of the natural selection publish in well known journals. This is fairly standard conspiracy theory stuff. Next you'll be telling us about QAnon and pedophiles.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    Seems common sense that scientists, like anyone really, would self-censor anything that goes against the norm. I remember when Agile was in its heyday and I said it had a lot of negatives and nearly got fired.
    - singemonkey 6y ago
      I'm sure you agree that your personal anecdote isn't evidence of a vast global conspiracy where scientists around the world censor themselves in order to ensure they retain links to Chinese labs? Do you know many scientists? To counter your anecdote, my personal anecdote is that many scientists I know (as friends or colleagues) are cantankerous contrarians who would delight in going against the grain especially in the knowledge that real proof of such a theory would vastly increase their profile/notoriety.
      - taylodl 6y ago
        Exactly. Scientific history is full of these contrarians who presented evidence to show they were right and everyone else was wrong all along. Now, to be respected in the scientific community you need to present strong evidence, even better irrefutable evidence, if possible, so as to not be viewed as a crackpot. In other words when going against the grain you'd better have an airtight case that's credible. Even if it eventually gets shot down, which happens, you'll have wanted the scientific community to have learned something in doing so. You'll still be remembered for that.
jkhdigital 6y ago
The Nature paper states, near the end, that “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another.” Contrary to popular belief, that paper does not “debunk” the claim of laboratory origin but merely casts some doubt on it. Several papers have now been written which provide more scientific data to re-evaluate this claim, and Steve Bannon did not provide the funding for all of them.

by mathw 6y ago

chrisco255 6y ago

Wait, you don't think people in China would be afraid of outing their government's nefarious deeds? Even in the U.S. our whistleblowers like Snowden have to run to Russia and face exile at best. How many people work in the NSA that could have said something but didn't? Now add that China isn't afraid to jail hundreds of thousands of people if it has to to get compliance. It's not afraid to harvest the organs of prisoners either. Add that they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall.

roca 6y ago
The conspiracy theory presented in this paper is that mainstream medical journals around the world are "strictly censoring" evidence that COVID19 was developed in a lab.
- drran 6y ago
  Yep. It's strictly censored by everybody around the globe. Nobody wants to see scientists hanging on trees.
yorwba 6y ago
> they literally control all communication in the country behind a tightly controlled firewall. I think you have a bit of an idealized perception of the Great Firewall if you think it allows controlling all communication. That's certainly the goal, but in practice, the implementation is far from achieving it. Well-known historical events like the Tiananmen Square protests can be censored because they're so well known, so the censors know what kind of content to block. (But people who want to talk about them anyway also know which keywords to avoid to evade censorship. It's a cat-and-mouse game.) New scandals become known all the time and cannot be censored until the news has spread far enough to reach the censors. For example, when Li Wenliang warned his friends about SARS infections in his hospital, the censors didn't know they had to censor screenshots of that conversation or his name until it was too late. When Ai Fen gave an interview to Renwu, the censors didn't know they had to censor it until it was too late. In the end, the Chinese government had to honor Li Wenliang as a martyr and Ai Fen as a hero to somewhat calm the waves of public opinion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to successfully suppress the information if the virus was lab-made and someone blew the whistle on that.

jerome-jh 6y ago

The Nature article only underlines the similarities between Sars-Cov-2 and viruses in the wild. It uses that as an evidence that the virus comes from natural selection. The similarity absolutely IS NOT an evidence of natural selection, neither guided selection or straight genetic engineering. Although I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon, many scientists self-censor to preserve their carrier, funding, link with chinese labs. Only those in favor of the natural selection publish in well known journals.

singemonkey 6y ago
> Although I am absolutely not in favor of Bannon, many scientists self-censor to preserve their carrier, funding, link with chinese labs. Only those in favor of the natural selection publish in well known journals. This is fairly standard conspiracy theory stuff. Next you'll be telling us about QAnon and pedophiles.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Seems common sense that scientists, like anyone really, would self-censor anything that goes against the norm. I remember when Agile was in its heyday and I said it had a lot of negatives and nearly got fired.
  - singemonkey 6y ago
    I'm sure you agree that your personal anecdote isn't evidence of a vast global conspiracy where scientists around the world censor themselves in order to ensure they retain links to Chinese labs? Do you know many scientists? To counter your anecdote, my personal anecdote is that many scientists I know (as friends or colleagues) are cantankerous contrarians who would delight in going against the grain especially in the knowledge that real proof of such a theory would vastly increase their profile/notoriety.
    - taylodl 6y ago
      Exactly. Scientific history is full of these contrarians who presented evidence to show they were right and everyone else was wrong all along. Now, to be respected in the scientific community you need to present strong evidence, even better irrefutable evidence, if possible, so as to not be viewed as a crackpot. In other words when going against the grain you'd better have an airtight case that's credible. Even if it eventually gets shot down, which happens, you'll have wanted the scientific community to have learned something in doing so. You'll still be remembered for that.

jkhdigital 6y ago

The Nature paper states, near the end, that “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another.” Contrary to popular belief, that paper does not “debunk” the claim of laboratory origin but merely casts some doubt on it. Several papers have now been written which provide more scientific data to re-evaluate this claim, and Steve Bannon did not provide the funding for all of them.