repeating my comment from the last times this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27026039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27026039 https://ne

repeating my comment from the last times this was posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27026039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27026039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27034782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27034782 This post (whether intentionally or not) is misinterpreting some of the evidence it presents. For example it gives this example research grant as evidence for chimeric viruses being made in the Wuhan lab. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje https://reporter.nih.gov/search/xQW6UJmWfUuOV01ntGvLwQ/proje... This is actually pretty standard virology grant. Nowhere does it say that they are making chimeric viruses. Note that "S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments" is not even close to "Creating chimeric viruses". This is not the same thing and it would not be rational to compare the two. The posts claim that: "What this means, in non-technical language, is that Dr. Shi set out to create novel coronaviruses with the highest possible infectivity for human cells. ". That is simply false, they are collecting and testing viruses. They were not creating new ones. This post also tries to claim that these researches had been doing genetic engineering in past work because of this paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 Note that Nature added an editors note here: "30 March 2020 Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus." Also note that the Wuhan lab is actually 5th author on this paper. In big publications like this order of authors is very important. 5th author usually means that they had a very minor role in the work. I.e a consulting role. This is compounded by the fact that only 2 people from the Wuhan lab worked on this paper. It is actually more likely that the "genetic engineering" took place at the University of North Carolina and not in Wuhan. The paper lists a 9 people on the project in the US. Usually the people who do the actual lab work get first author. Even further what about the 9 other virology labs that are on list? They have about the same amount of contributions to this paper? Why are they not suspect? In my opinion these are some pretty key details to leave out, especially from a science journalist who should not be hiding some of the key facts here.