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You're citing an article that literally has as its first sentence, "Nicholas Wade is not a racist". As citations go that's not very convincing. And at any rate

You're citing an article that literally has as its first sentence, "Nicholas Wade is not a racist". As citations go that's not very convincing. And at any rate, the attempted smearing of anyone who points to problems in establishment thinking as a racist is trivial, completely expected of a certain segment of society and of no importance relative to the topic at hand. Wade's article not only builds an extremely strong case for the "engineered in a lab" theory, but just as importantly, shows that virology as field needs to be shut down. Virologists have been caught engaging in two conspiracies around this topic now - the conspiracy of silence by Chinese state and researchers, and the second was the deception around the letters claiming a lab leak was an absurd conspiracy theory and which boldly claimed there were no conflicts of interest even though they had the biggest conflicts imaginable. That's before we even get to the stupidity of GOF research. It's a small field with a bad culture, and as the article points out, has in the end contributed nothing to actually fighting COVID. The case for defunding it looks strong and the case for continuing it looks weak. Those things are all far more important than your allergic reaction to a man who worked for decades at the NYT of all places

chipotle_coyote 5y ago
> You're citing an article that literally has as its first sentence, "Nicholas Wade is not a racist". As citations go that's not very convincing. I'm not sure you read past the first sentence of that article, since the second sentence makes it clear that Nicholas Wade is the one making the claim he's not racist. "It's not prejudice; it's science." It's pretty clear the reviewer -- in Scientific American, which I believe does have some bona fides -- is laying out the case that, in fact, it's prejudice, not science, and lays it out in a pretty convincing manner. The book being reviewed, as I understand it, has been pretty widely criticized not only by reviewers, but by scientists arguing that Wade misrepresented their research. Does that have any bearing on Wade's case for SARS-CoV-2 being a lab-created virus? Certainly not directly; maybe not at all. I read the whole article, and it certainly makes a plausible and compelling case! But like it or not, a lot of the conversation around "the lab creation theory" for SARS-CoV-2 has had a decidedly racial tinge. Having it turn out that this plausible and compelling case has been made by a science writer who had a recent, major work widely criticized for, ah, a decidedly racial tinge is, well... let's say "interesting." As a final note, gain-of-function research certainly sounds fraught with peril even under the best of circumstances, and these do not sound like they were the best of circumstances. I question whether that means "virology as a field needs to be shut down."
- thu2111 5y ago
  I did but the article is very poorly written. The explicit statement that Nicholas Wade is not a racist appears both as the first sentence - unquoted i.e. this is not reported speech but a statement by the article author - and in the abstract at the top, also not in quotes. But then it starts by mis-representing his argument by saying he "explains why white people are better because of their genes" and in the very next sentence admits that "to be fair" that's not actually what he said at all. We are left deliberately confused about both what the author of the article and the author of the book actually think. For example you wrote: Nicholas Wade is the one making the claim he's not racist. "It's not prejudice; it's science." and you put that statement in quotes to imply that Wade is the one who said it, but in fact, it's the article author who wrote that statement, not Wade! I don't fully understand where you see a racial tinge in the lab creation theory. The lab is in China but beyond that it has nothing to do with being Chinese. And as Wade and others document, the money came from US research agencies and GOF research is done in multiple countries, so again, I don't see any racial connection. If Wade was actually a racist I guess he'd not miss this golden opportunity to blame the apparently lax Chinese lab practices on their DNA, but he makes no such argument anywhere, not even about culture.
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    > you put that statement in quotes to imply that Wade is the one who said it, but in fact, it's the article author who wrote that statement, not Wade! No, I put it in quotes to indicate that it was a quote. And yes, allturtles is correct that the author was engaging in a rhetorical device here, and is clearly (at least, it's clear to me) asserting that, yes, Wade's thesis was essentially racist. I don't think we're going to get anywhere continuing this, though, so let's just agree to disagree.
  - allturtles 5y ago
    It's not poorly written, it's a rhetorical use of irony. Like Mark Antony repeatedly asserting that Brutus and Cassius are "honorable men" as he describes how they brutally and unjustly murdered Caesar.

chipotle_coyote 5y ago

> You're citing an article that literally has as its first sentence, "Nicholas Wade is not a racist". As citations go that's not very convincing. I'm not sure you read past the first sentence of that article, since the second sentence makes it clear that Nicholas Wade is the one making the claim he's not racist. "It's not prejudice; it's science." It's pretty clear the reviewer -- in Scientific American, which I believe does have some bona fides -- is laying out the case that, in fact, it's prejudice, not science, and lays it out in a pretty convincing manner. The book being reviewed, as I understand it, has been pretty widely criticized not only by reviewers, but by scientists arguing that Wade misrepresented their research. Does that have any bearing on Wade's case for SARS-CoV-2 being a lab-created virus? Certainly not directly; maybe not at all. I read the whole article, and it certainly makes a plausible and compelling case! But like it or not, a lot of the conversation around "the lab creation theory" for SARS-CoV-2 has had a decidedly racial tinge. Having it turn out that this plausible and compelling case has been made by a science writer who had a recent, major work widely criticized for, ah, a decidedly racial tinge is, well... let's say "interesting." As a final note, gain-of-function research certainly sounds fraught with peril even under the best of circumstances, and these do not sound like they were the best of circumstances. I question whether that means "virology as a field needs to be shut down."

thu2111 5y ago
I did but the article is very poorly written. The explicit statement that Nicholas Wade is not a racist appears both as the first sentence - unquoted i.e. this is not reported speech but a statement by the article author - and in the abstract at the top, also not in quotes. But then it starts by mis-representing his argument by saying he "explains why white people are better because of their genes" and in the very next sentence admits that "to be fair" that's not actually what he said at all. We are left deliberately confused about both what the author of the article and the author of the book actually think. For example you wrote: Nicholas Wade is the one making the claim he's not racist. "It's not prejudice; it's science." and you put that statement in quotes to imply that Wade is the one who said it, but in fact, it's the article author who wrote that statement, not Wade! I don't fully understand where you see a racial tinge in the lab creation theory. The lab is in China but beyond that it has nothing to do with being Chinese. And as Wade and others document, the money came from US research agencies and GOF research is done in multiple countries, so again, I don't see any racial connection. If Wade was actually a racist I guess he'd not miss this golden opportunity to blame the apparently lax Chinese lab practices on their DNA, but he makes no such argument anywhere, not even about culture.
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  > you put that statement in quotes to imply that Wade is the one who said it, but in fact, it's the article author who wrote that statement, not Wade! No, I put it in quotes to indicate that it was a quote. And yes, allturtles is correct that the author was engaging in a rhetorical device here, and is clearly (at least, it's clear to me) asserting that, yes, Wade's thesis was essentially racist. I don't think we're going to get anywhere continuing this, though, so let's just agree to disagree.
- allturtles 5y ago
  It's not poorly written, it's a rhetorical use of irony. Like Mark Antony repeatedly asserting that Brutus and Cassius are "honorable men" as he describes how they brutally and unjustly murdered Caesar.