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> "Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientifi

by jMyles 5y ago

> "Daszak had not only signed but organized the influential Lancet statement, with the intention of concealing his role and creating the impression of scientific unanimity." The interesting part of this - and I'm curious about the personal experience of others here - is that the scientists I know have been the strongest questioners of the wet market theory from the get-go. I don't think anything resembling scientific unanimity ever emerged, or even appeared to emerge. Heck, here on HN we've been talking about this consistently at least since the PNAS letter, and probably since the beginning of the pandemic.

jkhdigital 5y ago
And, for this thoughtful observation, you get... DOWNVOTES. These Covid origins comment threads are so brutal! But yeah, I agree. I’m just a lowly PhD student (an older one, though) but it’s pretty clear from my limited experience that “scientific consensus” is a PR term that bears little relationship to how scientists perform their work and engage with their colleagues.
tacitusarc 5y ago
There was an episode of TWIV last year where they mocked anyone taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously
- gataca 5y ago
  There was a pretty recent one that continues to dismiss the idea this came from a lab completely.
  - aorth 5y ago
    To be fair they (on This Week in Virology) said they think it's unlikely that it leaked, but urge anyone with actual evidence to come forward. Their guest on that episode also said that, while RaTG13 is indeed a SARS-like coronavirus, the nucleotide sequence of the genome is only 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2. The guest said it's not similar enough to do gain of function research with. Bats with other similar SARS-like coronaviruses appear in (at least) Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia, and migratory bats have a range of several thousand kilometers. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/

by jMyles 5y ago

jkhdigital 5y ago

And, for this thoughtful observation, you get... DOWNVOTES. These Covid origins comment threads are so brutal! But yeah, I agree. I’m just a lowly PhD student (an older one, though) but it’s pretty clear from my limited experience that “scientific consensus” is a PR term that bears little relationship to how scientists perform their work and engage with their colleagues.

tacitusarc 5y ago

There was an episode of TWIV last year where they mocked anyone taking the lab leak hypothesis seriously

gataca 5y ago
There was a pretty recent one that continues to dismiss the idea this came from a lab completely.
- aorth 5y ago
  To be fair they (on This Week in Virology) said they think it's unlikely that it leaked, but urge anyone with actual evidence to come forward. Their guest on that episode also said that, while RaTG13 is indeed a SARS-like coronavirus, the nucleotide sequence of the genome is only 96% similar to SARS-CoV-2. The guest said it's not similar enough to do gain of function research with. Bats with other similar SARS-like coronaviruses appear in (at least) Japan, Thailand, and Cambodia, and migratory bats have a range of several thousand kilometers. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-762/