4 ms·

If you are on the fence then it might be worth re-reading what the NY times wrote about it back then. For example, I could not find much wrong with this from F

If you are on the fence then it might be worth re-reading what the NY times wrote about it back then. For example, I could not find much wrong with this from February 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru... It does (correctly, IMO) focus on the 'bioweapon' conspiracies rather than the 'lab leak' theory and mentions how the senator ended up distancing himself from the former. And actually, the original letter in The Lancet might also not be entirely unreasonable? I cannot find fault with it, provided one interprets the phrase 'not have a natural origin' as 'engineered' (rather than 'leaked'). See here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... You should of course feel free to disagree, but it might be worth reading these sources before continuing the discussion? And maybe there are other articles I missed?

adolph 5y ago
With which version of Feb 2020 do you not find fault? https://web.archive.org/web/20200217083402/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200217083402/https://www.nytim... https://web.archive.org/web/20210724164846/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210724164846/https://www.nytim...
- prof-dr-ir 5y ago
  The first of these is a stub and might be unclear on the meaning of "originated in". Again, if you read it as "engineered" I do not think I can disagree with its content. The second is the one I referred to and seems to have appeared at most a day later. Also - what exactly is your point? Like the other readers here I could probably be convinced that my example is bad, and you might even be able to make us adjust our opinion of the NY times. But right now I only see a suggestion of criticism rather than the raising of an actual issue. Would it be too much to ask you elaborate?
  - adolph 5y ago
    Ok, stubs a stub, fair enough. Here is a more substantive criticism: In this article the author engages in a smear of the anthropogenic conjecture and of Sen Cotton by associations invented by the article itself. It may as well as ask "when did you stop beating your wife" as much as "when did Sen Cotton stop saying coronavirus was a bioweapon." Truthfully the article never establishes that Sen Cotton claimed that coronavirus was a bioweapon. However, the author does take pain to characterize later statements as "Mr. Cotton later walked back the idea that the coronavirus was a Chinese bioweapon run amok." How does one walk back a statement that was never made? I went back and listened to YouTube clips of Cotton during the time period [0, 1, 2 among them] and consistently I hear a person saying that coronavirus is bad, travel restrictions and quarantines are needed, and that the Chinese government is lying about the severity, chronology and origin of the disease. I didn't hear him making a claim of bioweapon. I depended on YouTube's search function and then Cotton's own media appearance list for videos before the article's date of 2/18/2020 so maybe there was some other source where Cotton made a bioweapon claim that could be walked back? I visited Wikipedia's helpful COVID-19 Misinformation page and didn't find anything about Cotton [3]. I then checked Archive org for the same page from the NYT's article's time period and found a few mentions of Cotton [4]. Here were contemporaneous articles from a publication called "The Hill" from 2/2/2020 [5], CNN from 2/18/2020 [6], and Snopes (which excludes archive.org) of 4/1/2020 [7]. The Hill's mention of Cotton comes by way of the Chinese ambassador on a television show "Face The Nation:" Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai criticized Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday for suggesting the coronavirus could have been created in a Chinese biological warfare lab. That is the entirety of it. No link to what Cotton said or didn't say. In the Face The Nation transcript [8], Amb Cui doesn't claim Cotton said that. It's the interviewer that brings up Cotton claiming "And in fact, this week, Senator Tom Cotton, who sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, suggested that the virus may have come from China's biological warfare program." Ok, so the Cotton statement must have been before 2/2/2020? Bookmark that for a moment. CNN's article focuses on Cotton coming "under fire" for his statements about coronavirus. On Fox News Sunday morning, Cotton suggested the virus did not originate in an animal market as the Chinese government has claimed, but perhaps from another source, such as an infectious disease research lab nearby. While acknowledging there's no evidence the disease originated there, Cotton questioned the validity of China's statements, saying "China was lying from the beginning, and they're still lying today." At no point is Cotton quoted or documented in any way as claiming coronavirus is a bioweapon. Snopes' writes It is speculative, however, to assert, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton did, that these actions were done to cover up a leak from a lab. citing the NYT article, completing the ourobouros of misinformation. Back to Cotton from before 2/2/2020. Before 2/2 Cotton appears to be trying to raise the alert for coronavirus and advocating for travel controls (and includes exception for Americans, medics and disease researchers) and quarantines. [9, 10, 11]. Again, I don't hear anything about biowarfare. CNN does link to a 2/16/2020 tweet [12] from the @SenTomCotton account in response to a Washington Post article [13]. The tweet is Let me debunk the debunkers. @paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: and subsequent tweets delve into each hypo. CNN also does quote Cotton with his rationale for speaking out about the wet market claim for the origins of coronavirus "Epidemiologists who are widely respected from China who have published a study in the international journal The Lancet have demonstrated that several of the original cases did not have any contact with that food market," Cotton said. "The virus went into that food market before it came out of that food market." Let no organization be entirely judged by its worst moments or by uncharacteristic best ones or by the actions of any single worker within it. I had expected to be quickly gratified by some Arkansas senator whose mouth went further than the facts. At the same time I remember Gell-Mann Amnesia [14] enough to not take one article's word for the facts. When I saw the heaps of other articles repeating and expanding on the NYT, I see unshadowed disinformation in action, an echochamber of bullshit. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7roTUfd35w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7roTUfd35w 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytGIkcCh7T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytGIkcCh7T8 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation 4. https://web.archive.org/web/20200715000000*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation https://web.archive.org/web/20200715000000*/https://en.wikip... 5. https://web.archive.org/web/20200804003739/https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/482228-chinese-ambassador-on-cotton-coronavirus-comments-its-very-harmful https://web.archive.org/web/20200804003739/https://thehill.c... 6. https://web.archive.org/web/20210308045325/https://web.archive.org/web/20200219234740/https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/coronavirus-cotton-fact-check/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210308045325/https://web.archi... 7. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ 8. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-cui-tiankai-on-face-the-nation-february-9-2020/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-cui-tiankai-on-face-... 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBsPh1Rq0Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBsPh1Rq0Fw 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjWm2GnuDn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjWm2GnuDn8 12. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126?s=20 https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126?... 13. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotton-coronavirus-conspiracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto... 14. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge... 15. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market... 16. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
fortuna86 5y ago
This is a good point I feel is often lost. There is a difference between "it's possible a coronavirus that was being studied leaked from a lab" vs. COVID was a bioweapon the Chinese Gov purposefully unleashed on the world. Because the bioweapon theory was the prominent one early on (and it was spread at a time when hate crimes against ethnic Chinese were exploding) you can see why it was shut down. The more reasonable idea of a virus taken from nature, studied in a lab, then escaping, was not the narrative labeled as a "conspiracy" last year.

adolph 5y ago

With which version of Feb 2020 do you not find fault? https://web.archive.org/web/20200217083402/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200217083402/https://www.nytim... https://web.archive.org/web/20210724164846/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210724164846/https://www.nytim...

prof-dr-ir 5y ago
The first of these is a stub and might be unclear on the meaning of "originated in". Again, if you read it as "engineered" I do not think I can disagree with its content. The second is the one I referred to and seems to have appeared at most a day later. Also - what exactly is your point? Like the other readers here I could probably be convinced that my example is bad, and you might even be able to make us adjust our opinion of the NY times. But right now I only see a suggestion of criticism rather than the raising of an actual issue. Would it be too much to ask you elaborate?
- adolph 5y ago
  Ok, stubs a stub, fair enough. Here is a more substantive criticism: In this article the author engages in a smear of the anthropogenic conjecture and of Sen Cotton by associations invented by the article itself. It may as well as ask "when did you stop beating your wife" as much as "when did Sen Cotton stop saying coronavirus was a bioweapon." Truthfully the article never establishes that Sen Cotton claimed that coronavirus was a bioweapon. However, the author does take pain to characterize later statements as "Mr. Cotton later walked back the idea that the coronavirus was a Chinese bioweapon run amok." How does one walk back a statement that was never made? I went back and listened to YouTube clips of Cotton during the time period [0, 1, 2 among them] and consistently I hear a person saying that coronavirus is bad, travel restrictions and quarantines are needed, and that the Chinese government is lying about the severity, chronology and origin of the disease. I didn't hear him making a claim of bioweapon. I depended on YouTube's search function and then Cotton's own media appearance list for videos before the article's date of 2/18/2020 so maybe there was some other source where Cotton made a bioweapon claim that could be walked back? I visited Wikipedia's helpful COVID-19 Misinformation page and didn't find anything about Cotton [3]. I then checked Archive org for the same page from the NYT's article's time period and found a few mentions of Cotton [4]. Here were contemporaneous articles from a publication called "The Hill" from 2/2/2020 [5], CNN from 2/18/2020 [6], and Snopes (which excludes archive.org) of 4/1/2020 [7]. The Hill's mention of Cotton comes by way of the Chinese ambassador on a television show "Face The Nation:" Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai criticized Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday for suggesting the coronavirus could have been created in a Chinese biological warfare lab. That is the entirety of it. No link to what Cotton said or didn't say. In the Face The Nation transcript [8], Amb Cui doesn't claim Cotton said that. It's the interviewer that brings up Cotton claiming "And in fact, this week, Senator Tom Cotton, who sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committee, suggested that the virus may have come from China's biological warfare program." Ok, so the Cotton statement must have been before 2/2/2020? Bookmark that for a moment. CNN's article focuses on Cotton coming "under fire" for his statements about coronavirus. On Fox News Sunday morning, Cotton suggested the virus did not originate in an animal market as the Chinese government has claimed, but perhaps from another source, such as an infectious disease research lab nearby. While acknowledging there's no evidence the disease originated there, Cotton questioned the validity of China's statements, saying "China was lying from the beginning, and they're still lying today." At no point is Cotton quoted or documented in any way as claiming coronavirus is a bioweapon. Snopes' writes It is speculative, however, to assert, as U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton did, that these actions were done to cover up a leak from a lab. citing the NYT article, completing the ourobouros of misinformation. Back to Cotton from before 2/2/2020. Before 2/2 Cotton appears to be trying to raise the alert for coronavirus and advocating for travel controls (and includes exception for Americans, medics and disease researchers) and quarantines. [9, 10, 11]. Again, I don't hear anything about biowarfare. CNN does link to a 2/16/2020 tweet [12] from the @SenTomCotton account in response to a Washington Post article [13]. The tweet is Let me debunk the debunkers. @paulina_milla and her “experts” wrongly jump straight to the claim that the coronavirus is an engineered bioweapon. That’s not what I’ve said. There’s at least four hypotheses about the origin of the virus: and subsequent tweets delve into each hypo. CNN also does quote Cotton with his rationale for speaking out about the wet market claim for the origins of coronavirus "Epidemiologists who are widely respected from China who have published a study in the international journal The Lancet have demonstrated that several of the original cases did not have any contact with that food market," Cotton said. "The virus went into that food market before it came out of that food market." Let no organization be entirely judged by its worst moments or by uncharacteristic best ones or by the actions of any single worker within it. I had expected to be quickly gratified by some Arkansas senator whose mouth went further than the facts. At the same time I remember Gell-Mann Amnesia [14] enough to not take one article's word for the facts. When I saw the heaps of other articles repeating and expanding on the NYT, I see unshadowed disinformation in action, an echochamber of bullshit. 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7roTUfd35w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7roTUfd35w 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytGIkcCh7T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytGIkcCh7T8 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation 4. https://web.archive.org/web/20200715000000*/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation https://web.archive.org/web/20200715000000*/https://en.wikip... 5. https://web.archive.org/web/20200804003739/https://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/482228-chinese-ambassador-on-cotton-coronavirus-comments-its-very-harmful https://web.archive.org/web/20200804003739/https://thehill.c... 6. https://web.archive.org/web/20210308045325/https://web.archive.org/web/20200219234740/https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/18/politics/coronavirus-cotton-fact-check/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210308045325/https://web.archi... 7. https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/04/01/covid-19-bioweapon/ 8. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-cui-tiankai-on-face-the-nation-february-9-2020/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-cui-tiankai-on-face-... 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3txmbWxb4 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBsPh1Rq0Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBsPh1Rq0Fw 11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjWm2GnuDn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjWm2GnuDn8 12. https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126?s=20 https://twitter.com/SenTomCotton/status/1229202134048133126?... 13. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotton-coronavirus-conspiracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/16/tom-cotto... 14. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge... 15. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market-may-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/wuhan-seafood-market... 16. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

fortuna86 5y ago

This is a good point I feel is often lost. There is a difference between "it's possible a coronavirus that was being studied leaked from a lab" vs. COVID was a bioweapon the Chinese Gov purposefully unleashed on the world. Because the bioweapon theory was the prominent one early on (and it was spread at a time when hate crimes against ethnic Chinese were exploding) you can see why it was shut down. The more reasonable idea of a virus taken from nature, studied in a lab, then escaping, was not the narrative labeled as a "conspiracy" last year.