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What would that evidence look like? The House Committee on Oversight and Reform have a press release with more detail[1], which the Telegraph mentions - it's h

What would that evidence look like? The House Committee on Oversight and Reform have a press release with more detail[1], which the Telegraph mentions - it's how I found it - and you can download a pdf which contains the partially redacted emails. It doesn't seem to me that the Telegraph has misled anyone regarding this news at all. Perhaps you could read it and be more precise as to where you think they're providing slant, or even lies, if that's what you think. [1] https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/release/comer-jordan-faucis-emails-raise-questions-of-lab-leak-cover-up/ https://republicans-oversight.house.gov/release/comer-jordan...

jacquesm 5y ago
Evidence that would convince an independent panel of people trained in the field that it confirms a lab leak. Given the odds against that evidence would likely have to be fairly hard.
- brigandish 5y ago
  Evidence does not need to be able to convince on its own, you seem to be picking an arbitrarily high bar that would dismiss all evidence until such time as it would confirm a leak. That's not even the bar used in law to begin a prosecution, when they know that reasonable doubt will need to be overcome. Regardless, this is evidence of a conspiracy of silence, not evidence that there was a lab leak. The two should not be mixed up nor conflated.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    There is no evidence of anything remotely like "a conspiracy of silence". The Telegraph article quotes parts of emails between people discussing the possibility of a lab leak and the possible outcomes of a public discussion of the possibility of a lab leak. At no point is anyone saying "we must keep this under wrap" or something along those lines. You have to squint very hard to find an insinuation that the discussion of a lab origin has to be silenced. As indeed it was not. The few people who thought a lab leak was likely have been very public about their opinion and nobody has attempted to stop them. We've all heard the one about the furin cleavage cite (even if about 0.005% of those who repeat it know what the hell a furin cleavage cite is). Hence why the internet bursts at the seams with discussions about lab leaks and conspiracies to cover them up.
    - mikeyouse 5y ago
      It’s amusing too because many highly trained people were perplexed about the FCS — until last year when we discovered that those mutations actually do happen spontaneously in nature, in Coronaviruses and are stable: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... People forget that we're looking at the "plane that landed" from the famous WWII picture. A bunch of low probability things had to happen for SarsCOV2 to emerge naturally -- but given a long enough timeline and trillions of viral replications, sometimes it will.
    - brigandish 5y ago
      > At no point is anyone saying "we must keep this under wrap" or something along those lines. Francis Collins, (at the time) director of the National Institutes of Health wrote: > Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy put down is strange language, but Collins has used similar in an email that also ended up in Dr Fauci's inbox: > The proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention > There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises take down, eh? And in the Washington Post[1]: > This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. The fringe epidemiologists not doing mainstream science but dangerous things are: Martin Kulldorff, PhD, a biostatistician, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School[2][3] Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging[4][5] Sunetra Gupta, infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford[6][7] The language doesn't match the claims, his or yours. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-herd-immunity/2020/10/10/3910251c-0a60-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-herd-immunity/20... [2] https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/martin-kulldorff-phd/ https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/m... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya [5] https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunetra_Gupta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunetra_Gupta [7] https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  That is not how science works. There is no authoritative panel of experts. There are scientists all over the world working on different problems. Some of them state they are careful because what they believe to be true could have political consequences. These ideas got suppressed. It is not much more complicated than that. Science has been shut down for political reasons. Your "panel" would just make sure that exactly that would happen. > Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony” The position is understandable, is it not? But it still doesn't have to do with science.
- Veen 5y ago
  The article is not about whether there was a lab leak, but whether scientists believed a lab leak was a possibility and chose to deny that belief for non-scientific political reasons. The article makes no claim at all about whether there was a lab leak, which would indeed require the level of evidence you suggest.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- piker 5y ago
  This is incorrect. The article is asserting that a group of important scientists (arguably) advocated for the public rejection of an important hypothesis not on the basis of evidence. Evidence proving or disproving a lab leak would be irrelevant to the article's claim.
alevskaya 5y ago
I was a genetic engineer for two decades: - Clear signs of molecular manipulation in the sars-cov-2 sequence. There are none. Almost all of the alleged manipulations would have left unmistakeable, damning evidence in a recognizable vector. The only remotely interesting thing at all in the sequence is the furin site, but plenty of coronaviruses have those, and it just likely indicates selection/propagation in a secondary host species... exactly like the ones that caused SARS-1 and MERS. - Failing that, even a scrap of evidence that anyone was even culturing (not just sequencing) this new sub-clade. You're not going to catch a respiratory virus by accident from a sterile rna-stabilized swab or a database entry. Compared to the vast, unregulated wild-meat industry in China this is such an unlikely vector. - Any epidemiological connections to WIV? There aren't any, just the original fact that the outbreak happened in Wuhan (...across the river, in an animal market with known coronavirus hosts species.) All of the index cases are associated w. the market - not WIV. There were a number of western scientists interacting w. WIV researchers in Nov/Dec at the start of the outbreak and no independent reports of any sickness or anything out of the ordinary. There's no evidence for a lab-leak. Increasingly febrile accusations of conspiracy and speculative just-so stories aren't evidence. Someone like me would be easily, readily convinced by some hard facts... but none have been presented. As a biologist that's what I and many of my colleagues find frustrating about this... it just seems like people emotionally crave a human agency to blame. I used to think René Girard was silly... but maybe he was right about humanity and scapegoats.
- afpx 5y ago
  This isn't just a random scapegoat. It just happens that the company (Ecohealth Alliance) proposed the gain-of-function research on the virus to DARPA, which was subsequently rejected as being too risky. NIH later funded similar research to the same company for its work in Wuhan during 2020. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. But, what are the chances of this being coincidental? The "from the wild" theory doesn't have any evidence either but requires more assumptions. Occam's razor.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    Jesus Christ, son of Mary, please don't bring Occam's razor in yet another internet discussion that tramples all over it. There is no reason to assume a lab leak when every disease we know that affects humans is _not_ the result of a lab leak. A natural origin is the most likely explanation and we don't need any other explanation unless there is strong evidence that something different happened, which we absolutely don't. In fact the "lab leak theory" is exactly anti-science. In the most backwards fashion it starts not with an observation that must be explained with a hypothesis, but with a hypothesis -that the virus escaped from a lab- that is not supported by any observation. Its proponents then try to find evidence to justify their hypothesis. They don't find any, but they keep looking anyway because they are convinced it is true even in the complete absence of evidence. Then they accuse everyone else of hiding the evidence. "A-ha! That's why we can't prove this hypothesis we know is true! Because the evidence has been hidden from us!". This is the pattern of quackery, not science and not scientific hypothesis-making and verification.
JohnTHaller 5y ago
Redacted emails without any associated email thread for context with cherry-picked quotes published by two Republican Senators who have consistently spread Covid-19 misinformation.
- brigandish 5y ago
  Not heavily redacted, there's certainly enough to be able to follow the thread - are you suggesting that the following quote could be given context that would change its meaning? > ... Given the evidence presented and the discussions around it, I would conclude that a follow-up discussion on the possible origin of 2019-nCoV would be of much interest. However, I doubt if it needs to be done on very short term, given the importance of other activities of the scientific community, WHO and other stakeholders at present. It is my opinion that a non-natural origin of 2019-nCoV is highly unlikely at present. Any conspiracy theory can be approached with factual information. > ... An accusation that nCoV-2019 might have been engineered and released into the environment by humans (accidental or intentional) would need to be supported by strong data, beyond a reasonable doubt. It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. > However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.
Diesel555 5y ago
The draft United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, S.1260 which passed the Senate 68-32, has verbiage on the lab leak too - it requires a report from the Director of the National Intelligence to Congress within 180 days which provides: > (1) an assessment of the most likely source or origin of the SARS–CoV–2 virus, including a detailed review of all information the United States possesses that it has identified as potentially relevant to the source or origin of the SARS–CoV–2 virus, including zoonotic transmission and spillover, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), or other sources of origin, transmission, or spillover, based on the information the United States Government has to date; > (5) an account of efforts by the PRC to cooperate with, impede, or obstruct any inquiry or investigation to determine the source and transmission of SARS–CoV–2 virus, including into a possible lab leak, or to create or spread misinformation or disinformation regarding the source and transmission of SARS–CoV–2 virus by the PRC or CCP, including by national and local governmental and health entities; [1] I look forward to seeing the report. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1260 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/126...

jacquesm 5y ago

Evidence that would convince an independent panel of people trained in the field that it confirms a lab leak. Given the odds against that evidence would likely have to be fairly hard.

brigandish 5y ago
Evidence does not need to be able to convince on its own, you seem to be picking an arbitrarily high bar that would dismiss all evidence until such time as it would confirm a leak. That's not even the bar used in law to begin a prosecution, when they know that reasonable doubt will need to be overcome. Regardless, this is evidence of a conspiracy of silence, not evidence that there was a lab leak. The two should not be mixed up nor conflated.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  There is no evidence of anything remotely like "a conspiracy of silence". The Telegraph article quotes parts of emails between people discussing the possibility of a lab leak and the possible outcomes of a public discussion of the possibility of a lab leak. At no point is anyone saying "we must keep this under wrap" or something along those lines. You have to squint very hard to find an insinuation that the discussion of a lab origin has to be silenced. As indeed it was not. The few people who thought a lab leak was likely have been very public about their opinion and nobody has attempted to stop them. We've all heard the one about the furin cleavage cite (even if about 0.005% of those who repeat it know what the hell a furin cleavage cite is). Hence why the internet bursts at the seams with discussions about lab leaks and conspiracies to cover them up.
  - mikeyouse 5y ago
    It’s amusing too because many highly trained people were perplexed about the FCS — until last year when we discovered that those mutations actually do happen spontaneously in nature, in Coronaviruses and are stable: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1873506120304165 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187350612... People forget that we're looking at the "plane that landed" from the famous WWII picture. A bunch of low probability things had to happen for SarsCOV2 to emerge naturally -- but given a long enough timeline and trillions of viral replications, sometimes it will.
  - brigandish 5y ago
    > At no point is anyone saying "we must keep this under wrap" or something along those lines. Francis Collins, (at the time) director of the National Institutes of Health wrote: > Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy put down is strange language, but Collins has used similar in an email that also ended up in Dr Fauci's inbox: > The proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary seems to be getting a lot of attention > There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises take down, eh? And in the Washington Post[1]: > This is a fringe component of epidemiology. This is not mainstream science. It's dangerous. The fringe epidemiologists not doing mainstream science but dangerous things are: Martin Kulldorff, PhD, a biostatistician, epidemiologist and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School[2][3] Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford's Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging[4][5] Sunetra Gupta, infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford[6][7] The language doesn't match the claims, his or yours. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-herd-immunity/2020/10/10/3910251c-0a60-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-herd-immunity/20... [2] https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/martin-kulldorff-phd/ https://www.dfhcc.harvard.edu/insider/member-detail/member/m... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kulldorff [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya [5] https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya https://profiles.stanford.edu/jay-bhattacharya [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunetra_Gupta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunetra_Gupta [7] https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta https://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-sunetra-gupta
raxxorrax 5y ago
That is not how science works. There is no authoritative panel of experts. There are scientists all over the world working on different problems. Some of them state they are careful because what they believe to be true could have political consequences. These ideas got suppressed. It is not much more complicated than that. Science has been shut down for political reasons. Your "panel" would just make sure that exactly that would happen. > Dr Collins, the former director of the US National Institutes of Health, warned it could damage “international harmony” The position is understandable, is it not? But it still doesn't have to do with science.
Veen 5y ago
The article is not about whether there was a lab leak, but whether scientists believed a lab leak was a possibility and chose to deny that belief for non-scientific political reasons. The article makes no claim at all about whether there was a lab leak, which would indeed require the level of evidence you suggest.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
piker 5y ago
This is incorrect. The article is asserting that a group of important scientists (arguably) advocated for the public rejection of an important hypothesis not on the basis of evidence. Evidence proving or disproving a lab leak would be irrelevant to the article's claim.

alevskaya 5y ago

I was a genetic engineer for two decades: - Clear signs of molecular manipulation in the sars-cov-2 sequence. There are none. Almost all of the alleged manipulations would have left unmistakeable, damning evidence in a recognizable vector. The only remotely interesting thing at all in the sequence is the furin site, but plenty of coronaviruses have those, and it just likely indicates selection/propagation in a secondary host species... exactly like the ones that caused SARS-1 and MERS. - Failing that, even a scrap of evidence that anyone was even culturing (not just sequencing) this new sub-clade. You're not going to catch a respiratory virus by accident from a sterile rna-stabilized swab or a database entry. Compared to the vast, unregulated wild-meat industry in China this is such an unlikely vector. - Any epidemiological connections to WIV? There aren't any, just the original fact that the outbreak happened in Wuhan (...across the river, in an animal market with known coronavirus hosts species.) All of the index cases are associated w. the market - not WIV. There were a number of western scientists interacting w. WIV researchers in Nov/Dec at the start of the outbreak and no independent reports of any sickness or anything out of the ordinary. There's no evidence for a lab-leak. Increasingly febrile accusations of conspiracy and speculative just-so stories aren't evidence. Someone like me would be easily, readily convinced by some hard facts... but none have been presented. As a biologist that's what I and many of my colleagues find frustrating about this... it just seems like people emotionally crave a human agency to blame. I used to think René Girard was silly... but maybe he was right about humanity and scapegoats.

afpx 5y ago
This isn't just a random scapegoat. It just happens that the company (Ecohealth Alliance) proposed the gain-of-function research on the virus to DARPA, which was subsequently rejected as being too risky. NIH later funded similar research to the same company for its work in Wuhan during 2020. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. But, what are the chances of this being coincidental? The "from the wild" theory doesn't have any evidence either but requires more assumptions. Occam's razor.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Jesus Christ, son of Mary, please don't bring Occam's razor in yet another internet discussion that tramples all over it. There is no reason to assume a lab leak when every disease we know that affects humans is _not_ the result of a lab leak. A natural origin is the most likely explanation and we don't need any other explanation unless there is strong evidence that something different happened, which we absolutely don't. In fact the "lab leak theory" is exactly anti-science. In the most backwards fashion it starts not with an observation that must be explained with a hypothesis, but with a hypothesis -that the virus escaped from a lab- that is not supported by any observation. Its proponents then try to find evidence to justify their hypothesis. They don't find any, but they keep looking anyway because they are convinced it is true even in the complete absence of evidence. Then they accuse everyone else of hiding the evidence. "A-ha! That's why we can't prove this hypothesis we know is true! Because the evidence has been hidden from us!". This is the pattern of quackery, not science and not scientific hypothesis-making and verification.

JohnTHaller 5y ago

Redacted emails without any associated email thread for context with cherry-picked quotes published by two Republican Senators who have consistently spread Covid-19 misinformation.

brigandish 5y ago
Not heavily redacted, there's certainly enough to be able to follow the thread - are you suggesting that the following quote could be given context that would change its meaning? > ... Given the evidence presented and the discussions around it, I would conclude that a follow-up discussion on the possible origin of 2019-nCoV would be of much interest. However, I doubt if it needs to be done on very short term, given the importance of other activities of the scientific community, WHO and other stakeholders at present. It is my opinion that a non-natural origin of 2019-nCoV is highly unlikely at present. Any conspiracy theory can be approached with factual information. > ... An accusation that nCoV-2019 might have been engineered and released into the environment by humans (accidental or intentional) would need to be supported by strong data, beyond a reasonable doubt. It is good that this possibility was discussed in detail with a team of experts. > However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.

Diesel555 5y ago

The draft United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, S.1260 which passed the Senate 68-32, has verbiage on the lab leak too - it requires a report from the Director of the National Intelligence to Congress within 180 days which provides: > (1) an assessment of the most likely source or origin of the SARS–CoV–2 virus, including a detailed review of all information the United States possesses that it has identified as potentially relevant to the source or origin of the SARS–CoV–2 virus, including zoonotic transmission and spillover, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), or other sources of origin, transmission, or spillover, based on the information the United States Government has to date; > (5) an account of efforts by the PRC to cooperate with, impede, or obstruct any inquiry or investigation to determine the source and transmission of SARS–CoV–2 virus, including into a possible lab leak, or to create or spread misinformation or disinformation regarding the source and transmission of SARS–CoV–2 virus by the PRC or CCP, including by national and local governmental and health entities; [1] I look forward to seeing the report. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1260 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/126...