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The problem is that the way the questions are posed comes across as "what are they hiding?!?" You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a discussi

The problem is that the way the questions are posed comes across as "what are they hiding?!?" You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest.

peteradio 4y ago
Here's what I'll admit, its shady as hell for a group of scientists (some with especially confounding conflicts) to come out and dismiss something as so unlikely as to be impossible when it was obviously still a plausible explanation. That was not a scientific position to take, but a political one. Lab leaks are not new or especially rare. There is a now public paper trail indicating they were trying to build the damn thing! You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest. Imagine after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if the scientists working on the Manhattan Project came out claiming that natural instances of fission accounted for all known instances of fission in the wild. It's a purely fallacious argument coming from the highest authority on the subject and that doesn't have you worried? But the tone of OPs question is worth worrying about?
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Let's stipulate that everything you say is true. It still doesn't address the content of the comment you are responding to: "it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest. " And as someone who has no opinion on the issue at all, and hasn't researched it, and can easily believe it is/isn't of lab origin, I can say that the top level OP comment was a very quick "I don't want to spend a minute of my time engaging with this guy." Do I have a flaw when I behave that way? Perhaps. Does he/she have a flaw in writing comments in ways that turn most people off? Definitely.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Another comment addressing pure tone, while never addressing content, unbelievable! People conducting science need to behave ethically, those are reasonable probing ethical questions. If the initial discussion related to origins of a bad pandemic can be quelled by a handful of science bureaucrats with conflicted interests then I think an interested journalist would ask the grand-OPs questions. The fact we don't have answers is because either the journalists aren't asking the questions (except the intercept) or the questions aren't getting answered. The normal format of journalistic curiosity is getting short circuited and so all you get to see is dickheads asking quesitons to the void on the internet. Perhaps you entirely disagree because you don't think those questions need to be answered. But we are stuck on tone of grand-OPs argument because why? Are you interested in the questions, I kind of think not.
    - BeetleB 4y ago

The problem is that the way the questions are posed comes across as "what are they hiding?!?" You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest.

peteradio 4y ago

Here's what I'll admit, its shady as hell for a group of scientists (some with especially confounding conflicts) to come out and dismiss something as so unlikely as to be impossible when it was obviously still a plausible explanation. That was not a scientific position to take, but a political one. Lab leaks are not new or especially rare. There is a now public paper trail indicating they were trying to build the damn thing! You have to admit that it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest. Imagine after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if the scientists working on the Manhattan Project came out claiming that natural instances of fission accounted for all known instances of fission in the wild. It's a purely fallacious argument coming from the highest authority on the subject and that doesn't have you worried? But the tone of OPs question is worth worrying about?

BeetleB 4y ago
Let's stipulate that everything you say is true. It still doesn't address the content of the comment you are responding to: "it's not a good way to kick off a discussion of the subject in earnest. " And as someone who has no opinion on the issue at all, and hasn't researched it, and can easily believe it is/isn't of lab origin, I can say that the top level OP comment was a very quick "I don't want to spend a minute of my time engaging with this guy." Do I have a flaw when I behave that way? Perhaps. Does he/she have a flaw in writing comments in ways that turn most people off? Definitely.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Another comment addressing pure tone, while never addressing content, unbelievable! People conducting science need to behave ethically, those are reasonable probing ethical questions. If the initial discussion related to origins of a bad pandemic can be quelled by a handful of science bureaucrats with conflicted interests then I think an interested journalist would ask the grand-OPs questions. The fact we don't have answers is because either the journalists aren't asking the questions (except the intercept) or the questions aren't getting answered. The normal format of journalistic curiosity is getting short circuited and so all you get to see is dickheads asking quesitons to the void on the internet. Perhaps you entirely disagree because you don't think those questions need to be answered. But we are stuck on tone of grand-OPs argument because why? Are you interested in the questions, I kind of think not.
  - BeetleB 4y ago