4 ms·

The author is part of a small team (himself plus two others) who recently released a preprint of a study suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is of synthetic origin. He h

The author is part of a small team (himself plus two others) who recently released a preprint of a study suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 is of synthetic origin. He has been accused of not having the requisite academic credentials to be making such an assertion, and in this post he recounts his quite-impressive scholarly achievements. The attacks upon the preprint are the product of an epistemically polluted trust network. In this case, the network (I believe) is aligned with the political Left. If the author were being attacked for asserting that Covid vaccines are generally safe and effective, one would assume the compromised trust network was aligned with the right. We as a society need to come up with a way to both foster freedom of speech and disseminate among the general populace the skills needed to vet competing accounts of scientific phenomena. And we all need to be willing to say, when appropriate, "There is not yet enough evidence to arrive at a firm conviction -- we will have to wait and see."

theCrowing 4y ago
If you look at the paper objectively even someone without the proper credentials should see red flags popping up left and right. He may have the credentials but his social media activities and his blatant hate for the scientific community (as he repeated in the post) during the pandemic seems to be driven by anger and hate. If he despises the scientific community that much and sees his studies and pre doctorates as a waste of time but uses them to give himself credibility seems odd. The "we did what we could we did the data we have" is also strange even if 90% of scientists are in on the conspiracy you would find somene who could provide a proper dataset. He could have avoided all of this if he would have just waited for the peer reviews, but we mostly know how they will turn out if he is that angry now. There are certainly still "Heureka" moments out there in which a hobbyist can outshine the status quo of the scientific community but this is not it.
- toomim 4y ago
  > If you look at the paper objectively ... He may have the credentials but his social media activities So did you read the paper and come up with a substantive scientific critique, or did you judge him on his social media activities and social opinions?
  - theCrowing 4y ago
    I read articles, got more intrested, read the paper, found some procedural mistakes that threw red flags, looked for scientists in the field to see what they think about it and after all that I looked at his social media and got annoyed real fast that it was just another nothing burger by an angry person.
    - ctoth 4y ago
      Curious, can you enumerate the red flags you saw?
      - theCrowing 4y ago
        The biggest was probably stating the results as facts in the result section and only as "more likely" in the conclusion. Sample size, taking only part of the genomes. The code quality of their scripts on GitHub and especially the comments in them. Bad spelling and convulted sentences... there is a lot more have a look yourself.
        postalrat 4y ago
        So you judged the science based on spelling in source code comments?
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      If you are looking for scientists in the field that tells us you are not in the field. But then you tell us you judged major procedural mistakes. How could someone who knows nothing about the field be an expert in procedural techniques in this field? Something tells me you are part of a group who feels threatened by these findings.
      - theCrowing 4y ago
        The process of writing scientific papers is mostly the same no matter the subject. The biggest flag was probably that he stated that he is 99,9% sure in interviews but the number never shows in the paper and in the conclusion part he just states "more likely". You don't need a bioengineering degree that something like that throws a red flag.
- amluto 4y ago
  And those red flags are…? You seem to be criticizing the author of the paper instead of the paper itself, which, in my book, is itself a red flag.
  - theCrowing 4y ago
    The biggest was probably stating the results as facts in the result section and only as "more likely" in the conclusion. Sample size, taking only part of the genomes. The code quality of their scripts on GitHub and especially the comments in them. Bad spelling and convulted sentences... there is a lot more have a look yourself.
  - dekhn 4y ago
    https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/1583486403416969216 https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/15834864034169692... among other scientists has a long list of criticisms. I have not looked into any of this work and make no judgements about the relative believability, but many of the criticisms are entirely about the claims, not the pedigree of the scientist. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33279281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33279281
- rjmunro 4y ago
  > his blatant hate for the scientific community Some areas of academia seem to do that to people. Nature even has a paper on it: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00663-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00663-2
- logifail 4y ago
  > He may have the credentials but his social media activities and his blatant hate for the scientific community (as he repeated in the post) during the pandemic seems to be driven by anger and hate. If he despises the scientific community that much and sees his studies and pre doctorates as a waste of time but uses them to give himself credibility seems odd. (Full disclosure: I have a science PhD) By the end of it, I hated my supervisor so much I could barely manage to speak to him and I went out of my way to avoid him. At the very end, after I'd done my viva and some minor corrections to my thesis I knew I've ticked all the boxes and the only thing left was to go in to clear out my lab space. At that point I simply didn't want to talk to anyone from the group so I went in very late one evening when I knew no-one would be around and packed up all my stuff and took it away. I didn't say goodbye and there was no leaving party. I was there for three-and-a-bit years, and then I wasn't. I have had no contact with the group, or my supervisor, since. I can easily imagine that someone with credentials / qualifications in a space might have issues with the system/community that appears to govern that space.
tjpnz 4y ago
>The attacks upon the preprint are the product of an epistemically polluted trust network. In this case, the network (I believe) is aligned with the political Left. Because some equate a hypothesis related to the WIV with racism?
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  If WIV was the source, it's very plausible that NIH-funded GoF research (and implicitly the existing field of virology) was the cause of the pandemic. There's been a lot of wagon-circling in the virology community at the implication that they caused instead of preventing a global pandemic.
alexwashburne 4y ago
Article author here - lots of interesting perspectives, I can't respond to them all, but I think this comment and the issues of bias induced by asymmetric application of trust (or vitriol) is important to consider. Some other interesting points on probability etc. - happy to discuss further. Perhaps a call sometime? We're of course open to feedback & civil discourse, and I've always admired the ycombinator crowd. I thought of applying to start a phage therapy company, but investors required a patent, which requires disclosing the tech to the whole world, and the tech can be used to make extremely dangerous viruses capable of killing people, so I folded on that venture. Anyways, I appreciate all of you entrepreneurs and smart people & your efforts to make the world better with disruptive innovations. I'm here - feel free to email me at alex.washburne@joinselva.com if you want to discuss anything further, and if possible perhaps a call with many people present and organized questions could be a way to engage in productive discourse? I'm flexible!

theCrowing 4y ago

If you look at the paper objectively even someone without the proper credentials should see red flags popping up left and right. He may have the credentials but his social media activities and his blatant hate for the scientific community (as he repeated in the post) during the pandemic seems to be driven by anger and hate. If he despises the scientific community that much and sees his studies and pre doctorates as a waste of time but uses them to give himself credibility seems odd. The "we did what we could we did the data we have" is also strange even if 90% of scientists are in on the conspiracy you would find somene who could provide a proper dataset. He could have avoided all of this if he would have just waited for the peer reviews, but we mostly know how they will turn out if he is that angry now. There are certainly still "Heureka" moments out there in which a hobbyist can outshine the status quo of the scientific community but this is not it.

toomim 4y ago
> If you look at the paper objectively ... He may have the credentials but his social media activities So did you read the paper and come up with a substantive scientific critique, or did you judge him on his social media activities and social opinions?
- theCrowing 4y ago
  I read articles, got more intrested, read the paper, found some procedural mistakes that threw red flags, looked for scientists in the field to see what they think about it and after all that I looked at his social media and got annoyed real fast that it was just another nothing burger by an angry person.
  - ctoth 4y ago
    Curious, can you enumerate the red flags you saw?
    - theCrowing 4y ago
      The biggest was probably stating the results as facts in the result section and only as "more likely" in the conclusion. Sample size, taking only part of the genomes. The code quality of their scripts on GitHub and especially the comments in them. Bad spelling and convulted sentences... there is a lot more have a look yourself.
      - postalrat 4y ago
        So you judged the science based on spelling in source code comments?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    If you are looking for scientists in the field that tells us you are not in the field. But then you tell us you judged major procedural mistakes. How could someone who knows nothing about the field be an expert in procedural techniques in this field? Something tells me you are part of a group who feels threatened by these findings.
    - theCrowing 4y ago
      The process of writing scientific papers is mostly the same no matter the subject. The biggest flag was probably that he stated that he is 99,9% sure in interviews but the number never shows in the paper and in the conclusion part he just states "more likely". You don't need a bioengineering degree that something like that throws a red flag.
amluto 4y ago
And those red flags are…? You seem to be criticizing the author of the paper instead of the paper itself, which, in my book, is itself a red flag.
- theCrowing 4y ago
  The biggest was probably stating the results as facts in the result section and only as "more likely" in the conclusion. Sample size, taking only part of the genomes. The code quality of their scripts on GitHub and especially the comments in them. Bad spelling and convulted sentences... there is a lot more have a look yourself.
- dekhn 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/1583486403416969216 https://twitter.com/acritschristoph/status/15834864034169692... among other scientists has a long list of criticisms. I have not looked into any of this work and make no judgements about the relative believability, but many of the criticisms are entirely about the claims, not the pedigree of the scientist. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33279281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33279281
rjmunro 4y ago
> his blatant hate for the scientific community Some areas of academia seem to do that to people. Nature even has a paper on it: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00663-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00663-2
logifail 4y ago
> He may have the credentials but his social media activities and his blatant hate for the scientific community (as he repeated in the post) during the pandemic seems to be driven by anger and hate. If he despises the scientific community that much and sees his studies and pre doctorates as a waste of time but uses them to give himself credibility seems odd. (Full disclosure: I have a science PhD) By the end of it, I hated my supervisor so much I could barely manage to speak to him and I went out of my way to avoid him. At the very end, after I'd done my viva and some minor corrections to my thesis I knew I've ticked all the boxes and the only thing left was to go in to clear out my lab space. At that point I simply didn't want to talk to anyone from the group so I went in very late one evening when I knew no-one would be around and packed up all my stuff and took it away. I didn't say goodbye and there was no leaving party. I was there for three-and-a-bit years, and then I wasn't. I have had no contact with the group, or my supervisor, since. I can easily imagine that someone with credentials / qualifications in a space might have issues with the system/community that appears to govern that space.

tjpnz 4y ago

>The attacks upon the preprint are the product of an epistemically polluted trust network. In this case, the network (I believe) is aligned with the political Left. Because some equate a hypothesis related to the WIV with racism?

bpodgursky 4y ago
If WIV was the source, it's very plausible that NIH-funded GoF research (and implicitly the existing field of virology) was the cause of the pandemic. There's been a lot of wagon-circling in the virology community at the implication that they caused instead of preventing a global pandemic.

alexwashburne 4y ago

Article author here - lots of interesting perspectives, I can't respond to them all, but I think this comment and the issues of bias induced by asymmetric application of trust (or vitriol) is important to consider. Some other interesting points on probability etc. - happy to discuss further. Perhaps a call sometime? We're of course open to feedback & civil discourse, and I've always admired the ycombinator crowd. I thought of applying to start a phage therapy company, but investors required a patent, which requires disclosing the tech to the whole world, and the tech can be used to make extremely dangerous viruses capable of killing people, so I folded on that venture. Anyways, I appreciate all of you entrepreneurs and smart people & your efforts to make the world better with disruptive innovations. I'm here - feel free to email me at alex.washburne@joinselva.com if you want to discuss anything further, and if possible perhaps a call with many people present and organized questions could be a way to engage in productive discourse? I'm flexible!