5 ms·

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plaus

Why is parent getting downvoted? The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. And gain of function research is 1: real 2: fucking insane and 3: a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic.

mikeyouse 4y ago
It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do exactly what Covid19 did.
- benreesman 4y ago
  I think there is a lot more controversy than you’re implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN comment thread is probably not the right place to litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan political football. I’ll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do their own research on this and try to look past the elephant in the room of the politics angle.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even educated!) person is to "do their own research" on something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering. Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the advance of the most recent bombshell paper that supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab origin missed obvious tells that completely invalidated the authors' claims. E.g. this thread; https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1587090507288776704 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/15870905072887767... If people do want to make up their own minds on this - I'd encourage you to track down people making falsifiable claims and then changing their priors based on the results of that research instead of people jumping from one conspiracy theory to the next to avoid changing their views. As one data point, several prominent "lab leakers" on Twitter are now insisting that prior strains are fake and were invented by virologists since those strains disprove recent papers instead of considering that maybe those recent papers were flawed. It's bizarre to watch. (One of the authors of the most recent 'bombshell' LL paper claiming that two related field-collected coronaviruses are fake / manipulated: https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248 https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248)
    - benreesman 4y ago
      No layperson is qualified to understand any advanced technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of us aren’t lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them. This is the dilemma inherent in not having a /u/PhdInEverything. But the answer isn’t “go away and let the grownups decide”, the answer is to try to learn what constitutes an expert, try to understand what degree of consensus does or does not exist amongst those experts, try to ferret out some obvious biases (e.g. red team / blue team idiocy) and be as informed as possible. The standard model of particle physics, or Wiles FLT proof, or 1000 other things are every bit as technical as anything in virology, but you’ll notice the mathematicians all agree: the layperson doesn’t have to look very hard to know what the takeaway is there. It’s medicine’s (including virology’s) job to get its shit together on the public’s behalf, not the other way around. This kind of condescension infuriates me, I’m working hard to be as polite as possible here.
      - mikeyouse 4y ago
        You can be as infuriated as you'd like, but I consider HN to be one of the more responsible and educated forums for casual discussion and the level of straight up conspiracy-driven misinformation on everything related to Covid is astonishing. From origins to vaccines to treatments (remember all of the threads extolling HCQ and IVM?), it's as sophisticated as you'd expect from people "doing their own research" in fields they don't understand and apparently aren't equipped to develop an understanding of. There's no political or financial implications to whether Wiles' proof of FLT is correct or not, and the proof can be checked with certainty by experts in the field -- so of course they can come to a consensus about something extraordinarily technical. Unfortunately with Covid, every question has turned into a political shibboleth so there will forever be FUD promoted by people who should know better. How is the average reader supposed to weigh the probabilities of some esoteric question like what the potential presence or absence of IIS restriction sites means when it's being promoted by people with advanced degrees as evidence of an artificial origin, even though it's nonsense? So I retreat to my earlier advice for those trying to form an opinion here -- look into the history of claims from the various scientists, and see whether evidence is guiding their claims or if their claims are guiding their evidence.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    I find pretty often when people resolve conversations like this by saying 'do your own research', particularly when the research to be done requires any homework at all, it is shorthand for 'find a loud voice saying things that are compatible with the worldview you've decided on already'.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      If "you do your own research" to confirm your own pre-existing ideas, then yes, you're going to get where you wanted to go. I read "do your own research" differently. I think it can go two different directions. In the positive direction, it can mean "Ignore all the loudmouths, all the liars, all the self-anointed experts. Even ignore me, the speaker. Find out who really knows what they're talking about, and listen to them." This assumes, though, that the listener can do that. Am I actually capable to discern truth from lies, or even real expertise from incompetence, in virology? Maybe, if I devote enough time to it. Do I have that kind of time for every topic on which someone tells me "do your own research"? Probably not. So what it really turns into is finding someone who at least sounds like they are doing their own research (and doing it well), and listening to them. More negatively, I suspect that "do your own research" at least sometimes is a veiled way of saying "If you really knew, then you would agree with me" in a much less in-your-face way than just saying it. The person saying this may have done their research as you say, finding a loud voice that said what they wanted to hear, and now be totally convinced that they are right, and that if you did your research, you would wind up agreeing with them.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    Most of controversy comes from scientists, often biologists and doctors, yeah. But not virologists. You know, people who actually know what they’re talking about. Biology is such an enormously wide and diverse field that opinions of someone who’s not a virologist is often as relevant as an opinion of the software engineer.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      It's like asking the DB admin about which machine learning framework to use for the new project, instead of your data scientist. Sure, the DB admin likely has an opinion, but it will almost never be as well formed an opinion as the one from your data scientist, even if their opinions are in agreement.
- pvarangot 4y ago
  > It's really not mainstream amongst virologists I mean if you seriously believe that theory you are probably going to either end, start thinking about how to end, or significantly change how you develop, your career as a virologist. Of course it's not mainstream.
  - Bukhmanizer 4y ago
    It’s not common for virologists to work on GOF research or to do anything close to as dangerous. It’s pure tin hat thinking to say that “my idea is correct and everyone who has any expertise is compromised”. I don’t know what is right or not, but I know a lot of virologists (through work) without any personal interest in the case who don’t put much stock in the lab leak hypothesis.
    - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
      Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
justapassenger 4y ago
Gain function is only way to research pathogens.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  No it isn't.
  - justapassenger 4y ago
    To study how they evolve and their potential to become a problem? Yeah, that’s the only way to go. And given how fast viruses evolve, there’s no real alternative.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      I think everyone agrees that observing live virus in the lab is a critical (if dangerous) part of studying them. Intentionally engineering them as high as possible on transmissibility and morbidity is bioweapon development being money laundered through conventional science: it’s an insane thing to do. Leaving SARS-COV-2 out of it completely: there have indisputably been other leaks. It’s the height of irresponsibility and shortsightedness to engineer civilization-ending viruses, which is why it’s banned under multiple international conventions that GoF is a workaround for. You don’t need a vaccine for the fucking superflu if you never develop the fucking superflu.
      - justapassenger 4y ago
        And you assume that flu won’t evolve in nature? And can only start to learn about superflu once everyone is locked down at home? Also, gain function refers to basically any change to pathogen. Banning it is like banning 5G, because it could be used to steer nano bots. And you also heavily overstate our abilities to actually mutate viruses in a way we’d want.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Nature has no qualms about performing GOF research if we don't do it. How do we protect ourselves from future viral and biological evolution otherwise? Virus's evolve literally every day, and if we don't find a way to build tools, processes, and countermeasures, we will absolutely be strongly harmed by a future one. This always feels like the "we can't afford to fix climate change so we just will ignore the problem" take.
nonameiguess 4y ago
It's a hell of a leap to go from gain of function research has ever happened at all to gain of function specifically on Ebola is a near-term serious risk. Is there any evidence that gain of function has ever been conducted on Ebola? I've never heard of it, and don't know where to look other than a search engine, and conducting a search there returns exactly two sources making that claim, one called "scamdemic" and one called "goldismoney." Neither seems like a particularly reputable source.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
LatteLazy 4y ago
>The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. So is denying climate change or the moon landings...
- thedorkknight 4y ago
  Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Despite actual pictures taken recently...
    - postalrat 4y ago
      You are claiming 6% is mainstream?
      - LatteLazy 4y ago
        I will say that the evidence is the same for either. What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will leave up to you...
        serf 4y ago
        let's leave it up to the word definitions instead : mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts. So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke books and parody.
    - thedorkknight 4y ago
      Interesting! I honestly would not have guessed it was that high
chimprich 4y ago
> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics. > a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of function research could potentially predict or help mitigate.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  >but lacking in evidence so anything short of a public confession by a CCP spokesman isn't enough?
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue here is that we didn’t get to hear real investigation of it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers with varying level of credibility.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    China was never going to let a legitimate investigation happen, no matter what. They have nothing to gain by letting people know exactly what happened (because they think they can manage things on their own) and everything to lose by letting someone prove that wet markets are horrific or that bio labs in china have terrible safety.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
  > but lacking in evidence Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
timr 4y ago
I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely, tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-CoV2 engineering, and the differences of type required to aerosolize a filiovirus. Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying that sharks are going to evolve wings and start flying around eating people.
- harvey9 4y ago
  But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and deposited on Los Angeles?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Now we have the basis of a movie.
    - gatane 4y ago
      Better, a one hit song (8 years ago) https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo

mikeyouse 4y ago

It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence for lab manipulation of the sars cov2 virus. It's vaguely plausible that the virus could have been captured in the wild and then leaked, but even that seems extremely unlikely given the two separate market lineages and timeline of the earliest cases. Stricter control of GoF makes a lot of sense but the reason everyone was studying coronavirus pandemics in the first place is because we'd had several near misses and everyone in the virology community knew it was only a matter of time before the right circumstances allowed a spillover to do exactly what Covid19 did.

benreesman 4y ago
I think there is a lot more controversy than you’re implying, even among serious scientists, but an HN comment thread is probably not the right place to litigate a complex issue that is also a partisan political football. I’ll leave it at this: I would encourage everyone to do their own research on this and try to look past the elephant in the room of the politics angle.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  I've got a busy day so don't want to get into it again -- but I cannot express how incapable the average (even educated!) person is to "do their own research" on something as complex and nuanced as molecular engineering and the probabilities of covid genetic engineering. Even some expert 'pre-reviewers' that received the advance of the most recent bombshell paper that supposedly proved an unnatural virus with lab origin missed obvious tells that completely invalidated the authors' claims. E.g. this thread; https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1587090507288776704 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/15870905072887767... If people do want to make up their own minds on this - I'd encourage you to track down people making falsifiable claims and then changing their priors based on the results of that research instead of people jumping from one conspiracy theory to the next to avoid changing their views. As one data point, several prominent "lab leakers" on Twitter are now insisting that prior strains are fake and were invented by virologists since those strains disprove recent papers instead of considering that maybe those recent papers were flawed. It's bizarre to watch. (One of the authors of the most recent 'bombshell' LL paper claiming that two related field-collected coronaviruses are fake / manipulated: https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248 https://twitter.com/VBruttel/status/1584920770605621248)
  - benreesman 4y ago
    No layperson is qualified to understand any advanced technical field these days. Semiconductor fabrication is utterly out of reach for the typical voter, but they still have to form an opinion on the CHIPS act. Most of us aren’t lawyers, but still sometimes need to hire them. This is the dilemma inherent in not having a /u/PhdInEverything. But the answer isn’t “go away and let the grownups decide”, the answer is to try to learn what constitutes an expert, try to understand what degree of consensus does or does not exist amongst those experts, try to ferret out some obvious biases (e.g. red team / blue team idiocy) and be as informed as possible. The standard model of particle physics, or Wiles FLT proof, or 1000 other things are every bit as technical as anything in virology, but you’ll notice the mathematicians all agree: the layperson doesn’t have to look very hard to know what the takeaway is there. It’s medicine’s (including virology’s) job to get its shit together on the public’s behalf, not the other way around. This kind of condescension infuriates me, I’m working hard to be as polite as possible here.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      You can be as infuriated as you'd like, but I consider HN to be one of the more responsible and educated forums for casual discussion and the level of straight up conspiracy-driven misinformation on everything related to Covid is astonishing. From origins to vaccines to treatments (remember all of the threads extolling HCQ and IVM?), it's as sophisticated as you'd expect from people "doing their own research" in fields they don't understand and apparently aren't equipped to develop an understanding of. There's no political or financial implications to whether Wiles' proof of FLT is correct or not, and the proof can be checked with certainty by experts in the field -- so of course they can come to a consensus about something extraordinarily technical. Unfortunately with Covid, every question has turned into a political shibboleth so there will forever be FUD promoted by people who should know better. How is the average reader supposed to weigh the probabilities of some esoteric question like what the potential presence or absence of IIS restriction sites means when it's being promoted by people with advanced degrees as evidence of an artificial origin, even though it's nonsense? So I retreat to my earlier advice for those trying to form an opinion here -- look into the history of claims from the various scientists, and see whether evidence is guiding their claims or if their claims are guiding their evidence.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  I find pretty often when people resolve conversations like this by saying 'do your own research', particularly when the research to be done requires any homework at all, it is shorthand for 'find a loud voice saying things that are compatible with the worldview you've decided on already'.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    If "you do your own research" to confirm your own pre-existing ideas, then yes, you're going to get where you wanted to go. I read "do your own research" differently. I think it can go two different directions. In the positive direction, it can mean "Ignore all the loudmouths, all the liars, all the self-anointed experts. Even ignore me, the speaker. Find out who really knows what they're talking about, and listen to them." This assumes, though, that the listener can do that. Am I actually capable to discern truth from lies, or even real expertise from incompetence, in virology? Maybe, if I devote enough time to it. Do I have that kind of time for every topic on which someone tells me "do your own research"? Probably not. So what it really turns into is finding someone who at least sounds like they are doing their own research (and doing it well), and listening to them. More negatively, I suspect that "do your own research" at least sometimes is a veiled way of saying "If you really knew, then you would agree with me" in a much less in-your-face way than just saying it. The person saying this may have done their research as you say, finding a loud voice that said what they wanted to hear, and now be totally convinced that they are right, and that if you did your research, you would wind up agreeing with them.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  Most of controversy comes from scientists, often biologists and doctors, yeah. But not virologists. You know, people who actually know what they’re talking about. Biology is such an enormously wide and diverse field that opinions of someone who’s not a virologist is often as relevant as an opinion of the software engineer.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    It's like asking the DB admin about which machine learning framework to use for the new project, instead of your data scientist. Sure, the DB admin likely has an opinion, but it will almost never be as well formed an opinion as the one from your data scientist, even if their opinions are in agreement.
pvarangot 4y ago
> It's really not mainstream amongst virologists I mean if you seriously believe that theory you are probably going to either end, start thinking about how to end, or significantly change how you develop, your career as a virologist. Of course it's not mainstream.
- Bukhmanizer 4y ago
  It’s not common for virologists to work on GOF research or to do anything close to as dangerous. It’s pure tin hat thinking to say that “my idea is correct and everyone who has any expertise is compromised”. I don’t know what is right or not, but I know a lot of virologists (through work) without any personal interest in the case who don’t put much stock in the lab leak hypothesis.
  - johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
    Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

justapassenger 4y ago

Gain function is only way to research pathogens.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
No it isn't.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  To study how they evolve and their potential to become a problem? Yeah, that’s the only way to go. And given how fast viruses evolve, there’s no real alternative.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I think everyone agrees that observing live virus in the lab is a critical (if dangerous) part of studying them. Intentionally engineering them as high as possible on transmissibility and morbidity is bioweapon development being money laundered through conventional science: it’s an insane thing to do. Leaving SARS-COV-2 out of it completely: there have indisputably been other leaks. It’s the height of irresponsibility and shortsightedness to engineer civilization-ending viruses, which is why it’s banned under multiple international conventions that GoF is a workaround for. You don’t need a vaccine for the fucking superflu if you never develop the fucking superflu.
    - justapassenger 4y ago
      And you assume that flu won’t evolve in nature? And can only start to learn about superflu once everyone is locked down at home? Also, gain function refers to basically any change to pathogen. Banning it is like banning 5G, because it could be used to steer nano bots. And you also heavily overstate our abilities to actually mutate viruses in a way we’d want.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Nature has no qualms about performing GOF research if we don't do it. How do we protect ourselves from future viral and biological evolution otherwise? Virus's evolve literally every day, and if we don't find a way to build tools, processes, and countermeasures, we will absolutely be strongly harmed by a future one. This always feels like the "we can't afford to fix climate change so we just will ignore the problem" take.

nonameiguess 4y ago

It's a hell of a leap to go from gain of function research has ever happened at all to gain of function specifically on Ebola is a near-term serious risk. Is there any evidence that gain of function has ever been conducted on Ebola? I've never heard of it, and don't know where to look other than a search engine, and conducting a search there returns exactly two sources making that claim, one called "scamdemic" and one called "goldismoney." Neither seems like a particularly reputable source.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

LatteLazy 4y ago

>The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. So is denying climate change or the moon landings...

thedorkknight 4y ago
Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori... Despite actual pictures taken recently...
  - postalrat 4y ago
    You are claiming 6% is mainstream?
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      I will say that the evidence is the same for either. What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will leave up to you...
      - serf 4y ago
        let's leave it up to the word definitions instead : mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts. So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke books and parody.
  - thedorkknight 4y ago
    Interesting! I honestly would not have guessed it was that high

chimprich 4y ago

> The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days. Mainstream, and conceivably true, but lacking in evidence. Personally I find it rather implausible due to a lack of motivation for why the lab in question would be doing secret work on coronaviruses. > fucking insane I don't think this is a helpful way to have this debate. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion on this, but a majority of virologists seem to think it's necessary, so I wouldn't automatically label them as lunatics. > a plausible way we would have a true captain trips style pandemic Other plausible ways are a mutation from an existing pathogen or another zoonotic spillover event, which gain of function research could potentially predict or help mitigate.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
>but lacking in evidence so anything short of a public confession by a CCP spokesman isn't enough?
throwaway1777 4y ago
The new report by pro publica and vanity fair is about as close to evidence as we are likely to get. The big issue here is that we didn’t get to hear real investigation of it until 2 years after the fact aside from whistleblowers with varying level of credibility.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  China was never going to let a legitimate investigation happen, no matter what. They have nothing to gain by letting people know exactly what happened (because they think they can manage things on their own) and everything to lose by letting someone prove that wet markets are horrific or that bio labs in china have terrible safety.
johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
> but lacking in evidence Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

timr 4y ago

I'll go: because while the parent comment is (loosely, tangentially) based in fact, it's an enormous leap to go from the kind of differences we're talking about with SARS-CoV2 engineering, and the differences of type required to aerosolize a filiovirus. Is it "possible"? Yes, theoretically. But it's not at all trivial, and far down my worry list. It's bit like worrying that sharks are going to evolve wings and start flying around eating people.

harvey9 4y ago
But what if lots of ebola was lifted up in a tornado and deposited on Los Angeles?
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Now we have the basis of a movie.
  - gatane 4y ago
    Better, a one hit song (8 years ago) https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo https://youtu.be/qlnsHiaAoYo