4 ms·

It's really not mainstream amongst virologists.. as has been demonstrated by repeatedly debunking the latest gish gallop papers, there's literally zero evidence

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...

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...