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There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today. Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says And then the s
by aaronbrethorst 4y ago
There's a lot of bad headline-writing on this subject today.
Here's the NYT's headline: Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says
And then the sub-head (or dek, if you want to sound like you're in the know): The conclusion, which was made with “low confidence,” came as America’s intelligence agencies remained divided over the origins of the coronavirus.
So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a confidence score: 'low'.
The NYT goes on to say:
Some officials briefed on the intelligence said that it was relatively weak and that the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with “low confidence,” suggesting its level of certainty was not high. While the department shared the information with other agencies, none of them changed their conclusions, officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-leak-coronavirus-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/us/politics/china-lab-lea...
- alchemist1e9 4y agoAlso article mentions FBI has “moderate” confidence it was lab leak. I find that very interesting given it wouldn’t be so much based on scientific analysis but some intelligence collection the FBI has.
- teawrecks 4y agoScience is the collecting and processing of empirical data using peer reviewed methods to reach a conclusion. Which part do you think the FBI is not doing which separates their process from science?
- kranke155 4y agoDoesn’t the FBI also have a large biological analysis team? For bio terror ?
- orlp 4y agoI think if anything COVID has shown us that biological warfare makes as much sense as nuclear: none. In our globally connected world it's mutually assured destruction, and that's without even the need for your enemy to maintain stockpiles of weapons. The virus will find itself within your own borders soon enough.
- scotteric 4y agoIt still makes sense for things like anthrax that aren't easily communicable. Or botulinum toxin.
- nradov 4y agoTerrorists motivated by religion or ideology sometimes use tactics and weapons that make no sense to rational people. The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological weapons.
- jcranmer 4y ago> The Aum Shinrikyo cult was developing biological weapons. Sarin would be classed as chemical, not biological. It's also worth illustrating that their primary terrorist act killed 15 people, after releasing sarin on 5 different trains during Tokyo's busy rush hour. You would have been more effective just lobbing a single grenade.
- ffssffss 4y agoAnd the WSJ piece says the CIA is undecided! I wonder what explains the different assessments.
- alchemist1e9 4y agoProbably they still aren’t sharing all the information they have with each other. I had thought that was supposed to be much improved post 9-11.
- kashunstva 4y agoOr there aren't objective standards for what "low, medium, and high confidence" actually mean, thereby allowing one agency to look at the evidence and say it's of low confidence and another to look at the same data and say it's moderate confidence.
- Bjartr 4y agoInterestingly, the CIA has published a paper on exactly this subject: Words of Estimative Probability (PDF) https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-8-no-4/words-of-estimative-probability/ https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/ar...
- cameldrv 4y agoModerate and Low are Words of Analytic Confidence [1]. This has more to do with the quality of the sourcing than a numeric probability number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_confidence
- ineedasername 4y agoOr they are coming to different conclusions given the same ambiguous/incomplete information. It could simply be disagreement, or just lack of a standard metric here to compare notes easily.
- ashwagary 4y agoIf you repeat a lie often enough, even the at first reluctant will start to believe it. That's how the propaganda machine typically works. The more these claims based on minimal new evidence are repeated, the more it seems the virus may have potentially been released by nefarious actors as an attack on the population. It's not implausable for an entity with knowledge and access to a virus being studied, to release a copy of it in the environment surrounding the lab while maintaining a high degree of deniability. If it is so, then the question that remains is, much like in the case of Nordstream, which nation state has the most incentive to carry it out?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- baja_blast 4y agoWhile I won't discount the possibility that the outbreak could be a nefarious plot to plant a virus.I feel the US's response to the pandemic and the massive mistakes made make it less likely. The most likely would be just an accident where a researcher unknowingly got infected while conducting research in a BSL2 lab where they were testing wild SARS like viruses and inserting FCS to gauge the viruses potential threat level
- taw567890 4y ago>I feel the US's response to the pandemic and the massive mistakes make it less likely. It may be unlikely but there have been many instances where the US population becomes a victim of its own government's covert actions. The quality of response doesn't neccessarily prove anything.
- bigfudge 4y agoI'm wary of engaging, but this just makes no sense to me. Perhaps you can explain and actually make explicit some of the implied connections. Previously the 'big lie' was that it was not from a lab. Now that it's assessed to be likely from a lab the new lie is the contention that it was done deliberately? Whose propaganda machine is at work here anyway? The Chinese govt or the US one? Or are they in cahoots now?
- iaseiadit 4y ago“The FBI employs a cadre of microbiologists, immunologists and other scientists and is supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center, which was established at Fort Detrick, Md., in 2004 to analyze anthrax and other possible biological threats.” -the article
- StanislavPetrov 4y agoIronic, since the anthrax from the "anthrax attacks" in 2001 were traced to Fort Detrick.
- abduhl 4y agoWhat is the substantive difference between "Lab leak most likely origin of Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. agency now says" and "Lab Leak Most Likely Caused Pandemic, Energy Dept. Says"? The only difference I see is that one notes the pandemic ("Covid-19") while the other notes the agency ("Energy Dept."). Or is your comment more broadly that both headlines are bad? If so, then I'd disagree. Both headlines give the most important part of the story: a US agency currently believes that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak.
- ghaff 4y agoI'm not sure what the better headline would be. "Lab leak possible origin?" Well, yes, in that they haven't ruled it out. But that's not really the same thing as saying that something is "most likely" even if, as the subhead notes, they wouldn't bet the farm on it.
- jonplackett 4y agoI think the criticism is that saying something is ‘most likely’ implies a sense of it being pretty likely. When the reality is that they are very uncertain. Both headlines are clickbait compared to the content of the article.
- stevehawk 4y ago> Both headlines give the most important part of the story: a US agency currently believes that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak. seems to me you're still leaving out a very important part of the news, which is that the confidence level is "low". so right now the US government has multiple theories, none of which it is confident. it's just that of the reports that is not confident in, it might be the least not confident in the lab leak idea. but the WSJ has decided to throw integrity aside and ignore that part in their headline.
- abduhl 4y agoThe confidence level for the Covid-19 vaccine being sterilizing was low, but we still ran headlines saying as much. The confidence level for cloth masks being effective was low, but we still ran headlines saying as much. The confidence level for everything when it comes to Covid-19 is low. The media gave up on integrity a long time ago, especially with respect to the pandemic. You're just noticing it now?
- andai 4y ago> In 2015, an international team including two scientists from the institute published successful research on whether a bat coronavirus could be made to infect a human cell line (HeLa). The team engineered a hybrid virus, combining a bat coronavirus with a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and mimic human disease. The hybrid virus was able to infect human cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#SARS-related_coronaviruses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#SA... Do we have the genetic sequences from these experiments? Has anyone compared them to the sequences from the pandemic? I'm not entirely up to speed but I recall hearing something about the US government funding them (without its own knowledge..?), so perhaps that info is not only in China's hands. (And while we're on the subject, did anything come of the thing about Pfizer engineering the virus, ostensibly for vaccine research purposes?)
- mikeyouse 4y agoYes we have the sequences and no they’re nothing like SarsCov2
- chitowneats 4y agoTrue. And yet, it shows that there is a large scientific community & apparatus willing to experiment with this. Circumstantial evidence is not proof of wrongdoing, but it is reason to ask more questions. Why were those questions censored? Why were they ruled unacceptable "misinformation"? It seems to me that we were asleep at the switch.
- mikeyouse 4y agoThe counter to that is that the experts in coronaviruses knew they were the likely next epidemic and that they were doing their best to characterize the threat as best possible but unfortunately failed before the spillover came. The scientific community knew how close we came between SARS and MERS, a small mutation of either could’ve been much more virulent and pathogenic, so of course they were trying to research.
- gremlinsinc 4y ago[flagged]
- colechristensen 4y agoThis supposes way too much intention that can much more easily be explained by incompetence. A lab doing questionable work with inadequate safety measures hiding a major leak to save face makes way more sense than a supervillain story.
- baja_blast 4y agoAnd when you add in the fact that virology work on unknown wild SARS like viruses were scheduled for only BSL2. And the vast majority of research published on sampled SARS like viruses was conducted in BSL2 labs it very easy to imagine a researcher unwittingly getting infected from a human mice model carrying a wild virus with a human optimized FCS inserted.
- ramraj07 4y agoThey always softball these bombshells like this so any confidence in official terms is something that pretty much solidifies this as the source of the virus for me. I’m trying to think of anyone involved had a conscience if they would be tallying themselves to be one of the most prolific murderers in history but then that likely wouldn’t happen since first unofficial hazing ritual you do when entering academia is to develop an air of “that’s not me” attitude about things like this.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoGood luck getting 95% of the American populace to understand any of that nuance. After seeing lots of Twitter threads about Nate Silver, condemning his lack of "certainty" in his predictions ("It's such a cop out! Since he never says yes or no one way or the other he always has an out when he's wrong!"), I'm even more convinced not just that people don't understand statistics, but they willfully don't want to.
- ss108 4y agoYeah. In 2016 when people were like "hurr durr experts suck, they predicted Hillary would win and she lost", it was exasperating. If a model predicted an outcome with 60-70% certainty, and the less likely scenario happens, model wasn't necessarily bad. That'd be true even if it was a 90/10 split.
- nradov 4y agoThe model wasn't bad, just useless.
- ss108 4y agoWhy useless? People have to attempt to predict the outcomes of elections, and have to do their best.
- afiori 4y agoI would guess that the vast majority of the population do not take meaningful actions based on election prediction (other than "I might [not] need to actually vote"). There are good reasons to have polls and predictions but they are far from necessary.
- ss108 4y agoPeople who work for political campaigns need to know, businesses and investors might like to plan, etc.
- belorn 4y agoIf all the other origin theories has "very low" as confidence score, then a lab leak is still the most likely origin with a "low" confidence score. It would be nice to see the confidence score as a numerical number in order to understand how much lead this theory has to the second most likely origin theory.
- nradov 4y agoThere is way to actually quantify such estimates. Any numbers would just be made up. A qualitative confidence rating like "low" really is the best way to convey intelligence information to policy makers.
- boopmaster 4y agoThis. Low confidence still significant in that it could have been “low confidence transmission from wet market game”, but that’s not the direction this landed on. It’s likely a lab leak, says the report, but there’s too many gaps to support higher certainty.
- frank_nitti 4y agoExactly - and how many were mocked, ridiculed, cancelled for even floating the idea of the lab leak; it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. Many, even some in this thread, are eager to minimize this story if they participated in ridiculing the fringe voices who kept questioning the official narrative. Better to have this quickly fade into oblivion lest they be outed as having placed their blind faith in false prophets. But Pepperidge farm remembers
- autoexec 4y ago> it was labeled as a BS conspiracy theory. At the time it was a BS conspiracy theory. There was some evidence for it, and some evidence against it and it happened that the evidence we had at the time was stronger for the non-lab leak theories. That's what changed right now. We have new evidence that puts the lab leak theory above the others. Back when Trump was demanding that "China pay" and people were beating up random Asians who were just walking down the street, that wasn't true. Just because we today have the evidence to support the lab leak theory, that doesn't justify Trump's claims or the "blind faith" of his followers who rejected the available evidence to support what they wanted to be true.
- sheepscreek 4y agoFor what it’s worth - FBI arrived at the same conclusion in 2021 with “moderate confidence.” Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807...
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoI wonder if the timing of these "bad headlines" is connected to this https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-new-agreements-with-russia-during-moscow-visit-2023-02-22/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chinas-top-diplomat-expects-ne...
- NoGravitas 4y agoOf course it is. It makes me sincerely hope J. Posadas was right.
- barbazoo 4y agoDo we know why it is the Department of Energy that works on that? I would have expected a branch of government that's more related to health, granted, I know very little about US gvmt structure.
- mort96 4y agoI don't know the answer to your question, but the DoE does a lot more than just energy. In addition to overseeing energy policy, they oversee the R&D of nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons program, they oversee the National Laboratories which does a lot of research and development in the areas of technology, health, physics, climate/environment and energy, they started the Human Genome Project, etc. Here's their overview of some of the stuff their National Laboratories have done: https://www.energy.gov/articles/75-breakthroughs-americas-national-laboratories-0 https://www.energy.gov/articles/75-breakthroughs-americas-na...
- midoridensha 4y agoIt sounds like they need to rename themselves. Perhaps "Department of Science"?
- starkparker 4y agoThere's a reason why DoE's used as the "villain" agency in Stranger Things, enough so that DoE commented[1] on it. 1: https://www.energy.gov/articles/what-stranger-things-didnt-get-quite-so-right-about-energy-department https://www.energy.gov/articles/what-stranger-things-didnt-g...
- fakethenews2022 4y ago[flagged]
- dqpb 4y agoSure, but the real news is it used to be taboo to say this - Sinophobic even. A lot of people are owed a serious apology.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoContext, as always, is key: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate-crimes-assaults-pandemic-incidents-aapi https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027236499/anti-asian-hate-cr... Are these people who are owed a serious apology the ones who actually attacked Asian-Americans? Or simply the ones who stoked racial animus prompting others to attack them?
- dqpb 4y agoThe people who are owed an apology are the people who did nothing more than to believe that the wuhan coronavirus outbreak originated from the wuhan coronavirus research lab.
- somewhereoutth 4y agoThat was situated in a region known for coronaviruses
- dqpb 4y agoWhy was it so stigmatized before and now it's the preferred hypothesis for FBI and DOE?
- somewhereoutth 4y agoGood question! Perhaps 'Deep Trump'? Certainly even the 3 letter agencies are not immune to what at best we might call the reactionary right, at worst proto-fascism.
- dqpb 4y ago
- another_story 4y agoFeels like we should assume it's a lab leak and push for caution anyways. If it wasn't a lab leak then all we've done is help better prevent that from happening in the future.
- nl 4y agoSee "Words of estimative probability" related to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_of_estimative_probabilit...
- pessimizer 4y agoThe headline is absolutely, literally true. I also don't understand the nuance that anyone could miss here. The astounding thing is that the Energy Dept. can say that a lab leak is the most likely cause of the pandemic, and people jump out in front of them to say that what they somehow still mean is that a lab leak wasn't the cause of the pandemic. They have "low confidence" that it was a lab leak (there might not even be a physical way to prove that conclusively), but they have higher confidence in that theory than in any other theory or possibly even than in all other theories combined. When evidence pointing to your previous belief being untrue makes you more confident in your previous belief, you're in When Prophecy Fails territory. ----- edit: Just wanted to add this wikipedia quote because it makes me sad... * 12:05 am. December 21. No visitor. Someone in the group notices that another clock in the room shows 11:55. The group agrees that it is not yet midnight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails#Sequence_of_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails#Sequence_o...
- axxto 4y agoA "sightly-less-shitty-than-other-theories" theory is still a shitty theory. Low-confidence means exactly what it sounds like.
- dangwhy 4y agothen why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery.
- selcuka 4y ago> then why even propose any theory ? why not let it remain a mystery. Reductio ad absurdum won't work here. There are ways to test a "low confidence" theory, and re-evaluate its confidence level. This is called science.
- philippejara 4y agoYou aren't going to get any confirmation or material evidence until the chinese government allows it to happen, and with their initial reaction to the situation before the rest of the world kenw what was happening and their reaction to the WHO inquiries, odds are we'll never get anything aside from "low confidence". Science isn't a magic wand, its a process, and honestly assuming we do get access an investigation like this most likely wouldn't even involve the scientific method at all. If science was enough to determine the origin given current available knowledge it probably would've been solved already.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoThey went from "undecided" to "Low Confidence". That is a shift in a particular direction. I would go on to talk about how the US invaded countries with zero confidence but...
- craigc 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- webworker 4y agoWell you didn’t just out and expect the US gov officials to say “lol yeah it was us, we were messing around with stuff we shouldn’t have been and is actively outlawed in US territories”, did you? The connections to eco health alliance were all laid out a long time ago
- chiefalchemist 4y agoPerhaps. But you buried the lede. It wasn't that long ago that just asking the question - or questioning the then narrative - was positioned as a threat to the democracy, racist (i.e., anti China), conspiracy theory, etc. Low confidence based on available data is 100x better than high confidence based on nothing but some backroom creative thinking, and a mindless media entourage willing to parrot anything tossed in front of them. It felt like 1984 then; this only magnifies that. And yet, still not an ounce of accountability. That's the lede.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoI got banned from a major Coronavirus subreddit for saying in 2021 "we don't know yet how many boosters will be needed or on what schedule". This was seen as a claim that the vaccines don't work, which was patently false (at the time). Questioning whether the virus emerged organically or came from a lab leak? That was equivalent to claiming the government is run by lizard people and the earth is flat. That's a public shaming and banning with prejudice.
- chiefalchemist 4y agoWhat concerns me is now that the facts are dripping out, the tools (i.e., public shaming) that enabled a false narrative and marginalized traditional common (i.e., asking painfully obvious questions) are still normalized. We can't just flip a button and undo the "programming" and glorification of group think. The step in the wrong direction can't be reversed.
- stevespang 4y ago[dead]
- wunderlust 4y ago> So we have a conclusion: 'lab leak most likely cause,' and a confidence score: 'low'. These qualifications seem to me to be in conflict. If there's low confidence about the most likely cause, then does that imply that there's low confidence about every possible cause? Could there be high confidence in the least likely cause? That, too, seems contradictory to me.
- ukoki 4y agoThere are only two theories being seriously considered: lab leak, wet market. Therefore I think it is reasonable to expect a probability of at least 90% that it is one of these two theories and not a third theory that no one is discussing. So if we have over 90% confidence that _either_ "lab leak" or "wet market", and we believe that "lab leak" is the _most_ the likely cause, then it follows that we must estimate the lab leak theory to be true with at least 45% probability. Maybe you could say "low confidence" if you're 45-80% sure, and "high confidence" if you're more certain than that.
- fsckboy 4y ago>"low confidence,” suggesting its level of certainty was not high you're analyzing this like it's the press sensationalizing. This is an establishment walking back what they've said in the past, and allowing a pov that this same press and govt literally censored. We shouldn't expect they're going to scream "we were completely wrong because we were biased". They're now admitting that there is no evidence at all for the hypothesis they've been treating as gospel, and admitting the evidence better fits lab leak (a view we know from Fauci's emails was floated early on and suppressed). That's saying a lot. We'll still have to wait for "not natural in origin", but that's coming too. And correct me if I'm wrong, but have the people here on HN who are poo-pooing this also taken stands in the past that allowing this would be a climbdown from? Because I remember when it wasn't allowed to discuss lableak here on HN either. Yes, let me quote Zola, "J'accuse!"
- anuraaga 4y agoFWIW the Japanese translation of the title is 新型コロナの起源、研究所から流出の可能性高い＝米エネルギー省 To retranslate back to English as a relatively direct translation The cause of COVID, there is a high possibility it spread from a lab. Notably missing are something like 一番, to mean most. This title is in absolute terms. The reason I found this in the first place was because a Japanese colleague was surprised that it did come from a lab! after an initial moment of doubt before accepting it because WSJ is reputable. I sent the news deck an email pointing it out but do expect it's intentional. Reading as absolute rather than relative is likely "correct" and a great example of misinformation from the WSJ. Presumably reputable news sources just don't exist anymore, or perhaps they never did :(
- plutonorm 4y agoThis is a prelude to war with China. We want people to hate them now that geopolitics are pitting us against them. Oh shit, we are heading to war.
- pagekicker 4y agoMore context on the Energy Department labs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/27/little-known-scientific-team-behind-new-assessment-covid-19-origins/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/27/...