4 ms·

Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240 https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1

Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240 https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240

hwillis 3y ago
That's not really relevant. The cases are all still very far away from the WIV, which is itself far from anywhere the thread implicates eg residential areas. I also suspect the thread is just flat wrong- the people most relevant to viral spread are NOT the ones who are only spending part of their day in the city. Its the people who live there and spend all their time there. 2/3rds of the population of Wuhan lives in the urban districts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions The people commuting in/out are a small minority. No model is perfect.
dekhn 3y ago
.... written by a geoscientist. There are limits on the ability to transfer knowledge between domains (although this doesn't mean the geoscientist is necessarily wrong, and often even amateurs can find big problems with papers that got through peer review).
- Sunhold 3y ago
  The geoscientist in question is actually arguing that some of the flaws in the paper are due to the authors' lack of expertise in geospatial analysis.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expertise&src=typed_query&f=top https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expert...
  - dekhn 3y ago
    that may be- I am not qualified to say after reading the twitter thread, but my money is still on the peer reviewed paper written by the virologist, based on a large collection of priors. Note taht the "geoscientist" is really a hydrologist who works on oil and gas, so their ability to comment on the centering model is still suspect. From what I can tell, "dawalker" is just a retired hydrologist with no special skills in this sort of analysis, especially in an biological contexgt. We are dealing with situations where smart people are using social media to promote propaganda in response to academic publications. Twitter as a medium is not really the best place to carry out these sorts of discussions- for exmaple, when I read walker's tweets, they jump all over the place and make many different arguments which are incomplete. If he really has a problem he should take his case to retraction watch and get the paper retracted if it contains invalidating errors.
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      If you read the linked thread, you might actually be able to engage with the argument on its merits, without resorting to ad hominems and appeals to authority.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        I read the thread. It's not that interesting.
    - tripletao 3y ago
      The peer-reviewed literature on COVID origins has been unusually bad. I assume you don't think SARS-CoV-2 came from pangolins; but Nature published "Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins", and took more than a year to correct it. (They said the virus was widespread among pangolins, based on multiple positive samples; but in fact multiple papers had been written about one batch of smuggled pangolins.) Map-based arguments for the exact site of introduction seem generally like noise to me. Worobey has made aggressive claims in preprints and media interviews, but even his Science paper falls back to just "epicenter", a weaker term without standard epidemiological meaning. SARS-CoV-2 must have been introduced into the Americas at air and seaports; but even with the advance warning to public health officials, that's not where the first clusters were found.
      - dekhn 3y ago
        Are you a professional scientist with experience in this area or not?
        tripletao 3y ago
        Definitely not. But if you just want to hold up credentials, then David Baltimore seems pretty convinced that SARS-CoV-2 arose unnaturally, and I'm pretty sure a Nobel prize beats a paper in Science. So I hope you now agree credentialism is dumb? Some areas of the origins debate require deep knowledge of the evolutionary biology of related viruses (e.g. the extent to which the coding of the FCS suggests engineering), but most of the debate is understandable with only basic molecular biology and math. From your post history, I'd guess you're better-placed to understand something like Pekar's epidemiological model than most of his reviewers were. So if you're interested enough to comment here, then I'm not sure why you wouldn't try?

Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240 https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240

hwillis 3y ago

That's not really relevant. The cases are all still very far away from the WIV, which is itself far from anywhere the thread implicates eg residential areas. I also suspect the thread is just flat wrong- the people most relevant to viral spread are NOT the ones who are only spending part of their day in the city. Its the people who live there and spend all their time there. 2/3rds of the population of Wuhan lives in the urban districts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions The people commuting in/out are a small minority. No model is perfect.

dekhn 3y ago

.... written by a geoscientist. There are limits on the ability to transfer knowledge between domains (although this doesn't mean the geoscientist is necessarily wrong, and often even amateurs can find big problems with papers that got through peer review).

Sunhold 3y ago
The geoscientist in question is actually arguing that some of the flaws in the paper are due to the authors' lack of expertise in geospatial analysis.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expertise&src=typed_query&f=top https://twitter.com/search?q=(from%3Adanwalker9999)%20expert...
- dekhn 3y ago
  that may be- I am not qualified to say after reading the twitter thread, but my money is still on the peer reviewed paper written by the virologist, based on a large collection of priors. Note taht the "geoscientist" is really a hydrologist who works on oil and gas, so their ability to comment on the centering model is still suspect. From what I can tell, "dawalker" is just a retired hydrologist with no special skills in this sort of analysis, especially in an biological contexgt. We are dealing with situations where smart people are using social media to promote propaganda in response to academic publications. Twitter as a medium is not really the best place to carry out these sorts of discussions- for exmaple, when I read walker's tweets, they jump all over the place and make many different arguments which are incomplete. If he really has a problem he should take his case to retraction watch and get the paper retracted if it contains invalidating errors.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    If you read the linked thread, you might actually be able to engage with the argument on its merits, without resorting to ad hominems and appeals to authority.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I read the thread. It's not that interesting.
  - tripletao 3y ago
    The peer-reviewed literature on COVID origins has been unusually bad. I assume you don't think SARS-CoV-2 came from pangolins; but Nature published "Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins", and took more than a year to correct it. (They said the virus was widespread among pangolins, based on multiple positive samples; but in fact multiple papers had been written about one batch of smuggled pangolins.) Map-based arguments for the exact site of introduction seem generally like noise to me. Worobey has made aggressive claims in preprints and media interviews, but even his Science paper falls back to just "epicenter", a weaker term without standard epidemiological meaning. SARS-CoV-2 must have been introduced into the Americas at air and seaports; but even with the advance warning to public health officials, that's not where the first clusters were found.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      Are you a professional scientist with experience in this area or not?
      - tripletao 3y ago
        Definitely not. But if you just want to hold up credentials, then David Baltimore seems pretty convinced that SARS-CoV-2 arose unnaturally, and I'm pretty sure a Nobel prize beats a paper in Science. So I hope you now agree credentialism is dumb? Some areas of the origins debate require deep knowledge of the evolutionary biology of related viruses (e.g. the extent to which the coding of the FCS suggests engineering), but most of the debate is understandable with only basic molecular biology and math. From your post history, I'd guess you're better-placed to understand something like Pekar's epidemiological model than most of his reviewers were. So if you're interested enough to comment here, then I'm not sure why you wouldn't try?