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It's a bummer to be a scientist whose work is stymied by these concerns. Nevertheless, pumping the brakes here is sensible. I get the sense that researchers f

It's a bummer to be a scientist whose work is stymied by these concerns. Nevertheless, pumping the brakes here is sensible. I get the sense that researchers feel a certain injustice that geopolitics is affecting scientific decisions by their funding bodies. Funding should be decided on the scientific merit of their proposals. In a vacuum, that makes sense. Seen more widely, though, the decisions of the NIH and similar funding bodies are shot through with political considerations. For example, it would be hard for a physician scientist to attend a conference in the last few years where considerable resources were not devoted to equity issues. My point here is that we already contextualize what work we fund by political decisions, for better or worse. In this circumstances, we continue to do so, but we in particular pause funding on research that may, in some form, be responsible for the deaths of millions of people and the disruption of lives of billions. That's a sensible choice.

avar 3y ago
There's the completely reasonable compromise of continuing to conduct this research at an isolated Antarctic station, at a quarantined oil platform etc. Instead these labs are all near major population centers, with researchers freely mixing with the general population.
- gustavus 3y ago
  This is what I don't get, why is this all happenning in cities? Like I live in a place where one of the major employers is a government research facility and every day people go to the designated meeting point and a bus takes them the rest of the way, or they spend 45 minutes driving on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere to keep anything from work (in this case nuclear related stuff) from coming home with them. Why the hell are we putting biological virology institutes in the middle of the major population centers instead of the middle of nowhere? Like there's plenty of unused land in the west, hell WY has like 2 dozen people living there, it seems that would be safe.
  - gosub100 3y ago
    They already kind of do this (look up Michael Army Airfield near Tooele, UT where they store(d) VX nerve gas and destroyed it over a multi-year period). How are you going to persuade civilian scientists to move there? If one of them gets sick, how are you going to keep them from going to the hospital? Are they physically confined if they have a fever? (the base was in fact locked down several years back because an accounting error made it look like VX gas was missing). What if they get a normal flu, are they under arrest? Not many will agree to those conditions, so research would be greatly slowed.
    - kridsdale3 3y ago
      The scientists of the Manhattan Project moved to Los Alamos, basically the same as Nowhereland WY. If this field is their career and their passion, they will do it.
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    > Why the hell are we putting biological virology institutes in the middle of the major population centers instead of the middle of nowhere? Have you looked at the answers to these questions?
- dkarl 3y ago
  That's a completely reasonable compromise. I think the reason it doesn't get mentioned is that nobody would bother doing it under those constraints. Scientists would not choose to work on it at such great personal cost, and the financial cost would mean that other kinds of research would be better uses of money.
  - improv 3y ago
    There are plenty of people who work in remote locations like Antarctica, and few if any of them make such grandiose claims as these virologists who think their work will save millions of lives. If they can't be bothered to work in a safely remote location then they don't actually believe in their work and are blind to the risks and history of lab leaks.
cameldrv 3y ago
In the article they talk about four researchers that may have trouble getting a grant due to the changed political environment. Seven million people are confirmed to have died from COVID, and the excess worldwide mortality since the beginning of the pandemic is 27 million. Both of these numbers are larger than the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust. These are stakes as high as any single event in human history. Given the danger we're talking about, whether or not a few professors get a grant and have a good career is simply not even worth discussing. The fact that it is even discussed shows that the priorities of the virology community are wildly misplaced.

avar 3y ago

There's the completely reasonable compromise of continuing to conduct this research at an isolated Antarctic station, at a quarantined oil platform etc. Instead these labs are all near major population centers, with researchers freely mixing with the general population.

gustavus 3y ago
This is what I don't get, why is this all happenning in cities? Like I live in a place where one of the major employers is a government research facility and every day people go to the designated meeting point and a bus takes them the rest of the way, or they spend 45 minutes driving on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere to keep anything from work (in this case nuclear related stuff) from coming home with them. Why the hell are we putting biological virology institutes in the middle of the major population centers instead of the middle of nowhere? Like there's plenty of unused land in the west, hell WY has like 2 dozen people living there, it seems that would be safe.
- gosub100 3y ago
  They already kind of do this (look up Michael Army Airfield near Tooele, UT where they store(d) VX nerve gas and destroyed it over a multi-year period). How are you going to persuade civilian scientists to move there? If one of them gets sick, how are you going to keep them from going to the hospital? Are they physically confined if they have a fever? (the base was in fact locked down several years back because an accounting error made it look like VX gas was missing). What if they get a normal flu, are they under arrest? Not many will agree to those conditions, so research would be greatly slowed.
  - kridsdale3 3y ago
    The scientists of the Manhattan Project moved to Los Alamos, basically the same as Nowhereland WY. If this field is their career and their passion, they will do it.
- cbsmith 3y ago
  > Why the hell are we putting biological virology institutes in the middle of the major population centers instead of the middle of nowhere? Have you looked at the answers to these questions?
dkarl 3y ago
That's a completely reasonable compromise. I think the reason it doesn't get mentioned is that nobody would bother doing it under those constraints. Scientists would not choose to work on it at such great personal cost, and the financial cost would mean that other kinds of research would be better uses of money.
- improv 3y ago
  There are plenty of people who work in remote locations like Antarctica, and few if any of them make such grandiose claims as these virologists who think their work will save millions of lives. If they can't be bothered to work in a safely remote location then they don't actually believe in their work and are blind to the risks and history of lab leaks.

cameldrv 3y ago

In the article they talk about four researchers that may have trouble getting a grant due to the changed political environment. Seven million people are confirmed to have died from COVID, and the excess worldwide mortality since the beginning of the pandemic is 27 million. Both of these numbers are larger than the number of Jews that died in the Holocaust. These are stakes as high as any single event in human history. Given the danger we're talking about, whether or not a few professors get a grant and have a good career is simply not even worth discussing. The fact that it is even discussed shows that the priorities of the virology community are wildly misplaced.