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A couple things make me think they knew they were doing something illegal. One, they changed the definition of GoF when questioned about it, in a way that makes

A couple things make me think they knew they were doing something illegal. One, they changed the definition of GoF when questioned about it, in a way that makes no sense. Two, they tried to avoid transparency laws like FOIA as well: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-origins-morens-hearing/ https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nih-foia-covid-ori...

dekhn 2y ago
Understood. Gain-of-function is one of those terms that only really makes sense with a lot of biological context and knowledge. Trying to explain that to the general public or politicians (especially in an adversarial context like a congressional hearing) is just not going to work. Trying to hide things in their chat messages and texts and emails was dumb. I still can't believe they did that (one guy even used the exact scenario that we learned at Google: don't say anything in email that would get printed in a negative light on the front page of the NY Times; I had a manager there who actually did have one of his emails, as part of the Oracle Java court case, in a prominent article in the Times). Public employees of the government should assume that literally everything they produce as part of their job (including on personal devices) will eventually be seen externally by people without the necessary context to understand. From what I can see, Fauci already admitted he made a collection of bad statements and decisions. For me, that's the end of the matter. Suing him over this is just going to damage the country. For example, next time there is a crisis, all those hardworking public servants are going to look at what happened and conclude "no, I will not be the public communicator that helps the country understand the situation we are in and how we are going to get out of it".
dang 2y ago
If you keep using HN primarily for political and ideological battle, we're going to have to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've asked you more than once already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... (This is not about NIH or GOF - it's about your account's commenting history. I just put it here because it's your most recent post.)

dekhn 2y ago

Understood. Gain-of-function is one of those terms that only really makes sense with a lot of biological context and knowledge. Trying to explain that to the general public or politicians (especially in an adversarial context like a congressional hearing) is just not going to work. Trying to hide things in their chat messages and texts and emails was dumb. I still can't believe they did that (one guy even used the exact scenario that we learned at Google: don't say anything in email that would get printed in a negative light on the front page of the NY Times; I had a manager there who actually did have one of his emails, as part of the Oracle Java court case, in a prominent article in the Times). Public employees of the government should assume that literally everything they produce as part of their job (including on personal devices) will eventually be seen externally by people without the necessary context to understand. From what I can see, Fauci already admitted he made a collection of bad statements and decisions. For me, that's the end of the matter. Suing him over this is just going to damage the country. For example, next time there is a crisis, all those hardworking public servants are going to look at what happened and conclude "no, I will not be the public communicator that helps the country understand the situation we are in and how we are going to get out of it".

dang 2y ago

If you keep using HN primarily for political and ideological battle, we're going to have to ban you. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've asked you more than once already. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... (This is not about NIH or GOF - it's about your account's commenting history. I just put it here because it's your most recent post.)