Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

minervanett.no

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 494 posts

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#51

Post by zenhack »

chrisco255 wrote: post #30
maest wrote: post #11

This is a really big claim, so some background checking: The paper was published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics[0] (this accepted version is materially different from the original link posted here). Only thing I could find about Birger Sorensen's was his Linkedin page [1a] and the Immunor page where he's listed as the Chairman [1b]. Angus Dagleish looks legit, although it's notable that he did stand for Parlia…

Why do the background checking? Why not just consider the arguments on their merits alone? That's what science is.

Can't speak for the OP, but for myself: I am not qualified to evaluate the evidence in this case; I just don't have the biology background. But sometimes when you get some out-there questionable sounding stuff research, and you spend a minute googling, you quickly find out that the journal the thing is published in is chaired by the author and itself has no credibility, the author is selling some form of snake oil directly supported by the dubious claims, and similar. Sure technically their argument ought to stand on it's own anyway, but there are so many quacks out there and so little time. It's a useful optimization.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#52

Post by mhh__ »

contravariant wrote: post #40
newacct583 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." Isn't that the whole point of science? Big claims require big proof. What standard are you proposing be used instead? Or are you leaning on the "better" in that sentence in the sense of coercion? As in, you're saying that arguments without overwhelming evidence that contradict established consensus…

For the sake of argument, something like Einstein's special relativity had little to no evidence backing it up, but was still accepted simply because it provided a more elegant explanation of several concepts. Of course it also had a few weird, testable, consequences that where later confirmed experimentally. All this is just to illustrate that it's not always easy to prove something right away with large amounts of…

Einstein's special relativity had lots of evidence backing it up in that existing (Galilean) relativity was completely at odds with electromagnetism. The speed of light is constant, Newton was wrong.

In this situation there is no smoking gun to prove it was made in a lab.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#53

Post by akimball »

bshoemaker wrote: post #46
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

That's because it's exhausting to debunk idiots & those operating in bad faith (often both); it takes several orders of magnitude more work to respond and debunk that unicorns don't exist than it does to post that they do.

It would be inappropriate to infer that the OP was advocating for unicorns.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#54

Post by akimball »

belltaco wrote: post #5
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

It's because normal people are not equipped to deal with the cherrypicking and manipulative narrative that these kinds of "evidence" papers show. Take the 5G conspiracy for example, 100+ cell phone towers attacked, and workers setting up attacked as well. Lots of testable assertions made, none backed up with any kind of evidence.

You argument appears to be that I should focus on a strawman instead of evaluating the evidence.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#55

Post by theknocker »

cooliosis wrote: post #43
kirse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scientific community widely agrees One has to wonder how a "Fact Check" site can make an assertion like this without any provided list of references. What exactly does "widely agree" even mean? Was there some sort of statistical polling they did to establish that? Exactly what percentage of the scientific community constitutes "widely" anyways? In fact, this website appears to enjoy using the word "widely" within…

Putting "all scientists agree" in quotes when that isn't in the source material is highly misleading. Edit: op edited their post

Thank you for helping OP articulate their extremely good point.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#56

Post by sradman »

This paper is not evidence, it is speculation based on an inability to see a path other than gain-of-function lab work. These coronaviruses are slow to evolve due to their proofreading capabilities but they recombine readily. The natural path, therefore, is a wild animal (likely pangolin, civet, raccoon dog, or even human) that is simultaneously co-infected by two viruses that recombine.

The problem with genome data centric analysis is that no distinction is made between RNA samples and virus isolates. Key evidence for the gain-of-function hypothesis, is one or more lab isolates that match long segments of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, including non-coding segments.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#57

Post by jiofih »

i_cannot_hack wrote: post #9

> A Norwegian virologist has made claims about the non-natural origins of the new coronavirus. These claims were, reportedly, in an earlier draft of the paper, and Dr Sørensen has since repeated them to Norwegian press. > The final version of the research paper, which has undergone peer review and been accepted for publication in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, doesn’t actually make any claims about whe…

The paper is six pages long.

> In this paper we argue that the likelihood of this being the result of natural processes is very small.

> We have deduced the internal logic of published research which resulted in the exact functionalities of SARS-CoV-2, including the convergence of agreement from difference classes of source, the timings of the stages of the research and the development of documented capabilities by named institutions and individuals

It’s the latest revision from July 1, by now the text is probably trying to be as “gentle” as possible.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#58

Post by theknocker »

bshoemaker wrote: post #46
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

That's because it's exhausting to debunk idiots & those operating in bad faith (often both); it takes several orders of magnitude more work to respond and debunk that unicorns don't exist than it does to post that they do.

Consensus should be determined by science, not the other way around. Otherwise, what is the point of science?

edit: "Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills." t. redditadmin.txt

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#59

Post by jiofih »

mhh__ wrote: post #52
contravariant wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of argument, something like Einstein's special relativity had little to no evidence backing it up, but was still accepted simply because it provided a more elegant explanation of several concepts. Of course it also had a few weird, testable, consequences that where later confirmed experimentally. All this is just to illustrate that it's not always easy to prove something right away with large amounts of…

Einstein's special relativity had lots of evidence backing it up in that existing (Galilean) relativity was completely at odds with electromagnetism. The speed of light is constant, Newton was wrong. In this situation there is no smoking gun to prove it was made in a lab.

The paper is presenting a handful of smoking guns all at once.

Re: The evidence which suggests that Covid-19 is not a naturally evolved virus [pdf]

#60

Post by tgflynn »

newacct583 wrote: post #22
etangent wrote: post #2

That evidence looks weak IMO, but it's frustrating that the current culture in science isn't "present the best argument for your position no matter how crazy it is" but rather "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right."

> "your arguments better agree with the established consensus unless you have overwhelming evidence that you are right." Isn't that the whole point of science? Big claims require big proof. What standard are you proposing be used instead? Or are you leaning on the "better" in that sentence in the sense of coercion? As in, you're saying that arguments without overwhelming evidence that contradict established consensus…

> Isn't that the whole point of science?

No, Carl Sagan's famous "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is certainly not the whole point of science. At best it's merely a useful heuristic for judging how much effort to put into researching a particular claim.

Trying to use that argument as the basis for science is highly problematic because how do you know what constitutes an "extraordinary claim" ? Claims can only be evaluated against the current state of scientific knowledge, which is itself in a state of constant evolution and which has also undergone and will continue to undergo many revolutions.

The core of science is the use of repeatable methods which can be verified by anyone (so very similar in spirit to open source software). The gold standards for such methods are random controlled experiments and rigorous mathematical proofs. However in many fields these methods aren't available and weaker ones must be used. Then you can certainly get into much discussion on the strength of the methods used as well as the interpretations of the results.

Post reply on HN