Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#221

Post by phyalow » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #217

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry man, but wouldn't you be able to just reply directly if you feel inclined to disagree with the parent. I'm not saying HN is entitled to your opinion but it feels a little lazy and disrespectful to the parent to say "you're wrong" then drop a link off site to a massive general summary of the situation in order to respond to a few specific points. Especially since point 3 has a source from a decently reputabl…

Hi, I actually ended up responding below to point 3 in particular but I also respond to it in my original post. Very few, if any of these arguments are novel. The reason you will find extremely few people with actual credentials in the science we're discussing in these discussions is that working scientists don't have the time or will to get into these debates with people who wouldn't have the faintest idea how to ac…

Firstly it is "Dunning-Kruger". Secondly you are engaging in an argument from "authority" without evidence which is often fallacious and always disingenuous.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#222

Post by loveistheanswer » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #164

loveistheanswer wrote: post #23

Judging by the comments in this thread, it seems a lot of people are still unaware that: 1. Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature, and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature. If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural" 2. It's not xenophobic for people from the US to suggest the possibility of a…

Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, and a few months back I wrote a very lengthy and involved piece full of sources. And in there, I describe exactly how wrong your point 1 is. And how misguided your point 3 is. The post also won a "best of r/science 2020" award! You can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gk6y95/covid19_did...

Which part of #1 is false?

1.1 Gain of function research primarily uses samples collected from nature

1.2 and seeks to stimulate their evolution in as natural a way as possible to learn how viruses evolve in nature.

1.3 If such viruses were to escape the lab, they would appear "natural"

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#223

Post by neolog » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:28 PM UTC

endisneigh wrote: post #92

engineer_22 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, I'm glad we agree that investigation matters :)

You've completely misunderstood my point. My point is that we're McDonalds - not Chipotle. Should McDonalds be investigating Chipotle's problems or their own? It's really that simple... If you believe McDonalds in this analogy should be investigating the origins of Chipotle's problems as opposed to resolving their ongoing issue then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

American Airlines can't reduce its risk by reading Delta's FAA incident reports?

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#224

Post by mistermann » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #220

mistermann wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is point 3 misguided?

Everyone is citing the evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 leak as reason to believe that viruses escape labs. But you know what's interesting about that? We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./ They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety community (the people with degrees in these things) helped china become more standard and respectable and safe. And now 15 years later, w…

What you wrote here is not wrong, but point number 3 stated:

> 3. Lab leaks happen more often than most people realize[1]

As I see it, there are two variables involved:

- how frequently lab leaks happen (total number of historic leaks - known + unknown)

- people's realization / awareness of how often they happen

> And now 15 years later, with zero evidence, we're accusing them of covering up the same thing.

Regardless of whether there is evidence or not (have they been perfectly transparent and enthusiastically encouraging of inspections?), a leak did happen, or it did not happen...and then on top of it, there is the problem of whether we have knowledge of it or not.

> Why would she lie for her government when they don't even agree?

Like many other things in life, it is not known.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#225

Post by twobitshifter » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #169

EMM_386 wrote: post #76

The 2018 US state department cables warning about this possibility can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-state-depart... Please note part (6) regarding WIV scientists studying human-disease causing SARS coronaviruses. Also note this report with the science to back it ("The genetic structure of SARS-CoV-2 does not rule out a laboratory origin"): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.10…

VERY VERY importantly, the cables were not written by or authored by scientists. It was all Trump State Department-hired businessmen and diplomats who inspected the facility and wrote that cable. Why should we expect them to be good at determining what is a dangerous or risky lab facility? Notably, in the same cable, they also requested more funding be sent to the facility, so they could conduct more pandemic surveil…

This is just an ad hominem. You do not know who inspected the facility, their qualifications, and what research went into the cable.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#226

Post by jeduehr » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #193

jeduehr wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furin cleavage sites very similar if not largely identical to this one have also been found in nature, and have been generated in nature in very short spans of time (on the order of a few decades, which is what is suspected to have happened with SARS-CoV-2). I describe the evidence in detail in this detailed longform post I wrote on reddit a few months back: Hi, I have a PhD in virology focused on emerging viruses, a…

I read through your post and it was incomplete and hand wavy, although that makes sense because it was written for Reddit. The bias was also obvious, and remarkably unscientific in how you approached the "problems" in a deterministic manner. You cherry picked examples (for instance, saying we can detect Cas9 mutations) that make no conclusive point (for example, there are a variety of ways to add a furin site to a ge…

That's interesting, because of the scientists featured in the above article... None of them are virologists.

Petrovsky, for instance, if you look at his google scholar, hasn't published a paper in a virology journal in the 10 years that I looked. He's published in some predatory journals, ones I wouldn't be caught dead publishing in.

He's also gotten /close/, I guess, by publishing about tuberculosis. But it really is different and the man clearly has never done any viral biosafety work or worked or supervised work in any secure facilities working with viruses.

If he did, I think he might be more cautious about being so cavalier with the probabilities here.

David Relman studies the gut microbiome.

I have no reason to believe you're a virologist with any training other than your word, but that isn't actually all that important to my argument.

Using viruses in your research doesn't make you a virologist any more than using pens in an art school thesis makes you an expert in ballpoint pens.

All of that aside, the consensus among people who actually use or study dangerous viruses in biosafety labs (both those for and against gain of function research, btw) is that the virus likely came from a wild zoonotic crossover event.

Not a malicious lab leak.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#227

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #220

mistermann wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is point 3 misguided?

Everyone is citing the evidence of the SARS-CoV-1 leak as reason to believe that viruses escape labs. But you know what's interesting about that? We know about the CoV-1 leak because /the chinese scientists told us about it./ They owned up to it and told the world and the biosafety community (the people with degrees in these things) helped china become more standard and respectable and safe. And now 15 years later, w…

[deleted]

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#228

Post by axiosgunnar » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

jeduehr wrote: post #216

itssssotrue wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you state that your article won a "best of r/science 2020" award is a bit like stating you came in first at the special olympics.

I would rather you criticize the facts of my argument than the platform it's raised on. I was under the impression HN has a certain sense of propriety in its "comment guidelines." Or do you want to stoop as low as the forums you criticize? Thanks

You can't expect him to restrict his criticism to the content of your arguments and not your person if you claim your argument must be true because you have a PhD and no time to retype your essay for us lowlifes.

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#229

Post by jeduehr » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #225

jeduehr wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VERY VERY importantly, the cables were not written by or authored by scientists. It was all Trump State Department-hired businessmen and diplomats who inspected the facility and wrote that cable. Why should we expect them to be good at determining what is a dangerous or risky lab facility? Notably, in the same cable, they also requested more funding be sent to the facility, so they could conduct more pandemic surveil…

This is just an ad hominem. You do not know who inspected the facility, their qualifications, and what research went into the cable.

Actually I do.

I have A) direct relationships with the people who study viral biodefense at USAMRIID and serve on the government panels, and they were very surprised to hear about these cables. They didn't find the authors credible at all. One is an entrepreneur and the other a career diplomat.

And for all those who don't have a PhD in the subject or know the people who know people, B) it's detailed closely in this washington post article who was there and what they wrote:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/national...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-dep...

Re: Scientists who say the lab-leak hypothesis for SARS-CoV-2 shouldn't be ruled out

#230

Post by phyalow » Fri, Apr 09, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #153

Once again, I will ask for (what I believe is) an interesting piece of context ... How many labs like this one are there in the world ? Are there 20,000 of them ? Are there 7 ? Of the labs like this one in the world, how many of them are doing GoF research on coronaviruses ? 1200 of them ? 1 of them ? This won't be conclusive but given the reasonable heuristics that I work with, having a sense of these proportions wo…

According to Wikipedia there are 56 BSL-4 labs globally, I cant find any good references on the amount of labs (BSL-3/BSL-4) doing GoF research on coronaviruses, but I cant imagine it is a significant amount. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#List_of_BSL-4_...

There is one fascinating article I came across published by Nature in 2017 which has all sorts of innuendo given the state of facts on the ground today. https://www.nature.com/news/inside-the-chinese-lab-poised-to...