Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research • Hacker News Board

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#251

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #235

darawk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research > 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research > 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses I believe what you mean to say here is that there is no published literature describing these things…

I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments over their use and validity. Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anyth…

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It all comes down to burden of proof. The more circumstantial evidence of a lab leak piles up, the more reasonably open-minded people will tend to shift their priors in that direction.

You will only accept hard evidence, yet you are aware that parties in China have actively removed some possible evidentiary sources. And others in USA promoted a campaign to shut down lines of enquiry, whilst withholding relevant information.

Many disciplines use Bayesian statistical models. In this case it may be the only way to "prove" a lab leak - assuming that were actually true.

I understand how this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist. I hate that. It would certainly be better to have hard evidence. I belive we have to reserve judgement in it's absence. And keep investigating both avenues.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#252

Post by christwhatanass » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:01 AM UTC

sillysaurusx wrote: post #247

craftinator wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I find it halfway interesting, as it is a discussion between someone who clearly understands the science and bureaucracy that surrounds that type of work, and someone who is chaining speculation and "what if's" like their life depended on it.

Definitely. Because companies need both types of people to succeed. I’ve also been on both sides of the table. It’s easy to underestimate the what-iffer and to overestimate the established senior —- and vice versa. Better than TV.

Fuck off. The what iffer in this case is looking for someone to blame.

That’s generally not productive, not helpful, and in this case, they’re hoping to blame the people who foresaw this very issue and wanted to stop it.

Not helpful at all, but you’re here sucking his cock like he is going to solve it on his own.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#253

Post by snovv_crash » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:06 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #235

darawk wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research > 2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research > 3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses I believe what you mean to say here is that there is no published literature describing these things…

I think employing probabilities and likelihoods which are subjective and will needlessly cause back and forth arguments over their use and validity. Could you provide some data to support the assertion that the virus was engineered? I'm hoping something like a leaked paper, or a lab notebook, or maybe hand written data on a piece of scrap paper that somebody found in the garbage bin in china.. I mean, I'll take anyth…

Lab leak doesn't mean engineered. It could have been wild samples collected and brought to the lab which then were handled by a careless technician.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#254

Post by arthurcolle » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

If this is true, Peter Daszak and any implementers should get the death penalty for such a cavalier attitude towards these activities. It is such a willfully negligent set of actions and this looks extremely bad for him and his acolytes.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#255

Post by proc0 » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #227

ramraj07 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the other way? Can you conclusively rule out that this virus wasn’t engineered (and then maliciously covered up) in a lab? The reason this approach is important is because the stakes here are higher. This means people who should have been careful weren’t, and are responsible for the death of millions and they’re happy continuing to cover up their part in it. The…

That is the wrong way to go about it. You have to approach it as you would in legal theory. Innocence is not something that is proven. The verdict is guilty or not guilty (which means evidence wasn't sufficient to convict, but that doesn't mean the defendant is innocent). In this case you have to prove that the virus was engineered by providing evidence. >All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the ot…

There's more than science here. This is also game theory, if a lab leak is still plausible. Why was this being researched? Who knew about it and why was it covered up, and to what extent was it covered up?

Personally I think it's naive that people are omitting human and government intentions from all this, as if they are not actors in complex political world. These huge world changing events don't happen in a vacuum, and government actors are usually aware of all these ongoing research efforts for agendas and specific goals, which of course includes misleading the public.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#256

Post by lovemenot » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #227

ramraj07 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the other way? Can you conclusively rule out that this virus wasn’t engineered (and then maliciously covered up) in a lab? The reason this approach is important is because the stakes here are higher. This means people who should have been careful weren’t, and are responsible for the death of millions and they’re happy continuing to cover up their part in it. The…

That is the wrong way to go about it. You have to approach it as you would in legal theory. Innocence is not something that is proven. The verdict is guilty or not guilty (which means evidence wasn't sufficient to convict, but that doesn't mean the defendant is innocent). In this case you have to prove that the virus was engineered by providing evidence. >All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the ot…

Your parent said like scientists. Not like jurists.

And as far as I understand it, they are correct. Science doesn't convict an effect, it provides a lower bound on the likelihood of the effect's existence.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#257

Post by blix » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:36 AM UTC

passivate wrote: post #227

ramraj07 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the other way? Can you conclusively rule out that this virus wasn’t engineered (and then maliciously covered up) in a lab? The reason this approach is important is because the stakes here are higher. This means people who should have been careful weren’t, and are responsible for the death of millions and they’re happy continuing to cover up their part in it. The…

That is the wrong way to go about it. You have to approach it as you would in legal theory. Innocence is not something that is proven. The verdict is guilty or not guilty (which means evidence wasn't sufficient to convict, but that doesn't mean the defendant is innocent). In this case you have to prove that the virus was engineered by providing evidence. >All valid points, but let’s be real scientists and work the ot…

Depends on which real scientists you are talking about.

I've worked with many "real scientists" who will consider possiblity unless they see conclusive evidence against it. On the frontiers, there is very little conclusive evidence; this is why they are the frontiers.

I have also met "real scientists" who actively dismiss conclusive evidence if it doesn't line up with what they think will get funded.

It doesn't seem the first flavor is the one you are talking about.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#258

Post by tomp » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:43 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #175

createdapril24 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a question I've encountered a few times. How quickly, versus natural evolution, can serial passage evolve a virus? Using this figure, we could have some parameters around how much time such a project must have taken and its latest start date (assuming its evolved from known or closely-related-to-known viruses). Using this figure, and a theoretical timetable, we can also specify how close a cousin virus we wou…

Serial passage isn't magic, it is just what nature does. In the lab you'll get a handful of mutations not thousands. After serial passage through some large fraction of a billion humans, with large evolutionary pressures due to the recent species jump, the delta variant is still well over 99% homologous to the reference Wu-1 strain. A 96.1% different would require serial passage through billions of organisms, but the…

> After serial passage through some large fraction of a billion humans

Wouldn’t this count as parallel passage though? Sure there’s more variability and evolutionary pressure on the mutations, but the speed of evolution (the number nucleotide mutations) is the same over the same period of time regardless of how many billions of people it infects in parallel.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#259

Post by gfodor » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

stablechaos wrote: post #222

lamontcg wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at the end of the day you have zero evidence of any of that actually happened. The backbone doesn't exist, the spike doesn't exist, the effort necessary to culture that completely unknown virus in the lab isn't documented anywhere. And the grant proposal very specifically is concerned with using the WIV1 and SHC014 backbones, nothing related to SARS-CoV-2. And going from sequence to live culturable virus that you…

"Zero evidence", huh? The epicenter of Covid-19 was the middle of a major metropolitan city (instead of a rural area near lots of animals), blocks away from a major virology lab which was specifically studying these viruses, collecting hundreds of wild strains from field operations, in research DARPA said before the fact endangers the local community and was banned by NIH, trying to specifically create this virus as…

The “zero evidence” claim is fun because every day there is a failure to discover an origin species is de facto evidence of a non-zootonic origin, since that evidence is not subject to being hidden and is highly incentivized to find given it would be exculpatory.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#260

Post by gfodor » Sat, Sep 25, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #205

lamontcg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Well, they could have altered the proposal when they pursued funding elsewhere." It isn't as simple as altering the proposal. You're speculating a very large and hidden process using sequences that were kept perfectly secret and have not been leaked, with virus backbones that would take considerable effort to create but which were never shared publicly (and kept perfectly secret before SARS-CoV-2 happened before t…

... but then you'd have to explain the infection geography in humans with two events. Not saying it's not possible, but lining it up with what's known epidemiologically speaking is different. Also, I'm not sure why the lab leak hypothesis is suddenly trickier. They had all sorts of samples. Labeling this all as "mental gymnastics" as in the article, or "a dagger in the heart of the lab leak hypothesis" is just the so…

You should def care if it was a lab leak or not, because as we have learned the only way we are going to address these risks properly if it was. The way to see this is obvious is that we are not acting as if it was a lab leak, and we should be.