These article is full of “this one scientist did something” and extrapolate it to “all western scientists are bad and holding out information” without considering those same scientists didn't think it was plausible. You can't take one scientist's belief and extrapolate to all scientists. The person who wrote this article is just trying to do this for shock value.
Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
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Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#792What really raises the most suspicion of the lab leak theory in my mind was how the Chinese government acted towards the rest of the scientific community...well before it was a theory at all. Not allowing foreign scientists in, destroying evidence, arresting journalists, etc. That just screams cover-up, even if there was none (in terms of a lab leak.) Then Western scientists that rely on grants with Chinese ties, etc…
China arrests and disappears people for making minor off handed comments about the CCP, the way they handled it really doesn't prove anything other than they were attempting to silence -everyone- involved so they had complete control of how information flows, just like they do on every other issue that has international attention.
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#793If this comment thread is the way the self proclaimed smartest forum on the web deals with articles like this then we're doomed. This article contributes zero actual evidence, is littered with out of context quotes (including of all places the title), doesn't appear to understand the science or the probabilities involved and finally is clearly written with an agenda. It shouldn't have been posted to HN in the first p…
Hmmm I think someone else is also extrapolating one data point to an entire community as well based on less than probably 0.1% of the participants of HN...
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#794It’s hard to believe how bad this is. Not the lab leak theory itself, but the fact that scientists found it plausible that a scientific mistake released an epidemic which killed 20m people – and decided they should cover this up because “talking about it might harm science“. This is truly scandalous, and I don’t see how those people can remain in their post.
You're making the same mistake as lots of others here and acting like this is all scientists. Did you pay attention to how much disinformation spread and you want them to report every email from every scientist to the general public as relevant? Do you post every frantic email from every engineer in your organization as equally viable along side well thought out memos/emails about a given situation? I don't think you really want that...
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#795Earlier quoted context omitted.
Evidence? The hypothesis of the article is that certain scientists did believe a lab leak was likely, but hid their views. The article provides ample evidence for this. If you also want it to conclusively prove the lab leak hypothesis in the same breath then I'd say your expectations are too high. Better publications have tackled the subject anyway: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
Then the title of the article is highly misleading. Using "Scientists" instead of "Some scientists" implies that the great majority of the scientists believed in this hypothesis, and there is no evidence for that.
Just like when CNN, WaPo, etc post “The GOP…” or “Republicans…”
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#796Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's naive to think that HN is necessarily better than an arbitrary Subreddit in terms of quality of conversations and depth of discussions, especially on non-tech related material. I don't know why one might think it's better/worse than a Twitter thread or Facebook post when it comes to controversial topics. You can find smart and dumb people here. Also, going against the narrative of the comment section may have ne…
> It's naive to think that HN is necessarily better than an arbitrary Subreddit in terms of quality of conversations and depth of discussions, especially on non-tech related material. HN is much better than an arbitrary subreddit in terms of quality of conversations. Dissenting opinions are very rarely censored on HN, but dissent on subreddits is typically quelled. Subreddits are mostly echo chambers for people who w…
Maybe it depends on the topic.
In the 3 years I've been reading HN I've observed a pretty steady increase in similarity to tech focused subreddits. Sometimes things are effectively "cross posted" on either site.
There's nothing stopping anyone on reddit from posting on HN and vice versa. I am a random example of someone who discovered reddit before HN, but was drawn to HN for what I also perceived to be better "quality of conversations".
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#797Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#798Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't just a random scapegoat. It just happens that the company (Ecohealth Alliance) proposed the gain-of-function research on the virus to DARPA, which was subsequently rejected as being too risky. NIH later funded similar research to the same company for its work in Wuhan during 2020. I'm far from a conspiracy theorist. But, what are the chances of this being coincidental? The "from the wild" theory doesn't ha…
> But, what are the chances of this being coincidental? Enormous. The odds are heavily on the side of this being a coincidence. What are the odds of, if this was a leak, the leak coming from that single research line? It's basically 1 divided by the number of experiments running on the lab. And that's assuming it was a leak, if you estimate the odds of it being a leak, you will at a minimum halve that number.
> 1 divided by the number of experiments running on the lab
That would only make sense if you knew there was a leak but didn't know which virus was leaked.
Since we already have the knowledge of what virus (supposedly) leaked, the odds are (1/number of labs experimenting with that virus).
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#799Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firstly, we’re not talking about America right now. Even so, the US has its faults, but is vastly more transparent than the CCP. I would be shocked if the US arrested scientists and journalists to conceal the origins of a viral outbreak.
God damn debating with you people is useless sometimes. My second paragraph is meant to show a possible other explanation why the Chinese didn't want foreigners snooping around their bio labs: in my belief the same evasiveness the Chinese has/had would apply to the USA if China wanted to visit and have unlimited access (for a thorough investigation) of American bio labs. And I'm not talking about whether American jou…
You've been breaking the site guidelines so badly and so repeatedly that I've banned this account.
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29916895 for more.
Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt
#800Earlier quoted context omitted.
WAs it? I remember debates about it on HN.
At least according to this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24482197
There was a debate. Some thought a lab leak was likely, others (like that person) thought it was completely bogus.
Here's a post from Jun 2020 where people are arguing both sides:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23660413
I'm pretty sure this is the debate I remembered, since I have 2 comments in that thread.