Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to give us the spark notes of the paper?
The Twitter thread is the SparkNotes on the paper.
Ah I didn't notice that.
Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
151–160 of 631 posts
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#152I ask myself whether the Chinese government knows more about the risks of a COVID infection and is therefore trying everything it can to stop it from spreading. Maybe the virus actually leaked and the chemists know something about the long term effects that they do not publicly disclose.
No post body was provided.
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Likewise the "1000 miles from bat viruses" thing is spun. We don't know that either! We just know what we measured, not what we didn't. That's not "spun", that's science. You're positing a COVID teapot that we have no evidence for. In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion.
> In a scientific context, it's not spin to omit stating "based on all available empirical evidence" after every assertion. No, that's a fallacy. If I find an apple on the ground at the supermarket, it is evidence that there are apples at the supermarket. It is not evidence that there are no apples at my friend's home where I found no apples. I just didn't check the refrigerator. The linked thread says, precisely, "W…
Sorry, where are the unsampled bats within 1000km of Wuhan?
This stuff has been sampled extensively.
Or are you merely stating it's possible there's a bat cave no one's heard of that hasn't been sampled?
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#154Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature edit…
I find a note added by Nature's editors in March 2020 to be the least trustworthy part.
Why?
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#155Other than the second tweet in the thread (which source is questionable, see edit below), no sources are provided. Does anyone have a list of sources for the claims in the remaining eight tweets? It's a compelling list of "facts" but without sources and an understanding of the science it's difficult to ascertain whether this is a genuinely strong argument by a "blue check mark" academic. Edit: This is the Nature edit…
I find a note added by Nature's editors in March 2020 to be the least trustworthy part.
You mean it makes the lab leak hypothesis less trustworthy through appeal to authority, or it makes Nature less trustworthy because they made the comment instead of letting the reader make up their own minds based on the paper only?
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#156If you click on the link in the thread, there's an editor's note clarifying that this paper is being used to prop up dodgy claims, for which there's no evidence. The main issue I have with the 'lab leak' theory is that I haven't seen much evidence one way or another. Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence. I personally don't see any issue with the idea…
>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…
But in science at least you always should test against the null hypothesis, and that is purposefully not done here like in many other "conspiracy theories". Note I'm not saying that the lab leak is necessarily a conspiracy theory or that it can not be true, I'm simply talking about the way of arguing. The way a lot of conspiracy arguments are being constructed is that they take a number of events which seem relatively improbable if regarded from general experience and then use that as proof because "it's impossible for these events to happen at the same time". However, looking in detail at the number of events occurring events actually become very probable (I mean there have been several instances of people winning the lottery twice).
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Hitchens' razor applies- what can be stated without evidence can be as easily dismissed without evidence Say mr X was seen at the crime scene at 10 am, he also knew the victim and lots of people have seen them fight a week ago, the victim had just came out of the bank with 20k$ in cash in a bag, mr X who's broke have been seen driving a car a month after the crime worth 18k$. There is no evidence mr X killed the vic…
I think you are using a definition of evidence normally associated with criminal trials here, and not scientific evidence.
Most journals require more evidence than what passes as such in a court of law. On the say-so of a dog can amount to evidence in some courts. Specifically talking about K9s granting reasonable cause to search a vehicle or premises, even if the science behind it is not supportive.
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do we have to speculate? If both hypotheses are plausible, should it make a significant difference for the measures we take which one is actually true? If evidence comes out showing which hypothesis is true, does it suddenly make the other one retroactively less plausible? I mean, it would be interesting to know what really happened, but it doesn’t change all that much.
It does. Knowing what caused this should be important, so it doesn't happen again. If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do. If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken, or such things should not be done in labs with iffy security practices... or maybe even not done at all. Many workplace (and general) safety rules were written because someone has died doing something (…
> If it happens naturally and randomly, there's nothing we can do.
Some people say the main progress of civilization is the ability to do things about forces which were previously seen as natural and random.
> If it was a lab leak, maybe some special precautions should be taken,
Do you mean like making sure the labs follow certain biohazard handling standards and procedures? Which they currently have to do to maintain their certifications/ratings?
We don't have to prove that covid was a lab leak to review the procedures. Likewise, we don't have to prove that covid was natural and random (I am glad you separated those two, by the way) before reviewing how we handle food safety and animal transportation measures.
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#159I mean guys, it supposedly started next to a lab that studies the virus and they've yet to find the original bat population spreading it. If I made a Contagion 2 film that asked you to suspend your disbelief wrt. these two facts you wouldn't buy it.
This argument is partly argumentum ad populum, appealing to the supposed normalcy of the argument, to validate the argument itself. The virus started there, so is it normal to think it might be correlated? Sure. Is it evidence? It's not.
The second argument is backwards. Reality is more wild, chaotic, unpredictable than the baseline set by entertainment, and that's because it's easiest to reach people when you build upon what they already expect. As TVtropes would put this: "Reality is unrealistic". If you put too much unexpected things in a medium, as you say people won't buy it. But while storytelling is often bound by this constraint, reality isn't.
Please note that I don't take a side with this comment. I want to know the truth, as I imagine many do, and I want to get there with a story that really makes sense, and doesn't just appeal to my nonrational parts.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnreali...
Re: Covid: Summary of lab-origin hypothesis
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also no evidence that it came from animals directly. Given that there are really only two plausible hypotheses, and nondirect evidence of either, we have to speculate based on circumstantial evidence. And if one hypothesis is floated around the media, we need to raise the other one as well. I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that there can be global media conspiracies, even though the…
> I'll also point out that some people don't like to believe that there can be global media conspiracies, even though there are (cf. "masks don't work unless you're a trained medical professional" propaganda at the beginning). That's not a conspiracy, that's just common shared knowledge.
It isn't a conspiracy. Conspiracy implies planning and plotting. That was just decentralized media figures deciding to copy each other's opinions, because there's safety in numbers and group think, and because dissent sticks out and gets attacked.