Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists • Hacker News Board

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#331

Post by ricksunny » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:38 PM UTC

BMc2020 wrote: post #318

oneshtein wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to exact moment in the video, because video is long and I cannot find the argument against lab leak.

There's also an mp3 link http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV1019.mp3 So you can download it to your phone and listen during your commute.

Wow, you found a self-reinforcing quote from one of the co-authors of the very paper in question. C̶u̶t̶e̶

Edit: Recognizing this forum frowns on snark, I will be more stoic. Whenever citing quotes in this debate, take but half a moment to observe the name of who is doing the talking; each side of the debate has an exceedingly finite set of vocal participants putting their scientific standing on the line, and, rightly or wrongly, their positions don't tend to change once made & vocalized.

So in a debate about whether person-X should have said thing-Y, it's epistemically distractibg (to oneself at least) to then go on to uncritically look at what person-X subsequently said on thing-Y as if it's unbiased, disinterested support of the position they also happened to hold earlier.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#332

Post by wholinator2 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:48 PM UTC

willyt wrote: post #330

willyt wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Journalist’ should be a profession like ‘medical doctor’ or ’structural engineer’ or ‘electrician’ or ‘architect’. Anyone can still write anything and publish it wherever they want. But the words ‘News’ and ‘Journalist’ become legally protected. If you want to claim that what you have written is ‘News’ and that you are a ‘Journalist’ you have to be registered with a professional body and you have to sign every artic…

In reply to downvotes: Interesting… Is it the idea of regulation that you disagree with? Do you also think that professionals like Structural engineers, Electricians and Doctors shouldn’t be regulated? Or is it the idea of protected words ‘e.g ‘Medical Doctor’ or ‘Prescription’?

If i might speak on some behalf, an adjacent question is what would a political agenda in structural engineering registration and certification look like? Then, what would a political agenda in the registration of journalists look like? It feels sorta like regulatory capture. Why would we allow the government or some central organizing body to determine who is legally allowed to report on them. Because introducing certifications turns it into a legal proceeding, possibly prosecutable with possibly steep penalties. Then we've just provided the infrastructure to jail dissenting journalists on a silver platter.

Maybe if the world was in a better state we could trust anyone with the literal power over speech but have you seen the uproar over even corporate pseudo-control that exists now? Imagine a world where a President, instead of removing unfavorable journalists from his press conferences, revokes those journalists certifications and then jails them the next time they try to do their job.

Okay, so it wouldn't be the president who has that power, who would you pick? Name a person who you trust with control over investigative speech itself. That's where all the downvotes are coming from. You can't just say, what if we regulated journalism legally. You have to also introduce a system that doesn't immediately descend into hell or people are gonna be way against you

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#333

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:56 PM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #327

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How am I wrong? There were countless spillover events for the original SARS. To this day, it's not known precisely how many SARS spillover events there were, because they were so numerous and tracing was so poor back then. In a different comment in this thread, I cited a review article that goes over the evidence for widespread spillover events of SARS in 2002-2003.[0] The gist of it is that SARS popped up independen…

You're mixing up animal > human transmission, and zoonotic events. They are not equivalent. Human SARS spike protein RBD could bind palm civet ACE2, but not vice versa. Palm civets (and other animals) could act as reservoirs for human SARS, (as well as non-human SARS, which contributed to the zoonotic event), but that's not the same as a new virus jumping species. It's more like getting rabies from a raccoon. It's po…

> It's more like getting rabies from a raccoon.

If rabies were a novel virus that had never infected humans before, you could make the comparison. SARS was a novel virus, which spilled over into humans in a very similar manner to SARS-CoV-2 (wild animal markets in a major Chinese city).

> It's possible that the original SARS jumped 3 times total, based on the genetic evidence

As the review I cited explains, the epidemiological and serological evidence makes clear that SARS independently jumped over to humans at many different locations, over the course of months.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#334

Post by rdtsc » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

tomhoward wrote: post #238

A few years ago I started undertaking practices to let go of emotional attachments, which I discovered after a lengthy and difficult period trying to figure out how to overcome some major life challenges. I’ve been doing these practices consistently now for about 11 years. Even after all that time, I’m not at all free of emotional attachments; I’m working through some very deep career-related ones right now. But that…

People who believe themselves to be more intelligent than others have an easier time rationalizing anything just to maintain that image. It’s just arrogance in my view.

One way to detect this is to see how many public apologies, corrections, withdrawals, opinion reversals they have done in public. There aren’t too many front page news that sound like “Shit, I guess I was wrong about my position, I apologize for my condescending comments…”

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#335

Post by Balgair » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

lukeholder wrote: post #315

tomhoward wrote: post #238

A few years ago I started undertaking practices to let go of emotional attachments, which I discovered after a lengthy and difficult period trying to figure out how to overcome some major life challenges. I’ve been doing these practices consistently now for about 11 years. Even after all that time, I’m not at all free of emotional attachments; I’m working through some very deep career-related ones right now. But that…

I think it’s just all just a replacement for religion. For some reason everyone longs for meaning.

I'm reminded of this DFW quote:

"Here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#336

Post by ricksunny » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 1:59 PM UTC

pcrh wrote: post #299

urinotherapist wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First of all, there were many jumps of SARS from animals into humans, over a period of months in which the markets containing infected animals were open. Can you point me to one or two cases you are talking about, please?

They may be referring to the study below [0]. This showed that several genetic variants (lineages) of SARS-CoV2 were identified in infected people associated with the market, indicating 1) that the virus was already circulating among people before the epidemic took off, and 2) that there was more than one transmission event. Note that no comparable data associates SARS-CoV2 with the lab in Wuhan. [0] The Huanan Seafo…

For the rec, comment I'm replying to highlights two simultaneously released papers that both include 4 of the 5 authors of the 2020 paper, Proximal Origins, that is in question by the Nate Silver piece that headlines this HN post. (The 5th author, Lipkin's "view has changed":

"The revelation that the WIV was working with SARS-like viruses in subpar safety conditions has led some people to reassess the chance that SARS-CoV-2 could have emerged from some type of laboratory incident. “That’s screwed up,” the Columbia University virologist Ian Lipkin, who coauthored the seminal paper arguing that covid must have had a natural origin, told the journalist Donald McNeil Jr. “It shouldn’t have happened. People should not be looking at bat viruses in BSL-2 labs. My view has changed.”

quote source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-...

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#337

Post by cscurmudgeon » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #303

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are blatantly missing the point. The point: Scientist says in private "A thing is possible" but in public "A thing is not all possible!" Not the point: "A thing is possible, therefore it happened"

> but in public "A thing is not all possible!" ...and the media picking it up, shouting that thing did absolutely not happen, could never have happened, the debate is over, the science is settled, and anyone who breathes a word in opposition is stupid, dumb, smells bad, and votes for Trump.

Exactly, and the same script is being played all over again with a different tune.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#338

Post by BeFlatXIII » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 2:11 PM UTC

tiznow wrote: post #312

Roark66 wrote: post #296

To be skeptical they first need competency to understand both sides of the argument. Unfortunately the longer I observe the work of journalists the more I become convinced,except few individuals, most people that become journalists do so because they failed in their primary choice of career. This is a huge threat to democracy that one of the most important functions in society (to inform) has been "outsourced" to a b…

"most people that become journalists do so because they failed in their primary choice of career." Well this is braindead. I assure you most journalists want to be journalists more than anything else -- that's the only reason to hang around in that industry.

> that's the only reason to hang around in that industry

That and having a vendetta against their previous industry and now being a muckraking watchdog.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#339

Post by ksec » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

>Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

Readers should be skeptical of all sources including Journalists.

Re: Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists

#340

Post by COGlory » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #333

COGlory wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up animal > human transmission, and zoonotic events. They are not equivalent. Human SARS spike protein RBD could bind palm civet ACE2, but not vice versa. Palm civets (and other animals) could act as reservoirs for human SARS, (as well as non-human SARS, which contributed to the zoonotic event), but that's not the same as a new virus jumping species. It's more like getting rabies from a raccoon. It's po…

> It's more like getting rabies from a raccoon. If rabies were a novel virus that had never infected humans before, you could make the comparison. SARS was a novel virus, which spilled over into humans in a very similar manner to SARS-CoV-2 (wild animal markets in a major Chinese city). > It's possible that the original SARS jumped 3 times total, based on the genetic evidence As the review I cited explains, the epide…

I read the review. There are many cases of this:

> It's more like getting rabies from a raccoon.

And only 3 potential cases of this:

> It's possible that the original SARS jumped 3 times total, based on the genetic evidence

You're saying animal -> human transmission of a human virus is equivalent to animal -> human transmission of a new virus. Those are two *extremely* different things. The palm civet SARS spike protein RBD did not gain the ability to bind human ACE2 many times. In fact, the evidence for that seems to only be a single time. The remaining two suggested origin events show mutation of the existing virus, followed be retransmission across species barriers.

Those are two completely different types of events.