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Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

theintercept.com

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Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#171

Post by djenendik »

teh_klev wrote: post #162
djenendik wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ok to have wishful thinking. Plenty of grants include virologists and epidemiologists, so your proposal isn't practical.

Sure, they could provide anecdotal input based on past outbreaks, but they don't have the biological expertise to decide solely on what research should or could be carried out.

Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#172

Post by tommymachine »

teh_klev wrote: post #157
djenendik wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a virologist should tell another virologist what to do. Got it.

Nope, a panel of virologists and related researchers with the same scientific understanding in the field should make these decisions.

Imagine if the same rule were applied to international bankers, military generals, or plumbers. Why should a virologist be able to have a say as to which part of his plumbing system I work on? Leave that up to a panel of like-minded plumbers to decide for him.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#173

Post by teh_klev »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #153
theduder99 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

please send me some good sites which produce unbiased analysis, thanks.

That's not my job, sorry.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can't hide behind the "go and look it up" response as is often uttered by science deniers.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#174

Post by brendoelfrendo »

teh_klev wrote: post #173
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my job, sorry.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can't hide behind the "go and look it up" response as is often uttered by science deniers.

The extraordinary claim is that the virus was man-made.

Edit to say: I don't think saying the virus came from nature requires any additional proof. The claim that requires extraordinary, indisputable proof is the claim that it was man-made. And I have yet to see it, from this or any source. Just a big compilation of weak, circumstantial evidence.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#175

Post by lamontcg »

createdapril24 wrote: post #145
lamontcg wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's 1,000 nucleotide differences between the closest known progenitor and SARS-CoV-2. That is an evolutionary distance of 30-40 years in a coronavirus. You can't replicate that many years of evolution by serial passage in a lab. Serial passage isn't a magic wand. And the rest of it is that you're arguing in favor of a science fiction explanation for the capabilities of the WIV lab.

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 they measure this difference in terms of years of evolution in nature which is on the order of 30-40 years.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#176

Post by teh_klev »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #174
teh_klev wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You can't hide behind the "go and look it up" response as is often uttered by science deniers.

The extraordinary claim is that the virus was man-made. Edit to say: I don't think saying the virus came from nature requires any additional proof. The claim that requires extraordinary, indisputable proof is the claim that it was man-made. And I have yet to see it, from this or any source. Just a big compilation of weak, circumstantial evidence.

So link to the actual indisputable proof.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#177

Post by teh_klev »

djenendik wrote: post #171
teh_klev wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, they could provide anecdotal input based on past outbreaks, but they don't have the biological expertise to decide solely on what research should or could be carried out.

Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.

"Anecdotally"

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#178

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

nl wrote: post #126
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> information (like titles) can be meaningfully extracted From a technical perspective it's probably simpler to just grep the page for the user-submitted title.

The issue is likely mostly paywalled sites and SPAs where this isn't as simple.

Yet another reason to ban paywalled sites.

I really don't understand why a site that wants people to actually read the article and discuss the contents promotes articles that at least 90% of readers won't be able to (easily) access.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#179

Post by djenendik »

teh_klev wrote: post #177
djenendik wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, that's not my experience with epi people. A fair few come from a bio/medicine background with a sufficient amount of experience in wet lab and theory to be considered a 'double threat'. Choose your own team.

"Anecdotally"

That was a reference to your previous comment. Does anecdotal count for nothing? Fine, run a survey of virologists and epidemiologists and report the intersection of set. It will not be arbitrarily small.

Re: Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research

#180

Post by spywaregorilla »

missinfo wrote: post #102

Check out this prescient article from 2017, when the ban was lifted: Critics say these researchers risk creating a monster germ that could escape the lab and seed a pandemic... Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard School of Public Health, called review panels “a small step forward.” Recent disease-enhancing experiments, he said, “have given us some m…

Is it supposed to ironic posting stuff like this under a new account with this name?
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