Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt • Hacker News Board

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#641

Post by oblio » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:14 PM UTC

irthomasthomas wrote: post #442

oblio wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13624175

Except that according to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect the spell is never broken for most people. They turn the page and resume reading as if the source was still trust worthy.

I'd argue that for most people that's still the case.

It's easy to pontificate for a few hours, days, weeks even, and much harder many years and decades down the line for someone else to objectively evaluate the way you access media and say: "J decided to give up on X media after discovering the 'spell' and even decades later they stuck to their decision".

My money's on most people giving up these "major" decisions due to practical reasons or sheer boredom, somewhere down the line.

You could say that we almost want or need the lies.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#642

Post by oblio » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

ls15 wrote: post #293

oblio wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you list a few of those, please?

It even correlates with the price. https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ If you would remove the dates and the prices, I would not be able to tell the age of most of these headlines.

Ah, "rumors of my deaths were greatly exaggerated".

My opinion is something like:

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will not die, but long term the current ones will become fringe techs except for some of their aspects which will be merged into the mainstream. It's too early to know which aspects will remain and which will go away. Plus at this point we cannot evaluate the beneficial/negative aspect of cryptocurrencies as a whole, but the general impression leans towards negative (a ton of negative externalities and 99% of the time used for raw speculation and we could have used those resources for things more beneficial to humankind).

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#643

Post by interestica » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

cocoggu wrote: post #458

rozab wrote: post #417

Earlier 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.

That's one of the tough parts about headline interpretations because you're right. I think editors use it as a sort of con knowing it can leave them with a way out. Here's an NPR headline using the same term that could be seen as just as misleading:

"Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory Of Pandemic Emergence" April 22, 2020 4:08 PM ET https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/841925672/scientists-debunk-l...

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#644

Post by tim333 » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

ayngg wrote: post #256

vasco wrote: post #241

You know this effect, when you've been reading the news for years, and finally your favorite source has a story about something you studied or worked on, and you realize how low quality or outright wrong it is? The spell is broken and you realize how little they know about anything they write. Once government officials and scientists gaslight us about what they think they should, how does one know they wouldn't for a…

"Trust the science" hasn't made people more rational, it has made "science" more dogmatic. I wonder what governments and the media will latch onto once they have eroded the trust in science, because there aren't many other trustworthy institutions left.

"Trust the science" I think has been corrupted a bit in an Orwellian way by the likes of

>Dr. Fauci On GOP Criticism: ‘Attacks On Me, Quite Frankly, Are Attacks On Science’

whereas I'm more into

Feynman: The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific 'truth'.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Fauci Is Science.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#645

Post by afpx » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

alevskaya wrote: post #608

brigandish wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that evidence look like? The House Committee on Oversight and Reform have a press release with more detail[1], which the Telegraph mentions - it's how I found it - and you can download a pdf which contains the partially redacted emails. It doesn't seem to me that the Telegraph has misled anyone regarding this news at all. Perhaps you could read it and be more precise as to where you think they're providing…

I was a genetic engineer for two decades: - Clear signs of molecular manipulation in the sars-cov-2 sequence. There are none. Almost all of the alleged manipulations would have left unmistakeable, damning evidence in a recognizable vector. The only remotely interesting thing at all in the sequence is the furin site, but plenty of coronaviruses have those, and it just likely indicates selection/propagation in a second…

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 have any evidence either but requires more assumptions. Occam's razor.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#646

Post by _Nat_ » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #99

_Nat_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RootClaim discusses that claim and its perceived relevance [here]( https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV... ).

Hmm, that's a nifty site, reminiscent in some ways of Metaculus but with an actual methodology behind it rather than just prediction aggregation. Very nice UI/UX as well. I'm surprised I've never heard of it.

Yeah, just saw it linked [in this comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902330 ).

Currently, it seems most helpful in aggregating some of the arguments folks put forth in examining claims, including describing the basic issues and linking some references. Plus it seems to offer some insight into what folks are thinking.

Then from an academic perspective, I really like the sort of approach that they're trying to use. A well-developed implementation of that general approach would seem like it could be awesome.

That said, dunno if I find their current methodology or numbers too convincing, as far as actual conclusions go.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#647

Post by tristor » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

alevskaya wrote: post #608

brigandish wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that evidence look like? The House Committee on Oversight and Reform have a press release with more detail[1], which the Telegraph mentions - it's how I found it - and you can download a pdf which contains the partially redacted emails. It doesn't seem to me that the Telegraph has misled anyone regarding this news at all. Perhaps you could read it and be more precise as to where you think they're providing…

I was a genetic engineer for two decades: - Clear signs of molecular manipulation in the sars-cov-2 sequence. There are none. Almost all of the alleged manipulations would have left unmistakeable, damning evidence in a recognizable vector. The only remotely interesting thing at all in the sequence is the furin site, but plenty of coronaviruses have those, and it just likely indicates selection/propagation in a second…

> Any epidemiological connections to WIV? There aren't any

I am neither a geneticist nor an epidemiologist, however my understanding is that as further tracing of early cases has occurred that the earliest cases identified were employees of the WIV and predate the case cluster that started in the wet market. This was one of the strongest pieces of information that swayed me towards believing a lab leak was likely, and that it was most likely accidental rather than purposeful.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#648

Post by baq » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #305

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, holding strong to the logic that's like a mom concluding of her kindergartner "You're being evasive, this means definitely that you're hiding something" is ridiculous. If the outbreak started in Colorado, and Russia wanted access to the CDC lab there, Americans (officials and public) would also be crying and screaming...

If Russia wanted access to a CDC lab, the Americans would be crying and screaming regardless of whether something happened there or not.

Exactly. Same thing in the China-not China relations.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#649

Post by raxxorrax » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

cocoggu wrote: post #581

raxxorrax wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you would make the same criticism against articles that denied it could have had a lab origin? At some point people don't believe you anymore.

I don't have a strong opinion about what happened, it may or may not be a lab leak. It's still ongoing and I feel it will be a very long and sterile debate with few scientific facts to prove anything. Granted, if the title of the article was "Scientists believed that Covid had natural origins...", this article wouldn't attract my attention as much, because I already believe that to be the popular opinion. But if, in…

Yes, some scientists did and they didn't want speculation and suppressed the fact with political means. There were other scientists that did entertain the thought publicly and they were branded as being anti-science. Just for entertaining the thought, not for saying the had any conclusive evidence.

Re: Scientists believed Covid leaked from Wuhan lab, but feared debate could hurt

#650

Post by throway453sde » Wed, Jan 12, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

PaulGraham hypothesized this way earlier in a tweet. But the important realization to me was that not all riches are the same. Not all rich people have access to the most important information. Certainly being rich in tech sector is powerful.