Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

unherd.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 792 posts

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#81

Post by 127 »

stetrain wrote: post #12

I think understanding the origin is important, but I also understand why it wasn't a media fixation during the pandemic itself. 1) Understanding the origin doesn't change the consequences or response to the pandemic 2) Unlike the nuclear analogy in the article, pandemic virus outbreaks happen naturally, and fairly frequently. Combined with the huge increase in global travel, when one does happen it can be around the…

Wasn't SARS-1 stopped largely with contact tracing? You're saying that understanding the origin of the virus does not help the production of a vaccine in any way?

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#82

Post by voakbasda »

spamizbad wrote: post #42
UIUC_06 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but scientists are not public policy makers. Their job is to follow the evidence, not publish based on what they think will happen if they do.

Scientists are members of society too. They are not automatons.

If scientists do not publish their unbiased results and instead bend their results to fit personal or public expectation, their credentials should be revoked in the name of science itself. There is no greater crime against humanity that to conceal or compromise scientific truth.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#83

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

[deleted]

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#84

Post by mikeyouse »

For those with a bit more background in the sciences, there's an increasingly massive amount of evidence to support Zoonotic origin. Philipp Markolin has a good rundown:

https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g...

Most of the "evidence" for lab leak is just weird insinuation -- it's increasingly hard to pin down what the advocates for that position are even arguing (e.g. whether it's a natural virus that escaped or an engineered one, how different lineages showed up at the market, which lab it allegedly escaped from since the WIV campus is much further from the market compared to the CCDC, etc etc).

China is a bad actor and definitely contributed to the conspiracy madness around the virus by being so shut-down and performing such a half-assed investigation but unfortunately they would have done the same whether the virus came to be via the same animal trade that caused the last SARS outbreak or if there was some secret Wuhan project.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#85

Post by robbomacrae »

fguerraz wrote: post #31

It's not that the origin story is not important, it's not that people don't care, it's that it is a distraction. It doesn't help solve the crisis. The article makes the comparison with a nuclear bomb. This is a bad comparison. If we were attacked by a sentient creature, we could reason with it and mitigate further damage or escalation. In the case of a virus, it's good to know to prevent future pandemics maybe, and t…

I think this is correct. I also think the point being made is that we SHOULD spend more time learning lessons and applying them to try and prevent some of the future pandemics. Imagine if we can prevent just one out of the next 10 pandemics through investment here. That would be millions of lives saved!

Part of the problem with the covid pandemic is how much we let our guard down. For example, the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness — was established in 2015 by Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice [0].

This was then disbanded under Trump and its head Timothy Ziemer, top White House official in the NSC for leading U.S. response against a pandemic, left the administration [1].

Jon Oliver has a good segment on why we need to focus on preventing future pandemics [2].

[0]: https://time.com/5806558/administration-officials-fight-crit...

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-U3K1sw9U

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#86

Post by dekhn »

NationalPark wrote: post #36
throwawaymaths wrote: post #2

The lab-leak hypothesis is meta-scientific. When it was first tossed around, the lab leak hypothesis generated two predictions: 1. We would find evidence that someone was doing experiments on furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses. 2. We would find that the furin cleavage site matched a known sequence. We did not find 2, which should have been easy to find. Eventually, we found 1, since a rejected DARPA grant proposal…

Can you link some sources here? Call me skeptical, but if the evidence is as convincing as you make it sound, then it implies a pretty widespread conspiracy among experts (of many countries and affiliations) who would understand the implications yet are deliberately mis-communicating via their podcasts, news appearances, papers in famous journals, etc. Are there any papers published on this or is it just in the book…

A loose conspiracy of a bunch of social media scientists/journalists? Wouldn't the overall size and diversity of the field mean that there would be at least a few dissenters presenting more factual alternatives?

You should just read the book. It's not very convincing. The most likely explanation for the lack of interest in identifying the origins is primarly a lack of data. Speculating about conspiracies does not help the discussion, either.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#87

Post by Izkata »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #21
whatshisface wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should contact the patent holder and let them know they're being infringed upon. ;)

That would be, ironically, moderna. Will the patent court award them negative damages? On a more serious note, to stave off conspiratorial thinking, it should be "not crazy" that a moderna furin sequence appear. If I told a biochemist to go and insert a furin cleavage site into a virus, that grad student would do an NCBI blast search and get a list of all sequences. Maybe they are more knowledgeable than me and did k…

> On a more serious note, to stave off conspiratorial thinking, it should be "not crazy" that a moderna furin sequence appear. If I told a biochemist to go and insert a furin cleavage site into a virus, that grad student would do an NCBI blast search and get a list of all sequences.

The weird part is, prior to 2020, a BLAST search only results in Moderna patents. There wasn't anything there for them to copy from.

https://arkmedic.substack.com/p/how-to-blast-your-way-to-the...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#88

Post by EA_itsinthegame »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #20
antiverse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up a bit. What the fuck is "meta-scientific"?

I'm using it to refer to applying the scientific method to the process of science itself.

You are intellectually and scientifically dishonest by presenting the lab leak like this.

Take your own theory and argument for it. You could only stare at a honest list of for and against regarding the lab leak, and conclude that lab leak is meta-scientific.

When you call for evidence, remember the information blackouts and destruction of samples ordered by the Chinese. Chinese citizens and scientists were dissapeared for following the science and doing proper journalism. To conclude their legacy as meta-scientific is ugly. That is not my science, but maybe that is your job here...

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#89

Post by bredren »

fguerraz wrote: post #31

It's not that the origin story is not important, it's not that people don't care, it's that it is a distraction. It doesn't help solve the crisis. The article makes the comparison with a nuclear bomb. This is a bad comparison. If we were attacked by a sentient creature, we could reason with it and mitigate further damage or escalation. In the case of a virus, it's good to know to prevent future pandemics maybe, and t…

If this is true, it seems like science trying to have it both ways.

Usually, there's desire for media to share scientific evidence in ways that are engaging to the public to recognize our best scientific conclusions.

What I'm taking from your portrayal is scientists know best what ~"helps the current situation."

Despite the origin being important, and that the public wants to know about it science doesn't want evidence on this matter and doesn't want it covered by the media or for it to influence the thinking of the public.

These seem like political behaviors, not scientific ones.

Re: What happened to the lab-leak hypothesis?

#90

Post by SilasX »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #20
antiverse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back up a bit. What the fuck is "meta-scientific"?

I'm using it to refer to applying the scientific method to the process of science itself.

That seemed to be an unnecessary label in the context of your post, especially since it’s also just a normal scientific hypothesis.
Post reply on HN