Hacker News Reader

Comment by avmich | Hacker News Reader

> Provided by Chinese Academy of Sciences

Is it trustworthy?

In my view, hopefully that question can be replaced with: Is it reproducible? The method they mentioned, Cryo-EM, is also how we've got those amazing 3d pictures of the novel coronavirus. They mentioned that preparing a good sample was a challenge, but it shouldn't be insurmountable for someone else to repeat that part of the experiment.

No, the intent of the question was: do we still have trust into scientific information coming from China? We know that China government closely controls many aspects of life in their interests, so should we consider this an exception?

Or, instead, should we wait for publication in a trustworthy source about "we were able to successfully repeat experiments, earlier reported from China, which demonstrate..."?

I guess the matter of trust is for everybody to decide by themselves.

Indeed, perhaps I should have said it a bit differently. There's certainly a potential issue with government influence over scientific research. But there's also an issue with any preliminary finding, and the same solution could address both issues.

I considered the important finding is not necessarily the images, but the recipe for preparing a sample of the virus. If this recipe works, labs with better equipment or better techniques should be able to produce even better data. If the recipe doesn't work, it will be quickly apparent.

There are known histories of government influence over science research with unhappy endings, such as the Lysenko affair, and probably global warming research in the US. Countries know that spewing out false scientific knowledge, if it's a solution for any problem, is a short term one. The Chinese government still has an interest in developing a good reputation in science. At least that's my take.

> Or, instead, should we wait for publication in a trustworthy source about "we were able to successfully repeat experiments, earlier reported from China, which demonstrate..."?

I mean, shouldn't we wait for that always rather than reporting unreproduced findings to people other than those who might reproduce it?

I think so long as people understand how science works, or the journalists provide some explanatory insight about it, reporting interesting science news to the public should be OK. Scientists tend to be skeptical of systems that decide who should have access to information before others.

Most findings are unreproduced. It usually takes someone with a reason to be interested, to reproduce a study.

As trustworthy as the US equivalent. (I've met and worked with members of the CAS in ICT and they are people of high integrity and competent leaders in their field of science)

That's great, but for how long should we trust our previous experience regarding this? With plenty of recent examples from a relatively tightly government controlled country should we worry that a publication may pursue unusual goals?

Clearly you know the answer to these questions. Why even ask. Just be confident say what you feel.

Generally, national academies of sciences are very highly regarded.

In the case of CAS, Wikipedia says that they've been the number 1 institute on Nature Index for years.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01230-x

Reply on news.ycombinator.com