Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome | Hacker News Reader

Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome

zenodo.org

25 pointsguybedo14 comments

A strangely written paper, with some strong statements, underlining and bold sections. I'm not sure I buy their premise that the origin of the virus is censored in peer reviewed journals, and certainly it doesn't look like they tried too hard to get this accepted.

Yes, and the paper is authored by a group at the Rule of Law Foundation, which seems to be an organization to expose and undermine Chinese authoritarianism.

This is a goal I support, but I do not want activism mixed into my science.

Are there any journals that list the reasons why a paper is not accepted? It would be great to see evidence-based counter arguments to the issues brought up here especially since this is so political.

Maybe even more troubling than the potential that the virus is engineered. It's that why are American institutions trying to limit distribution on a scientific literature just because of the literature's implications? Chilling...

The sequenced genome is freely available to all to look at, and compare to other genomes. While gene editing is not my field, if SARS-Cov-2 looked obviously man-made, I don't think any single institution / country could stop an international community of scientists from talking about this. If the evidence of gene editing is more subtle, I suspect it will simply come out in time.

Also, there is already a paper looking at whether sars-cov-2 is man-made, published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world (not American):

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

At the moment, no. The rejection letter is written to the authors, and I think that most authors would be mortified if their rejection letters were made available. At that point the authors can attempt to send it to another journal. There is nothing stopping the authors of this paper from publishing the peer-reviewed comments and feedback they will have received from attempting to publish it.

I don't know what PlosOne's policy on publishing something like this would be. They don't reject based on relevance or impact alone, but I suspect that they would not want anything that looked fraudulent in their journal nonetheless.

I strongly suspect this is the case, though talking about it too loudly quickly brings accusations of crankery and "sinophobia".

There are far too many coincidences and the damage has been too catastrophic for this not be investigated so that it isn't allowed to happen again.

Even if can be scientifically proven that the virus was not engineered, there is still plenty of evidence that China covered it up, silenced researchers and destroyed evidence which would have helped prepare the international community, all in the effort to save the reputation of the ruling party. The WHO played a role in this as well - they still have tweets up saying that human-to-human transmission is not possible, because they trust the Chinese scientists who told them so!

I have spent time in China and found the disregard for public safety, and more generally the disregard for the value of human life, to be absolutely shocking. (As an example, when I was there, they opened the bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing. In the opening weeks, there was a disastrous collision, knocking a whole train off of a bridge and killing everybody on board. It was, quite literally, covered up: they simply covered the destroyed train with dirt, not even removing the bodies. Train service resumed shortly after [0]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision

The Wikipedia source you liked to contradicts what you wrote.

You write: 'knocking a whole train off of a bridge and killing everybody on board'

Wikipedia writes: 'The two trains derailed each other, and four cars fell off the viaduct. 40 people were killed, at least 192 were injured, 12 of which were severe injuries.'

Okay, it killed 40 people and injured 192. It doesn't change my point. "Killing lots of people on board."

It doesn’t have to change your point to severely reduce a reader’s confidence in it. A kind reader would say that difference in detail is hyperbole with the intent to incite an emotional response. A less kind reader would call making up details to better suit your narrative a form of lying. Yes they covered up the train incident, and yes it was despicable and horrible they did so. That aspect is not my problem, it’s the deliberate choice of words to foster not discussion, but outrage. It makes me question your entire narrative and intent before I’ve even had a chance to consider it.

Part of the reason that I didn't know is that while it was unfolding, the state told news reporters not to cover it in detail - the implication was the everybody had died, and that it was not to be discussed any further. I had not looked at the case since. It is fortunate that more people were not harmed, given how many people were on the train.

Truth is hard to come by in China.

Looking at the reconstruction, it's somewhat surprising there weren't more fatalities considering the size of the drop. https://youtu.be/PoX4dTM9qvo?t=112

Interesting if true. Chances of a real investigation to determine if true: approximately zero. It is too political. Maybe in 50-ish years we can have an impartial inquiry into this.

The good news is: someone out there knows how to defeat the virus.

The bad news: someone out there knows how to make this kind of viruses

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