Hacker News Reader

Your scale looks pretty biased toward one side.

If you throw away the two most extreme options and focus on 2 - 4, notice there is no reasonable counterpart to those expressed on the other side.

In other words, 2 - 4 are worded to look reasonable, while 6 - 7 are not, when they easily could have been worded differently to be more reasonable.

Number 5 is worded to have the appearance of looking neutral, while it's really expressing the fallacy of "there are two sides so let's assign them 50/50 likelihood even though the data weighs clearly on one side."

So that one is also on the side of 2 - 4, while appearing on the surface to be reasonable.

Then 6 immediately leaps to an extreme and untenable position, saying "almost certainly" and making that side look non-credible, as if they jump to conclusions and near certainty when the evidence is still coming in.

And 7 goes even farther to the extreme.

So again I would suggest this scale is a bit weighted against one side here.

I assume this was not your intent. If my assumption is correct, perhaps you could edit it to address this issue.

But the view that is really not expressed at all on this scale is:

We do not know for certain at this time. But we should continue to follow the evidence where it leads, and we should not solely rely on people who have a conflict of interest, especially people who have tried to hide their conflicts of interest, such as Peter Daszak reportedly did in the Lancet.

I never claimed my scale wasn't biased :)

Point 5 could be the "when you don't know, all probabilities are roughly 50%" fallacy, but I think it can also charitably interpreted as belief that a careful weighting of the evidence is roughly equal.

But your points are well taken. I'm not going to edit it here, as I don't think that would be fair to the people who have responded.

Your final paragraph is of course the only reasonable position for the truly open-minded (and actually represents my own position quite well), but I didn't bother to put it on the scale as it seems hardly represented at all, at least in Twitter discussions and HN threads.

Correction to 4: Biosecurity incidents are common, there were about 17 in the last decade [0]. Just SARS-CoV-1 leaked from the lab 4 times [1].

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

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndr...

This is fair! I was only really counting events with large numbers of infections (so the 1977 flu and maybe one or two others), but biosecurity incidents themselves are, as you say, common, and many prominent people in the field (Marc Lipsitch particularly comes to mind) have been calling for better biosecurity - and strict limitations on gain of function research - for some time.

Although he has been consistently wrong on interventions during this pandemic, I have enormous respect for Marc Lipsitch; I wish he were in a position of decision-making on dispersal of NIH funds wrt pathogen research.

And for that matter, the rest of CambridgeWG has also had a consistent record of calling for investigation into lab-leak incidents at WIV for several years, including from the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Hats off to all of them.

> biosecurity incidents themselves are, as you say, common

Let's generalise that a touch to defang it, incidents in scientific laboratories are common.

#1: I worked in a university science lab for four years. One of my colleagues blew up a fume cupboard* and, since he was deafened and had minor wounds from flying glass shards, I - personally - called the emergency services.

* don't apply a heat gun to stuff that looks like ice but might not be....

I met the fire service and ambulance at the front door to the department, as requested, and led them up to our laboratory, accompanied by bemused looks from other students and staff.

The lead guy from the fire service asked me (I'm not kidding) "is there anything dangerous in your lab?" ... I tried hard not to giggle (the adrenaline had taken over by that point), I told him it was a Chemistry lab and asked if he had anything specific in mind? We stored dangerous stuff alphabetically, and as I recall, the fume cupboard that blew up was the second one along, so had everything dangerous from (approximately) F to L.

#2: After they'd carted my colleague off to hospital, a professor turned up and asked who had called the emergency services. I fessed up. He gave me a dressing down and told me "the press will hear about this!". I was dumbfounded. My colleague was in the back of an ambulance on the way to hospital covered in glass shards and the prof was worried about us getting in the papers?

"Biosecurity incidents" aren't the same thing as a global pandemic, though. We're being asked to believe that Wuhan was doing secret GoF research, and that they had a security incident, and that this escaped detection until spreading in the general population, and that no one involved so far has blabbed about it. Any of those in isolation would be pretty unlikely. In combination they really don't say much at all.

The one thing saving the conspiracists so far is the Journal story of two weeks ago that western intelligence agencies were aware of an outbreak of something among lab staff at more or less exactly the right moment to explain a covid origin. That's the one thing that's hard to explain as a coincidence.

And even then... meh. I give it even odds at best. Again, if this was really happening you don't think some enterprising PhD would have tried to leverage a tenure position at Stanford or something in exchange for testimony? The incentives to tell the world about this are huge.

4.7 trending up.

What's disconcerting is how the lab leak was treated as a conspiracy theory that needed to be censored for the past year.

And many scientists acting as if it were anathema to suggest a lab origin while conveniently keeping quiet on their own conflicts of interest.

Which in some ways is even worse, since one would expect scientists to have a higher standard for veracity than the media and politicians.

Why put someone or something up on a pedestal like that? Academia and scientists have justified almost every horrific thing the US has ever done and yet here we are again like this time is going to be any different.

> Why put someone or something up on a pedestal like that?

Since March of 2020 all criticism and skepticism has been shouted down with "are you 'An Expert'"? The entire pandemic has been nothing but a thinly guised appeal to authority. And a very narrow set of authority at that--the only authority we were allowed to listen to are the ones who sold this as the worst thing ever. Hope or optimism or just asking basic questions was never allowed.

Nah, it was a reaction to things like this at the beginning and far worse later on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAh4uS4f78o

> one would expect scientists to have a higher standard for veracity than the media and politicians

(Full disclosure: have science PhD, wife has science PhD, sister has science PhD): with no snark intended: have you met (m)any scientists?

Yes!

An i agree with GP: while they sometime talk about some junky theory (the one i spoke with the most is a retired geneticist agronomist - J.Mallard, who try to convince me that drosophila are somehow born either righty or lefty, and that their choices are caused by genetics), they utter the words "Maybe, i don't know, possibly, i do believe so, but don't take my words for it..." more than the average population. Disagree?

>> What's disconcerting is how the lab leak was treated as a conspiracy theory

> And many scientists acting as if it were anathema to suggest a lab origin while conveniently keeping quiet on their own conflicts of interest.

Do you people not hear yourselves? You're alleging a conspiracy to suppress the discussion of the conspiracy discussion that has clearly not been suppressed. You guys have been screaming about it endlessly for going on a year now. We've heard you loud and clear, we just don't believe you.

It hasn't been covered by media sources, because it has little to no evidence. That's not "suppression", it's journalism.

Did you not read the Vanity Fair article posted on here a couple days ago? Also who is "you people"? I haven't been posting about the lab leak until now.

What number is "we don't have conclusive evidence for either, but there is more evidence for lab leak then there is for zoonotic" Suspicious behavior is not an indication towards one or the other. There are negative effects if it IS lab leak, so of course they are going to say things that lead away from that hypothesis... but the behavior cannot be a part of the base of evidence.

I feel like a combo of 2 and 4 yet not 3, where I'm pretty sure it's zoonotic but given the CCP being the CCP I wouldn't be shocked if it was spillover.

Yeah my personal opinion is similar. IMO the best evidence for it being a lab leak is the extent to which the involved parties (the Chinese government, the head researcher at the lab, and the Ecohealth Alliance guy) are acting like they have something to hide. That's entirely circumstantial of course, but it's not like there's a ton of evidence for anything.

The second best piece of evidence IMO is the lack of an alternative explanation, but these things do take time to piece together.

It’s worse because holding a rational-sounding position for irrational reasons is not good. It creates a sense of consensus among experts that may be wholly unwarranted and could threaten trust in experts. The reason why this is especially contentious for this particular opinion is that it’s pretty clear China would prefer everyone to believe in 2 or maybe even 1. Why exactly that is is unclear, but the “data-free” part of the title warrants asking why we have no data over a year and a half later. Is it radical to suggest that the data was suppressed? I’m no expert, but the Vanity Fair article certainly paints the picture that it has been. Now we just have to be in the unfortunate position of not being able to ascertain whether it was due to paranoia or because they knew things that we didn’t.

I don’t have a number right now. I do have some suspicions regarding the consistent attempts to squash the lab leak theory. It has been rather aggressive at times.

I'm a hard 4.5. There's no reason to believe the US, WHO, or CCP would be entirely honest, and plenty of reason to believe they say what's convenient for them. Anything at 1 or 8 is basically extremist and certainly not a party with pursuit of truth as their main priority.

5.5

Thank You. Saves us all so much time. Next time we will just point to this post and say it is number [x] again .

You should add one between 5 and 6, I'm sure plenty of people lean towards lab leak without being almost certain of it.

6

This.

Oftentimes people are mad at the media too quickly dismissing the possibility last year rather than actively suggesting it was a lab leak.

I think it's normal.

Rarely our media and politicians show their true colors in this fashion

6

0

Being an effectively racist talking point is independent of how plausible one believes the topic to be. I'd be at 3 on your scale, but as an independent matter I worry about the combination of how non-actionable the idea is along with how effectively it supports racist rhetoric.

Note that my wording was specific there. It's effective because it has a bunch of people talking about it. It supports racist rhetoric because it creates an environment in which people are comfortable making statements blaming China, and there are a lot of people who are sloppy about distinguishing between the government of China and Chinese people.

Whether the theory "is" racist or not is the wrong question. The right question is whether discussion of it helps to normalize racist positions. That seems like a much easier matter to study - no need to divine anyone's private beliefs. And it's completely independent of any question of how the new coronavirus got into human spread.

I think it's very important to separate these two topics, so that the far more important question of how much damage this is doing to Asian communities doesn't get buried in some completely unactionable nonsense about the virus's means of introduction to the human population.

> Whether the theory "is" racist or not is the wrong question. The right question is whether discussion of it helps to normalize racist positions.

This is incredibly problematic and anti-scientific sentiment. Science is about expanding knowledge. Whether covid came from China or Spain or Madagascar doesn't matter; we should determine where it came from and then see where that takes us. Racism and racist uses of fact and fiction are a separate, societal issue; tackle that separately.

I can't agree that it's unscientific at all. There's a huge difference between doing science and constantly pushing public discussion of your unsupported hypothesis.

Should there be people tracking the origin of the disease, how it got into the general population, and how to reduce similar incidents in the future? Yes, absolutely. That's doing science.

But what, exactly, is scientific about spreading your hypothesis across popular media for public discussion when the entirety of your evidence is "there's no concrete evidence to the contrary"? This isn't how science is done. It's how propaganda is done.

I am disturbed by the number of people here who fall for such propaganda so easily. Being a testable hypothesis does not make something intrinsically science. Actually doing science does. And science is not done by media talking heads selling you fear in order to increase their advertising income.

There are many things in science that didn't have concrete evidence to the contrary before they were researched; where do you think concrete evidence comes from if not starting to research? It's ironic that you criticize propaganda on one hand while suggesting that we just believe whatever we're told is true without question on the other hand. What is that if not propaganda?

Criticizing pretty much any non-Western country might "help to normalize racist positions".

>Being an effectively racist talking point is independent of how plausible one believes the topic to be. I'd be at 3 on your scale, but as an independent matter I worry about the combination of how non-actionable the idea is along with how effectively it supports racist rhetoric.

Truth is truth, regardless of whether it supports a viewpoint you decry.

I presume you'd be on BART's side in this story. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholdin...

Claiming it's true is a huge leap. What if it isn't?

But more importantly, truth doesn't absolve you of your personal responsibility. You are responsible for your actions. This means paying attention to their results and changing your behaviors if you don't like what happens in response. Your intentions and beliefs are less important than your actions and their results. If the way you are expressing something has results you don't like, you should change the way you're expressing it. I'll stand by that assertion whether the thing you're saying is true or not.

And let's be very clear here: 1) The lab leak hypothesis has no evidence. The best it has is a lack of concrete evidence to the contrary. 2) Resolving the question either direction will not change any actions you take in the future. 3) Media discussion of the hypothesis does not resolve it nor provide you with any reason to change your actions.

What is the actual value in discussing the hypothesis as if it's a matter of public import? What public need is being addressed by a media circus? Are you happy with the results of the way the question is being treated in public?

I'm not. So I'm advocating we change the discussion to reduce harm.

> Claiming it's true is a huge leap. What if it isn't?

Examining the question to determine this wasn't allowed in the media during the past year, until very very recently.

>And let's be very clear here: 1) The lab leak hypothesis has no evidence. The best it has is a lack of concrete evidence to the contrary.

I don't disagree. I would argue, however, that there is more circumstantial evidence[1] for an origin for COVID19 from a Wuhan biolab than for purely natural animal-to-human transmission.

>2) Resolving the question either direction will not change any actions you take in the future.

Nonsense. Determining that, say, an accdiental leak from a Wuhan biolab caused the pandemic would affect

* how and whether future gain-of-function research is done around the world

* what punitive actions the world would demand from China

* the credibility and legitimacy of the Chinese government within and outside its borders

>3) Media discussion of the hypothesis does not resolve it nor provide you with any reason to change your actions.

Why do you get to declare that this story, but not others, should not be discussed in public?

You didn't answer my question regarding the 2017 news story I linked to. Did BART do the right thing by suppressing camera footage of crimes, and in how the transit agency justified doing so?

[1] Circumstantial evidence is, contrary to what Hollywood has taught us, quite permissible in the court of law. Many cases, criminal and civil, are resolved entirely or largely based on circumstantial evidence.

My justification is the part you ignored. Take responsibility for the results of your actions. The way this is being discussed has had real negative impact on entirely innocent people. There are many useless things that can reported on that don't injure large groups of people. Sports scores, for instance.

And I'm not even saying don't report on it. I'm saying to take responsibility. If your goal isn't to support racism, stop reporting in a way that does.

As for the BART thing... Eh, I think a lot of what they said is nonsense, like attempting to justify their choice based on minor privacy laws. But I think they made one key point that's enough to justify their choice: releasing those videos to the media doesn't increase public safety. It increases public fear. Scared people are actively harmful for public safety. A terrified person pulling out a gun the next time several black teenagers get onto the same train car is only an escalation of violence.

You seem to be forgetting there's a middle ground between suppressing and sensationalizing. Did the lack of video footage prevent reporting on the BART incidents? Was the news suppressed? Was anyone injured by the lack of video? I can find no evidence of this happening. Everything I can see suggests that things ended up in a reasonable spot there. People who wanted to know about crime could find out about it.

So what's the middle ground on the lab leak hypothesis? Stop dredging it up like it's important to every media consumer. Every action you listed is a public policy decision, not a personal action. Report on it when it's important for determining public policy, not when you're scaring people for ratings.

And yeah, I'm aware that circumstantial evidence is fine in court. But when I see the circumstantial evidence, I don't see anything to outweigh the fact that zoonotic transmission has been the source of thousands of outbreaks in the past. That's one hell of a circumstantial hurdle any other argument has to clear. Any argument of the form "this time it's different" has a very high bar to clear.