Comment by erostrate | Hacker News Reader

Comment by erostrate | Hacker News Reader

Some points I found interesting:

- Kristian Andersen offered to abuse his power as editor to stealthily edit a preprint. He is the main author of the most notable paper supporting a natural origin, and has been one of the major resources of the natural origins camp. Now his scientific integrity is seriously questioned.

- Peter Daszak appears much more focused on finding new sources of grant money than on doing good science: "What was needed, he exhorted his staff, was a “change in culture” as “part of [a] mentaility [sic] to get money,”

- The Wuhan Institute of Virology is more of a second zone lab than a top lab: "The WIV was also viewed as subpar, especially when compared with the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute. Harbin was China’s Harvard, said the former DARPA official. The WIV was more like a safety school"

- EcoHealth Alliance and Daszak were seen by DARPA as amateurs in virology, not at all the expert frontline organisation that's been suggested before: "EcoHealth Alliance was viewed as a “ragtag group” and a “middle guy,” a backseat collaborator willing to get on an Air China jet, eat terrible food, and stay in bad hotels" "EcoHealth Alliance had “bolted on” a serious scientist, Ralph Baric".

> a backseat collaborator willing to get on an Air China jet, eat terrible food, and stay in bad hotels

I'm not sure why this is supposed to be compelling evidence. Are people who refuse to work unless provided first class plane tickets, meals at Michelin star restaurants, and five-star hotels expected to be more reliable? If anything, I imagine people would be way more willing fudge or flat out lie about their research if they were willing to get that kind of accommodation out of it.

I've sat on a China Eastern jet (in first class) and gotten covid… and the flight was the more unpleasant of the two.

Seems you have missed the greater point: these people were willing to do the science that the Administration granting money wanted to have done and no one of repute would sign up to do. Focusing on a small bit of hyperbole in order to reverse the argument is a weak stance to take

If my stance on the correctness of their argument was stated weakly, it's because I don't have one. I do have a stance that criticizing people for having different standards for plane travel and hotels and cuisine is in poor taste, and that applies regardless of whether the greater point the criticism was intended to convey was valid or not.

It's interesting that Harbin became so prominent given its general obscurity otherwise. If you are interested in the history of biology, Harbin during WWII was occupied by the Japanese and was the primary site of their "Unit 731" which focused on biological warfare. Did the Chinese take over their labs post war?

It seems to be mostly grim coincidence. All the researchers were Japanese, who destroyed everything including the buildings themselves before they left. Most returned to Japan and were granted immunity by the US in exchange for access to their research, a few served short jail terms in the USSR, but none remained behind in China.

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