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Comment by bbayles | Hacker News Reader

> It should matter, a lot, that even a group of scientists who believed a lab leak idea was plausible couldn't muster up an argument that would hold up under peer review

I think Nate would say that the problem is that the paper literally said that such a scenario was "implausible" while the authors believed the opposite.

In the "more studies are needed" section, the authors could have explained what questions remained and what data might have resolved them. I suspect Silver would have considered that more honest.

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> I think Nate would say that the problem is that the paper literally said that such a scenario was "implausible" while the authors believed the opposite.

Exactly. What brain block is preventing people from understanding this?

The paper made firm, overbroad claims not backed by evidence, and in private communications the authors themselves said they found the conclusions unpersuasive.

Could you list the exact messages (and their timestamps) where the authors are saying this in their private communications? Anything cited in the articles is very unconvincing to me.

This was discussed in the previous thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36821853

No, it wasn't. The quote is from a month after the publication. The comment above said:

> I think Nate would say that the problem is that the paper literally said that such a scenario was "implausible" while the authors believed the opposite.

Please show me the evidence that the authors believe the opposite when they wrote the paper.

Is the idea that they believed it was plausible before writing the paper, became convinced it was implausible during the writing, and then later switched back to plausible?

These are indeed the contortions people are going through. Basically, as the evidence for zoonotic original allegedly mounted and lab leak origins became less convincing, suddenly the Proximal origin authors become less convinced of their own arguments. Astounding.

Indeed this is what happened according to the chats. Check for example the posts on April 3rd.

This whole conspiracy theory relies on selective omission of context from the messages (I refuse to believe that Silver, Chan and co. are doing it out of incompetence). And of course nobody actually checks a 140 page source document. This also explains why no serious journalist has picked up the story. They do actually read sources.

I think Prof Francois Balloux, infectious disease epidemiologist, summarized it well [1]:

    I'm not convinced there’s a villain among the PO authors, but just a series of cock-ups and poor decisions, aligned with, and fuelled by, bad incentives, eventually engulfing everyone in its wake.
    It remains an embarrassing institutional failure, however we look at it.
    I disagree with those who try to rationalise their content and pretend that the authors changed their mind as they followed the science (sigh).
    There was never any new real evidence that could have triggered a change of opinion in that time period, anyway.
    The charge that the final version of Proximal Origins in Nature Medicine does not accurately reflect the PO authors’ doubts expressed in private feels fair to me.

[1] https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/16846724873243320...

The authors can believe what they want, isn't the whole point that if they're not willing to "commit" to those views, then they don't actually matter?

We don't know their mental state when writing those Slack messages, we don't know where they ended up after those thoughts, we don't know anything that could reasonably contextualize what we're seeing from the FOIA requests other than the raw text.

The path to discovery is not a straight line, and if researchers are now somehow beholden to every offhand statement they make, every argument they mull over, every notion/hunch that comes to them, regardless of their ability to apply rigor, don't we lose a substantial amount of value from the process of peer review?

I think this is veering pretty hard into the domain of politics where you kind of expect every politician to have a "public position" and an often contrary "private position." Science and scientists, in a functional society, should feel free to publicly say and discuss things as they see fit, whether it's in line with the norms of the time, or patently offensive to said norms.

Obviously these individuals did not feel free discussing these matters, at all. And that's really the problem. These sort of leaks aren't going to cause some sort of new chilling effect. They're leaks because there was already a dramatic chilling effect in play. That saying "I think plausible thing is plausible." is only available in a "leak" indicates something has already long since gone horribly wrong.

There is what you believe, and then there is what you prove. Science isn’t interested in the former, and Nate Silver understands that.

It’s got nothing whatsoever to do with politics, and scientists are free to think whatever they like; however, what they say formally is subject to the process of peer review.

We can speculate all day about why these folks committed to the position they did, but the published content is all that matters.

You can read the paper in question here [1]. In cases like this where there's little to nothing in the way of experimentation or generalizations, all they're doing is assessing the evidence and offering their opinion on whatever they believe is most likely. The catch being in this case, what they said they believe is probably not what they did.

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

I think it is representative of where they landed, but not of where they were the entire process. Folks often argue one thing but come to believe another over time, and what we see is only the end product of that journey (unless someone FOIAs our conversations).

Are they retracting the paper? Are they publishing anything else to qualify their opinion or change their stance, formally? If not why not?

There's a really interesting article with a lot more relevant information here. [1] They (Andersen and Rambaut) describe exactly where they "landed", and how [1]:

---

Andersen: “Natural selection and accidental release are both plausible scenarios explaining the data – and a priori should be equally weighed as possible explanations. The presence of a furin [cleavage site] a posteriori” — the furin cleavage site was the characteristic of the virus that the scientists thought was indicative of engineering or other lab origin — “moves me slightly more towards accidental release, but it’s well above my paygrade to call the shots on a final conclusion.”

Rambaut: "Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possible distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content to with ascribing it to natural processes."

Andersen: "Yup, I totally agree that’s a very reasonable conclusion. Although I hate when politics is injected into science – but it’s impossible not to, especially given the circumstance. We should be sensitive to that."

---

Outside of this, another major issue (which they lied to congress about - these are some really stand up guys...) is that they had a grant for millions of dollars awaiting final approval from Fauci. Fauci is a major advocate for gain of function research, and Andersen was also worried that him digging further into lab leak could leave him being pinned as hostile to gain of function research.

Defacto censoring science is how we destroy science.

[1] - https://theintercept.com/2023/07/21/covid-origin-nih-lab-lea...

Sorry but if these people aren’t willing to say this in a way that invites peer scrutiny, then I don’t give a shit what they mumble back and forth to one another, and you shouldn’t either.

We saw this with election fraud claims from the Trump admin and his supporters; wild fraud claims in the media, but not a single legitimate peep in an actual courtroom. Same thing here, wild claims in informal settings but refusal to hold those claims up to scrutiny, knowing they wouldn’t survive.

They did not omit it for fear of peer scrutiny, they omitted it because we live in a society where even experts at the top of their field can face brutal repercussions for having the wrong opinion. The lead author felt the lab leak was the most probable explanation, but said exactly the opposite because of politics.

And this is something you very much should care about, because it's directly impacting and harming the quality of science that we produce, to say nothing of completely distorting social discussion. It's like science in the e.g. Mideast where any discovery or statement that may, in any possible way, run into conflict with religious values would largely be self censored away. It's this exact problem that caused the Mideast to go from the academic capital of the world, to a wasteland of such.

> They did not omit it for fear of peer scrutiny, they omitted it because we live in a society where even experts at the top of their field can face brutal repercussions for having the wrong opinion. The lead author felt the lab leak was the most probable explanation, but said exactly the opposite because of politics.

So he claims. I don't believe him, and I don't agree with you.

I don't believe him because he knows how the scientific process works; that peer review is the only way to credibly challenge an idea. The only real reason he could possibly have for writing the precise opposite of what he believes is if he knows what he believes won't hold up to scrutiny. There were many, many ways he could have handled this situation that didn't involve writing a paper that argues exactly the opposite of his supposed beliefs, but that's the route he chose, because that's the route the data led.

I don't agree with you because you're clearly ignorant on all of the masking research that's come out lately that "contradicts" earlier held opinion re: effectiveness of the general population using masks to effectively slow down the spread of a respiratory virus. If it were so "dangerous" to speak contrary to popular opinion, why is it so trivially easy for the folks conducting the masking research to do so?

The authors of this paper had no evidence to credibly support their beliefs, so they wrote what they could support. That matters a whole hell of a lot more than random emails of Slack messages ever will. The system worked, let's hope it keeps working.

Your ideal is a great one, it's not really how things work in reality.

The issue is not one of public opinion, which is largely irrelevant and trivially reshaped - it's about pissing off the political establishment. Masking was never particularly taboo and the official position itself flip-flopped and was relatively open to constructive dialogue. But the lab leak was extremely taboo because this was at a time when the US still adamant that a lab leak was impossible, probably because we were actively involved in it. So you're pissing off the US political establishment, to say nothing of China. Oh, and the guy who's trying to decide whether or not to finalize the multi million dollar grant he's about to send you.

Especially (and unfortunately) in academia, you just don't get far without knowing how to play these stupid and ultimately socially destructive games.

No, the "lab leak" theory is not so taboo that any serious scientist would throw out everything they know about the scientific process. You're acting as if a credible argument was made and shot down unjustly already, but no such thing has happened. You have no evidence to suggest that would actually have happened here, either. Just wild speculation about the worst possible behavior of one man in particular who does not in any way deserve your hate.

But even if that were the case, what this doesn't do is make any movement whatsoever as to the veracity of any "lab leak" theory. If you want to make that argument, do so. Nobody has, not credibly, even after these messages leaked. Where are the retractions, now that the cat is out of the bag? Nowhere, because they know such a thing would be indefensible.

All you have are implications, scuttlebutt, and postulation. Until someone actually presents the argument, all you can do is speculate, and that's not good enough for the scientific process to be relevant.

You're repeating yourself here, without adapting to what we've discussed. There was no grand scientific process. This is all just evaluating evidence and giving one's opinion on it - not some profound scientific process leading to an inescapable conclusion.

The issue is finding a widget right beside a widget factory and trying to decide if it came from that factory, or if it came from a mystical laden African swallow that's evaded all attempts at discovery. Technically one cannot prove it one way or the other, and that's problematic when saying one thing sets the world (and likely, your livelihood) on fire, while saying the other is met with a yawn and vigorous approval from the two most influential nations in science, as well as the guy about to sign off on your dream scenario grant.

The only argument they used to try to ignore having to deal with discussing a lab leak is that they claimed that COVID was inefficient at binding to a specific human receptor, with the implication that if it were lab created then you could have developed a more efficient binding mechanism. Nearly a trillion cases later, it seems fairly safe to say that the virus' binding mechanism was quite efficient after all, even prior to mutations.

I'm repeating myself because you're ignoring my point, as you lack a good argument to the contrary.

These scientists have no standing to believe what they said in their Slack messages and in email, knew that, and only wrote what they could support; that COVID was not a lab leak.

If they could support the lab leak theory, they would have written about it. That they didn't means until someone does write about it, what we have is a really good argument against it being a lab leak, and nothing else. Slack messages are not scientific research.

Now you're being increasingly nonsensical. What, exactly, is this "really good argument"? And why would you publish something that would be career suicide?

You're using quotes wrong, I never said what you claim. But the argument, as I've repeated over and over, is simple; what scientists publish is what matters. What they say in private Slack chats and emails is entirely irrelevant. I await these authors collective retractions, but lacking that, these Slack messages mean absolutely nothing, and Nate Silver knows that, as should you.

You have a super low and entirely unjustified opinion of a whole lot of key institutions and people in this situation; people you know very little about, institutions you've never interacted with directly, and it shows.

Publishing a paper explaining your belief that COVID may have been a lab leak is not career suicide, if you approach it logically, with humility, and explain your argument clearly. Publishing a well argued and highly sourced paper only to get cancelled is not how any of this works.

So now you're refusing to defend your own statements, and resorting to ad hominem? What, exactly, is this "really good argument"? And why would you publish something that would be career suicide? Try to actually answer instead of offering some passive aggressive blithering ad hominem nonsense.

The argument, as I've repeated over and over, is simple; what scientists publish is what matters. What they say in private Slack chats and emails is entirely irrelevant. I await these authors collective retractions, but lacking that, these Slack messages mean absolutely nothing, and Nate Silver knows that, as should you.

And you ought to learn what an ad hominem is. Worst application of the term I've seen on HN in a while.

You're again failing to even hint at what you think this "really good argument" is, and you're also not formulating an argument yourself. Your argument relies on ignoring all evidence and simply assuming your provably false assumption that the world of academia is this amazing place free of bias where merit and objectivity are truly all that matter.

As for retractions. Things move, at best, slowly even when overt. The Lancet's also the journal that published the MMR-Autism paper, back in 1998. It wasn't fully retracted until 2010 (there was a partial retraction in 2004). And even then it wasn't due to this beautiful system you've built up in your mind, but rather a an investigation from one of Murdoch's newspapers showing the paper's author was a conman.

This is the argument. This is not a hint, a clue, an implication, it is me directly stating what the argument is:

Okay, so let's go back to 1998 and some 'Slack' (IRC?) chats leak of Mr. MMR vax => autism guy. And he lays out everything pretty plainly - he's publishing it to sell some junk snake oil he's built up.

Would you still be here going "No, that doesn't matter. It's been published, so it must be true. If it can be published, peer reviewed, it must be the legitimate word of science!" Or...?

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