Dr. Epstein, here are instructions for how to put individual tweets into a thread by threading the links to each existing tweet. This preserves the comments and all original content. I will put each step in a thread here, then rolled up so you can access all steps in one doc.
Start by opening Twitter in 2 browser tabs at once. One tab will be used for copying the tweet links, the other tab will be used for creating your thread. 
Go to the tweet that will be the first tweet in your thread. Click on the icon below the tweet to pop up the menu. Select "Copy link to Tweet".
On the other tab, select "Tweet".
This is your first tweet in your thread DRAFT (not yet published). In the new tweet, paste the "link to tweet" you copied from the other tab. Do not select the "Tweet" button yet.
Select the + as shown. This adds another draft tweet to your thread.
Select the + as shown. This adds another draft tweet to your thread.
Now go back to your "source" browser tab, copy the link to the next tweet you would like to add to the thread, and repeat copy/paste until you have all the original tweet links in the draft thread, one copied link per draft tweet.
When you are ready to publish ->"Tweet all"
When you are ready to publish ->"Tweet all"
To roll up the thread into one document, in your published thread, add a COMMENT to the last tweet with the syntax as shown in the image. This invokes the threadreader app to compile the thread into a document (delivered as a reply to your comment). The threader app also below
@threadreaderapp unroll please
@threader_app compile please
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Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
