Thread by @Ayjchan

Really good story telling by @whippletom and some honestly funny quotes by experts in this @thetimes article about the search for the origins of covid. @shingheizhan and I are very flattered to have been interviewed for this story. thetimes.co.uk/article/how-di…

I like the article & think it gives lab origins fair evaluation:
“Publicly, many extremely senior scientists have opposed this idea. “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories.. wrote one group in the Lancet..
Privately, some told The Times it was not so absurd.”

Although would have been good to also highlight the history of that Lancet letter if there was space in the article for it- in terms of Daszak writing it, who agreed to co-sign vs who didn’t agree to, and its connection to the NASEM letter emails mentioned in @thetimes article.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1329182513730899969

I also enjoyed @BallouxFrancois quote “There is nothing notable to distinguish this from the other natural coronaviruses.. But, equally, “I cannot dismiss it. I cannot disprove it is the work of some nefarious boffin.”

Immediately gave me mental image of a mischievous scientist.

But I think that, if sars2 did come from a lab, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be the work of a nefarious boffin. Could’ve arisen from the typical work of culturing natural viruses, moving genes between closely related genomes or inserting a tiny new feature to see what happens.

Current approaches of detecting engineering can’t discern these types of genetic manipulation that either rely on processes simulating nature (eg selection or evolution experiments) or seamlessly introduce parts from close relatives. (And it’s not a machine learning problem.)