Thread by @MoNscience

Wednesday’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol demonstrates the consequences of letting misinformation and conspiracy theories go unchecked...

Despite this tragedy, the conspiracists behind @NYMag’s cover story on SARS-CoV-2’s origins kept pushing and propping up their misinformation all week—even while the nation was reeling on Wednesday.

That’s because conspiracy theorists are relentless, but also because science media needs more accountability.

So, let’s dive deeper into why:

1) Let’s settle some questions about my POV.

I think that health investigators should absolutely probe the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and that China needs to display better transparency/cooperation with these investigations.

apnews.com/article/united…

washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…

That’s why I commissioned this piece in November by @MulKyle.

It outlines what a successful investigation should look like so that the public can gauge when China falls short during the process.
nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/1…

2) What folks may not realize is that China delayed outside investigators during the 2002-2003 SARS pandemic.

Despite that, scientists traced the animal origins of the virus.

It isn’t too late to figure out COVID's origins
nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/1…

apps.who.int/iris/handle/10…

3) The conspiracy theorists behind the @NYMag cover story are conflating the need for greater transparency from China with an unfounded proposal that scientists manufactured SARS-CoV-2.

While an accidental release is possible, there is currently no direct evidence to back it.

The latter scenario—a bioengineered SARS-CoV-2–is unsupported and countered by a sea of studies.

4) The @NYMag story lambasts Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli because their labs work directly with SARS, MERS, and SARS-CoV-2.

But the story exaggerates the risks associated with this brand of research.

5) You’ve likely heard of the lock-and-key concept of infection.

SARS-CoV-2 uses its spike protein (the key) to interact with receptors (the locks) lining our cells and break-in

6) But there’s a catch: SARS, MERS, SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses cannot efficiently infect normal mice. Their viral keys do not fit the mouse locks.

That leaves scientists like Baric and Shi with two main options for studies with mice…

7) Option A: Genetically modify the SARS’s spike protein, creating what’s called a mouse-adapted strain.

But this genetic modification impairs the virus’s ability to circle back and infect human cells. It’s a safeguard.
nature.com/articles/s4138…

embopress.org/doi/full/10.10…

This modification relies on a handful of mutations, rather than a single modification of the virus's genetic code.

This collection of mutations works together to allow for infections in mice. jvi.asm.org/content/86/2/8…

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Despite all that, conspiracy theorists cherry-pick individual mutations in these strains to make the situation sound more threatening than it is...even when the studies they’re citing disagree with that takeaway. science.sciencemag.org/content/369/65…

8) Option B: Genetically modify a mouse, so the locks on its cells (the receptors) mimic ours.

This permits the human virus to enter, and with that done, a researcher can use SARS/SARS-CoV-2 in their mouse models. nature.com/articles/s4158…

So, conspiracist @Ayjchan argues a mouse bite could yield an infection in a researcher, causing an accidental release.

Can you spot the flaw in this logic? Spoiler: Think about the transmission routes for coronaviruses.

Think about where the virus would end up after a mouse bite breaks the skin?

The bloodstream.

What’s known about the blood-mediated transmission of human coronaviruses?

It’s never been reported.
fda.gov/emergency-prep…

ashpublications.org/blood/article/…

One can explain this point over and over to @Ayjchan (@angie_rasmussen certainly tried), but Alina continues to stick to her baseless posturing.

9) That’s why conspiracists rashly cite these @propublica articles by @alisonannyoung/@JessicaEBlake, even though:

- most of the incidents involved mouse-adapted strains

- the one incident with SARS2 didn’t break the skin, and even if it had, blood transmission is implausible

10) Indeed, I wonder if @propublica, @alisonannyoung, and @JessicaEBlake are fully aware that conspiracy theorists use their articles to promote misinformation.

(Note: Some journals now add editor’s notes at the top of their content to dissuade such activity.)

11) Moreover, none of the UNC accidents led to a known infection.

Lab accidents should obviously be avoided, but you should also know that, in the U.S., such coronavirus labs are routinely inspected to follow federal code.
selectagents.gov/sat/list.htm

futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/fv…

The latter raises the question:

How are a half dozen lab accidents at Baric's lab at UNC, spaced over years and undoubtedly hundreds of experiments, relevant to what happens in China?

12) Next, SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein carries a feature called a furin cleavage site.

It’s a collection of 4 amino acids that arose through a mutation known as an insertion. virology.ws/2020/05/14/sar…

In July, scientists found a wild coronavirus in bats—called RmYN02—with a similar three-amino-acid insertion.

RmYN02 is the closest known relative of SARS-CoV-2 for the majority of their RNA genomes.

They’re sister lineages. cell.com/current-biolog…

Sidebar: Recall from your high school biology class that RNA is composed of a sequence of “letters” called nucleotides.

In turn, they encode strings of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins—and the coronavirus’s overall architecture.

🖼️: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK55477…

Line up the RNA and amino-acid sequences of RmYN02 and SARS-CoV-2, and their respective insertions land in the same spot.

This is a thorn in the bioengineering conspiracy theory.
cell.com/current-biolog…

13) So, @ydeigin, @Ayjchan, and @R_H_Ebright chirp about a gap in the alignment (blue circle) located near the insertion pts.

They argue this single gap—coincidentally, of 4 amino acids—means that SARS2 and RmYN02 shouldn't be compared. (PSA: The two viruses are 93% identical).

A natural process can easily explain this gap.

In June, @SpyrosLytras sketched out a plausible hypothesis on Virological, describing how the insertions arose by exchanging genetic material with a third coronavirus—a common occurrence with RNA viruses. virological.org/t/the-sarbecov…

For those unacquainted with Virological:

It’s a discussion forum for well-regarded evolutionary virologists. Its members post in-depth analyses, including two recent ones that helped raise the alarm on the SARS-CoV-2 variants.
virological.org/t/preliminary-…

virological.org/t/a-preliminar…

14) Ok, I’m almost done. Promise!

15) The takeaway: @NYMag’s cover story is deceptively unbalanced.

The natural rise of SARS-CoV-2 isn’t just plausible; it’s well supported. Rather than explore those details, the story conflates the idea of an accidental release with speculation of SARS-CoV-2 bioengineering

.@NYMag’s cover story and its conspiracists make nonsensical claims like "there is no direct evidence for these zoonotic possibilities" for SARS-CoV-2—without acknowledging the same could be said of Ebola, a virus long considered to be zoonotic and nature-borne.

16) Those blind spots exist because illogical conspiracy theories thrive on half-truths.

The conspiracists here can’t even accept when they make basic mistakes.

Ex. The @NYMag cover story originally misstated the start date of the SARS pandemic not once but FOUR times.

The WHO, CDC, ECDC cite Nov. 2002 for the outbreak’s launch point. cdc.gov/sars/about/faq…

who.int/csr/don/2003_0…

ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/fa…

https://t.co/menQWCyloG

After my thread on Monday/Tuesday, @Ayjchan claimed to “read and re-read” the piece.

But did she notice the 2002 error also appeared in a sentence featuring her name?

Likewise, @NYMag has added a similarly perplexing footnote—all without fully adjusting the piece to match their own clarification. 🤦

17) Insidious misinfo impacts everyone because unsubstantiated conspiracy theories can sway even smart people.

This demography grad student felt so compelled by @nicholsonbaker8's bunk that he called me out and then immediately admitted that he didn’t understand the specifics.

This @Bloomberg columnist questioned when the 2002-2003 SARS pandemic began, even though his employer lists November 2002 as the start date. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

18) That’s the threat of science misinfo and illogical conspiracy theories: They sow doubt in places you wouldn’t expect, and this process corrodes.

You don’t get the destruction of COVID-19 vaccines without seeds of misinfo planted years ago. npr.org/2020/12/31/952…

19) Science media has some watchdogs like @RetractionWatch, @undarkmag, @factcheckdotorg.

But by and large, these science-based conspiracy theories tend to go unchecked because debunking them requires time and editorial expertise.

Science media also lacks personas like @karaswisher, @profgalloway, @Sulliview, or @davidfolkenflik, @ErikWemple—thoughtful critics with massive platforms who can consistently flag and breakdown scientific misinfo in news media.

If I hadn’t been staycationing this week, who knows if I would have threaded about the @NYMag story.

I’ve called out flawed “science” stories in the past, but doing so feels like walking through a mud puddle filled with turds.
pbs.org/newshour/scien…

pbs.org/newshour/scien…

20) Moral of the story:

When conspiracists conflate China’s lack of transparency alongside fabricated theories about a bioengineered virus, one must wonder where they might ultimately lead us.