Thread by @Ayjchan

Chatted with @schmidtwriting for his new @undarkmag article on the traps and dangers of advocating for an investigation into potential lab origins of covid-19. #laborigins #OriginsofCOVID

https://twitter.com/undarkmag/status/1372244595971665923

I think this piece by Charles @schmidtwriting was particularly well written because of how balanced it is. There were parts that I didn't like and had to grapple with. A lot has happened in the last year since I started looking into the evidence surrounding the #OriginsofCOVID

It comes at a time when the WHO-China team is expected to release their full report in the coming week(s). And @JamieMetzl and ~two dozen scientists (me too!) have posted a letter in the @WSJ pointing out major major flaws in the WHO-China not-an-investigation joint mission.

The article points out that there are really 2 camps right now. It is not natural origins vs lab origins vs #PopsicleOrigins

It is (1) lab leak is plausible and must be investigated vs (2) SARS2 almost certainly natural so lab origins can be dismissed without real investigation.

But in each camp, there are disagreements.

Not everyone who thinks lab origins are plausible are on the same page. There are insane theories.

Not everyone who sides with EcoHealth thinks lab origins are conspiracy theories. (Some even think lab origins should be investigated.)

Speaking from the camp that thinks lab origins should be investigated, I advocate for scientists to please put out your own independent, original statements on the #OriginsofCOVID

If everyone posted what they thought about the origins, we would realize it's not that polarizing.

I suspect most scientists - especially the majority who have not dedicated weeks and months to looking into as many pieces of evidence (sometimes stretching all the way back to the first SARS epidemic) - would come up with:

I don't know. We should investigate.

This is the baseline I started with a year ago.

I had not read @TheLancet letter by Daszak. I had no idea about the politics of the origins.

I thought my well-meaning colleagues were paranoid when they said having text about lab origins in a preprint would be dangerous.

This is what we said in May last year. It was not conspiratorial. We laid out the top 3 scenarios that I continue to believe are each plausible and cannot be dismissed without a proper, credible, independent, transparent, accountable investigation. biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

If any scientist wants to rule out natural origins today, in the terrible absence of any data or evidence, I would fight just as hard as I'm fighting now to get a proper investigation going into these scenarios of natural spillover.

(Probably not for #PopsicleOrigins though...)

As I told @razibkhan back in Dec 2020, I don't think I would undo what I have done in the past year. But here are some serious learning moments I want to convey to other scientists (especially early career) thinking about looking into #originsofcovid ... unsupervisedlearning.libsyn.com/alina-chan-on-…

Number 1. This **** is going to be political no matter what you do.

As one brilliant person put it, the stakes could not be higher.

You're going to go in thinking you have enough patience.

You don't.

You could try and stick to the facts as much as possible. Try and be as empathetic as possible.

But with all the mud slinging politics and the I-can't-believe-this-BS "peer" reviews you receive along the way, I think even a saint would crumble.

Number 2. You're going to experience a series of unanticipated situations.

Not a week goes by without some scientist calling you a conspiracist with an agenda.

But at the same time, experts are calling and emailing you every hour to get your analysis and take credit for it.

I am very pleased to be helpful to experts on this matter, but at the same time there are people talking to me, asking me to explain EVERYTHING, and then putting out their shows and articles (maybe even books and documentaries) without crediting my intellectual contributions.

While every other day, I have to battle off Chinese sponsored anonymous twitterers, scientists who think I'm a QAnon-level misinformation spreader, and occasionally people (scientists included) emailing my employer to get me fired.

This is not sustainable. I'm close to quitting.

Clarification: Not quitting my job because I super love it.

Quitting this origins BS where experts are literally investigating work that they funded/were a part of.

At first, I just thought the scientific community needed a bit of nudging.

Now I realize it's 99.99% bystanders.

The last thing, which I felt strongly after reading the @undarkmag article... is that scientists (especially the ones in relevant fields) are not going to be the people solving the origins of COVID-19 or even helping to prevent a future lab leak pandemic. undark.org/2021/03/17/lab…

There are many things wrong with science, or rather, scientific practices. And the pandemic has shown us how these shortcomings can be exploited to manipulate public perception and "scientific consensus."

This is not a "the experts are wrong" situation.

The experts are human.

Even if we never find the origins of COVID, can we at least fix these problems?

Open peer review #OpenScience

Establish public forums on pathogen research & other key research, involve non-scientists and policymakers.

Invest in #ScienceCommunication and #ScientificLiteracy

There is no one occupation of people who can be self-governing and self-auditing.

There needs to be accountability even amongst people whose jobs are to seek and investigate the truth.

I had held on to hope but just don't see this scenario happening any more:

Where a group of top international scientists band together and say, scr*w the politics, we're going to investigate lab origins seriously & look at all available data (so much of it is outside of China).