Thread by @Ayjchan

I see this is raising eyebrows so I better nip it in the bud.

The work I did on human artificial chromosomes (HAC) had been widely presented at local meetings & on the lab website. I talked so openly about it that it could not be patented because it had been publicly disclosed.

https://twitter.com/gumby4christ/status/1398488808077893640

The rest of the thread above rightly criticizes the meeting being “secret” - but I always thought that it had been labeled “secret” by the organizers to drum up media coverage (sorry, organizers!).

As far as I could tell, all of the research at that meeting was in public domain.

I’m sorry to reveal this gimmick but actually I think many of the scientists and organizers were eagerly awaiting journalists to call them to talk about the “secret” meeting.

In reality, most scientific meetings happen without any journalists paying attention.

The thread then talks about Jeffrey Epstein hanging around Harvard and MIT, and meeting with one of the “secret” meeting’s organizers.

statnews.com/2019/08/05/cit…

We have seen & will probably see more scientists apologizing for meeting with Epstein.

tbh many scientists are so absorbed in their research that they don’t know who public figures are.

They get told by the university to meet a funder and they do it because science costs $$$$$.

Seriously, a lot of people I’ve met recently have expressed surprise that I don’t know who they are and haven’t seen their show/books 😂 I promise it’s not you. It’s me. I don’t pay much attention to non-science news, and 99% of what I read is science-related.

I constantly have to ask my colleagues or Google, “Who is this? Should I respond to this?” Because I don’t know if I can be criticized later for talking to the wrong person.

Institutes have learnt from the Epstein saga & should be screening donors more carefully in the future.

But the underlying problem has not been solved- which is the amount of public science funding is so low (compared to other things US gov spends $ on), that many scientists have to beg for private donations/investments to pay for expensive experiments. Begging is our parttime job.

I heard an anecdote that a professor was getting super frustrated about not getting a 5-year $300K grant (a typical grant!) & couldn’t continue her lab’s work. Her banker husband said, how about I give you the money out of my own pocket so you can relax and focus on the science.

Ok last tweet here to convince you that the research wasn’t and still isn’t diabolical, and then I’m back to #OriginsOfCovid

Please see this wonderful piece in @statnews featuring quotes from yours truly.

statnews.com/2016/06/02/syn…

Turns out some people on twitter are not happy with me because Ralph Baric is on the Science letter calling for investigation into #OriginsOfCovid and think that I am gatekeeping on this topic.

Would you rather if Baric did not sign the letter? And no one has given me any keys!

I've been asked to (and agreed to) peer review several papers on origins but these have all been natural origins papers. My first response is usually to ask the authors to produce the data before I can do the peer review 😂