Thread by @jeeeberts

so I've realized almost every single one of the named authors in this increasingly influential lab leak paper is demonstrably batshit

Kevin McCairn is... well

Jonathan Couey thinks we need to halt vaccination immediately and rejects the efficacy of facemasks

Daoyu Zhang, an "independent geneticist", is on Gab and boy does he have some thoughts

Alejandro Sousa is apparently Alejandro Sousa Escandón, a doctor—specifically, a urologist—in Spain who also hates masks almost as much as he hates it when Spanish medical articles use barbarisms from English like "complex PSA" instead of translating them into Spanish

like, for real, Dr. Sousa is *really* invested in how much English there is in medical publications

Dan and Karl Sirotkin are rather elusive, but they both work for a company called Karl Sirotkin, LLC in some random town in Florida. Karl appears to have been affiliated at some point with the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project and Los Alamos. Dan studied political science.

Dan is also a blogger with some fun medical takes as well, lmao

some bonus Cairn content:

Segreto is not so much demonstrably batshit as puzzling. She's PhD in microbiology in Germany. Prior to her foray into COVID stuff, she worked exclusively on fungi and orchids, it seems, so her pivot is very weird, but whatever

I have no idea who Adrian Jones is. there's like nothing on him, and it looks like publications under that name are from multiple people.

Finally there's Yuri, a biotech entrepreneur and "life extension activist". the "Science for Life Extension" foundation he is VP of foundation has quite the website, scienceagainstaging.com

Deigin, like Segreto, is not immediately, demonstrably batshit, but his latest startup does seem to have some... bold goals. best of luck with all that youthereum.ca

oh, bonus! Dan Sirotkin is a sex pest!

https://twitter.com/thebirdmaniac/status/1399197219551682561?s=20

anyways this took like half an hour of research and while I'm very much on board with looking at arguments themselves, the lack of reporting on just who these authors are (see the rest of the squad here—some real gems) is pretty remarkable to me. drasticresearch.org/the-team/

a note re: ad hominems etc.

https://twitter.com/wokeglobaltimes/status/1399366654400909314?s=20

lol a rejoinder from Jonathan

Annnnd there's more. Dr. Sousa is an anti-vaccine activist as of late, not only discouraging people from getting the COVID vaccine, but also the 'flu vaccine. He believes lots of serious covid cases are actually reactions to earlier flue vaccines. My god. elprogreso.es/articulo/ribei…

McCairn, the weaboo guy, thinks COVID is a *prion* disease (i.e. extremely rare diseases where misfolded proteins—prions—induce other proteins to misfold, all untreatable and terminal. except for this one!)

note—this Karl Sirotkin was not affiliated with the Berkeley researcher, per another person on the project. credential -1

https://twitter.com/chrismungall/status/1399432157995569154?s=20

speaking of the Sirotkins, by Dan's account, Karl is his father—and despite being the one with the actual qualifications, Dan claims in other published work about COVID the pair have under their name, the bulk of the research/writing was done by him.

okay I'm done with this, these people are largely just completely off the rails. from Couey, the Pittsburgh Medical professor!

in conclusion, here's a chart I made. I misspoke—only 5/9 of them are *demonstrably* batshit. The batshit levels of two cannot be determined given limited information, and the other two are not obviously batshit, even if a little quirky. mea culpa (: (: (:

and here's some context for the coverage the article has gotten through some statistics from Altmetric. Most recently, Nicholas "I love race science" Wade linked to this paper in his essay in the Atomic Bulletin Journal.

ok I keep saying I'm done but my man (watashi-no-nanjin, if you will) Kevin is just too fascinating... more evidence, as if corona-chan isn't clear enough, that he is a 4chan bro, which immediately negates any advanced degrees he has

https://twitter.com/baroquespiral/status/1399546437709479938?s=20

and tankies who are retweeting this: i am not your friend

it would be useful to hear from the other authors like @Rossana38510044 or @jjcouey about Adrian Jones. I also saw there's a history professor in Melbourne with the same name. Which one is he—the history prof, alternative medicine crank, or sb else?

https://twitter.com/shaeconnor/status/1399628306987864068?s=20

important clarification: Segreto is in Austria, not Germany. for the record I am not a crypto pro-Anschluss/Greater Reich nazi, I promise... I just can't read, apparently :)

https://twitter.com/katharintai/status/1399378491154616331?s=20

okay another important update: Dr. McCairn has threatened to milk me

https://twitter.com/SystemsNeurosc2/status/1399594849943265283?s=20

D.R.A.S.T.I.C.'s comms guy has arrived

https://twitter.com/BillyBostickson/status/1399752650724319237?s=20

this thread is the gift that keeps on giving... not only is Dr. McCairn a total weeb, he's also incredibly racist and homophobic and appears to have gotten his PhD via an online uni! you're doing great, Kev

the good doctor continuing to have a normal one, as it were