Share this page!

Alina Chan Profile picture
Twitter logo
10 Aug, 4 tweets, 3 min read
😂 “I can assure you the worst possible way to position oneself to get NIH grants is to criticize NIH grants. Doing so does not make the NIH your friend.”

Interview of ⁦@R_H_Ebright⁩ by ⁦@thackerpd⁩ disinformationchronicle.substack.com/p/a-candid-con…
More context: @R_H_Ebright was responding to an unfortunate conspiracy theory created by the hosts of a podcast who suggested that scientists were criticizing virologists wrt #OriginsOfCovid in order to steal their funding.
The same podcast revealed more erroneous beliefs, easily debunked with science, that were held by the hosts and journalists discussing the #OriginsOfCovid
One of the errors was particularly striking. I recommend that when scientists and science journalists discuss a paper, they should at least look at its figures first…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Alina Chan

Alina Chan Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
12 Aug
When SARS2 was detected in Wuhan in 2019, the WIV had been working on the 9 closest related viruses at the time, for several years, collected from a Yunnan mine where 6 people suffered a mysterious pneumonia and half died.

This info should’ve been released to the world on day 1.
Regardless of whether WIV had SARS2 in its possession prior to the outbreak, the whole point of the Predict or Global Virome Project was to immediately inform the world about potentially concerning emerging pathogens.

Yet, their pathogen database disappeared in Sep 2019.
The SARS2 genome they had would’ve shown this virus had a sufficiently different spike from the bat SARSrCoVs in the deadly mine.

Mainly the spike had a unique FCS insertion that other scientists immediately noted as troubling.

Dec 2019 patient data pointed to H2H transmission.
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
11 Aug
I don’t want any more experts accidentally spreading the misinformation that WIV was built next to a hotbed of coronaviruses.

Wuhan scientists had to make long trips to South China each year to find SARS-like viruses and bring 1000s of animal and human samples back up to Wuhan.
More misinformation about #OriginsOfCovid being debunked here
How far is Wuhan from the Yunnan mines that were teeming with SARS-like viruses?

About 1,800km by road.
Comparable to New York to Orlando FL, or Portland OR to San Diego.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
10 Aug
Am I getting this right that the question is no longer:

Is Covid-19 from a market or a lab?

But even China is asking:

Is Covid-19 from a Chinese or American lab?

The natural spillover hypothesis is definitely off the table now?

globaltimes.cn/page/202108/12…
This Chinese state media article has so many good points:

1. Labs should be investigated by the WHO #OriginsOfCovid

2. Even top labs have (frequent) accidents and may not report it to the authorities

3. Biosafety measures taken in response to lab incidents are not bulletproof
4. A leak can result in 100s of people infected over a period of time when the virus is quietly evolving better human-to-human/animal transmission

5. Some countries have an opaque biosafety/biosecurity system

6. The government doesn’t always know what is happening in its labs
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
9 Aug
On the question of whether covid-19 might’ve come from Europe.

TLDR it didn’t.
Also this is really how peer review should work. Open, honest and fair criticism of preprinted/published work. Now everyone can see what problems each study suffers from and decide for themselves whether they think the conclusions are well supported. Expertise is being shared.
On studies pointing to covid appearing in Europe earlier than Dec 2019, many somehow detect later variants (D614G) rather than the earliest form of SARS2.

This requires a virus endemic to South China/SE Asia to not only be able to time travel but also teleport across continents.
Read 9 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
8 Aug
Question for epidemiologists: in your field, is it acceptable to reverse engineer data out of a figure (left) using Illustrator to generate a nicer version (right) for your paper?

Sources:
who.int/docs/default-s…

zenodo.org/record/5075888…
The original data cannot be accessed, legend is blurred out, the map itself is highly pixelated.

But would it be better to copy the original figure into one's new paper (with attribution) alongside the reverse-engineered figure so that readers are aware of the 'data' quality?
The authors do clarify in their supplementary (but not main text) that data loss occurred during reverse engineering:

"Map data was manually extracted from Fig 17.. using Adobe Illustrator. Because of multiple overlapping points there will be errors in the extraction process."
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
8 Aug
If anyone needs a good 😂 this is the figure from the China-WHO report showing the home address of covid-19 cases from Dec 11, 2019 or earlier.

A team of scientists, unable to access early case data, had no choice but to extract information from this fig using Adobe Illustrator.
Problematically, despite being already of such low resolution, the map still has 'unintended errors' as revealed by @washingtonpost
washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pac…
These errors are shown here in a diagram made by @InWuchang
Read 17 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @Ayjchan has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @Ayjchan!

Read all threads by @Ayjchan

:(