Thread by @Ayjchan

“email chain shows editor Shan Lu telling two of the authors he would share a “secret” with them — that Taylor & Francis could become “very suspicious” when he pushed “a super fast review and accept (basically no review)”.” #OriginsOfCovid #PeerReview unherd.com/2021/08/how-ch…

We now have at least 2 virologists, who published anti-lab origin articles in top scientific journals, deleting their Twitter accounts after emails implicating them were FOI’ed by @USRightToKnow and @BuzzFeed

This does not inspire trust in science. It’s a loss for humanity.

I don’t know what other scientists think while observing this pattern of scientists having conflicting public and private opinions about the possibility of SARS2 having come from a lab, engineered or not.

For me, it’s discouraging. The scientific gatekeeping system is corrupt.

The way to rebuild public trust and actually make the research system trustworthy is not to cover up, but to hold actors who made poor decisions accountable.

I suggest that the letter invited to EMI be retracted as well.

Please do not try to pull a @TheLancet
It just shows people that these editors don’t understand where the letter by Daszak et al. went wrong.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1407150015156457473

First author of Proximal Origin “no lab based scenario is plausible” correspondence in @NatureMedicine deleted his Twitter account.

First author of No Credible Evidence of Lab Engineering invited letter in @EMI_Journal deleted his Twitter account.

The former claimed that his old tweets auto-delete even though his pre-covid tweets about other viruses in 2019 were still up on Twitter.

Shortly after ~5,000 of his 2020 tweets relating to SARS2 auto-deleted, the account was also deleted.

https://twitter.com/prometheusam/status/1401550451498110981