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Alina Chan Profile picture
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4 Oct, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Scientists on both sides of a controversial issue can talk to each other civilly while asking tough questions of each other.

Let's aim to make this the norm. Public, transparent exchange. Mutual respect. Facts-based debate. Steel-man both sides.

science.org/content/articl…
If the aim is to rebuild public trust in the functionality and integrity of the scientific community, particularly in its ability to keep its own members honest, we need to make scientific discourse more open and accessible to the public.
What doesn't build trust is scientists deciding what info to withhold in case the public cannot handle it.

What doesn't build trust is scientists silencing or even being abusive to each other.

What doesn't build trust is scientists making assertions when evidence is lacking.
What deters many scientists from being transparent is people, anonymous or not, sending scary messages to scientists or their employers.

We need to invest in safe engagement spaces for scientists and non-scientists to talk about high impact issues.

Building trust is like building a relationship. It's going to take cooperation from both sides.

I have the strongest respect for the experts who participate in these public events where it is possible they might be proven wrong or might receive public backlash for their opinion.
To encourage more open scientific discourse, I urge everyone to keep our engagement with each other respectful. This doesn't mean you should not ask tough questions, but that your approach should not be degrading.

Your 1st aim should be to encourage openness and productivity.

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More from @Ayjchan

Alina Chan Profile picture
5 Oct
If you find that many scientists are unmoved by the finding that more PCR machines were purchased in Wuhan in 2019, that’s because PCR is too general to point to anything in particular.

It’s like finding that someone bought more batteries one year. It doesn’t tell us anything.
Furthermore the purchases were made by multiple different institutions over a time period of May to late 2019. Not in parallel, but in different months.

It doesn’t make sense to me how this would be the response to an emerging outbreak beginning in May 2019.
It would be a completely different matter if Wuhan purchases of PCR reagents and primers specific to coronavirus had increased at an unprecedented rate in 2019 prior to December.
Read 4 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
4 Oct
Questions to run through before deciding whether to threaten/degrade scientists:

1. Are they directly responsible for a cover-up or are they just annoying?

2. Are they deliberating spreading misinfo or are they just ignorant?

3. Will threatening scientists hurt your own cause?
I suspect if you run through these questions, most of the time you'll realize that the scientist you're super mad at is just annoying and ignorant.

And threatening or degrading them only makes your "side" look dangerous and uncivilized.
Facts:

Not all scientists know everything about every single topic, even in their field of expertise.

Not all scientists are aware they are not always right.

Scientists are human, figuring this pandemic out just like everyone else.
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
3 Oct
These redactions are getting kind of over the top.
I don’t think releasing a Feb 2020 discussion among scientists about the origins will make that much difference in terms of the West’s relationship with China. It’s not like it’s going to surprise us that they were taking a lab leak seriously - we saw that in Farrar’s book.
What’s there left to surprise us with?
Read 9 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
3 Oct
Why has the DEFUSE EcoHealth x WIV document not hit the mainstream?

The public needs to know there was a pipeline for genetically modifying novel SARS-like coronaviruses as part of an international collaboration involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The biggest reason as far as I can see is that the largest news outlets refuse to run stories once they lose the exclusive.

This makes little sense to me because what % of people are following the Twitter users tweeting about DEFUSE?
The DEFUSE story was so close to being in a big newspaper but got pulled last minute when it was dropped on Twitter.

This is a disservice to the public and to the documents and the whistleblower.
Read 6 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
2 Oct
If a person and an animal are in a room and you find infectious virus on surfaces in that room, how can you distinguish whether the virus was shed by the person or the animal?
We've been spending most of the pandemic worrying about fomite transmission (getting infected by touching surfaces or objects) and disinfecting the **** out of our workspaces.

Isn't the underlying assumption that sick people are shedding infectious virus onto surfaces?
A study of the Diamond Princess cruise hit by Covid-19 found that virus RNA "was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess..."
cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/6…
Read 8 tweets
Alina Chan Profile picture
2 Oct
The documents FOIA’ed or leaked in the past month have shown us that there is a lot of info relevant to #OriginsOfCovid still being withheld even outside of China. Many FOIAs are still in progress, and it could take years before those emails and documents are finally released.
It’s troubling that the individuals sitting on these documents don’t have knowledge or access to a secure whistleblower channel, or in some cases they appear not to even understand the impact of the info they’re sitting on and their decision not to make public what they know.
If, in Jan 2020, the world was informed of the DEFUSE proposal and that scientists don’t know whether the virus came from a market or a lab, there’s a possibility we could’ve ended this pandemic before it got so out of control.
Read 5 tweets

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