Thread by @Ayjchan

Starting ~27:30min mark, UK chief scientific advisor Patrick Vallance discusses the 1 Feb 2020 phone call with his US counterpart and leading experts, which he says produced the Proximal Origin @NatureMedicine correspondence by Andersen et al.
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0…

https://twitter.com/ianbirrell/status/1449659475745460226

He describes his role at this meeting as a bystander and says that’s why none of the emails can be shared- because they’re not his emails.

So the public cannot see the emails informing both US and UK scientific heads as well as the most influential #OriginOfCovid publication.

I also want to know that those emails are indeed as boring as some scientists have asserted. Let’s see them and we can all re-focus our energies on more productive venues of investigation. But for now, it looks like the scientists at that meeting don’t intend to be transparent.

There’s probably nothing too scandalous in there, but those excessive redactions make it look like there might be something terrible.

The emails are either so dry and boring that you question the judgment of the folks putting in the redactions…

Why would you redact pure scientific content that can help the public understand how natural the #OriginOfCovid must be?

Or they could show us that several leading experts actually thought the virus had a lab origin and were terrified of the public’s response if a lab origin hypothesis were to proliferate in the media and scientific community unchecked.

We don’t know. So we can only guess.

These redactions have made it near impossible for the scientists to demonstrate to the public that they were focused on the science and did not let policy or politics influence their work. This is ironically what most of Vallance’s BBC interview discusses.

In interviews: “Scientists must be transparent and stay focused on the science not politics so that they can build public trust.”

In practice: “Just trust me, the public doesn’t need to see what’s under those redactions to make sure scientists weren’t influenced by politics.”

Please follow your own advice on scientific transparency.

In Jan 2020, why did the lead author of Proximal Origin tweet about finding the intermediate host of SARS2 “within a month” when behind the scenes he was fearing a lab-engineered origin of the virus?

https://twitter.com/inwuchang/status/1418497076363726849

It’s one thing for the experts to have a complete change of mind 3 days after the 1 Feb 2020 phone call, but it’s another thing for them to be worrying about a lab origin while saying in public that a natural origin will be found soon (😉 included).

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1418334081436188679

Proximal Origin was worked on under the leadership and guidance of key experts on the 1 Feb 2020 phone call.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1418233712567668739

They had started sharing a draft as early as Feb 4.

https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1418339118036094977

But when you look at the acknowledgements in Proximal Origin, the only expert thanked for contributing to discussions is M. Farzan.
nature.com/articles/s4159…

If Proximal Origin came about due to the expert discussion at the Feb 1 meeting, shouldn’t all intellectual contribution be acknowledged?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1418328714195079169