Thread by @daniel_corcos

The origin of Covid-19 is no longer a scientific issue: it is a major issue on the functioning of scientific institutions.
(corrected version)
@NaomiOreskes @thackerpd @mattwridley
#COVID19 #lableak
1/n

The Covid-19 epidemic that has claimed millions of lives began in the city of Wuhan, a modern city in China with an institute (the WIV) where bat coronaviruses were studied and housed.
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The most basic way to determine if the SARS-CoV-2 that claimed so many victims came from the WIV would have been to find out what work was being done there by obtaining funding requests and lab notebooks.`
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This is a forensic investigation rather than a scientific study. Chinese authorities have refused to provide this information. The police investigation was finally carried out by non-professionals on the Internet (DRASTIC group).
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It revealed that Chinese authorities lied about the origin of the epidemic by pretending it was linked to the Wuhan Wet Market and that they suppressed data on the first infected patients and on the viruses that were studied in the WIV.
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For a judicial institution, removing clues from a crime scene would be an admission of guilt. But the investigation revealed much more: The laboratory had applied for funding to produce a virus similar to the one that caused the epidemic.
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The scientific community, for its part, has not remained inactive. One can get an idea of ​​the origin of SARSCoV2 from its DNA sequence by comparing it to the sequences of known coronaviruses in order to understand how a bat virus could have caused a human pandemic.
7/n

Two theories were possible: adaptation by an intermediate host; adaptation in the laboratory. No intermediate host could be found. The pangolin hypothesis has been ruled out.
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A number of researchers, on the contrary, have found some evidence for the laboratory origin.

Now, what have done the scientific institutions?
9/n

1) Leading scientific journals (Lancet, Nature Medicine) have called research suggesting laboratory origin a conspiracy theory. The correspondence to the Lancet was signed by the top virologist, most of them with conflicts of interest.
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Most of them had their work funded by an international organization, EcoHealth Alliance, which also funded the WIV.
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2) The scientific manuscripts suggesting a laboratory origin written by various researchers have almost all been systematically rejected, including at the preprint level on BioRxiv, i.e., it is simply censorship.
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3) A petition supporting virus research in Wuhan funded by EcoHealth Alliance received the support of 77 Nobel laureates in May 2020.
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Thus, far from having a neutral attitude and open to all possibilities, major scientific institutions have tried to impose an alternative reality on the origin of the virus, which avoided questioning certain activities.
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One can be frightened as to how such a "conspiracy" could have been carried out, but our preliminary reflection on the subject indicates that it is simply the usual functioning of scientific institutions, based not on contradictory argumentation, but on the balance of power.
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Scientists do not only live in the world of ideas and have to make a living, too. It is fallacious to imagine that large scientific institutions are disinterested and only perverted from the outside (Big Tobacco, Big Pharma).

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They are rarely independent of political power and must present their work in a favorable light to continue to be funded.

In some cases, the assertions of scientific institutions may be confronted with a perceptible reality outside their realm of influence.

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This reality reveals that the Emperor is naked. This is the case for the origin of Covid-19, as is the case for cancers linked to x-ray imaging, perhaps the main cause of cancers in developed countries.

18/n

Despite an abundant literature tending to affirm the safety of the doses of radiation used, a simple examination of the incidence of breast cancer after the establishment of screening shows that this is not the case and that X-rays are are responsible for a cancer epidemic.

19/n

Society must address the issue of the independence of scientific institutions with the same acuteness as it does for judicial institutions.

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