Thread by @Ayjchan

I'm all ears to hear about the precise scientific process that occurred between Feb 2 and Feb 4, 2020 where top experts in virology and evolutionary biology completely changed their minds about the likelihood of SARS-CoV-2 emerging from a lab.

In Jeremy Farrar's book, he noted that Marion Koopmans had said furin cleavage site insertions happen in viruses all the time naturally.

Kristian Andersen, lead author of Proximal Origin, said just because it happened in nature did not rule out unnatural origins.

By the time Proximal Origin was published (i.e., the final paper), Koopmans argument had been absorbed into the manuscript without acknowledgement.

"insertions.. can occur.. the polybasic cleavage site can arise by a natural evolutionary process."
nature.com/articles/s4159…

The authors, who believed a lab origin was as likely or more likely than a natural origin on the day they drafted Proximal Origin, had abandoned their initial stance that just because something can evolve naturally doesn't mean lab origin can be ruled out.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1480949746319740934

The lead author had already begun to assert without evidence to other experts in private meetings in the first days of Feb 2020 that he could tell there had been no genetic engineering of the virus.

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1472208799008272389?s=20

For what reason were the other attendees of the Feb 1 phone call and experts who convened and advised the drafting of Proximal Origin not given proper acknowledgement in the paper that they had organized, conceived, and/or contributed intellectually to?

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1472207738298150918?s=20

We can refer to the NIH's own Ethical Considerations of Authorship:
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

Imagine attending a meeting where you disagree strongly with a peer, only to discover later that they have drafted a manuscript adopting your arguments without crediting you.