Thread by @PhilippMarkolin

#lableak tweets

A few observations:

1⃣ Lableakers have no response to explain the #evidence layed out by the work of Worobey/Pekar et. al. for a market origin

(here is a nice summary from @angie_rasmussen explaining key details 🔽 )
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https://twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1551937826580824070

2⃣ As with previous important publications about the origins topic, the first response from #conspiratorial thinkers is to ridicule, downplay and denigrate the studies and scientists involved (with absurd falsehoods and ad hominems)

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We have seen this pattern before, directed at independent scientists who contributed to the origins literature; and there are many

The goal of these personal attacks is to make life miserable for scientists who speak out, to get them to shut up or leave social media completely
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This is of course not unique to #scientists, this is a silencing tactic (sometimes called Heckler's veto: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heckler%2…) often employed by trolls and other motivated actors against public figures, from journalists to doctors to political advocates...
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Notice that despite the emotive language, there is no substance or nuance to these attacks, just a mixture of handwaving denial about #published scientific studies coupled with insults about the author's intellectual ability and their moral character.

This is not sustainable.
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The insults and handwaving is a panic response to keep people #distracted while a crew of motivated lableak content creators is working to come up with #talkingpoints on how to explain away the #evidence.

This is an interesting process worth paying attention too:
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When evidence emerged about how RATG13 (or any other known Coronavirus) could not have been used a 'template' for creating SC2 because of its recombinant mosaic genome 🔽, many lableak fantasies had to give up that talking point and find new ones.
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The same thing happened when Temman et al. nature.com/articles/s4158… found the closest humanACE2-binding RBD-domain in #bats in Laos, proving such human-binding domains exists in #nature and are not product of genetic #engineering.
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In both circumstances, #lableakers did not adjust the likelihoods of their belief into a lableak, instead, they created what experts call 'epicycles'; basically expanding the #conspiratorial ideation to include further cover-ups to account for these facts.

Concretely, they
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had to make up an additional 'cover-up story' about WIV possessing troves of 'unknown viruses' that could have served as a 'template' for engineering, as well as include the dubious assertions about how the WIV actually got Laos virus samples via EcoHealth alliance.

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This is of course very common with conspiratorial ideation and what makes many conspiracy theories unfalsifiable; when evidence comes out to the contrary, the conspiracy gets expanded.

Now with the current science papers, I assume a very similar process will happen.
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But we are not there yet, and because no common 'new narrative' has been widely adopted by lableakers, I expect we will see a lot of very weird and convoluted explanations coming out from lableak the next few days... (continued)
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