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Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
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Oct 6 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
This is what the public often does not understand about #lableak conspiracism.

These malicious actors take stuff that is out in the open, decontextualize it, create convoluted fantasies, and then run with it instead of evidence, creating noise and doubt where there is none.
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Brandolini's law (also known as bullshit asymmetry) says that it takes about 10x more work to debunk made-up shit than it takes to actually make it up.

@flodebarre invested a lot of personal, unpaid time to look deeper into some of the #lableak myths

2/
The TL;DR for all of them is the same:

#lableak advocates misrepresent and (after correction by others) continue to deliberately lie to further their myth, while Shi Zhengli's statements have been independently verified to be truthful, again and again

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When will the public wake up to the fact that scientists have been proven right again and again, while #lableak advocates have made many deliberately false claims that were subsequently proven wrong?

Is this pattern really so hard to discern?

I am not even talking about...

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the scientific evidence in this case, which makes it clear that any and all #lableak scenarios are inconsistent (and often contradicted) by the detailed knowledge we have. 🔽

protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-negl…

I am also not talking about...

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all the conspiratorial garbage the #lableak side is entangled with, a group made up of anti-science political activists, AIDS conspiracists, climate deniers, 9/11 truthers, Russia propagandists, and all-out toxic trolls, harassers, and helpless idiots.

For casual readers:
Don't get manipulated into submission by #lableak advocates who create false uncertainty, or stir unwarranted fears. It's all BS.

All virologists I talk to take biosafety seriously, they don't need false myths to motivate them.

protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/shadow-hunte…

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More from @PhilippMarkolin

Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Oct 7
While the #lableak theory is scientifically dead, the lableak conspiracy myth will never die out.

This has everything to do with #asymmetric forces on social media, and the self-serving influencers and information combatants abusing them.

A thread:
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How does one go about when trying to find out what is true in a world segmented by echo chambers and fragmented reality perceptions?

I cannot say that there is a formula, but I can share what steps I took.

When I started, I believed lableak likely..



2/
Science is constantly evolving and the scientific literature gets updated when new evidence comes in.

So if you do not want to start out with your intuition, maybe check the status of current scientific literature science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

3/
Read 19 tweets
Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Sep 18
Let me show you something & explain:

Having lost the battle to sabotage scientific consensus formation for #zoonosis, LLs can only invoke 'research cartel' tropes & target individual scientists.

They hope people will not realize hundreds of scientists produced the evidence.
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The emergence of a scientific consensus is dependent on the body of scientific #evidence, and not on who has the loudest microphone.

There are dozens of papers with evidence directly related to the #origins question, and that evidence is created by hundreds of scientists from
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all over the world. Talking about a 'research cartel' or 'conspiracy' is a ridiculously stupid idea & should be laughed out of the room.

Unhappy to report that #lableak conspiracism is going down the exact same route as the tobacco industry

They invent conflicts of interest
3/
Read 13 tweets
Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Sep 8
Here is a twist, I am getting the "@K_G_Andersen treatment". 😂😂

Stick around, it is a teaching lesson.

#Lableak trolls just realized that I thought a leak plausible when I entered the discussion right after the Nicholas Wade Op-ed, and think that is a 'gotcha'

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I have often proclaimed that I came late to the discussion, and also, that I was initially favoring #lableak, just based on my personal experience with how quickly lab accidents might happen.

When the Wade Op-ed hit, I thought well, respectable outlet, maybe its true?
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It certainly felt intuitive.

But here comes the lesson:

I did not want to leave it to my #intuition, I wanted to know the #truth.

Very soon (~2 weeks) after, I realized that the scientific #evidence tells a very different story, even at a time when uncertainty was higher.
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Read 9 tweets
Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Jul 27
@janeqiuchina shows again a great sense of independent reporting on the origins; with a critical eye towards remaining uncertainties and of course the problematic nature of wildlife trade worldwide.

I have one little criticism about the room given to Kumar et al.'s study,
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which gives the (in my opinion) false impression that it is a coin-toss whether there were one or two zoonotic introductions. Scientific dissent does not imply that false equivalency.

Pekar vs Kumar phylogenetic methodologies are hard to compare because they do very different
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things, and one of the methods (Pekar) is clearly superior for the question at hand (rooting to identify ancestors) and consistent with all other evidence, whereas the other is not.

@Samuel_Gregson and I have talked to independent phylogenetic experts that were not involved
3/
Read 10 tweets
Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Jul 27
#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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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
3
Read 12 tweets
Philipp Markolin, PhD Profile picture
Jun 23
Surprise surprise, the new paperback of their book is out and @mattwridley and @Ayjchan find it in their hearts to self-promote shamelessly once again by alarmist language, blatant lies, misrepresentations, and panic-mongering.
Let's have a look at the content, shall we?
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Matt and Alina like to paint themselves as 'the brave truthseekers' against the establishment, in order to position themselves like that, they have to tell some convenient lies, for example, that there is no 'real interest' by the establishment to investigate.
I'd like to see
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the evidence for that, because as far as I can tell, just last week they bragged about how EVERYBODY in the ESTABLISHMENT from WHO, US government to G7 is calling for investigations.
Certainly curious to frame this as 'interest disappeared, but good for book sales, I guess
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Read 15 tweets

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