“Science is not an unblemished search for the truth but rather a scrum of salesmanship full of competition, greed and harassment in which men have the upper hand.”

Excellent book review by @alexwitze @Nature of The Exceptions by @kzernike.

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go.nature.com/3KMFMHT The book is a “deeply researched dive into the history of gender discrimination in US higher education”.

“The ‘exceptions’ of her title are the exceptional women who pushed through discrimination in science to have accomplished careers,” as Nancy Hopkins did.

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Two interviews? Please get your facts right, Michael!

I logged > 40 hours of reporting during a cumulative 6-week stay in Wuhan that spanned 14 months. I talked to different people in the team. I checked their versions of the story against each other.

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https://twitter.com/mbalter/status/1628420138331525123

I checked what Shi and her team members told me against their publications and what other scientists—in and outside China—knew about their unpublished work from conferences, internal meetings and collaboration over a period of two decades.

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Stunning scoop or train wreck?

A matter of mistranslation?

Incompetence, honest errors or bad faith?

Summary of glaring errors & omissions & lack of insight of science in story by @KatherineEban @jeffykao

@tracyweber @SteveEngelberg @propublica @radhikajones @VanityFair

1/ 1️⃣ Glaring error in the tense regarding “the 3 nos” and glaring omission of “the 3 haves”

The dispatch you cited was about officials gloating about how they had started from “the 3 nos”, overcome obstacles, and achieved “the 3 haves”, which was noted in the GOP report👇

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https://twitter.com/janeqiuchina/status/1586647298938920961

Hi @KatherineEban @jeffykao @VanityFair @propublica:

Your article contains at least 1 glaring error & 1 glaring omission

Citing two documents published in June & Sept 2019👇,you say they lamented the BSL-4 lab as having the problem of “the 3 ‘nos’”

You got the tense wrong

1/ The glaring error:

Both documents cite the same quote, saying that there were “the 3 nos” (“三无”)—no equipment/technology standards, no design/construction teams, & no experience of operating/maintaining—“at the beginning of the construction of BSL-4 lab” (”在建设伊始“).

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Thanks, Philipp! I’m glad to hear you were not saying that I created false equivalence in my @NatGeo story

I can’t agree with you more regarding “the tyranny of the majority” & believe that a lone scientist can be right even if everybody else disagrees

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https://twitter.com/PhilippMarkolin/status/1554119614765965313

I also agree it’s all about evidence, which underpins “false equivalence” (resulting from journalism practice in which two sides of a debate are presented as equally valid even though there is overwhelming evidence for one of them)

My job is also about following the evidence

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https://twitter.com/janeqiuchina/status/1554107250368602112

I’d like to clarify that I wasn’t saying only when we find an animal at market infected with a progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 could we conclude spillover happened there

It’s more about the preponderance of evidence not strong enough to convince some scientists that was the case.

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https://twitter.com/janeqiuchina/status/1552762245569863680

The bottom line is: the majority of scientists I talked to agree *multiple lines* of evidence point to:

(1) Pandemic exploded out of Huanan

(2) Emergence of covid was caused by zoonotic spillover associated with wildlife trade

These are the conclusions of your market paper

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Hi Philipp Thanks again for the critiques.

I just wanted to stress that “false equivalence” is a special terminology that describes a journalism practice in which two sides of a debate are presented as equally valid even though there is overwhelming evidence for one of them

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https://twitter.com/PhilippMarkolin/status/1552304094299279360

A textbook example of false equivalence is to do with some of the media coverage of climate change.

Numerous studies from numerous research groups around the world point to climate change as a real phenomenon caused by human activities.

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Hi Moreno I’m not sure what you meant by “line-ups” or “journalists have their own ideas”

I wonder if this might reflect lack of understanding of journalism, which can cause confusion and make a toxic debate even more toxic.

Please let me explain my journalistic processes.

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https://twitter.com/emmecola/status/1552687712494403589

Have you considered there might be a third possibility?

Perhaps,like detectives,science journalists follow the evidence and then delivery a story as fair, impartial & dispassionate as possible

That’s what journalism is about. At least that’s what journalism should be about

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@angie_rasmussen @stgoldst @NatGeo Let me be clear:I did not question his qualification.I suspect he might not have the level of insights to critically evaluate the assumptions,parameterisations & uncertainties associated with Pekar paper

I tend to ask extremely technical questions that not all authors can answer @angie_rasmussen @stgoldst @NatGeo Hi Stephen I have the nagging feeling this tweet👆might not be clear.Twitter’s brevity doesn’t allow for nuances & contexts

I thought I would dedicate a thread to explain what I meant & context

I was tempted to QT but decided against it so as not to cause unintended offense

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Thanks for the critiques, which are always welcome!

Mentioning different lines of investigation that come to different conclusions does not necessarily implies they are of equal merits.

The point is there are enough uncertainties to leave the debate on spillover site open.

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https://twitter.com/philippmarkolin/status/1552304079577178113

Quite a few virologists, bioinformaticists & epidemiologists—who hold no strong position in origins debate—have issues with some of the assumptions & parameterisations associated with the paper on the two jumps

I looked into the technical details, which informed my judgement

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Please be rigorous when communicating science to public,@Ayjchan

This sentence “working with 100s of new airborne viruses in BSL2” is misleading

1️⃣ Different types of work have different BSL considerations. PCR tests (covid tests for bats) have lowest risk & is fine in BSL2

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https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1517137389646495744

2️⃣ Shi’s team didn’t culture “100s of new airborne viruses in BSL2”

Before covid,Shi had worked w only following live bat viruses.All were close relatives of SARS1 & none could have caused pandemic
- 3 natural isolates
- 3 synthesized from genome sequences
- a dozen chimeras

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Virologists have discredited the analogy by @R_H_Ebright who is not a virologist

Please do not uncritically cite the wrong comparison

BSL2 involves working in cabinets with air filtration and under negative pressure to keep pathogens inside. No dentist work in such cabinets

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https://twitter.com/ayjchan/status/1516492761121312768

It’s not uncommon for labs worldwide to culture uncharacterized animal viruses in BSL2 facilities.

In US, some contagious animal CoVs that can infect human cells in a petri dish, including deadly pig viruses originated in bats, are—like Shi’s viruses—designated BSL-2 agents.

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As someone who was a molecular biologist for a decade, I don’t find that surprising.

First, Shi was a new kid on the block in 2013 when she started to conveive viral genetics experiments—after the team had isolated the first bat CoV—whereas Baric had done that for decades.

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https://twitter.com/emmecola/status/1516762239046463494

Second, science is slow & incremental; it takes time to build experimental capacity; resources are always limited. Thus, scientists always have to prioritize their work based on existing findings.

In 2013-2019, Shi’s team was just starting to learn how to do viral genetics…

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Meet China’s bat woman: She’s spent 18 years studying coronaviruses. She’s traced both SARS and covid to bats. Did she cause the pandemic? Is she the victim of a witch hunt? I spent 14 months trying to find answers. Join me in Wuhan and at a bat cave. 1/n
bit.ly/3oDC1sK A long story, a long🧵:@techreview

1️⃣ What’s new & surprising?
2️⃣ What makes 🦇research incredibly painstaking and difficult that goes on at snail’s pace?
3️⃣ Did a coronavirus killed the miners in 2012?
4️⃣ What’s so dangerously fascinating about a🦇relative of SARS virus?

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.@MichaelWorobey has a soft spot for wild theories. He studied OPV/HIV conspiracy theory. He signed Science letter calling to probe lab leak. He challenged natural origins theory,but now thinks spillover at Huanan market “vastly more likely” @techreview 1/
bit.ly/3x4qR2W Worobey had wondered if the link between early Covid patients and Huanan was a result of doctors seeing more cases in places they spent more time looking. If such bias exists, then the link would be nothing but a mirage, and the natural origins theory would be untenable. 2/

.@NIH's "outrageous" demand: @EcoHealthNYC has to fulfil 7 criteria before funding on the grant can resume, a step many say is unusual and impossible. Nobel Laureate and former NIH director Harold Varmus calls it “outrageous”. @betswrites 1/27 wsj.com/articles/nih-p… via @WSJ Trump, the Trump administration, and conservative commentators have asserted, without evidence, that SARS-CoV-2 causing the current pandemic originated in Wuhan Institute of Virology, a long-term collaborator of @EcoHealthNYC, says a story by @meredithwadman @ScienceMagazine 2/27

HOT from the press @NatureMicrobiol: SARS-CoV-2 is likely to have diverged from the most closely related bat viruses 40–70 years ago. The findings suggest that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 may have been circulating in bats for decades. nature.com/articles/s4156… Three approaches show that SARS-CoV-2 and its most closely related relative (RaTG13) share a single ancestral lineage and estimate that SARS-CoV-2 genetically diverged from related bat viruses in 1948, 1969 and 1982, respectively.

A thread on why wearing a face mask can save lives. Masks must be prioritised for healthcare workers, so use them rationally. Wear a mask when go out. You don’t have to be sick to do that. Don’t shun people who do wear them. #covid19 By @zeynep (NYT-1/14) nyti.ms/2x2naQu “As evidence suggests COVID-19 could be transmitted before symptom onset, community transmission might be reduced if everyone, including people who have been infected but are asymptomatic and contagious, wear face masks.” By @bencowling88 @TheLancet (1/11)
thelancet.com/journals/lanre…

Exclusive and gripping tale of scientist’s virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves, starting in aftermath of SARS. Since her lab got first patient samples on 30 Dec, she’s been fighting a battle in her worse nightmare, unaware what she was up against @sciam scientificamerican.com/article/how-ch… 1. “The SARS outbreak was a game-changer,” says Linfa Wang @dukenus, whose work got a swift mention in 2011 film Contagion. It was the first time a deadly coronavirus with pandemic potential emerged, helping jumpstart a global search for animal viruses that could infects humans.