There are some interesting side notes in the slack:
1) Do you guys recognize the journalist Don McNeil? He’s the guy who the NYT fired for using the n-word on the rich kid journalist boondoggle a couple years ago.

2) The whole back story for this originated when an anonymous scientist contacted a journalist and told them that Andersen and Garry were convinced covid was engineered and then magically produced a paper a couple weeks later claiming the opposite. However, the email (included in the pdfs) seemed to be attempting to accuse Andersen et al of academic misconduct. Andersen’s paper had a huge scientific impact, but the anonymous scientist claimed that the real credit belonged to two coronavirus specialists who were in the big Fauci meeting in early February, and explained to the Andersen group that their lab leak theories were nonsense. The anonymous scientist claimed that Andersen simply adopted the coronavirologists arguments and wrote the paper. Either the anonymous scientist or a different collaborator of the coronavirologists was responsible for quashing the first version of the Andersen paper in peer review, in part because the paper might be used to bolster the lab leak interpretation. Andersen, for his part, claimed immediately after the Fauci + coronavirologists meeting that the coronavirologists were (deliberately?) misinterpreting his opinions, and that the coronavirologists were categorically unwilling to consider a lab leak possibility (partly out of self interest in protecting their field of study). Academic disputes are notoriously petty, but it is pretty funny to think that the coronavirus specialists who were so focused on minimizing the lab leak interpretation have inadvertantly provided everyone a reason to doubt the paper that is being used by politicians to minimize the lab leak possibility.

3) The “natural origins” hypothesis is based purely in an evolutionary biology perspective. Some very similar viruses have been found in bats, the weird receptor binding domain is in a pangolin coronavirus in the wild, and a partial furin cleavage site is in some coronaviruses. All of the pieces of the virus are present in nature (and we still have pretty limited wild virus samples), so the simplest explanation is that the virus originated naturally. The “lab origins” hypothesis is largely based on assumption, interpretation, and intelligence reports. China was freaking out like it was their fault, our government/research complex was overtly trying to control the narrative, WIV was doing some research that was in the same ballpark, and of course the intelligence reports that claim Wuhan corona researchers got suspiciously ill in November ’19. A big part of the disagreement is from people using different sets of data to draw their conclusions.

1) The notion that the Andersen et al. authors don’t believe their own paper is silly, and completely contradicted by the slack messages. One of the reasons that the Proximal Origins paper was suspicious to begin with was that the authors were concerned about the possibility of engineering, and then a couple weeks later wrote a paper dismissing that possibility. How could the scientists go from being so concerned to being convinced otherwise so quickly? Well, read the slack – it tells you. Taibbi and others are hypying early quotes where Andersen et al. are concerned and open-minded like we want them to be (and one later comment by Andersen post publication), but then burying their later conclusions after they evaluated more data. For example, EH – “I’m now very strongly in favor of a natural origin. The component bits of the virus are more or less there in a tiny sample of wildlife. Plus there is more to come… I don’t see why we need a lab origin on these data. 2/25, p 67. On top of plenty of comments that indicate they are very happy with the science underlying their paper, the authors continue to publish articles furthering the conclusions from the Proximal Origins paper.

2) The claim that Andersen et al were trying to deceive NYT’s McNeil is very bizzare. Scientific collaborators should always collaborate on media interactions. Scientists are usually wary of the media because journalists are notorious for misunderstanding or misrepresenting scientistific explanations. All the other authors just want to ignore media requests until after the publication. Andersen wanted to reply to McNeil because they have a prior positive relationship. Taibbi seems to be suggesting “using humor to deflect the fact [Andersen] is dismissing” McNeil is some sort of dangerous deception. It is ridiculous to suggest that declining a media request in a way that tries to preserve a working relationship is some sort of meaningful deception. Taibbi might be trying to suggest that the misleading claim is “the data is consistent with a natural scenario and inconsistent with a scenario involving any type of deliberate genetic engineering, including a bioweapon.” That claim is exactly what Andersen thinks, and it seems to be true. I can’t see what McNeil actually asked Andersen, but it doesn’t seem to be about the science, and biologists shouldn’t be speculating in the media about politics or intelligence agencies.

Taibbi seems to be motivated by the use of this paper to quash dissent of politically inconvenient hypotheses (and it was used for that purpose). I would argue that flawed “scientific” papers have repeatedly been published with the primary intended use as a marker for political arguments (like Elizabeth Warren’s 50% medical bankrupcy papers from a while back). Politicians like Fauci definitely wanted something to cite. Andersen et al. all have an evident baseline bias for how they want the paper to turn out. Based on the slack, though, it looks like they were trying to handle things as neutrally as possible.

In the days before grants, science was carried on by academics on stipends and gentlemen of leisure, sometimes funded from the pockets of wealthy and/or noble enthusiasts. What, in your opinion, was responsible for quality of science in those days?

1) all science and academia is broken. There is no quality process. At all. In any of the sciences. Science is a quest for grants and there are no grants for replication. Thus, no quality in science anymore.

2) I do believe in “lynch mobs”. The American Revolution was a lynch mob. When killers and oppressors walk free and the people have exhausted all peaceful means of redress, move on to the next tactic on the checklist.

What Can The Smallpox Vaccine Disaster Teach Us About Spike Protein Injuries?

https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/what-can-the-smallpox-vaccine-disaster