[HN Gopher] Publish and Perish
___________________________________________________________________
Publish and Perish
Author : walterbell
Score : 307 points
Date : 2021-06-06 10:33 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (erikhoel.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (erikhoel.substack.com)
| hirundo wrote:
| > But Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine was developed in a few hours back
| in January 2020.
|
| After which over 150 million people got sick and over 3 million
| people died. It seems possible that the regulatory rigidity
| responsible for the long roll out is a greater mortal threat than
| the virus itself. It's hard to imagine plausible scenarios in
| which a complete failure to regulate could have been more
| destructive. We have met the enemy and he is us. Apparently the
| most important technology that we lack to prevent a repeat isn't
| biotech, but the means to regulate the regulators.
| netrus wrote:
| The plan is in inject 6 Billion people with $vaccine. I have no
| medical expertise, but the idea of >3 million people dying from
| 6 Billion unregulated injections does not seem outlandish to
| me.
|
| Edit: especially taking into account one of the main tasks of
| the regulators was to decide _which_ vaccine to choose. If I
| remember correctly, there were hundreds of vaccines in
| development. In hindsight we know which ones were the right
| choice, but that's the result of rigoros, regulated, time-
| consuming testing.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Let's also keep in mind that the timeline for approving the
| vaccine still pales in comparison to the timeline for
| manufacturing and distributing it.
|
| Phase III trials for Pfizer took ~16 weeks. It has been 26
| weeks since the US granted an EUA based on that trial. In the
| 26 weeks since then, ~14% of the world has been vaccinated.
|
| And that's _after_ we spent those 16 weeks of the trial
| building out manufacturing capacity.
|
| We did skip a lot of steps on this vaccine. When we started
| mass administration of it, we had no idea whether it would
| prevent or reduce transmission or just symptomatic infection.
| We are still figuring out how long we expect immunity to
| last, whether we need boosters every six months or never.
|
| Maybe once we have the technological capacity to manufacture
| and distribute 8 billion vaccine doses ~instantly it will
| make sense to skip the "does this even work?" step, but as
| long as that remains the bottleneck I have a hard time
| believing it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You missed the does this have any long term effects on 6
| billion people. Without long term testing we may find out
| in 5 years those who had the vaccine may suffer some side
| effects unknown today. More worrying is if in the future
| this delivery model becomes the norm where we roll out
| solutions before fully testing to save money.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| In my opinion, that's the largest selling point of mRNA
| vaccines. In 4 weeks you can have the entire world's
| productivity capacity changed into whatever vaccine you
| deem urgent, and when it's not urgent, you can just store
| it in a computer's hard drive.
|
| Once this is possible1, we can ask governments to keep some
| extra capacity unused to respond to emergencies. What is
| different from any previous tech, where extra capacity
| would be useless nearly every time.
|
| 1 - AKA, when the patents expire. I vote for greatly
| rewarding the people that developed them and taking the
| patents away, but I'm sure that won't happen, so I hope we
| don't see any larger pandemics for 15 years.
| shoto_io wrote:
| I think back in April 2020, the NYT published a calculator
| where you could play around with the variables to see when a
| vaccine could be ready. The best you could do back then was mid
| 2021...
|
| I think we have come a long way and pushed the boundaries
| substantially.
| WnZ39p0Dgydaz1 wrote:
| > Of late he feels like all the activity of himself and his peers
| is just playing the Science Game: varying some variable with
| infinite degrees of freedom and then throwing statistics at it
| until you get that reportable p-value and write up a narrative
| short story around it.
|
| Just like ML research, we just skip the p-values.
| belval wrote:
| The classic "we achieve SOTA on ImageNet by using a novel
| training procedure" where they just played with learning rate
| schedules until they got 0.1% over previous SOTA.
|
| To be fair to there are a lot of smells in DL papers, usually
| you can tell whether an approach is worth your time by looking
| at code availability, lab, previous publications and the
| conference where it was published.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > In virology, there are only so many dials--only so many natural
| viruses. .... The big excitement is in finding a new virus
|
| How is that supposed to jibe with articles like this in which,
| unless I badly misread things, the authors found FORTY FIVE
| THOUSAND new viruses?
| https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2023202118
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Those are bacteriophages.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Bacteriophages are viruses.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Your study seems to be looking at remnants of viruses "left
| behind" in our collective genome by analyzing datasets. The
| viruses are hypothetical in nature, and might not be complete
| (they remark in the abstract that _some_ have _nearly_ complete
| genomes).
|
| Finding them would be worthy of a paper, some of them might be
| complete enough to be able to produce further insights, but at
| the end of the day there's only so much you can do when you
| don't have a live virus to "tweak the dials" so to speak. 45k
| is certainly a lot of potentially interesting viruses to study,
| sure, but it's a finite supply and the quality of genomes will
| likely further reduce this number.
|
| And that's kind of where the OP comes back into play. Sure,
| these new viruses were found, but how much can they contribute
| to the "Science Game"? Especially compared to a live virus you
| can tweak and play with to your heart's content to make
| whatever you want.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| With respect, I think you need to re-skim that paper.
|
| > Your study seems to be looking at remnants of viruses "left
| behind" in our collective genome by analyzing datasets.
|
| You appear to be confusing the 'genome' and 'metagenome'. The
| genome does have plenty of viral remnants[0] that by and
| large are incomplete fragments.
|
| The 'metagenome' in this case is taken from the Human
| Microbiome Project[1], which took samples of the microbiome
| from various regions of the bodies of various humans[2], and
| then sequenced basically everything in there that they could.
|
| > might not be complete (they remark in the abstract that
| some have nearly complete genomes).
|
| The only thing about completeness in the abstract I'm looking
| at is "with historically high per-genome completeness".
|
| Later in the paper they write "A total of 14,034 contigs
| (31.2%) were estimated to be high-quality (90 to 100%
| complete)" which I'd call more than 'some'!
|
| > but at the end of the day there's only so much you can do
| when you don't have a live virus to "tweak the dials" so to
| speak
|
| Many viruses are not currently able to be cultivated. This
| doesn't mean that they aren't important, or that they can't
| be studied.
|
| For a different example, consider the anelloviruses. From
| [3]: """ Anelloviruses are small, single stranded circular
| DNA viruses. They are extremely diverse and have not been
| associated with any disease so far. Strikingly, these small
| entities infect most probably the complete human population,
| and there are no convincing examples demonstrating viral
| clearance from infected individuals. The main transmission
| could be via fecal-oral or airway route, as infections occur
| at an early age. However, due to the lack of an appropriate
| culture system, the virus-host interactions remain enigmatic.
| Anelloviruses are obviously mysterious viruses, and their
| impact on human life is not yet known, but, with no evidence
| of a disease association, a potential beneficial effect on
| human health should also be investigated. """
|
| The way I read this, you are almost certainly infected with
| anelloviruses, I am almost certainly infected with
| anelloviruses, we don't know how they're transmitted, we
| don't know what cells they target, and in fact we don't know
| very much about what it's doing in there at all.
|
| > a finite supply
|
| Well sure, and there's only so many hundreds of millions of
| years before the sun devours the earth.
|
| Hoel writes: """ In virology, there are only so many dials--
| only so many natural viruses. And each is a source of
| competition, as famous labs make claims to various viruses to
| study and monopolize them by beating others to publication.
| The big excitement is in finding a new virus, mapping the
| genome, figuring out its function and transmissibility,
| comparing to other viruses, etc."""
|
| How many virology labs are out there? The American Society of
| Virology has about 2500 members[4] in the US, Canada, and
| Mexico. Multiply by 10 to bring in the rest of the world
| (surely an overestimate, if anything) gives you 25000, which
| is still less than the number of brand-new viruses found in
| this one study!
|
| And that's just from a handful of samples focusing on one
| organism (albeit one of particular interest). Wiki lists 96
| families of virus[5], some of which have dozens of subpages.
| Viruses are everywhere you look, and infect every kind of
| life on earth including each other[6]
|
| I'm also not convinced that labs can "monopolize them by
| beating others to publication". Many viruses are worked by
| many labs. As just a quick example, I searched biorxiv for
| 'herpes' (it's a virus!) and of the first few papers that
| looked like virology I found authors affiliated with
| Cambridge (Departments of Pathology, Veterinary Medicine, and
| Medicine, as well as the Institute for Medical Research) [7],
| the European Molecular Biology Lab [7], University of Berlin
| [7], University of Columbo [7], LSU [8], Albert Einstein
| College of Medicine [9] (Departments of Microbiology and
| Immunology, Pediatrics, and Medicine), Institute for Virology
| (Zurich) [10], University of Bern[10].
|
| This doesn't seem like monopolization to me.
|
| > quality of genomes will likely further reduce this number
|
| 14034 new genomes is still an awful lot, and so is the text
| in this post, so I'll stop here.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus [1]
| https://hmpdacc.org/hmp/publications.php [2]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5831082/ [3]
| https://academic.oup.com/femsre/article/44/3/305/5809966 [4]
| https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/04/cornell-
| virologist-... [5]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Viruses_by_family [6]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_virophage with a bit of
| poetic license. [7] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2
| 021.04.13.439638v2.... [8] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10
| .1101/2021.05.05.442792v1.... [9] https://www.biorxiv.org/con
| tent/10.1101/2021.05.05.442792v1.... [10] https://www.biorxiv
| .org/content/10.1101/2020.12.23.424160v2....
| ___luigi wrote:
| > .. may one day pose similar risks due to the run-away prestige
| games scientists play.
|
| It is happening in front of our eyes. From where should we start.
|
| (1) Responsible AI, but the outcomes didn't challenge AI research
| enough to stop some of the practices. I would avoid commenting on
| what happened at Google AI recently, but I would say that most of
| the AI-based solutions that are deployed at large scale can be
| challenged.
|
| (2) paperswithcode.com solved this issue. Back in the day, we
| would re-implement models that we see in the paper. When we email
| authors, we will always figure that an RA implemented the
| solution and s/he left.
|
| (4) Rich is becoming richer. There is a phenomena in academia to
| blindly trust those who are in good labs. I have seen many papers
| that are great coming from these labs, but there are bad papers
| as well. we shouldn't just blindly trust ppl.
|
| (5) Review process is broken. Review is a voluntarily work for
| professors, and imho it shouldn't. In industrial R&D, reviews are
| one of the most important things as part of the work. Some of our
| PRs takes days.
|
| (6) All recommendation engines are black-boxes. I don't know what
| YT or FB recommend to a kid and whether this is aligned with some
| of our values. If s/he accidentally watch something bad, we
| noticed that their timeline is full by the same ideas. In our
| spare time, we tried to check if we can influence this behavior
| as a user. I figured that all of our recommendations engines are
| black-boxes. I don't know why we don't challenges. I hacked an
| App to fetch data, new, feed and run it through recommendation
| engine and started customizing what I can read.
|
| (7) It's 2021, most of good papers are coming from industrial
| labs.
| borrowcheckfml wrote:
| I agree that (4) is a problem but there is also some signal in
| brand name. There is such a flood of (mostly low quality)
| papers that it's impossible to look at their content to judge
| what's worth reading. If you want to be at the forefront of
| research you can't wait to see which one stand the test of
| time.
|
| That's why I fall back on trusting brand name labs. They are
| "staking" their reputation on a paper. If a paper turns out to
| be absolute BS their reputation suffers. Even if all talent is
| equally distributed, this makes it more likely that papers from
| brand name researchers and institutions are carefully reviewed
| because they have something to lose. This isn't right, but what
| is the alternative?
|
| (7) Because most resarch happens in industry labs. Many
| university academics have left, or at least have dual positions
| in university and industry.
|
| (2) IMO paperswithcode didn't solve much. It's nice, but just
| publishing code doesn't fix any of the incentive problems. You
| still don't know how that code was generated. Most likely by
| tuning random knobs until something worked.
| gspr wrote:
| I agree with most of what you're saying, but 7 seems way off.
| Maybe it's field-dependent? I would say that in e.g.
| mathematics, physics and neuroscience, almost all good papers
| come from academic labs.
| nawgz wrote:
| > mathematics, physics, and neuroscience
|
| I can't imagine two things making less tangible
| ("industrial") value than Mathematics and Neuroscience today.
| Physics is too big a field to make such an asinine comment on
| at least
| akiselev wrote:
| Less tangible value than _mathematics_? The last few
| decades have been a golden age of linear and constraint
| programming research. The impact they 've had on logistics
| alone is incalculable - it's changed how everyone does
| business from Ford and Fedex down to Uber drivers. Almost
| every mass manufacturer in the world uses them in one way
| or another to optimize their processes. I can't imagine an
| academic field that has had _more_ impact on industry.
| effie wrote:
| That is interesting. Can you give some concrete example
| of how linear programming optimized some process?
| ___luigi wrote:
| I am a bit biased [1] [2], I work on ML. That was my naive
| observation.
|
| [1] https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/google-scholar-
| reveals...
|
| [2] https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/google-scholar-
| reveals...
| derefr wrote:
| There are "industrial labs" for mathematics? (I would think
| that an implicit qualifier here is "in fields where there is
| actually an incentive for industry to do field-advancing
| research, to create + own the resulting IP.")
| gspr wrote:
| Highly applied mathematics, yeah.
| beagle3 wrote:
| Was (3) self censored, or just an off-by-one error?
| ___luigi wrote:
| A good catch. I was typing fast, and I didn't pay attention
| to it.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| You signed an NDA, didn't you? In fact, I reckon (3) was
| something about NDAs, or something vaguely along those
| lines.
| [deleted]
| fridif wrote:
| scientific papers are not a good medium of knowledge transfer.
|
| show me the code and or a demo.
| jampekka wrote:
| As a researcher I would gladly do this. Unfortunately the
| funding game doesn't support this at all.
|
| I agree that papers are not good for knowledge transfer, but
| they are required if you want to keep a roof on your head.
|
| Academic community seems to be unable do little else than
| complain about this. Even though at least in countries I'm
| familiar with (Finland and UK), academic community mostly runs
| the funding system as well, although some outside politics do
| shape it too.
|
| I think what is needed is public pressure to academia and
| politicians to fix this mess. Unfortunately any criticism of
| science from the outside seems to be thrown into conspiracy
| theory category, but this is done mostly by non-academics.
| fridif wrote:
| Feeling bad for you
| jampekka wrote:
| It's not that bad personally, I can and do do demos and
| show code. Just have to do the chore of writing a paper,
| but otherwise in academia people are quite free to do what
| they want. I find it to be more a disservice to society
| that funds academia.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| If COVID-19 did come from a (accidental) leak from gain of
| function research, presumably the pandemic itself counts as a
| demo. Which leads to the posted article's point---it may be
| better to not do any gain of function research on viruses that
| are already well-understood, regardless of how well the
| research is or isn't communicated.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Papers are good for communicating the big picture: what is
| being done, why certain choices were made, and how things are
| supposed to work. Writing them is useful, because it forces you
| to think about the big picture. It's common that people who
| have spent months or years working on a project suddenly
| understand some aspects of it better when they try to
| communicate it to other people.
|
| Code is good for communicating details, but very few people
| actually read research code. Those who do usually just check a
| few details, because it's hard to justify spending weeks or
| months studying a single project. It doesn't help that the code
| was probably written before anyone understood what was the
| exact problem they were trying to solve and what would be a
| good way of solving it.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I wondered who is Erik Hoel. He is a writer and neuroscientist.
| His website is here:
|
| https://www.erikphoel.com/about.html
|
| "I ended up receiving my PhD in neuroscience at the University of
| Wisconsin-Madison, where I worked with Giulio Tononi on
| developing aspects of Integrated Information Theory. Later I was
| a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University working with
| Rafael Yuste, as well as a visiting scholar at the Institute for
| Advanced Study in Princeton."
| [deleted]
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| This retarded faggot can blow it out his dickhole. I'm 100%
| certain he was one of the NPCs telling everyone spreading the lab
| leak theory in early 2020 to kill themselves. His hands need to
| be surgically removed and his mouth stitched shut.
| ctoth wrote:
| Unrelated to the article, but the author linked to his novel and
| I grabbed it and have been rather enjoying it on this lazy
| Sunday. https://www.amazon.com/Revelations-Novel-Erik-
| Hoel/dp/141975...
| trentnix wrote:
| > It is immensely unfortunate this issue became politicized.
|
| This comment is over a year too late. Almost immediately after
| COVID became the topic du jour the technocrats and media were
| aggressively shutting down anyone who noticed the circumstantial
| evidence that the coronavirus emerged in close proximity to a lab
| conducting sloppy coronavirus research. That, coupled with
| China's refusal to allow anyone outside the CCP apparatus to
| investigate should have, at least, given thinking people pause.
| But clearly, "thinking people" doesn't characterize the media or
| the technocrats and their speech police.
|
| And we shouldn't forget the astonishingly sudden about-face by
| the media (almost all of whom work for companies who also sell
| their entertainment properties in China) who routinely called
| COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus" one day and the next day
| castigated anyone who dared to do so as an irredeemable racist.
|
| It was political from the beginning.
| phlakaton wrote:
| Not to mention that the author rails against it being
| "politicized," only to propose a deeply political reason why it
| happened. Like, seriously, dude?
| smoldesu wrote:
| > who routinely called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus"
| one day and the next day castigated anyone who dared to do so
| as an irredeemable racist.
|
| Probably because Patient Zero was located in Wuhan? What sort
| of cognitive dissonance am I missing here?
| throw_away wrote:
| It was also political because of the punitive measures sought
| by those pointing fingers to China-- ranging from 10 trillion
| in reparations to war. Rather than saying hey, maybe this gain
| of function business was a mistake & we should just do it in
| the supercomputers like with nukes or something.
|
| Personally, I don't really understand the focus on pinning down
| the exact reason this happened. Stop GoF research _and_ shut
| down wet markets. Stop encroaching on wilderness as best we can
| while we 're at it. Do all the things.
| Lazare wrote:
| Many reforms will be aggressively resisted. Wet markets are
| unlikely to be shut down _unless_ they can be plausibly
| fingered as the source of COVID-19 (and maybe not even then).
| GoF research has been heavily criticized for years, but it is
| still funded because there 's a lobby in favour of it. People
| saying "hey, this could cause a pandemic" wasn't enough.
| There's another in favour of encroaching on wilderness.
|
| > Do all the things.
|
| We're more likely going to do _none_ of the things. Again,
| unless one of them can be shown to be directly related to
| COVID, and even then, it 's questionable.
| throw_away wrote:
| Maybe after 2020, the other side of those arguments have a
| bit more weight for everybody. Were we to focus more on
| those things rather than war and reparation, maybe we can
| survive as a species. But yeah, probably not.
| newrotik wrote:
| Is it realistic to expect them to comply with demands that
| they should stop GOF research / shut down wet markets without
| a credible threat of (at least) an economic retribution?
| throw_away wrote:
| The US does this kind of research, too. And, it seems like
| it even funded the Wuhan research at least to some extent.
| Would the US need a threat of economic retribution to
| reconsider this research? Or to change a practice of their
| food supply suspected of causing significant harm? Writing
| that out, I guess maybe it would.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| I'm kind of interested how one nation thinks it's going to
| convince another sovereign nation to pay that kind of
| 'reparations'.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Isn't a wet market just one that sells meat and produce? Like
| my local Kroger's and Safeway? Or do you mean something else?
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| A lot of this "circumstantial evidence" was and is game-of-
| telephone nonsense. Many mix together two completely different
| institutions (the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and the
| Wuhan Institute of Virology) which are several kilometres
| apart, for example.
|
| (Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk is a great
| look at said game of telephone.)
| dimgl wrote:
| I'm not sure this is a valid counterargument. The intent is
| clear when someone says "it likely leaked from the lab in
| Wuhan"... I'm surprised how pedantic everything has gotten.
| btmorex wrote:
| It's actually this exact attitude that kept it out of the
| media. I'm curious: what is your goal? Everyone can see the
| glaringly obvious circumstantial evidence that it was a lab
| leak. At this point, comments like your's just look
| ridiculous.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Oh, so vulnerable and fragile media decided to spin a
| ridiculous narrative because of stupid comments on the
| internet? Maybe the media should grow up and stop acting
| like a stereotypical 13 year old girl.
| btmorex wrote:
| No, it's an attitude of haughty dismissal, which the
| media has a real problem with too.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like a real problem when the media can't
| even clear the bar for internet comments.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| To be honest, the "evidence" I've seen so far boils down to
| stating that a virology lab was nearby the first outbreak so
| sure it must have come from that lab and couldn't have come
| from a wet market or elsewhere. In other words, evidence is
| confused with plausible storytelling, in incredibly common
| mistake nowadays.
|
| What's mildly infuriating me about this is that the people
| who push the lab escape hypothesis seem to have political
| motivations, but the wet market origin hypothesis is much
| worse for China. Although they have officially prohibited
| many of the practices and animal abuse that make it easier
| for viruses to jump to humans from other hosts, these
| practices remain widespread. It's much easier to secure
| virology labs than tens of thousands of semi-legal and
| illegal wet markets.
| btmorex wrote:
| If that's the only evidence you've seen so far, you're not
| looking very hard.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| There's certainly an argument that it's all the fault of
| the Great Leap Forward.
| refenestrator wrote:
| The fascinating part is everyone did an about face on it
| overnight after the WSJ article.
|
| We went from Facebook banning mention of the theory to
| everyone being certain it's right on the basis of "national
| security flack says someone who works at the lab was sick,
| during flu season".
| btmorex wrote:
| It's almost like the media is taking cues from the Biden
| administration.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Yes, but this is more the trans-administration national
| security blob than Biden people in particular.
|
| The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems
| about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time.
|
| You might be onto something with garden-variety liberals
| feeling 'free' to try and blame China now that Trump's
| out of sight, though.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| > The WSJ author had brought us other CIA-approved gems
| about WMDs in Iraq once upon a time.
|
| In case other people besides myself were confused, we're
| apparently talking about Michael Gordon, and this WSJ
| article [0], not this one [1]. Michael Gordon also wrote
| [2], which reported on the Bush administration's claims
| that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-on-sick-
| staff-at-w... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/wuhan-lab-
| leak-question-chinese... [2]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/08/world/threats-
| responses-i...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I downvoted you, and I'll explain why. In my recollection, the
| very first "politicization" I heard of Covid's origins were
| politicians insisting that the virus was man-made. Politicians,
| mind you, who had been _repeatedly_ clear that they were not
| particularly interested in figuring out the truth in what
| happened, but assigning blame.
|
| So then I saw the unfortunate (and this is where I agree with
| part of your sentiment) response from media and the scientific
| establishment insisting that this wasn't possible, instead of
| stating the truth, that is "we just don't know". Note these are
| similar falsehoods that the scientific establishment took early
| on in the pandemic, saying "masks don't work for the public",
| instead of saying that "we're scared there won't be enough
| masks for hospitals, and we don't know how effective masks are
| by the general public."
|
| Finally, this statement by you is downright laughable:
|
| > And we shouldn't forget the astonishingly sudden about-face
| by the media (almost all of whom work for companies who also
| sell their entertainment properties in China) who routinely
| called COVID the "China virus" or "Wuhan virus"
|
| I recall quite clearly one particular American president
| calling it "the China virus" and virtually every mainstream US
| media outlet calling him out for racism. I don't remember _any_
| member of the media establishment calling it the China virus.
| throwkeep wrote:
| The corporate media is good at memory holing things, but
| here's a compilation of them calling it the "Wuhan
| Coronavirus", "Chinese Coronavirus" and "China's
| Coronavirus":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g
|
| Bonus complication of when "the flu is worse" was the
| narrative:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVDPVBZF2Xg
| refulgentis wrote:
| - Link A: The clips are a compilation of COVID19 being
| referred to as the "Wuhan Coronavirus" and "China
| Coronavirus" in Q1 2020. I'm not sure what I was supposed
| to take away from it, is the implication that The US Media
| was hypercritical because people criticized the US
| president for repeatedly saying it xenophobically, months
| later?
|
| - Link B: The clips are a compilation of health experts on
| MSNBC/CNN in January 2020, when the outbreak was confined
| to China, telling people they didn't need to worry yet.
|
| I thought we'd emerge from this with an understanding of
| how quickly things move and operating under uncertainty a
| la Taleb, but in the current American context, it appears
| it turned into another reason to triple down on They'ing.
| trentnix wrote:
| > The clips are a compilation of health experts in
| January 2020
|
| Did you watch the video? Christiane Amanpour is not a
| health expert.
|
| The media joined the outrage mob only when the _wrong_
| people started calling it such. That 's more evidence of
| the early politicization driven by the same media.
| refulgentis wrote:
| The argument as described seems weak: "Combination of
| words $X said on Any News Outlet at any time mean its
| impossible for anyone to ever criticize $X being said by
| anyone else in any context at any time after. If it
| happens, Politicized Media."
|
| I wonder if there's a bit more nuanced way to make this
| argument, I'm amenable to it, but...it reads more as
| American culture war than a discussion
| kbutler wrote:
| I think it occurs someone criticizes a political opponent
| for using a word or phrase which has been commonplace
| until that time, though some may have considered it
| offensive.
|
| Immediately, that usage is widely decried as horribly
| offensive, and even groups that routinely used it pile on
| to join the attack: "When (my opponent)
| said X today, it shows they are horrible and intend
| terrible things, whereas my use of it yesterday/last year
| (or in the future!) was completely innocent."
|
| The direction of the politicization will remain in
| dispute: Did my opponent politicize it by
| using language known to be offensive, as a callout to
| their constituency? Or did I politicize it
| by criticizing them, as a callout to my constituency?
| Or do they politicize it by continuing to use it
| afterward?
| trentnix wrote:
| > I wonder if there's a bit more nuanced way to make this
| argument, I'm amenable to it, but...it reads more as
| American culture war than a discussion
|
| That's a fair critique, but I'm inclined to leave a more
| nuanced argument in someone else's hands. I'll just say
| I've long suspected massive media collusion and I found
| the media's almost overnight religious conversion on
| speech that identified the source of the virus to be
| jarring and suspiciously in sync.
|
| There are dozens of egregious examples of the media
| adopting certain language or using certain terms in a
| sudden, widespread manner. A few examples you can find on
| Youtube include "power through", "beginning of the end",
| "walls closing in", etc.
|
| I do think the media monoculture is partially to blame,
| but I don't that accounts for all of it.
| [deleted]
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| It was first called the Wuhan Virus by mass media and
| researchers, even in China. That naming choice was fairly
| ordinary, similar to Spanish Flu, West Nile Virus, or
| Crimean-Congo fever. The "China virus" term became
| problematic once it was politicized in a criminally dumb
| way by the Trump government - back when they claimed it's
| not dangerous at all and totally under control in the US.
|
| Insisting on a more neutral name was helpful for
| distinguishing reliable information from nonsense. But in
| my opinion the name Sars-Cov-2 was unhelpful in the long
| run because people just ended up calling it Covid or
| Coronavirus instead. Wuhan virus would have been a better
| naming choice, and it was called like that inside China at
| the beginning. The politicization of the health crisis
| (instead of showing solidarity first) was the big issue.
| Worse, it's still ongoing.
|
| If totally neutral names are so important, maybe
| virologists should start thinking about naming schemes like
| meteorologists use, e.g. using first names.
| [deleted]
| trentnix wrote:
| >In my recollection, the very first "politicization" I heard
| of Covid's origins were politicians insisting that the virus
| was man-made.
|
| I'd like to see some evidence that politicians insisted it
| was man-made instead of trusting your recollection. If the
| virus had lab origins in a lab specifically performing "gain
| of function" research, that's quite a coincidence that might
| even suggest those politicians were correct (although I would
| concede it may have certainly been irresponsible).
|
| Additionally, I _expect_ polemics and politicization from
| politicians. It is their nature. But I 'm not supposed to get
| it from the media, from the CDC, from the technocrats, and
| from the "fact checkers". But their rhetoric was political
| and their actions to shut down and shout down _wrongthink_
| was wrong (and now can be seen as having specious
| justification).
|
| > I don't remember any member of the media establishment
| calling it the China virus.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eZtCq1aj2g
|
| Another commenter already explained this, but these types
| of videos that are deliberately designed to obfuscate what
| actually happened are bullshit.
|
| Yes, the media called it the "Wuhan coronavirus" early on
| _before_ it was an actual pandemic _because the virus
| primarily only existed in Wuhan at that point_.
| Furthermore, the now well-known name of Covid-19 was not as
| prevalent then, and your average listener would understand
| "coronavirus" more than a new technical name at that point.
|
| This is _very_ different than, after the pandemic had
| already been widespread, _specifically_ crossing out
| "Coronavirus" to call it "Chinese virus", as Trump did.
|
| Look, there are plenty of things that the media at large
| deservedly gets criticized for, but trying to pretend
| calling it the Wuhan coronavirus early on in the pandemic
| is the same thing as specifically emphasizing it as "the
| Chinese virus" 6 months later is just lying.
| trentnix wrote:
| > Look, there are plenty of things that the media at
| large deservedly gets criticized for, but trying to
| pretend calling it the Wuhan coronavirus early on in the
| pandemic is the same thing as specifically emphasizing it
| as "the Chinese virus" 6 months later is just lying.
|
| Your argument explicitly depends on the context and it
| depends on the criticism. The context wasn't "6 months
| later". It was _days later_. And the criticism was that
| it is racist. That it is xenophobic. That it is intended
| to humiliate and threaten people of Chinese descent.
|
| A much more plausible explanation would have been that
| Trump and his insistence on calling it the "China virus"
| was an attempt to deflect any political blame for his
| administration's policies to try and contain the virus. A
| more plausible explanation was that Trump was being
| unnecessarily coarse. Or unnecessarily provocative. But
| no, he was accused of racism and xenophobia.
|
| But even before the phrasing of "China virus" was a
| thing, Trump was criticized for shutting down travel from
| China as being racist. In hindsight it turns out to have
| been a very shrewd, life-saving move. But instead of
| giving credit where credit's due and recognizing the
| wisdom of shutting down travel, suddenly the phrasing was
| racist and xenophobic. The accusations were the same, but
| the goalposts were moved. That the same people (the
| media) lobbing the accusations of racism and xenophobia
| were _only days earlier_ using the same language is clear
| hypocrisy.
|
| Since racism is _wrongthink_ and _wrongthink_ doesn 't
| merit being discredited, it's easy to see why it's thrown
| around so casually. It requires no justification and is a
| cheap way to generate outrage. And that makes it a useful
| political tool.
|
| We now know that many of these same people (the media
| along with their cohorts in government and the socials)
| shut down reasonable discussion regarding the origins of
| the virus while simultaneously using accusations of
| racism and xenophobia. And that's potentially scandalous
| and should be deeply embarrassing.
| jl6 wrote:
| I also recall mass confusion about what constitutes "man-
| made". That could mean anything from a natural-origin virus
| released accidentally from a lab that was legitimately
| studying it, to an artificial-origin virus deliberately
| released from a lab for malign purposes.
|
| (As well as the even milder variant of "natural-origin virus
| that didn't leak from a lab, but which humans encountered as
| a result of sample-gathering for research")
| opaque wrote:
| This article is a general critique of the reward system in
| academia, bolted on the lab leak hypothesis for clickbait. "The
| Science Game" is a thing and often discussed on HN, but I don't
| see any causative link here.
|
| > All to say: scientists create dangerous synthetic viruses to
| achieve "high-impact" scientific output.
|
| Does gain of function research yield more high impact papers than
| more benign types of virology research? The article seems to
| suggest so, but provides no citations indicating that. Were the
| scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology publishing their
| research to general acclaim up until now? Given how little we
| know about it, doesn't seem so. Are these scientists driven by
| the same invectives as western university research academics?
| They're probably state employees on stable contracts for a start,
| not the PhD students and itinerant PostDocs of the university
| system, who are the main players of the Science Game.
|
| I don't know the answers to these questions, but the article
| would be more persuasive if it did.
| akkartik wrote:
| > Does gain of function research yield more high impact papers
| than more benign types of virology research?
|
| The article puts "high-impact" in quotes. The thesis as I
| understood it is not that gain-of-function research is higher
| impact, but that it's _a_ fertile knob capable of stamping out
| adequate papers. The externalities here should put it out of
| bounds of the Science Game. The author is basically saying, go
| find other knobs to play your games.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| Skimming the "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus
| Emergence" grant [0] cited in the posted article suggests a
| potentially useful role for gain of function research, although
| I'm not sure if that method was actually used.
|
| The intended work was to (1) look for unknown viruses in bats
| and sequence the virus' genomes, (2) screen people who live and
| work nearby to see which viruses cross over to people, and (3)
| test the infectiousness of these viruses in cell culture and
| animal studies in a laboratory setting. The point of #3 would
| be to systematically compare the properties of viral strains
| with slight genetic variation to reveal which parts of the
| genome are responsible for which outcomes (symptoms, which
| species can be infected, etc.). Information from the lab
| comparisons would be used to help interpret which naturally
| occurring viruses observed in the screening work are
| potentially dangerous. Work like this _could_ help prevent a
| pandemic. (It would be bitterly ironic if it instead caused a
| pandemic.)
|
| Synthetic variation of the viral genome ("gain of function",
| but also loss of function) allows direct experimentation to be
| done in the lab (#3). Direct experimentation is very useful
| because it allows systematic comparison to establish cause &
| effect; which genes do what, and how they interact. If a large
| supply of naturally occurring variants are already available
| though this can also be achieved, with less certainty, by
| correlation. But if humanity is going to be proactive about
| studying viruses, I don't see much reason to avoid gain of
| function research. Collecting and studying wild viruses means
| that dangerous new strains will be present in labs regardless,
| so either way stringent safety controls, monitoring, and
| containment plans are absolutely necessary.
|
| [0] https://reporter.nih.gov/search/q4dXFDKEsU-
| IkTAYgowOKw/proje...
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Direct experimentation is very useful because it allows
| systematic comparison to establish cause & effect_
|
| Only if "experimentation" includes "infecting humans with
| various strains and seeing what happens". Is that what you're
| advocating?
|
| _> Collecting and studying wild viruses means that dangerous
| new strains will be present in labs regardless_
|
| Dangerous new strains that happened to evolve naturally is
| one thing.
|
| Dangerous new strains that are purposely being created by
| experimenters for the express purpose of finding ones that
| are more infective is another.
|
| _> so either way stringent safety controls, monitoring, and
| containment plans are absolutely necessary._
|
| This would appear to be an argument for _not_ doing this type
| of research in the Wuhan lab, which evidently did not have
| sufficient controls in place. Moreover, I see no indication
| that any assessment of such controls at the lab, and
| confirmation that they were sufficient, was a prerequisite
| for funding this research. That seems insane.
| azakai wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the article's point, but I think it does try
| to answer this question of yours:
|
| > Does gain of function research yield more high impact papers
| than more benign types of virology research? The article seems
| to suggest so, but provides no citations indicating that.
|
| The article's argument is that gain-of-function research moves
| the researcher from the set of existing viruses to the set of
| all the viruses we can create - a far, far larger set, and
| hence one that allows more publications. Or, to put it another
| way, after you've run out of viruses to find, and things to
| publish about them, creating more gives you many more papers to
| write.
|
| There may be something to that argument, but I still agree with
| your general point that the article needs more evidence.
| germanjoey wrote:
| The actual impact of gain-of-function research papers isn't
| actually what is being critiqued here. That's putting the cart
| before the horse. What is being criticized is that the authors
| of such papers are pushing their research efforts into this
| area because they see it as their highest expected value avenue
| for generating the "impact" they need to secure funding,
| tenure, etc.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| But if the gain-of-function research really is high-impact in
| the sense that is valuable to society, isn't it a good thing
| that incentives push scientists to work in this area? It
| would be an example of careerism "impact" lining up with
| actual impact; i.e., the system working as intended.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> if the gain-of-function research really is high-impact
| in the sense that is valuable to society_
|
| So far its net impact seems to be extremely negative (one
| pandemic, zero help with any treatments or preventive
| measures). So by your own argument, we should stop it
| immediately, right?
| phreeza wrote:
| I've seen so many posts about or at least implicitly accepting
| the lab leak hypothesis in a very short time now, that it almost
| seems like some sort of concerted campaign to me. Would be
| interesting to know if there is an upvoting block doing this. Did
| I miss any new evidence coming out? Everything I saw so far
| seemed rather circumstantial.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I suspect there are many people who consider it likely, felt
| silenced, and are now feeling vindicated.
|
| While I obviously don't have hard evidence, the constant
| coverups make me consider the lab leak theory rather likely.
| The WHO inquiry seemed to conclude that they have no clue, but
| they were very adamant that it definitely wasn't a lab leak,
| with no supporting evidence. The whole thing _reeked_ like an
| attempt to appease China to possibly get some more access.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| If you have no evidence, "no clue" is the correct conclusion.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Exactly. What I'm criticizing is that they said "no clue
| _except for the lab leak theory_ , that one definitely
| can't be it"
| jollybean wrote:
| No, if we have some evidence, it can inform outcomes and we
| can act.
|
| This isn't a Judicial Trial, it's an investigation and
| pragmatic response.
|
| If we're 85% sure it came from the lab, that's materially
| actionable.
|
| But there's a 100% that China is obfuscating the situation
| on purpose and at very minimum they must be removed from
| the WHO. It's unthinkable that they could be a part of an
| organization and act directly against it at the same time.
|
| They'll do as they please (in this and other things),
| without consequence, because there are simply not cost to
| their actions.
|
| The issue is not Science, it's China. Given the existential
| consequences of COVID, the response to their intransigence
| should be existential, far beyond being removed from the
| WHO.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Yep, and it doesn't matter now.
|
| _Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted._
| jimbokun wrote:
| It matters a lot for determining what kind of controls we
| need to place on virology research going forward.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Nope, not one bit. All pathogen research and engineering
| should be treated as a proliferation issue similar to
| nuclear weapons with international oversight. It's
| actually much, much worse because of independent
| biohacking and not needing rare enriched materials, which
| isn't a valid reason (chicken-little excuse) to _not_
| regulate it strongly globally.
| refulgentis wrote:
| To your point, it was widely understood last year it could have
| been a lab leak but almost certainly not a bioweapon, and a lot
| of people a year later are turning the science of this into
| another culture war battle based on the idea that last year it
| was _censored_ that it could have been a lab leak.
|
| I'm increasingly worried about a phenomena I see more and more
| often: a cohort 'rediscovering' an old topic and it being
| played as news. ex. Bitfinex/Tether was a scandal _years and
| years_ ago, and a lot of people rediscovered it and think its
| new because the legal proceedings from that initial outburst
| years ago finally wrapped up.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| There's an interesting analysis here:
| https://www.rootclaim.com/analysis/What-is-the-source-of-COV...
| that concludes with 80+% probability in favour of the lab leak
| theory.
|
| It's still based on indicative evidence rather than definitive
| court-of-law evidence, but it's a good systematic attempt and
| makes me personally believe that the lab leak theory is more
| likely than not.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| This is a pretty good summary of the lab leak hypothesis:
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...
| Evaluate it on its own merits. Personally I think it's
| incredibly compelling, but there are certainly many smart
| people who disagree.
| codyb wrote:
| I don't really have an opinion one way or the other to offer on
| your concerted campaign comment or the origins of the covid 19
| virus but my understanding is basically this...
|
| People postulated
|
| Trump politicized
|
| Others kept researching and found important facts
|
| There was internal fighting and dissension throughout various
| entities about whether or not to pursue these inquiries
|
| Certain initial assessments may have been tainted by the biases
| of their authors
|
| And we're in the stage now where the inconsistencies, biases,
| and details are all coming out in this steady trickle and
| things are snowballing a bit.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| There's a good writeup here: https://project-
| evidence.github.io/
| raphlinus wrote:
| The latest commit to that anonymously authored repo is over a
| year ago. I am a bit tired of these "we are an anonymous
| group pushing the truth" efforts; in the case of HCQ they are
| unmitigated bullshit.
|
| The best sourced argument for lab leak is the Drastic
| project[1]. This is basically the work that's been getting
| the media attention for the last few weeks.
|
| A good source for arguments holding the lab leak unlikely
| (there is of course no evidence strong enough to rule it out
| entirely) is episodes 760 and 762 of the podcast This Week in
| Virology[2]. Skeptics of authority would say that this is the
| community of virologists covering their own back. Others who
| basically believe in science [ETA: meaning basically trust
| scientists; this is a pretty complex concept to unpack] will
| find passionate and knowledgeable experts explaining why they
| find the lab leak hypothesis unlikely.
|
| [1]: https://drasticresearch.org/
|
| [2]: https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
| newrotik wrote:
| Another compact source of information that is well
| referenced and is being kept up to date is here:
| https://jamiemetzl.com/origins-of-sars-cov-2/
| raphlinus wrote:
| I grant you that this is well researched. However,
| readers should bear in mind that this resource is first
| and foremost a persuasive effort in favor of the lab leak
| hypothesis.
| Lazare wrote:
| The theories seem to be: 1) Zoonotic 2) We have no idea, 3) Lab
| leak 4) Purposefully created and released bioweapon.
|
| What seems to have happened is that there's a large group that
| have always backed theory 2, but theories 2, 3, and 4 were
| lumped together, and then all effectively suppressed, meaning
| all you saw being discussed was theory 1, despite the fact that
| it was always a minority view.
|
| What happened fairly recently is that, for various reasons,
| theories 2 and 3 is no longer being effectively treated as
| synonymous with theory 4, and thus it's now "safe" to discuss
| theory 2 and 3. And now the large group of people who _always_
| backed theory 2 are seemingly everywhere.
|
| (I'd caution against interpreting people supporting what I've
| labelled theory 2 as "implicitly accepting the lab leak
| hypothesis". As the linked article states, "...the only
| conclusion here is that of doubt. There is no direct evidence
| that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.")
| bob33212 wrote:
| Part of the confusion is that lab leak theory includes a
| zoonotic component. The virus started as a bat virus and then
| was modified in the lab. When Trump says "china made this
| virus" people assume he is saying it was made from scratch or
| made maliciously. Both of which are unlikely and Trump has a
| history of saying thing that are total bullshit like "my
| investigators in Hawaii are going to find proof of Obama's
| birth"
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's a shame half a million Americans died to bring us a
| lesson most people learn in kindergarten.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Trump's non-stop intentional effort to say outrageous and
| nonsensical things in order to inflame passions (for his
| own personal profit) and try to hide his own ignorance and
| lack of work ethic, make it important to have an honest
| public conversation. This can't be understated. It went so
| far that half a million US Americans died due a botched
| response that included people refusing to take basic safety
| precautions (and supported by their political leaders) just
| to "to own the libs"
| pvaldes wrote:
| And 5) lab detected (But this one is losing power)
|
| 'We don't know' can't be a theory (by definition). Theories
| try to explain and know.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| Science prestige games suck. But the lynchpin of this thesis is
| the assertion that gain-of-function research didn't (and won't)
| improve our ability to respond to epidemics with vaccines and
| policies. That point isn't substantially argued in the post,
| author just says that one COVID vaccine was developed in hours.
|
| Anyone near the field able to give a perspective?
| ankurdhama wrote:
| IMHO research about human body in general and immune system in
| specific is more useful to improve our ability to respond to
| epidemics with vaccines than gain-of-function research.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| The Moderna covid vaccine was developed in a few hours, because
| extensive work had already been done on the SARS virus. They
| could very easily tell by homology which part of the RNA
| sequence coded for the spike protein. I suppose theoretically,
| generating novel viruses could prepare us for similarly quick
| vaccine design in the absence of a natural predecessor, but
| that would be a huge stretch requiring us to invent vast
| numbers of novel viruses.
| throw737858 wrote:
| >> vaccine was developed in hours
|
| Difficult part is to isolate an unknown virus and sequebce its
| RNA and proteins. With covid we got lucky because Chinese
| scientists published that very fast. But it could easily take
| several months.
| mxcrossr wrote:
| I think the author just has a complaint about the scientific
| process (and believe me, all scientists do...) and is trying to
| fit this topic to that complaint. I doubt that it's helpful. If
| we think there aren't enough safeguards about this kind of
| research, I think the solution is to restrict funding, not to
| assume that changing the research incentive structure would
| stop it.
| Imnimo wrote:
| One might accuse the author of playing a game of his own,
| where his writing is driven by a desire to get clicks rather
| than a desire to communicate factually...
| ehnto wrote:
| I had no idea the article was littered with links, as the colour
| difference is too small to see for me and my monitor. They look
| like the same colour to me. If Substack feels a different colour
| for links is too distracting or tacky, maybe they could consider
| a little icon denoting a link. But it's not very good web
| etiquette to hide links like that.
| Cyril_HN wrote:
| Underlining is a common way to indicate links. However,
| Substack allows the author to decide whether to make links
| bright blue or merely underlined.
| extra88 wrote:
| On the web, links are underlined by default, a clear, non-color
| way to visually convey they're links. It has become way too
| common for sites to remove that styling, maybe showing the
| underline when the cursor is hovered (useless on mobile devices
| without a cursor); this one doesn't even show the styling on
| :focus to make the visible on keyboard navigation.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| The underline is an affordance, an indicator that it's
| special. The problem with removing it is there is no way to
| see it's a link without affirmatively taking an action over
| the text. Plus, on touch screens, there is no hovering.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| How would people with screenreaders or limited central vision
| use this site?
| extra88 wrote:
| While most screen reader users have some vision, screen
| reader software is mostly not affected by styling changes so
| they will still say "link" when there is one.
|
| People with various kinds of low vision (or color blindness)
| who do not use a screen reader but use text enlargement,
| screen zooming, etc. would have a particularly hard time
| differentiating the links from the surrounding text.
| [deleted]
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I used to work in one of the top fMRI labs. The comments about
| The Science Game are spot on. The vast majority of scientists, by
| the time they're midway through their postdocs, just want to do
| whatever research will get them a professorship and some grants.
| Actual knowledge generation is a distant second to keeping the
| ball bouncing by getting out papers and getting in grants.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| I think you're right. There's only a few people with the
| curiosity, tenacity, and obsessive patience to keep up their
| idealism and enjoyment momentum to deliver consistent
| intellectual quality for its own sake. You basically have to be
| on the spectrum or very, very diligent. Most people just want
| more funding. (ProTip: Full-time grant writers are key.)
| sangnoir wrote:
| > You basically have to be on the spectrum or very, very
| diligent.
|
| ...and be independently wealthy (or have wealthy
| benefactors). Science lives and dies by funding. We may be
| regressing to pre-20th century science, where most of the big
| discoveries were made by rich people who could afford to do
| science all day everyday.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Just want to add, it's generally not a conscious choice.
| Everyone wants to do something that is both a genius experiment
| and gets published in Nature. The Science Game gets propagated
| in how scientists conceive and plan their work. Everything must
| be done in the paradigm of publications and grants. You can't
| do anything if it doesn't have at least interim results within
| a year or two. It's an unfathomable career risk to try
| something absolutely brand new. There's a good chance it fails,
| at which point you have a 2 year blank spot in your CV and you
| can never get back in the top 10% of scientists where you need
| to be to get R01 funding and run your own lab.
| mirker wrote:
| One problem is the incentives are biased toward "ok" papers.
|
| h-index should be replaced with a more competitive index
| (e.g., Max over citations). The publication hyper-
| competitiveness is due to publication spam, which boosts
| citation and publication count. However, twisting a knob and
| getting slightly different results should be viewed as a
| failed project.
| Boywithhalo wrote:
| I agree that h-index isn't very indicative, but max
| citations seems like a poor alternative.
|
| There is a relation between citations and certain aspects
| of research quality, but citation count can be easily
| gamed, and is affected by many factors other than the
| quality of the work itself.
|
| Trying to use single measures to quantiy something as
| complex seems flawed to begin with.
| mirker wrote:
| Top N papers is already a metric used for professorship
| slots, so Max or other functions are me simplifying the
| situation.
|
| I agree though that citations are proxies for goodness
| and are ultimately poor indications of work. For example,
| a paper closing the field would have no follow-up work,
| but a provocative paper would have plenty (regardless of
| quality).
|
| I think a quantitative metric is necessary because many
| decisions eventually hit a bean-counter (e.g., admin
| type), who is not able to assess research quality in the
| time they have. But even with experts reviewing a set of
| candidates on research qualifications, the panel would be
| unable to objectively provide a full ranking of
| candidates.
|
| A perhaps better way to do it would be to perform proper
| accounting on research output which stabilizes across a
| 10-year timeline or so. Each researcher is a "stock" and
| the stock-price reflects current and projected "revenue".
| If someone publishes only papers that go nowhere, their
| stock tanks. At top institutions, tenure kind of does
| this (only one time).
| ItsMonkk wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| > When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
| measure. - Goodhart's Law
|
| > The more any quantitative social indicator is used for
| social decision-making, the more subject it will be to
| corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to
| distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended
| to monitor. - Campbell's Law
|
| You want to use metrics as a very broad breadth first
| search to help cull the search space and use trust
| systems as a depth first search. But once you have found
| signal through trust, you should completely ignore that
| first search and even look more into things that you had
| previously excluded.
|
| Find researchers that you agree with, find the papers
| that they recommend, read those papers and check that you
| agree with them. If they recommend something from a no-
| name university, look at those first.
|
| Unfortunately if this is not your field and you aren't
| able to determine quality, this becomes impossible. If
| it's important to you, you need to learn it. This is why
| I don't like non-technical managers. If the people who
| approve the grants do not understand the result, this is
| inevitable. It might work early on when trust still
| lingers, but as metrics take over the social systems
| always fall apart.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > The publication hyper-competitiveness is due to
| publication spam, which boosts citation and publication
| count.
|
| The publication hyper-competitiveness is a direct result of
| grant hyper-competitiveness. Funding rates at top US
| agencies are around 10-20%. Grants are how researchers fund
| their research, pay their students, pay themselves, and
| earn tenure, so there's a lot riding on getting them.
|
| I see a lot of talk about the problems with publications on
| HN and possible fixes to the publication process (like
| requiring code for example, or as you suggest changing the
| important metrics), but publications really are just a
| proxy (and prerequisite) for the grant application process.
| You can change around the publication process all you want,
| but nothing will improve unless you address the issue of
| grants, because that's where the money is.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| But the question is, can you make grants more dependent
| on actual scientific breakthroughs rather than
| publication spam?
| mirker wrote:
| Right. Listing 10 papers with "ok" impact should be
| viewed as 10 "bad" papers and not 10 "good" papers.
|
| It's extremely unlikely that a 50 page CV is
| demonstrating real value throughout. It's the academic
| equivalent of putting 20 Javascript frameworks on your
| Resume because you used them one time.
| rvba wrote:
| People dont call it the way it should be called: "gain of
| function" is basically biological weapon research.
|
| You make a new disease and (supposedly) try to find a treatment
| for it. Yet somehow we dont hear about new vaccines or drugs
| found in those labs.
|
| Since research on biological weapons is banned by conventions -
| bad actors try to overcome this by using non military labs.
| Russia had Biopreparat who tested multiple viruses and bacteria
| and then made warheads to deliver them (long after it was
| banned). USA's Reston "accident" with monkeys also looks like
| reaserch on ebola. China makes "gain of function" in Wuhan,
| sometimes 300 meters from the wet market testrd as place of
| origin of the COVID19 virus.
|
| What is gained here? Only military can gain something.
|
| Those scientists are enemies od humanity - making biological
| weapons, but nobody will do anything about that. Because
| supposedly this research can lead to new drugs. Well... where are
| those new drugs or vaccines? China, Russia and probably USA have
| those labs - a lot of money is spent, yet all real vaccines and
| drugs come from private labs. Not military.
|
| You can read Ken Alibek's book on his work as one of the heads of
| Russian biological weapons program (hidden as normal research):
| the guy got infected with a militarized strain of tularemia - and
| instead of reporting it and going yo quarantaine, he just took
| some antibiotics and called in sick. The negligence of someone
| who knows about bio weapons was astounding. You cannot rule out
| that same did not happen in China. In fact the press points to
| it: gain of funcion done in BSL2 labs.
|
| Not to mention that USA reasearchers are on China's payroll, what
| looks like plain treason.
| [deleted]
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The Science Game is a natural result of the marketisation of
| science. (It's not the only factor of course.)
| phreeza wrote:
| Others would argue it's kind of the opposite, funding of
| science by risk-averse and bureaucratic government agencies.
| derbOac wrote:
| It's really both. At least some of the marketing hype, maybe
| most of the hype, in the scientific community tends to
| coalesce around ideas that are obvious already, or that are
| on everyone's minds, or are appealing for very risk-averse
| reasons (something that allows one to churn out papers). The
| funding is risk averse along these same lines, in that it
| tends to follow slightly dated hype.
| rook166 wrote:
| > If you ask a gain-of-function proponent, they will say that by
| creating viruses that might emerge in nature, you get to
| understand zoonotic jumps from animals to humans better and
| possibly prevent them. Specifically, you get a head-start on
| developing vaccines for them. This possibility of curing future
| diseases might be true in some cases. But Pfizer's COVID-19
| vaccine was developed in a few hours back in January 2020.
|
| I've been wondering about this for the last few months, I feel
| like this "better prepare for future viruses" argument is
| substantially weaker now -- coronaviruses were a well-known group
| of viruses, there was already research directed at gain-of-
| function work for this family of viruses, and yet as far as I'm
| aware the mRNA vaccines that were developed derived no benefit
| from any of that research. So whether or not the virus came from
| a lab, why should we fund this kind of work since it seems not to
| be very useful?
| greazy wrote:
| There's more to GoF research than developing vaccines.
| Sometimes its trying to understand host virus interaction,
| virus evolution, zoonotic events. The list goes on. The
| majority of primary research is not at all interested in
| vaccine development.
|
| For coronaviruses they're a huge family of viruses. Sometimes
| it's not transferable between species
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The argument the post is presenting seems like it could be a
| straw man. Gain-of-function research would surely be useful to
| things other than vaccines, which might even be more important
| than vaccines? For example, figuring out in what conditions
| viruses jump hosts and therefore how to reduce the likelihood
| of new epidemics.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why wouldn't Gain-of-Function be helpful for research on
| oncolytic viruses (viruses that target cancer cells)?
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| It's a tangent on the example given, but the bigger question is:
| Does the origin of SARS-CoV-2 really matter at this point? I
| think it's moot and the lab speculation trope comes across as an
| agenda-driven conspiracy theory.
|
| We can reduce our risks by having strict international
| conventions on pathogen labs and engineering, eliminating high-
| density meat agriculture, and reducing overuse of
| antibiotics/antimycotics/antivirals. Pragmatically, human
| pathogens should be treated with the same care as nuclear weapons
| as a matter of risk-management.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It matters politically. There is a reason both US and China did
| what they did in terms of messaging.
|
| And it does not make sense until you recognize potential
| political fallout from it.
|
| How would it affect your opinion if covid19 gain of function
| research was funded by US?
|
| How would it affect your opinion if it there is an actual proof
| of China developing this virus?
|
| Both have their ramifications and they are not even mutually
| exclusive.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Political concerns are immaterial to the issue of global
| pandemic mitigation, preparedness, and response
| planning/coordination.
| jollybean wrote:
| Political Concerns are inseparable from those things.
|
| Judicial Concerns matter as well, and we don't just ignore
| the manslaughter of 10's of millions of people because of
| populist concerns over xenophobia.
|
| If this were XYZ Corp. USA, and they killed 1 million
| Americans due to their lab accident - all of you (edit:
| 'all of us') would be screaming for life-sentences for the
| executives and a Trillion in damages for the victims, their
| families, and probably for a 'total overhaul' of relevant
| structures. And that wouldn't be political.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Eh. I would like to believe it, but pragmatist in me knows
| it is not true. I will add that willingly ignoring this
| facet is doing a disservice to pandemic handling. It simply
| cannot exist without political will and capital.
| anamax wrote:
| > Does the origin of SARS-CoV-2 really matter at this point?
|
| Matter for what?
|
| The origin was extremely important as long as all the good
| people agreed that said origin had nothing to do with the Wuhan
| lab.
|
| It's curious that the origin is not important now that said
| good people are saying that the Wuhan lab might be the origin.
|
| It's almost like the importance of the origin depends on what
| the origin is.
| throw737858 wrote:
| It matters a lot, what if this type of pandemic happens every
| 10 years? How difficult it would be to create similar virus?
|
| Also I sacrificed two years of my life. I think I deserve an
| answer.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Does the origin of SARS-CoV-2 really matter at this point?
|
| I hear this question so often I'm beginning to get upset.
|
| Yes, it absolutely 100% matters for the same reason it matters
| that we learn about anything. Why would we ever want to
| restrict our knowledge and be willfully ignorant? At this point
| I just assume the only reason is political. And when has that
| ever been a good thing for humanity or history?
|
| For all we know China is purposefully manufacturing viruses as
| weapons (in fact there is already some evidence of this
| happening), and you think it doesn't matter?
|
| Honestly none of the anti-China propaganda ever really seemed
| to do anything for me, but nothing has made me more leery of
| China than the wall of "we don't really need to know where
| covid came from" comments I see on the internet. I don't know
| or care if the person I am replying to is a shill, but I have
| never seen such a strong front defending ignorance before in my
| life.
|
| JFC everything gets flagged now instead of anyone having a
| discussion. I'm directly responding to part of the comment
| which I believe to already be political, so I'm just trying to
| continue the conversation that OP started. Maybe if most
| comments suggesting we should explore this issue weren't so
| quickly flagged on HN it would make me more receptive to the
| idea this isn't an organized political front.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| _> The only consensus is no consensus. We may never know._
|
| Well that's refreshing. Of course, the preceding paragraph gives
| a lot of strong evidence _for_ a lab link.
|
| _> Baseless conspiracy theories will run wild, like the American
| government did it on purpose... or that the Chinese government
| released it on their own citizens. These aren't true._
|
| And here again we fall into the "things I don't like can't
| possibly be true" trap, which is just as ridiculous as the wild-
| eye'd absolutist conspiracy theory position. Consider: There were
| military games in Wuhan just before the outbreak.[1] Apparently
| intelligence knew about the coronavirus as early as November[2].
| Iran's senior leadership was hit very hard by the virus[3].
|
| Do these facts prove that the virus was intentionally released?
| Of course not. But we have to at least consider the possibility.
| If it was intentionally released, does that mean the US or China
| did it? Of course not. It could have been a rogue group within
| either of those two countries, another country entirely (trying
| to stir up tensions?), or a non-governmental group.
|
| As the author noted previously: we may never know.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Military_World_Games
|
| [2] - https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/intelligence-report-
| warned-c...
|
| [3] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-irans-leaders-contract-
| coron...
| erikhoel wrote:
| Author here. Happy to be listening in on some of the thoughts of
| HN. If you have a specific question or thought feel free to AMA.
| toomim wrote:
| What path in life led you to write articles like this? If you
| are still a practicing scientist, do you fear any repercussions
| to speaking against the community like this?
| jollybean wrote:
| Do you think your thesis would be controversial within the
| Scientific Community, at least if discussions were to be had in
| public?
|
| Does the Scientific community have enough self-awareness about
| this to do something about it, and are calls for 'creating new
| viruses' being actively made and addressed?
| erikhoel wrote:
| I actually think most working scientists agree about The
| Science Game. Almost everyone thinks of things this way in
| their darker moments, or talks among other scientists like
| that, although it is a bit of an "open secret." For gain-of-
| function research in particular, I don't imagine it will
| survive this news cycle. It has been banned for periods of
| time before (I believe last ban ended in 2017) and there's
| almost no way it doesn't get and likely stay banned, at least
| in the USA.
| walterbell wrote:
| Virus and therapeutics researchers, for future history books:
| Ron Fouchier, Netherlands Yoshihiro Kawaoka, Japan
| Alexander Kagansky, Russia (died 2020) Bing Liu, USA (died
| 2020) Frank Plummer, Canada (died 2019) Gita Ramjee,
| South Africa (died 2020)
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Is this a conspiracy theory dogwhistle, or supposition of
| uncoordinated acts of stochastic assassination?
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