Here's an interesting development - a now sacked former senior journalist at the New York Times, Donald McNeil Jr, has stated that the Proximal Origin gang misled him:
Hi Jim, Thanks for the citing my comment. (I am a he not a her. In England, where I was born, "Robin", as in "Hood", is a reasonably common name for boys and for some girls, perhaps with a 'y'.) I have not had time to read the drafts of the proximal origin article, but I am sure it would be interesting to do so.
I think this is based on the Slack and email transcripts, rather than the PDF with the sequence of drafts which led to the final article.
The Proximal Origin article is surely the most consequential of fraudulent scientific articles in living memory. The fact that its statements and conclusions are incorrect is not the problem. It is fraudulent for both of these reasons:
1 - The formally listed authors did not declare all their conflicts of interest and all the other people who influenced how they wrote the final article.
2- They did not formally disclose all the people who actually had a direct hand in writing the drafts and the final article.
Either of these would be grounds for retracting the article, even it if was about some inconsequential minutiae of some highly theoretical and speculative aspect of string theory (which probably does not even represent Nature).
The profoundly serious impact of this fraudulent article is due to its wrong conclusions being very widely accepted within scientific fields. This is due to the article being the work of people who are genuinely expert in the subject matter, because it passed peer-review and because it is very widely cited. This impact is enormous for several reasons, including:
1 - It detracts from the proper pursuit of the truth about the origins of the virus.
2 - It portrays itself as properly accounting for the arguments at the time which favour a lab-escape hypothesis, when in fact it does not.
3 - It downplays the risks of GoF research.
4 - It increases the demand for GoF work, as part of broader viral research, because it portrays this, the most serious of the three recent coronavirus pandemics as being of zoonotic origins as the first two - SARS and MERS. In fact, SARS-CoV-2 and millions of deaths occurred precisely because of GoF research which was funded, accepted and encouraged because of the risks of further pandemics arising from zoonotic transfer.
This whole debacle - the creation of SARS-CoV-2 in GoF research and now four years of coverups by all governments (particularly the Chinese and United States governments - is part of a larger problem in which governments, experts (including many doctors, immunologists, virologists, vaccinologists etc.) work together with academic publishers and the mainstream media in ways which are contrary to all proper scientific and moral principles, with outcomes which harm and kill millions of people.
It is a debacle but we are all learning how the scientific sausage is made. But truth eventually wins out. Impressive list of DYOR links. Didn't know about this one:
Here's an interesting development - a now sacked former senior journalist at the New York Times, Donald McNeil Jr, has stated that the Proximal Origin gang misled him:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/03/26/new-york-times-donald-mcneil-wuhan-lab-leak-theory/
Hi Jim, Thanks for the citing my comment. (I am a he not a her. In England, where I was born, "Robin", as in "Hood", is a reasonably common name for boys and for some girls, perhaps with a 'y'.) I have not had time to read the drafts of the proximal origin article, but I am sure it would be interesting to do so.
Apologies Mr Whittle. Here is a good summary of the changes.
https://x.com/SteveBigpond/status/1770299049683640415?s=20
Thanks! A revised and somewhat more detailed version of this, on 2023-07-26, is at: https://twitter.com/RAEMKA1/status/1683968370482241538 I have a copy at my page of resources regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/07-origins/ .
I think this is based on the Slack and email transcripts, rather than the PDF with the sequence of drafts which led to the final article.
The Proximal Origin article is surely the most consequential of fraudulent scientific articles in living memory. The fact that its statements and conclusions are incorrect is not the problem. It is fraudulent for both of these reasons:
1 - The formally listed authors did not declare all their conflicts of interest and all the other people who influenced how they wrote the final article.
2- They did not formally disclose all the people who actually had a direct hand in writing the drafts and the final article.
Either of these would be grounds for retracting the article, even it if was about some inconsequential minutiae of some highly theoretical and speculative aspect of string theory (which probably does not even represent Nature).
The profoundly serious impact of this fraudulent article is due to its wrong conclusions being very widely accepted within scientific fields. This is due to the article being the work of people who are genuinely expert in the subject matter, because it passed peer-review and because it is very widely cited. This impact is enormous for several reasons, including:
1 - It detracts from the proper pursuit of the truth about the origins of the virus.
2 - It portrays itself as properly accounting for the arguments at the time which favour a lab-escape hypothesis, when in fact it does not.
3 - It downplays the risks of GoF research.
4 - It increases the demand for GoF work, as part of broader viral research, because it portrays this, the most serious of the three recent coronavirus pandemics as being of zoonotic origins as the first two - SARS and MERS. In fact, SARS-CoV-2 and millions of deaths occurred precisely because of GoF research which was funded, accepted and encouraged because of the risks of further pandemics arising from zoonotic transfer.
This whole debacle - the creation of SARS-CoV-2 in GoF research and now four years of coverups by all governments (particularly the Chinese and United States governments - is part of a larger problem in which governments, experts (including many doctors, immunologists, virologists, vaccinologists etc.) work together with academic publishers and the mainstream media in ways which are contrary to all proper scientific and moral principles, with outcomes which harm and kill millions of people.
It is a debacle but we are all learning how the scientific sausage is made. But truth eventually wins out. Impressive list of DYOR links. Didn't know about this one:
https://vitamindstopscovid.info/07-origins/2023.07.11-SSCP-Interim-Staff-Report-Re.-Proximal-Origin_FINAL.pdf