My impression is different. If what they say does reproduce, then to me this would look likely that the pandemic has been the result of research which has been partially reproducing this particular published 2008 work.
In any case, this would need to be publicly discussed, not hidden under covers (I know some details of how decisions whether to accept this for publication have been made in some of the cases and it has never been about the quality of the paper, when it has been explicitly discussed it has always been about possible repercussions for a journal in question and for its editors (and when it has not been discussed, it has always been a technicality in the style of “in this particular case it looks like the venue profile is not a fit for this text”, even if the venue has published on similar topics)).
To summarize the claim:
this is the best match among all sequences ever submitted before the pandemic,
and the critical region match is very high,
and the critical region match is not high for any other sequences for which the overall match is approaching this one.
So, the claim is not just about this being the best match among all sequences ever submitted before the pandemic, it’s quite a bit more than that.
It is rather obvious that Covid is not derived directly from this virus (the difference is too big), but it does look to me and to many other readers of this preprint, although not to everyone, that it’s likely that people who have synthesized the original Covid have been looking at the published 2008 sequence while doing their work.
All that is conditional on the claim actually reproducing (which is why it is very annoying that the database admins has made it more difficult to try to reproduce it, either deliberately or accidentally).
There is enough here to discuss publicly, I think (and yes, enough room to disagree about the interpretation of the findings).
Why are you using vague terms like “very high” instead of being specific about the numbers you consider to be “very high”? It would be much easier to follow your claim if you would be more specifc.
It is rather obvious that Covid is not derived directly from this virus (the difference is too big), but it does look to me and to many other readers of this preprint, although not to everyone, that it’s likely that people who have synthesized the original Covid have been looking at the published 2008 sequence while doing their work.
Why? How do you expect that synthezing process to look like? What motivation do you imagine for it as a research project?
Why would they synthezise the whole genome instead of just taking one viruses they had in their lab and insert the mutations they want to study? Inserting specific mutations is much easier than synthesizing the whole thing.
Why are you using vague terms like “very high” instead of being specific about the numbers you consider to be “very high”?
It’s a visual illustration, no? Visually this looks rather strong (Figures 1 and 2 on pages 16-17).
I don’t think they had the virus. They had what’s was published, not the materials.
And I do think that China might have enough research manpower to just routinely reproduce all published findings of this kind of experiments if they want to (I don’t know if they actually do that; I would not be too surprised if they do that as a routine though; this depends on what are their actual policies; I have no means to investigate that).
(So, I would presume they would have reproduced it earlier, and were using the results of that reproduction for various things as needed without thinking much, and one of those subsequent things leaked.)
It’s a visual illustration, no? Visually this looks rather strong (Figures 1 and 2 on pages 16-17).
The visual match can quite easily show you that one match is stronger than another but they don’t tell you how good a match in question actually happens to be. There are ways to measure whether something is a good match with numbers.
And I do think that China might have enough research manpower to just routinely reproduce all published findings of this kind of experiments if they want to (I don’t know if they actually do that; I would not be too surprised if they do that as a routine though; this depends on what are their actual policies; I have no means to investigate that).
The idea that a country would just spend that much research capital and do that without it leaving any trace in their research publications and other public communication seems farfetched.
The visual match can quite easily show you that one match is stronger than another but they don’t tell you how good a match in question actually happens to be. There are ways to measure whether something is a good match with numbers.
Yes, an independent reproduction would also evaluate if their methodology is actually good in this sense (I can imagine all kinds of methodological “underwater stones”).
I did not mean to give an impression that I had made up my mind about the outcome of this potential further exploration. I had made up my mind that it’s worth further exploration, but I would not predict the results. Unfortunately, it is not all that easy to arrange (we do know that neutral prior here is important, rather than someone heavily leaning towards one side doing it, because there is always room for pushing results towards this or that direction; for example, I’ve spent too much “quality time” with this paper to be considered a fully neutral person, although I would certainly make an effort to avoid the bias if I were to do this work; then one might be unsure how safe it would be to publish on this, even today, and so on).
The idea that a country would just spend that much research capital and do that without it leaving any trace in their research publications and other public communication seems farfetched.
They would report to the government (if the order to reproduce things comes from the government). The government would decide what to make public and what to keep for more restricted use. It’s very natural (especially if the subject is potentially “dual-use”, or, at least, is considered relevant to national defense).
My impression is different. If what they say does reproduce, then to me this would look likely that the pandemic has been the result of research which has been partially reproducing this particular published 2008 work.
In any case, this would need to be publicly discussed, not hidden under covers (I know some details of how decisions whether to accept this for publication have been made in some of the cases and it has never been about the quality of the paper, when it has been explicitly discussed it has always been about possible repercussions for a journal in question and for its editors (and when it has not been discussed, it has always been a technicality in the style of “in this particular case it looks like the venue profile is not a fit for this text”, even if the venue has published on similar topics)).
To summarize the claim:
this is the best match among all sequences ever submitted before the pandemic,
and the critical region match is very high,
and the critical region match is not high for any other sequences for which the overall match is approaching this one.
So, the claim is not just about this being the best match among all sequences ever submitted before the pandemic, it’s quite a bit more than that.
It is rather obvious that Covid is not derived directly from this virus (the difference is too big), but it does look to me and to many other readers of this preprint, although not to everyone, that it’s likely that people who have synthesized the original Covid have been looking at the published 2008 sequence while doing their work.
All that is conditional on the claim actually reproducing (which is why it is very annoying that the database admins has made it more difficult to try to reproduce it, either deliberately or accidentally).
There is enough here to discuss publicly, I think (and yes, enough room to disagree about the interpretation of the findings).
Why are you using vague terms like “very high” instead of being specific about the numbers you consider to be “very high”? It would be much easier to follow your claim if you would be more specifc.
Why? How do you expect that synthezing process to look like? What motivation do you imagine for it as a research project?
Why would they synthezise the whole genome instead of just taking one viruses they had in their lab and insert the mutations they want to study? Inserting specific mutations is much easier than synthesizing the whole thing.
It’s a visual illustration, no? Visually this looks rather strong (Figures 1 and 2 on pages 16-17).
I don’t think they had the virus. They had what’s was published, not the materials.
And I do think that China might have enough research manpower to just routinely reproduce all published findings of this kind of experiments if they want to (I don’t know if they actually do that; I would not be too surprised if they do that as a routine though; this depends on what are their actual policies; I have no means to investigate that).
(So, I would presume they would have reproduced it earlier, and were using the results of that reproduction for various things as needed without thinking much, and one of those subsequent things leaked.)
The visual match can quite easily show you that one match is stronger than another but they don’t tell you how good a match in question actually happens to be. There are ways to measure whether something is a good match with numbers.
The idea that a country would just spend that much research capital and do that without it leaving any trace in their research publications and other public communication seems farfetched.
Yes, an independent reproduction would also evaluate if their methodology is actually good in this sense (I can imagine all kinds of methodological “underwater stones”).
I did not mean to give an impression that I had made up my mind about the outcome of this potential further exploration. I had made up my mind that it’s worth further exploration, but I would not predict the results. Unfortunately, it is not all that easy to arrange (we do know that neutral prior here is important, rather than someone heavily leaning towards one side doing it, because there is always room for pushing results towards this or that direction; for example, I’ve spent too much “quality time” with this paper to be considered a fully neutral person, although I would certainly make an effort to avoid the bias if I were to do this work; then one might be unsure how safe it would be to publish on this, even today, and so on).
They would report to the government (if the order to reproduce things comes from the government). The government would decide what to make public and what to keep for more restricted use. It’s very natural (especially if the subject is potentially “dual-use”, or, at least, is considered relevant to national defense).