I think Eliezer ignores how important prestige is for the Chinese. We got them to outlaw human cloning by telling them that doing it would put the Chinese academic community in a bad light.
We likely could have done the same with gain of function research. Having their first biosafety level 4 lab for the Chinese likely was mostly about prestige. Having no biosafety 4 labs while a lot of other countries had biosafety 4 labs wasn’t something that was okay for the Chinese because it suggests that they aren’t advanced enough.
I do think that it would be possible to make a deal that gives China the prestige for their scientists that they want without having to endanger everyone for it.
So to summarize: from what we know, researchers at WIV inserted a spike protein from a naturally occuring coronavirus into another coronavirus that was capable of replicating in a lab and infecting human cells. But the genome of this resulting virus seems too different from that of coronavirus for it to have been a direct ancestor of the pandemic causing coronavirus.
The Chinese took their database with the database about all the viruses that they had in their possession down in September 26 2019. In their own words they took it down because of a hacking attack during the pandemic (which suggests that starts for them somewhere in September). If we would have the database we likely would find a more related virus in it. Given that the point of creating the database in the first place was to help us in a coronavirus pandemic taking it down and not giving it to anyone is a clear sign that there’s something that would implicate them.
On the other hand, Joel Wertheim, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California San Diego, told PolitiFact that the experiments carried out in the 2017 study, despite using recombinant RNA technology, don’t meet the criteria for gain-of-function research in virology.
Basically, people outside of the virology community told them that they have to stop after exposing 75 CDC scientists to anthrax and a few weeks later other scientists finding a few vials of small pox in their freezer.
The reaction of the virology community was to redefine what gain of function research happens to be and continue endangering everyone.
It’s like Wall Street people when asked whether they do insider training saying: “According to our definition of what insider training means we didn’t”.
Overall I don’t feel like enough people are linking their sources when they make statements like “I’d give the lab leak hypothesis a probability of X%”.
Wow, this is quite the post! I’ve been looking for a post like this on LessWrong going over the lab leak hypothesis and the evidence for and against it, but I must have missed this one when you posted it.
I have to say, this looks pretty bad. I think I still have a major blindspot, which is I’ve read much more about the details of the lab leak hypothesis than I have about the natural origin hypothesis, so I still don’t feel like I can judge the relative strength of the two. That being said I think it is looking more and more likely that the virus was probably engineered while doing research and accidentally leaked from the lab.
Thanks for writing this up. I’m surprised more of this info doesn’t show up in other articles I’ve read on the origins of the pandemic.
I’m surprised more of this info doesn’t show up in other articles I’ve read on the origins of the pandemic.
I was too when I researched it. I think it’s telling us something about the amount of effort went into narrative control.
Take for example Huang Yanling, who was in the start of the pandemic called “patient zero” till someone discovered that she works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese started censoring information about her. The fact that the NIH asked the EcoHealth alliance about where Huang Yanling is suggest that the US government (that has CIA/NSA who wiretap a lot and hack people to try to get some idea what’s going on) does consider this to be an important piece of information.
Why doesn’t the name appear in the NewYorkTimes? Very odd...
It seems impossible for a simple he-said/she-said article about the questions from the NIH to EcoHealth to appear in any of the major publications.
I think Eliezer ignores how important prestige is for the Chinese. We got them to outlaw human cloning by telling them that doing it would put the Chinese academic community in a bad light.
We likely could have done the same with gain of function research. Having their first biosafety level 4 lab for the Chinese likely was mostly about prestige. Having no biosafety 4 labs while a lot of other countries had biosafety 4 labs wasn’t something that was okay for the Chinese because it suggests that they aren’t advanced enough.
I do think that it would be possible to make a deal that gives China the prestige for their scientists that they want without having to endanger everyone for it.
The Chinese took their database with the database about all the viruses that they had in their possession down in September 26 2019. In their own words they took it down because of a hacking attack during the pandemic (which suggests that starts for them somewhere in September). If we would have the database we likely would find a more related virus in it. Given that the point of creating the database in the first place was to help us in a coronavirus pandemic taking it down and not giving it to anyone is a clear sign that there’s something that would implicate them.
Basically, people outside of the virology community told them that they have to stop after exposing 75 CDC scientists to anthrax and a few weeks later other scientists finding a few vials of small pox in their freezer.
The reaction of the virology community was to redefine what gain of function research happens to be and continue endangering everyone.
It’s like Wall Street people when asked whether they do insider training saying: “According to our definition of what insider training means we didn’t”.
I have written all my sources up at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wQLXNjMKXdXXdK8kL/fauci-s-emails-and-the-lab-leak-hypothesis
Wow, this is quite the post! I’ve been looking for a post like this on LessWrong going over the lab leak hypothesis and the evidence for and against it, but I must have missed this one when you posted it.
I have to say, this looks pretty bad. I think I still have a major blindspot, which is I’ve read much more about the details of the lab leak hypothesis than I have about the natural origin hypothesis, so I still don’t feel like I can judge the relative strength of the two. That being said I think it is looking more and more likely that the virus was probably engineered while doing research and accidentally leaked from the lab.
Thanks for writing this up. I’m surprised more of this info doesn’t show up in other articles I’ve read on the origins of the pandemic.
I was too when I researched it. I think it’s telling us something about the amount of effort went into narrative control.
Take for example Huang Yanling, who was in the start of the pandemic called “patient zero” till someone discovered that she works at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese started censoring information about her. The fact that the NIH asked the EcoHealth alliance about where Huang Yanling is suggest that the US government (that has CIA/NSA who wiretap a lot and hack people to try to get some idea what’s going on) does consider this to be an important piece of information.
Why doesn’t the name appear in the NewYorkTimes? Very odd...
It seems impossible for a simple he-said/she-said article about the questions from the NIH to EcoHealth to appear in any of the major publications.