Following up on science stories that have been badly handled by the media.
UFOs
I am tempted to refer to this phenomenon as “flying saucers” to emphasize the nonsense that surrounds it. The report was released last week and seems to have been drowned out by Critical Race Theory and other shiny objects thrown out to distract from real issues.
Kelsey Atherton comprehensively explains why, no matter what UFOs may be, the military will never tell us everything they know. Everything they know would inform adversaries of the capabilities of military sensors and other things we’d rather they not know.
Here’s another view of the reporting on UFOs and other things, and I’m quoted.
Leaky Labs
The argument that on the way from animals to humans, the SARS-CoV-2 virus stayed in a laboratory in Wuhan is still around, but it looks to me like the largely evidence-free argument is slowing down as solid articles debunk the fantasies.
In either case, a natural source of the virus needs to be found, and that hasn’t happened yet, although close relatives have been. Investigations like this for other diseases have taken years, so don’t expect much from the 90-day intelligence assessment President Biden requested. The intelligence community is poorly suited to such an assessment anyway.
Lindsay Beyerstein has provided intelligent commentary on Twitter and has now published two articles summarizing what she has learned by actually interviewing virologists and bat biologists, unlike most of the proponents of laboratory escape. This is a comprehensive article, summarizing what is known and not. This (paywall) is more specifically about bats as possible carriers of the virus and takes a swipe at Zeynep Tufekci’s long New York Times guest essay, which has multiple problems.
Tufekci has a devoted following on social media who are quick to attack critics, so Beyerstein is taking a chance with that second article. I think another article criticizing that guest essay may be coming out soon. Seems like attacking the person indicates you know you’ve got a weak argument.
I’ve mentioned Justin Ling’s article before. With Beyerstein’s article, or either, you have a good basis for understanding the issues.
Tom Levenson considers the journalistic aspect of writing on the source of SARS-CoV-2.
Not about virus origins, but this guest essay in the New York Times deserves mention. There’s a lot of panicky writing about the delta variant, but it shares the evidence-free approach that the lab-leakers use. There are many reasons that one variant might replace another that DO NOT mean that the variant is more transmissible or more dangerous. Delta is certainly replacing other variants, but the evidence for other claims about it is slim to none. Conclusion? Vaccination, masks, social distancing, and other precautions are the most effective protection.
Directed-Energy Microwave Weapons
This topic seems to have been inundated along with UFOs, but here’s my article pointing out that we don’t know how microwaves cause the damage they are blamed for nor how such a weapon might look.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
Baud
On the lab leak, NBC was pushing a story about “ties” between a researcher at the Wugam lab and the Chinese military. It was pretty shoddy journalism. The ghost of William Randolph Hearst would have been proud.
Ken
So UFOs are using directed-energy microwave weapons to breach bio-research labs?
(Sorry, I’m busy today so can only read the headlines.)
Cameron
@Ken: No, I’m pretty sure Jewish UFOs are using space lasers.
Martin
The Jews are indeed very clever with their space lasers
(fucking Cameron stealing my joke! Can you read minds? Confess!)
Elizabelle
I’m serious. Could we have a light thread? The Supreme Court decisions were horrifying, and this one takes too much brainpower.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The whole problem with determining the virus’ origin is the CCP knee jerk response to things like this is to cover up and misdirect since it shows the Communist party isn’t all powerful. The CCP can’t shoot the virus in the head or build a dam to control it so they will want to pretend it never happen.
germy
Baud
Jesus, the antisemitism in this thread…
Martin
@Baud: Hey, don’t look for Jesus to help you out on this. He was also a Jew.
Wait, what if Jesus is the space laser – up there in the firmament, blasting poor Lyttel, BC with his eye lasers like Cyclops or Homelander.
Ken
I just felt a great disturbance, as if thousands of archaeologists had cried out in horror.
Cameron
@Martin: Fucking space lasers. How do they work?
Benw
@Baud: I have several good friends that are Jewish UFO space lasers…
Cheryl Rofer
@Elizabelle: Sorry, this was my light post for the day, to lighten my load of tabs. I’ve got a couple of heavier ones in preparation.
Maybe one of the other FPs has something light!
Elizabelle
@Cheryl Rofer: Quite OK.
I heard from O Felix Culpa. She is recuperating nicely. At home.
Spanky
Since the topic is Science and Technology, I’ll just mention that my doctor’s office sent out an email today about their holiday hours, and led off with a reminder that their masking policy hasn’t changed. Everybody is still required to wear a mask. Makes me feel justified for keeping up with the masking when I go in stores.
Spanky
@Elizabelle: Yay! I hate unexplained pain that sends you to the ER. Hell, I hate easily explained pain (back spasms) that send you to the ER.
Mart
“Vaccination, masks, social distancing, and other precautions are the most effective protection.” Was at a rural hospital for work. Walked in a fairly crowded office with no masks. One of my hosts said I could take my mask off if vaccinated. I said I am vaccinated, but lied and said my company requires me to keep my mask on. (I wear two, a vented N95, with a cloth mask on top. Also safety goggles with reading cheater built in.) Other host said he was not vaccinated, but OK as he already had it. I gave him a dirty look and he sheepishly hooked his mask on. No maintenance workers or contractors had any protection or distancing. On the patient floors about the only masks being worn were around their necks. In a freaking hospital. Hope I am wrong, but fear for a lot more severe illness and death, especially in the unvaccinated rural ‘murica.
Elizabelle
@Spanky: Yes! Scary! All went well.
Matt McIrvin
I am really disappointed in Zeynep Tufekci; I thought she was doing really good work early in the pandemic and she seems to have gone off the rails.
I thought it was well-established that Delta had a much higher R0 value in unvaccinated populations–this seems to be taken as granted in mainstream media articles. But I recognize there are a lot of variables here.
Matt McIrvin
…and UFOs are another subject where if you express any great skepticism on social media, you will be jumped on by a lot of very angry people, so many are wary.
Rodger
I am a virologist/vaccinologist and I spent most of the last year plus working on one of the COVID-19 vaccines.
I know plenty of reputable scientists, including myself, who are far less confident on the question of whether it was a lab leak or an environmental transmission. I’m about 50/50 on the question and trending more toward lab leak. I would say that is by far the most prevalent opinion among people who actually do the work. I suspect the virus was collected in the wild and came home with a sloppy lab tech.
It’s unfortunate that the whole thing has become political. I suspect Democrats (I am one) would be more accepting of a lab leak hypothesis if it hadn’t been advanced by Trump and co.
In the end it doesn’t matter to me whether it was a lab leak or if COVID arrived via a less direct route. If it was a lab leak, it does point out the need for much more stringent procedures in handling the virus, but that’s about it. The one thing people overlook is that breaches of safety regulations in Chinese laboratories have led to localized outbreaks of coronavirus in the past, and they almost certainly will again.
trollhattan
Holy cow, Mark Cavendish!
(Tour de France fun. Cav–The Manx Missile [UFO tie in]–today won his second sprint stage after not having won a stage for five years. He’s now behind only Eddy Merckx with the most Tour wins ever. Pretty good for somebody presumably retired.)
germy
I will be replacing Meghan McCain on The View.
trollhattan
@Matt McIrvin:
In 2021 what, a third of the world’s population? carries a camera. I figure if there are saucers, saucer people and bigfoot (feet?) we should be getting pics pretty often.
If there’s a special category that never descend lower than 50k feet altitude, then we’ll have to subcontract to the military. Everybody’s military, not just the US.
trollhattan
@germy:
Hey now, was your father a P.O.W.?
germy
@trollhattan:
He actually was. WWII.
That’s my only qualification.
trollhattan
@germy:
You get my vote then. How do you look in heels?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump and co. argument is it was made in a lab as a bioweapon. As one my conservative friends put it, the problem with this stuff is it’s about trying to find someone to punish rather then trying to figure out how to keep it from happening again.
trollhattan
Okay, so the blog didn’t work out but we have a New Secret Weapon for Winning.
Note, however, “quietly launched.” When does Trump ever do anything quietly?
Next week, “Macebook” co-launched with the Proud Boys.
Cheryl Rofer
@Rodger:
I suggest you read Beyerstein’s big article on this. I’ve worked with high containment for plutonium, and, while there are differences from biological containment, I find her arguments much more plausible and better supported than those that are being put forth for lab escape.
I agree, though, that whatever the circumstances of the jump, it matters little in practice.
germy
@trollhattan:
“Get ‘er done” ?
I thought Parscale was the web guy, not Miller.
Baud
@trollhattan:
GETTR?
Trump is one of the most vile people ever, but even he’s better at marketing than that.
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The problem with the “lab-leak hypothesis” is that it isn’t what it is; in the political-commentary ecosystem, it’s not literally about whether COVID escaped from a lab, it’s some unholy combination of “COVID is a Chinese biological weapon”, “Trump did nothing wrong”, “Anthony Fauci is a traitor” and “the liberal media are feeding you lies”. And then giving it any oxygen feeds all of those things too.
It seems like a lot of the mainstream reporting on it is meta-stories: not “how likely is it that COVID escaped from a lab?” but “are the liberal media unfairly biased against the story that COVID escaped from a lab?” and then you can do a lot of hand-wringing without any substantive research at all.
germy
germy
Good point:
Spanky
@germy:
… their money.
catclub
Back and forth, in and out.
catclub
Speaking of which, In Michael Lewis’s book Premonition:
Boas were dying mysteriously, virus dna lab gets involved, finds virus similar to ebola.
Pythons (old world) were NOT dying mysteriously. Immune to the virus,
Pythons may be a wild reservoir for ebola.
Cameron
@trollhattan: GETTR? These nincompoops can’t even spell GUTTER right.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Matt McIrvin: Not to mention, even the modified “lab accident” version still doesn’t answer were the virus came from, just how it ended up in Wuhan in 2019.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Grifting
Electronically
To
The
Rubes
.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The key thing is that the “lab leak” is a motte-and-bailey type argument. The people pushing it in an attempt to exonerate Trump are doing so because they want people to think it was an engineered virus rather than a naturally occurring one*. But they won’t come right out and say this in a public discussion because they want to be able to retreat and say they’re only talking about an accidental release of a virus under study, or maybe undergoing gain of function research.
*Why allowing a Chinese bioweapon to kill Americans is supposed to be any better than allowing a naturally occurring virus to kill them is never examined very carefully.
Cheryl Rofer
@Roger Moore: Nor is the fact that the Chinese had no vaccine against the virus.
In fact, if it was a lab leak (which I think is on the lower end of probability), it illustrates precisely the dangers of bioweapons.
Cheryl Rofer
Also why you don’t want a highly contagious virus as your bioweapon, but something more controllable so that it can be directed, like anthrax.
TriassicSands
Oh, Cheryl, who needs facts and evidence when we have opinions?
I was pleased to see Beyerstein mentioned our failed attempts to find the source of Ebola, after 40 years of searching. But if 40 years weren’t enough for Ebola, surely Biden’s 90 days should be more than sufficient to nail down SARS-CoV-2.
Nasruddin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The only way the current “lab leak” speculation makes sense to me, is as a stalking horse for a “lab tweak” conspiracy theory. Otherwise, it tells me nothing useful – useful would be what bat species, what the virus looked like while it was confined to the animal, where exactly it came from, &c.
A lab leak speculation that did something useful like identify a real patient 0 (or earlier one), that could be tied as a poster says to a trip by a lab employee or contractor, something. But that doesn’t seem to be where the juice is – it’s all about gain of function, nefarious Chinese scientists, Chinese government interference, conspiracies with tainted western scientists & labs & other stuff like that.
Ruckus
@Mart:
How can those murcans prove they are strong, tough, unbeatable if they mask up? Only weak non patriots wear masks!
I don’t like to see people die, but if they weren’t taking others with them it wouldn’t bother me near as much. The point is that while this disease is potent enough to kill and maim people, it is rather easy to avoid, just mask up. Masks are now available at very reasonable prices, yes they are a pain, but far less pain than getting this disease and dying a protracted, painful, death. Liberals (and non lunatic less than liberals) outnumber the insane. We likely can’t win elections in every place but we can win enough. But we have to be alive and mentally functional to govern reasonably. My point is, let them go maskless, they will die off or learn.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
It’s funny. We have determined that the best way to explore planets is to use relatively small unmanned rovers and probes, and yet UFOs in popular imagination continues to be big flying saucers filled with bug eyed aliens.
I can imagine miniature, barely detectable devices being deployed on likely inhabited planets to reduce risk of detection.
Or, there just ain’t no alien visitors.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
I think the lack of a vaccine and the virus not being well designed as a bioweapon could be explained away as a result of it being under development. See, they were still only partway through weaponizing it, and they knew they would have to make enough more changes that any vaccine against it would be obsolete before it was ready, so they hadn’t started developing one yet. There’s no similarly facile explanation for why Trump’s malfeasance on the virus is somehow more acceptable if it was a Chinese weapon.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: If there are any objects of extraterrestrial intelligent manufacture in our solar system, they are almost certainly machines of some sort not carrying a crew, at least not physically. Maybe self-reproducing machines, on the basis of all the old speculation about how you could scout the whole galaxy with those at sublight speeds.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I am so confused. So Trumpoligists are saying that the virus was a hoax engineered in Chinese labs.
Killed a whole lotta other people, including Chinese people. Not very smart for a supposedly leaked bio-weapon.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Pics of flying saucers? I’ve got a picture of an alien! He’s green, 14 feet tall, and he’s holding up a Dunkin’ Donuts sign in Roswell, New Mexico.
TriassicSands
Excuse me, but my next door neighbor (when I was a kid) explained that, while Jesus was born a Jew, he converted to Catholicism while on the cross. So, not a Jew.
In true 2021 fashion, the non-existence of the Catholic religion was not a problem for my neighbor.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, self-reproducing machines would be a smart way to deal with vast distances and myriad planets. And customizations to account for variables.
I wonder whether there is some sci fi story out there with alien first contact being achieved via an intergalactic Zoom call.
Fair Economist
There’s a nontrivial chance the real source for COVID won’t be found, because it has been destroyed. For example, if it was generated in a pangolin farm, that farm is probably long gone as the owners have gone to ground.
Remember it almost certainly wasn’t a bat virus. It *descends* from a bat virus, but the positive selection on the spike protein, a weird new protein, and some loss of infectiousness in bats indicates it’s been in a different host for years, or possibly even decades.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Expecting Trumpists to be intellectually consistent is a losing fight. They choose what to believe based on whether it makes Trump look good, not whether it makes sense in conjunction with their other beliefs. It’s totally possible for them to believe that the virus is a hoax, that it’s a Chinese bioweapon, and that there’s no need to get vaccinated.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: The other half of it is an attempt to shift blame for COVID to Anthony Fauci, for being involved in funding the coronavirus research that supposedly caused the pandemic. Fauci is a demon of these people so it fits.
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Creating enemies and assigning blame is a typical Trump move.
Not thinking about prevention of future occurrence is also a typical Trump move.
TriassicSands
@Roger Moore:
Oh, Roger, now you’ve convinced me it was engineered. Since the Chinese are commies, they didn’t do a very good job and let it get away from them before it was deadly enough to kill every non-Chinese person on the planet, while the 100% effective Chinese vaccine would have saved every Chinese citizen in mainland China.
No other explanation is possible!
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
It’s a Holy Trinity of stupidity.
Gravenstone
@trollhattan: To be followed with the sister site DUN?
Fair Economist
@Roger Moore: Often believing patent nonsense is part of cult membership. It may be a social analogue to the handicap principle – where carrying a detrimental cost advertises fitness, or in this case the implied benefits of group membership. The idea is that it’s signaling “membership in our group is so great it outweighs believing (or pretending to believe) this nonsense”.
Hoodie
@Fair Economist: Yeah, all Trumpists do not believe the same things, but the thing that unites them is that they’ve defined an “us” against a “them,” where “us” is centered on adulation of Trump and villainization of anyone who criticizes Trump. That makes it easier to hold this motley crew together and reconcile all these conflicting beliefs. It also necessitates not acknowledging that some of “us” believe ridiculous things. I know Trumpers who do not believe the virus is a hoax, wear masks, etc., because they don’t want to die. However, those are the ones who tend to believe in things like Chinese bioweapons or the lab leak theory, which gives them a way to maintain their Trump bona fides.
Ken
I’ve read several similar stories, but don’t remember authors or titles. There was one short story where alien messages were decoded, and they were the equivalent of Nigerian Prince spam. I think this might have been written by a scientist?
I also recall a novella where humanity had joined the galactic civilization and had been eagerly downloading from their databases. Then we were informed that there were fees, and we’d be auctioned off as slaves and/or food if we didn’t pay promptly.
Ken
Tardigrades.
Although they were better candidates before the disproof of the claim that they can extract DNA from foreign cells and incorporate it into their own genome. Between that and the ability to survive outer space, the only logical conclusion was that they were engineered by aliens as self-reproducing sampling probes.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: There are lots of stories where contact begins with a message that is instructions for constructing a machine, either malevolent or benign (including Carl Sagan’s Contact).
Then there’s the movie This Island Earth (maybe best known now for being mocked somewhat unfairly in MST3K: The Movie), in which a bunch of big-forehead aliens recruit scientists by planting mysterious ads for electronic components with capabilities beyond human technology, then seeing who is smart enough to follow their hints and construct a communication device called an “interociter”. The aliens are in a secret hideout on Earth, where they’re trying to get these scientists to help with defense against the enemies besieging their home planet. But they’re not telling the whole truth…
Torrey
The Levenson article is a fascinating example of how journalistic ways of thinking can get in the way of accurate science reporting. Wade’s response (4th paragraph from the end) to Baltimore’s recanting of an ill-considered phrase (“smoking gun”)–that “the totality of the quote” still supports his case–amounts to a defense that “there’s enough there that my story meets the standards of good journalism” rather than “my account was accurate.” Journalists are trained to go for the juicy quote, but the juicy quote is often the part of the story most likely to mislead.
Rodger
@Cheryl Rofer: The big difference is that you have instant feedback if radioactivity escapes confinement, where there is no way to detect whether you’ve aerosolized a virus while pipetting.
I worked in a lab equipped for BSL3 Biocontainment, although because it was built in an urban area it was never actually used as such. It’s pretty easy to see many, many weak points in containment in these labs. They very much rely on staff following procedure.
steve g
@Rodger:
If the tech gets the virus in the cave, or on the way home, then it is a virus jumping to a human in the wild. If the tech doesn’t get it, but spills it in the lab and someone else gets it, then it’s a lab leak. The two choices start getting closer together! What if the tech doesn’t get it, but still passes it to someone in a food stall on their way back to the lab from the cave? Which kind of leak or jump is that?
kindness
I have no problems believing intelligent life exists elsewhere and visits our planet for a look see. I don’t understand why this is an issue. The religious objections are bullshit. Look….Christians & Jewish folk start off their books saying God created heaven & earth and all the stars in the sky. That God is all powerful and everywhere. They then spend the rest of the chapter shoving the omnipotent being into a little tiny box saying they only care about Earth and it’s creatures. Utter crap right there. Anything that could assist (even if only through ‘natural’ forces & evolution) in creating life would do so everywhere it could exist. Some of those peoples are older, (hopefully) wiser and more discrete than we are. Not an issue.
nasruddin
@steve g: This is what I meant by “lab leak” not telling me much, if anything; the best case is moving closer to a patient 0. The lab can only be a missing link – the link has to chain elsewhere.
On the other hand, as stalking horse (or motte-and-bailey), it makes sense.
brantl
If the new variant is getting into more people, it would seem to me that one, or more, of the following has to be true:
The variant breeds better,
the variant hops hosts easier, or lives outside longer, or infects at a greater distance,
the vaccines don’t work as well on the variant.
This doesn’t mean it has to be more virulent, it might be less, but it might also make it more communicable, as you might be even more asymptomatic, while carrying a boatload of virus to shed.