DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Scientific American

Not so much backing a candidate as rooting against another... but still significant.

... I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. When the title of your article is that you're endorsing Joe Biden, that's pretty textbook backing of a candidate.

The magazine was bought by a German company awhile ago. Does this mean Germany is meddling in our election?

It also has a new editor-in-chief as of last year, so playing to the first time in 175 years feels a little disingenuous.

Having said all that, I can't really blame them.

I still wish there was a better candidate than Biden to endorse.

I wish there was too but we got Joe so we have to go with that or risk Trump winning again.

paragraph 2. See the last line I quoted.

"The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, ..."

It was bought by a German group in 1986? Also, the editorial board that made the endorsement is American...



We shall have to search for the newspaper that has had the same editor for the last 175 years...

The person/group who pays your checks influences what you say under that person's/group's auspices. I just thought it was interesting that Scientific American has its corporate HQ in Germany.

My point was what does 175 years have to do with the endorsement? Different times, different people.

Wow, unprecedented.
Suspicious timing given the recent open publication " Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genom...Synthetic Route " by Li-Ming Yan et al.

It's a pretty devastasting blow to the theory that the virus came from nature without any human manipulation.

It also brings into question the integrity of Springer Nature, the owner of Scientific American, as it appears that they are pawns in an astroturfing campaign by the CCP.

No surprise, since China has been cranking out more PhDs than the rest of the world, Springer has been cow-towing to their demands for some time .

But surely the CCP cannot exert this much influence over journalists in Scientific American, right?
Let's see who is writing their articles on COVID-19 origins:


David Cyranoski - Nature Asia-Pacific Correspondent, Shanghai
"The Biggest Mystery: What It Will Take To Trace The Coronavirus Source"

Jane Qiu - Chinese Freelance Writer, Beijing
"How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus"


Granted, Trump is not the brightest scientific mind, but you shouldn't trust anything owned by Springer Nature either.

You are aware that Scientific American is a popular science magazine and doesn't actually have anything to do with publishing papers?

You are also aware that this group doesn't work at any research institute (university, government, or industry), and do not appear to have any degrees in biochemistry?

They appear to work for a think tank that is dedicated to freeing the Chinese people from the Chinese government.

https://rolfoundation.org/en/

That's all fine and well, but how can you possibly dispute what was said?



It's fine to attack the messenger. Often times it's shown to be valid. But yet there are times when the messengers message is accurate no matter who that messenger is.

If that had been the entire article, your initial post would have been valid. The entire second half of the article was pretty much all pro-Biden, though.

As much about how bad Trump is as backing Biden, Sure, I could have let that slide. More about Trump didn't seem accurate, especially considering the title.

I spent too much time in a field where accuracy and precision were paramount (metrology, not to be confused with meteorology) *shrug*

From Scientific American's website:



Just saying.

Ok - that's fair.

Though the idea that Springer (and the literally tens of thousands of scientists from around the world who have published on the coronavirus) are all being bribed by the Chinese government.

And the only people who have figured out the real origin of the virus - are a few non-geneticists working on an anti-Chinese government think tank.

Is a bats*** crazy conspiracy theory.

Distractions are key to their message.

Scientific American has gone political like everyone else.

Tis the season.

In times like these, science doesn't have a choice.

There are times when it is ethically indefensible to not be political.

It could just be my confirmation bias allowing me to read what I had assumed when I saw the title and then clicked the link, but I take that first part of the article at face value ("trump is bad, so that's why we say vote for the other guy"), and the fact that that's how the article opens measn something, imo.

Like with Global Warming.

Except Li-Meng Yan did work at the University of Hong Kong, and she does have an MD and PhD and worked in immunology and virology at a WHO affiliated research facility there... As far as I can tell. It's kind of hard getting information about people in China.

*Edit: here's an example of an article she helped author at the University of Hong Kong Link *

I'm not saying I buy the conclusions of the article, but China trying to suppress information doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility. They have a long history of censorship.

All I'm saying is I'd like a scientific examination of the evidence, instead of attacking the messenger.

Unfortunately, China has control of the first hand "origin" information. It's hard to examine the evidence when China isn't exactly known for being open.

Also, I think we're getting a little convoluted on which source is connected to which story. Scientific American was connected to the Biden Endorsement. I don't know that it's connected to the COVID being man-made or not direction the thread has taken.

That's the perfect way to frame it. You found "one example" at University of Hong Kong that is spreading this message. One. Can you imagine how many there are that disagree at University of Hong Kong?

The exception to the rule usually isn't the rule.

Yes.

Still turning a blind eye to the facts I see.

Doesn't fit your narrative.

Glad you admit it is political.

Global warming is science, not politics. The only people that make it political is your ilk.

So was Global Cooling.

I can imagine zero or I could imagine hundreds. What people imagine doesn't matter.

Facts matter, not the stories people tell about them.

I'm sorry that I want to see the facts. A lack of evidence doesn't prove or disprove something, especially if access to the evidence is being withheld.

If China was trying to hide something, they wouldn't be handing out the evidence.

So we don't have any evidence is your evidence. Thanks.

I think this is (probably accurate?) information about this person:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Meng_Yan

There definitely are legit people who work at the University of Hong Kong -- it's a world renowned place.



But isn't that sort of what you are doing? There are hundreds of world-renowned virologists who have said that this was not made in a lab. And you said you wouldn't trust those reports because China might be influencing them?


Here is a peer-reviewed Nature Article, again with real experts, arguing that the Coronavirus is not made in a lab:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9


Here are the people who wrote it:
https://www.scripps.edu/faculty/andersen/
https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/research/themes/disease-dynamics/andrew-rambaut
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/people/our-faculty/wil2001
https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic-staff/edward-holmes.html
https://medicine.tulane.edu/departments/...-mentor/faculty

Here is what they say:





Another scientist commenting on this study states:


http://emmahodcroft.com/



These are just some popular science articles, but they are quoting real experts:

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-lab-manmade-myth-debunked-2020-6?r=US&IR=T
https://medicine.tulane.edu/departments/...-mentor/faculty
https://www.huck.psu.edu/people/maciej-f-boni

https://www.newscientist.com/term/coronavirus-come-lab/
https://vet.osu.edu/about-us/people/shan-lu-liu


And here is Fauci - who has access to both intelligence reports and is an expert in the field, saying the same thing:

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/20...-evidence-shows

Except when we present "facts" they don't count -- because it is just people saying things?

Oh no! China must have gotten their hands on Fauci!

Here is another key study, again peer reviewed and in nature, which traces the origin of coronavirus to naturally circulating viruses that have evolved in bats since the 1970s:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4



and the scientists who wrote it:

https://www.huck.psu.edu/people/maciej-f-boni
https://rega.kuleuven.be/cev/ecv/evolutionary-and-computational-virology-publications/00036765
https://fightcovid19.hku.hk/tag/xiaowei-jiang/
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9769-1527
http://blairperry.netlify.com/
http://www.snakegenomics.org/ToddCastoe/Home.html
https://www.ed.ac.uk/edinburgh-infectious-diseases/research/themes/disease-dynamics/andrew-rambaut
https://www.gla.ac.uk/researchinstitutes/iii/staff/davidrobertson/

That is the opposite of what I said?

This is from your first article.



So basically, they're saying we can't prove our theories. We don't believe the laboratory-based scenario.

Hrrmmmmmmmm. Sounds like good science there. Can't prove ours and don't believe theirs. Sounds more like something that'd take place on these boards than solid science.

The reason they don't believe it is man-made is because, if it was made, it wasn't made the way they would have done it. Or it was modified from a virus that hadn't been used as a backbone before, since it hadn't been done before, it didn't happen.

You are misreading the sentence.



They say specifically that a laboratory based scenario is not plausible.

They go into quite a bit of detail on why. The attachment site between SARS-CoV2 and ACE2 receptors has never existed before anywhere in nature.

And in fact - our models of ACE2 receptors indicate that such a virus shouldn't be able to bind to ACE2 sites (which was wrong).

If a laboratory wanted to genetically engineer a virus to bind to ACE2 -- they would start with a structure that is known to bind to ACE2. It is currently outside our scientific ability to design binding structures from scratch.

To quote one of the scientists -- now speaking at a popular science level:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why...-a-chinese-lab/





By "other" they are clearly referring to the three possible theories for the construction of the Sars-Cov-2 binding site (which form three well-defined subsections of their paper).

1. Natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer
2. Natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer
3. Selection during passage

Basically, they can't determine whether the receptor-binding domain of Sars-Cov-2 developed in bats and then transferred, or developed after it transferred to humans (e.g., maybe as a minor cold circulating around humans for some time, that didn't yet have the ability to bind to lung and heart tissue).

Maybe you should apply to be a referee for Nature?

You mean the ones that haven't defected or don't want to "disappear"?