. On March 13, I wrote in my journal that there seemed to be something oddly artificial about the disease: “It’s too airborne — too catching — it’s something that has been selected for infectivity.
What ridiculous, groundless, irresponsible speculation. The reproduction rate is, in the grand scheme of things, comparable to (if a bit higher than) a typical flu. You want to see an airborne virus that’s selected for infectivity, take a look at measles and varicella, with R0s in the teens.
Man, it’s difficult to hear this kind of discourse on BoingBoing. There’s literally several highly-regarded scientists in the piece! Baker has a long history as an essayist and reporter. Dismissing him as “just a fiction writer” would be like dismissing Cory Doctorow as a “children’s book author.”
Baker is a contrarian, no doubt, but he’s no conspiracy theorist or anti-science stooge.
Fuck that. They are doing real work. Important stuff. This nonsense was comprehensively debunked early last year by analysis of the genetic structure of Sars Cov 2 which showed it being 80 years at least out in the wild.
Getting them to respond is the equivalent of both siding Nazi concerns.
First, I’d like to note that I do not think it’s likely that research interference caused Covid-19 to spread to humans. But Baker is making a larger point beyond covid: that the decision to manufacture dangerous viruses in order to research them, however well-intentioned, has too high a risk and causes more problems than it may solve.
Right at the beginning of the piece, if you choose not to actually read it: “…SARS-2 was not designed as a biological weapon. But it was, I think, designed. Many thoughtful people dismiss this notion, and they may be right.”
He admits that he may be wrong, and that does not have any direct evidence when it comes to Covid-19. He is not trying to flame conspiracy theory flames.
“I do not have any evidence to think this thing, but I’m going to spend N thousand words telling you I think it anyway” is not a reasonable position to take.
And that should be end of story. Anyone can make up meaningless shit, present it without evidence and claim that the experts are just wrong. Witness the whole Q phenomenon. This is on the same level. Please, just stop.
But that entire piece you cited is about how Covid-19 wasn’t artificially manufactured in a lab. There’s nothing much in there to indicate that it couldn’t have been incubated or studied in a lab, and a leak - which many very reputable scientists have been concerned about for years - occurred.
I wish that Baker’s piece focused more on the general risk of this kind of viral leak, not specifically covid-19, but these aren’t made-up concerns from 8chan or something that he’s bringing up.
Wait, are you Nicholson Baker defending himself, but due to cowardice hiding under a pseudonym? I think we should take that as a real possibility. I mean, I have no evidence at all, but it’s not at all the first time someone on the internet has done that.
Nobody is criticizing him for writing about values or consequences. This is about making up a hypothesis out of whole cloth, saying “There is no evidence for this, but that’s OK, I don’t need any” and then being shocked at not being taken seriously. If you want to overturn the accepted scientific consensus, have at it. But bring the evidence or expect to be laughed out of the arena.
I doubt it. For all his faults, Baker is a talented writer who also understands what censorship actually is. If he were using sockpuppets, I’d imagine he’d take more care in crafting them than that shoddy comment evinces.
Baker isn’t “attacking science.” He’s not a right-winger or anti-vaxxer dismissing the premise of scientific inquiry and rigor. He is questioning (“attacking” if you want to use your word) the practice of bringing dangerous viruses into labs to be manipulated. There’s real concern there and there are other ways of protecting against viruses.
If we as a society cannot question what different scientific groups are doing with technology that can legitimately have world-spanning effects, where does that lead us? Any scientists can work on anything they want without oversight or visibility? If we’re not going to develop reasoned, healthy conversations about our values on where science can go, we are abdicating our responsibility to have a democratic society.
And part of the problem is that he’s dumping this into the discourse, which is already filled with racist and whackadoodle nonsense. So it adds a veneer of legitimacy to the crap that public health organizations are already having to deal with. It doesn’t further the discussion, it muddies it.
There’s a big difference between arguing that a lab leak could happen (and indeed, as noted by the article and several commenters, lab leaks have happened) and arguing that this specific event is the result of a lab leak. It’s the same cognitive error as assuming that the probability that two people in a room of 50 people share a birthday is equal to the probability that you share a birthday with someone in a room of 50 people.
Baker also dances merrily across the line regarding lab creation: “I don’t think it was made in a lab, but look how similar it is to this other coronavirus!” “I don’t think it was made in a lab, but look at how infectious it is!” This is about three epsilons away from Trumpian “I’m not saying it was immigrants, but many people are strongly saying it.”
To be clear: yes, the prior probability that the pandemic was caused by a lab leak is nonzero. But unless there is concrete evidence of a leak – in specific situation – that probability remains almost vanishingly small. And I don’t think Baker has made that case, even remotely.
And notice that the 6-month-old article addresses and refutes several of the points that Baker highlights in his argument.
Except he does deliver a lot of information from very reputable sources questioning some of the key studies and (lack of) research into the origins of the virus. While he has no smoking gun - and I do not believe he’s right when it comes to Covid-19 - dismissing the concerns that legitimate, educated scientists have because there’s a conspiracy theory fringe doing real harm isn’t using reason or data, either.
Blockquote There’s a big difference between arguing that a lab leak could happen (and indeed, as noted by the article and several commenters, lab leaks have happened )
But that is the other main premise of his piece - even if did not happen with covid-19, which, again, he both freely admits is possible and says he’s not convinced he’s right - is about how an event as bad or worse can happen with our current policies on virus manipulation in labs. And, for this, commenters here are saying he is “attacking science.” Maybe you’re not going that far.
