Talk:Origin of SARS-CoV-2/Archive 10

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why the Bloom lab preprint doesn't make the lab leak more likely

(and also another reason why we probably shouldn't include it in articlespace yet).

Just wanted to drop this excellent Twitter thread from Trevor Bedford[1]. And also this Jesse Bloom twitter thread helps as well[2].

What this shows is that the added sequences that Bloom had his preprint focused on only further solidify the phylogenetic argument that the B lineage of the virus (which is most of what we've seen in early Wuhan) was probably not the founder strain. Molecular clock vs rooting in closest known viruses disagree, but it's clear that the most parsimonious arrangement has the A strain as the founder. If true, this makes Wuhan a less and less obvious origin point for the virus. The Bloom preprint sequences only emphasize that further.

and this debate, this confusion about what the preprint means, is precisely why peer review is so valuable and why preprint findings should not be included in these COVID-19 articles, regardless of how much coverage they get in news sources.

We need the robust criticism and context from other scientists to make these findings clear and robust. and useful.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:09, 26 June 2021 (UTC) (edited 15:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC))

So lemme get this right. We've got well-sourced assertions, given without attribution in the sources that appear to be factually correct and are undisputed (even by those who take a different interpretation on what the event means), published in Nature, the New York Times, CNN, and other HQRS, and we want to exclude any mention of this from Wikipedia on the basis of a Twitter thread by Trevor Bedford? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:15, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

That's not really what I said. I'm sorry let me try and make it more clear.

My argument about non-inclusion is that these news coverage sources don't know how to properly contextualize or interpret the findings of the preprint, as per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. News agencies do not, by and large, have the expertise to understand the science behind this controversy. And, more specifically, the Nature article you're referring to is a news article. It is not peer reviewed or (usually) written by a scientist who has training in this field. Ewen Callaway has a master's in microbiology, to be fair[3].

In general, I find the argument for inclusion using the Nature news[4] and Science news[5] pieces to be more compelling.

But I still think for something this controversial, this debated, we are way more likely to get it wrong than right by relying on news sources. Here are several news agencies with great reputations who completely fumble the coverage of this preprint, by emphasizing how "secretive" and "cloak and dagger" this is [6][7][8][9]. Bloom himself (in the twitter thread above) emphasizes that the secrecy should not be assumed to be malfeasance [10], that the issue is the totalitarian regime of the Chinese government, and also how these sequences make the phylogenetic argument for a zoonotic origin slightly more solid.

The academic press news sources (which, at least in the case of the Nature piece, do cover this well) push me a bit closer in the direction of inclusion, but not all the way. I'm sorry that you disagree. I'm not trying to be tendentious, just asserting that there is a reason why Preprints are problematic. They need the context of peer review, much like what Bedford is doing openly in this twitter thread. The final published version of Bloom's article would do well to have a more clear and frank discussion of the multiple rooting possibilities. And better phylogenetic trees that show this rooting problem. He discusses it some, but in a confusing way. It's confusing for me, and I have a PhD in this field. So why do I expect news reporters to have a better grasp of it?--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:37, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

If I recall correctly, there was a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information saying that special sourcing requirements do not apply to the origins. Although currently unclosed, by numbers alone it's obvious it won't be closed any other way. If our WP:RS guideline is resulting in factually accurate information, that should be addressed separately.

About this, it appears nobody disputes the core facts. Here it says Some scientists are skeptical that there is anything sinister behind the removal of the sequences. ... “You can’t really say why they were removed,” Dr. Bloom acknowledged in an interview. “You can say that the practical consequence of removing them was that people didn’t notice they existed.” Even those disagreeing on the interpretations agree on the core fact that sequences were removed due to a request by the Wuhan University.

There exists no policy that allows editors to unilaterally decide publications by community accepted reliable sources are factually inaccurate. We are not citing to a preprint, we're citing to reliable sources discussing things in a preprint. These are two very different things. Reliable sources are allowed to do original research - in fact, that's precisely the point. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:51, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

There were actually a fair number of comments on that RfC that also emphasized that the RfC was meaningless or unnecessary, because we already have policies which say that scholarly journal articles have primacy over news articles, even in spaces where MEDRS does not apply.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:53, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes, iirc that was my argument, but no peer reviewed scholarly sources exist for this particular issue, so we go to tier 2 RS (good illustration: User:Levivich/Tiers of reliability). ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:56, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

I think we're arguing past each other. I get what you're saying, I get the tiers of reliability. The other important point would be the way the General/Discretionary Sanctions handle preprints in this topic area. There are quite a few other preprints which never got published, or which are preposterous, or even get published in crappy journals, which got lots and lots of news coverage. However we don't cover them here. This case with the coverage about this preprint is different, but this serves to show the edge case. One example would be this absurd paper in a Biophysics journal published by those two Norwegian guys that is full of misinformation [11][12][13][14][15][16]. Sørensen et al got lots and lots of basic facts about the virus wrong, and a few WP:RSes covered it. In some cases, they actually repeated false claims of the paper, without proper fact checking. Does that mean we also should have a section on this paper/preprint? If we had done so right when it happened, we would have repeated those false claims. And not had the proper context to know this preprint was bogus and full of misinformation.

I guess what I'd like to say is, if we're going to include it, the weight and proportion and context should be entirely based upon the news articles published in Nature, not these other outlets. And frankly, if it were solely my decision (which it isn't, I'm a fan of consensus), I wouldn't include it at all until it were peer reviewed. Because it's a controversial set of claims and ideas, in a controversial topic area, under DS.

If we're going to include it, the context of the Nature news article is probably the best around, and should form the basis for inclusion. Emphasizing the way this changes the phylogenetic argument, and how it means we need a more open investigation with less interference from the Chinese government. NOT emphasizing the "secret deletion" or the way this somehow means a conspiracy is afoot. Does that make sense? I think our due weight should be based on the best quality sources, namely those two articles in Levivich's Tier 2.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 16:10, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

In that example you gave, the only tier 2 RS is The Telegraph, and that's a "Letter to the editor", not a news article, so the piece itself is not RS, and The Telegraph made no such claims in its own voice. So it's not really comparable to this situation. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:17, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

More generally, there could be a case where the RS get it wrong, but then Wikipedia (as a tertiary source that merely summarises the reliable secondary sources) will and should get it wrong too. Wikipedia can only do as well as the RS do. Editors setting their own standards is a hazy line (if it were acceptable, then surely "the sources are POV" would be a valid claim to exclude content in the American politics topic area). I have no strong opinion on how exactly this material is covered, but complete exclusion or a presentation that is not reflective of the best sources is contrary to Wikipedia policy. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:23, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

We are not citing to a preprint, we're citing to reliable sources discussing things in a preprint: Pre-prints are unreliable for factual claims. Popular press articles about pre-prints are even worse. We should not be relying on low-quality sources for any remotely scientific claim, and in the context of virology, the NYT, CNN and the rest of the popular press is low-quality.

By the way, it should be noted that the sequences in question were published by the Chinese researchers who obtained them in a peer-reviewed journal in June 2020: [17]. The specific claim being made by Bloom is that they were removed from a specific database, but the researchers did subsequently publish the sequences elsewhere. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:39, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

The articles I saw, most of them explicitly mentioned that Bloom himself said this doesn't affect the origin debate (specifically where the zoonosis occurred). It's the insistence to add information about the preprint to this article which seem to be wanting to make the link, contrary to the author's statements.

I think we can (and should) improve our discussion of the pre-Huanan Market spread without needing to rely on the preprint. Bakkster Man (talk) 16:32, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

• It does not matter if it makes "lab leak" more or less likely. Were new sequences of the virus found, was it an important finding, and was it reported in secondary RS, such as CNN (certainly not Twitter)? The answer to all these questions is definitely "yes". So include this sourced info on the page please. My very best wishes (talk) 01:30, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

Why lab leak likely/unlikely is completely besides the point

As those of you who have read the preprint already know, Bloom never claimed his findings gave more weight to any lab origins hypotheses. Rather, Bloom presents the removal of the data from NCBI and CNGB as prima facie evidence of the Government of China’s gag order in effect, as clearly stated in the preprint’s abstract. This gag order was first reported by the The Associated Press in their bombshell investigative report [18]. This behavior is not the norm in Public Health Emergencies as per International Health Regulations, and this is why I highlighted the importance of phylogenetic evidence in the RFC about COVID-19 origins [19]. Serological or phylogenetic analysis of the index patients and virus are probably the only means for scientists to investigate the origins of this virus, without the Government of China’s cooperation on a forensic investigation of wet markets and labs in Wuhan.

Those here trying to downplay the deletion of these sequences and advocating for the WP:POVDELETION of this story either don’t understand the role of phylogenetics in epidemiology, or the importance of Data publishing for Reproducibility in Open research and Open science - so you should click these links if they’re blue for you, and read this letter too [20]. For sure it was nice of the authors of that paper to leave us a table of mutations in and publish it to a nanotechnology journal where no virologist would ever have found it, but that table wouldn't have been enough for Bloom to do a phylogenetic analysis and publish the findings of what he believes are ancestral sequences of the virus as it was spreading in its early days. With that said, we should include the critical comments from Robert F. Garry in the WashPo for WP:BALANCE, as he is one of the most respected virologists in the world, even if still red linked. It should be noted that Gary’s response is to Bloom presenting his finding as evidence of cover up, and not to his phylogenetic analysis, which he hasn’t commented on, yet.

Note that the Government of China is holding up talks for [21] and resisting certain terms of [22] the International Treaty for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which will be the biggest revision of International Health Regulations since the last revision created after their well documented cover up of the early spread of 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. This is still all coming together in WP:RS, so we should take it slowly. CutePeach (talk) 13:51, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@CutePeach: Those here trying to downplay the deletion of these sequences and advocating for the WP:POVDELETION of this story either don’t understand the role of phylogenetics in epidemiology, or the importance of Data publishing for Reproducibility in Open research and Open science... To be clear, the opposition appears to have been almost entirely a difference in interpretation of WP:PAGs, not the content itself. We'd be having a much different discussion right now if this was already peer reviewed. Let's not jump on the POV-train. As you said later: This is still all coming together in WP:RS, so we should take it slowly.

With that said, we should include the critical comments from Robert F. Garry in the WashPo for WP:BALANCE, as he is one of the most respected virologists in the world, even if still red linked. It should be noted that Gary’s response is to Bloom presenting his finding as evidence of cover up, and not to his phylogenetic analysis, which he hasn’t commented on, yet. I broadly agree that this is the key in how we present this. We have a RS that sequences were deleted at the request of the submitter (on the basis of submission elsewhere, do we have a RS that identifies them as not being available?), the initial claim in the preprint isn't itself an RS and the coverup claim should be handled with care (as I explained above), with RS for other scientist's reactions. Could you link the WaPo article with the Garry comments? I included a critique from David Robertson in Business Insider in my proposed rewrite above (see discussion) and could see the potential to drop that one in instead if that's what we're going with. Bakkster Man (talk) 14:14, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man thanks for your reasoned response as always. Here is the WashPo article with critique from Gary [23]. Please note that Gary is one of the holdouts of the Proximal Origin paper, and I suspect it's personal for him because he has worked closely with Shi of WIV for many years, and he has also been falsely implicated in lab leaks before, which may be noted in other RS. CutePeach (talk) 14:27, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, your claim "there was a consensus at Wikipedia talk:Biomedical information saying that special sourcing requirements do not apply to the origins" is entirely false. There was a poll asking "to unambiguously define disease and pandemic origins as a form of biomedical information" (i.e. under the scope of MEDRS). That poll failed. But it doesn't mean that it is entirely not biomedical information. As many, including myself (who opposed) said, there are aspects of the origin of covid that are biomedical information (and thus under the scope of MEDRS) and there are aspects that are not (and covered by other guidelines and policy). Just because it isn't entirely biomedical information doesn't mean it is entire not biomedical information.

I note that Bakkster Man has added some text on the deletion dispute per discussion further above. In my view, that dispute warrants coverage as a (for now) notable scientific dispute about the origins of covid 19, and not for the actual biomedical claims made by Bloom (which fail MEDRS and fail the sanctions against preprints regarding covid). Whether that dispute rumbles on or gets forgotten in a week or two will determine if the text is notable enough to remain. -- Colin°^Talk 18:33, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: I'll point out again, nobody has yet made the case that this claim requires MEDRS sourcing. The first references of MEDRS regarding this topic were from people arguing against a strawman that the revert was based on WP:MEDRS rather than WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Let's not allow preemptive arguments against MEDRS to become an albatross that prevents productive consensus building.

In the end, I pulled the pre-print note from Li-Meng Yan's article (to point out that it lacks review), and followed up the deletion claim (clearly non-biomedical) with the confirmatory note from a news RS. If there's room to improve it's with the claim of the phylogenics, which I watered down significantly (and I suspect we have prior strong sources we can point to to make the claim that this was already well established science, but need help finding) and the contrary opinion from another scientist. The thing that ended up swaying me mostly was that while I cite the pre-print, it's not really used to make any claims but has to be at least referred to because it prompted the discussion. Definitely a better inclusion that the originally requested bare presentation of 'he found missing sequences and we don't know why they were missing', and calls to restore prior to at least adding that context. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:04, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

You may be right that nobody removed it is claiming it requires MEDRS sourcing, but those arguing for its inclusion have mentioned MEDRS and their views on its apparent non-applicability to this entire article. -- Colin°^Talk 19:34, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

The first mentions of MEDRS were people advocating for inclusion, and the only mentions by those advocating against inclusion were in agreement that MEDRS didn't apply. Just because someone mentioned MEDRS in another discussion about other content doesn't mean we should keep referring back to it preemptively, especially not when used to say something along the lines of 'this isn't a BMI claim, and there are no other applicable sourcing policies'. That's why I call it a strawman, and why preemptively mentioning it hurts our consensus building. Bakkster Man (talk) 20:20, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Yes... So, the origin of COVID-19 isn't covered by MEDRS, which is what I said. If some particular sentence in this article falls under a different applicable category then obviously it's covered as usual, but it's not covered by virtue of being related to the origins of COVID. The idea that sequences were deleted is not covered under a different applicable category. The text you have introduced is pretty much what I was arguing should've been added (or, at least, there was no sourcing reason not to add it), so I don't really have any remaining concerns here. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 23:58, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Saying "the origin of COVID-19 isn't covered by MEDRS" won't make that true no matter how many times you repeat it. Some aspects of the origin of COVID-19 are covered by MEDRS and some aspects aren't. Look, if some academic had discovered a recent ancestor of COVID-19 in some Chinese bat cave, and nobody had ever suggested a lab leak, this entire thing would be a short paragraph or even just a sentence in some other article, and be sourced entirely in compliance with MEDRS. -- Colin°^Talk 11:46, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

As it stands, there's far too much space given to the Bloom/SRA story. The problem is that it takes several sentences to adequately explain what happened (reads published in the SRA, reads deleted from SRA, sequences published in a journal, Bloom writes preprint, various people comment on preprint). But in the context of the overall investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, this is a minor story, and it shouldn't take up this much article space. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:40, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

This was my primary concern as well, though I think it's mostly mitigated by being near the bottom of the article and contextualized (your edits were very beneficial). I'd actually like to see that section expanded with some other (more notable) independent findings. That might also point out if this preprint is a nothingburger that it's worth removing (and will reduce our reliance on the single WHO study). Bakkster Man (talk) 18:09, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

The WHO study is, by far, the most thorough investigation into the origins of the virus. It should take up most of the space in this article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:04, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting otherwise, it should have top billing right now. But I do think there's room to flesh out information on other, less notable studies lower on the page. Bakkster Man (talk) 02:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Thucydides411, your edit [24] puts the claim that the Wuhan University researchers published the sequences, which is not what the Nature article or any of our other sources say. The Nature article makes it clear the sequences were deleted from the SRA before the paper was published, and the sequence information it was published with did not contain the raw data. I have explained above that a table with a list of mutations is not the same as raw sequence data, and the entire section seems to brush that aside as a "nothingburger". CutePeach (talk) 03:29, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

In this case, the single nucleotide polymorphisms contain all the relevant information. The criticism is that the raw reads were deleted from the SRA, but the paper still made the most important information available (though I don't think even Bloom is claiming that these particular sequences say much of anything new about the origins of SARS-CoV-2). -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:58, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

Still, Nature Magazine does not make that distinction. Your edit is based on a WP:MISREPRESENTATION WP:MISINTERPRETATION of our source.. What you call relevant information and raw reads are not the same thing and we should not be presenting them as such for our readers. CutePeach (talk) 11:38, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't agree with your assertion that my edit misrepresents this issue. As the Nature article explains,

Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, points out that the sequences Bloom recovered were not hidden: they are described in detail, with enough sequence information to know their evolutionary relationship to other early SARS-CoV-2 sequences, in the Small paper.

The issue Bloom is criticizing is the deletion of raw reads from a particular database, but as the Nature article points out, the same authors who deleted the raw reads also published the sequence information. But again, Bloom's pre-print is still a pre-print, and I'm highly doubtful that we should say anything about it in the article at all. Just in the time that we've been discussing the pre-print here on the talk page, it has undergone very significant revision. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:56, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I think, with this information part of the section, it's worth wondering whether this is a nothingburger that shouldn't be covered, or if it is that it's covered more directly as 'much ado about nothing'. Something more along the lines of "A preprint claimed to find missing genomes which had been deleted from the SRA, however this genetic information had simply been published in an alternate location." We've mentioned it, but not given it more credence than it's worth. @Colin: ping since you had input on this previously. Bakkster Man (talk) 18:35, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I just gave that Independent Investigations paragraph a quick read. I think the whole paragraph/section should go. Giving this much weight to a WP:SELFPUBLISHed preprint seems a bit WP:PROFRINGE to me. If it takes 5 sentences to explain something claimed in a preprint, that is just way too much weight to something that is self-published, imo. –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:50, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

I think the main argument was that if someone comes looking for discussion of the Bloom preprint, they should find information about it here. Hence my suggestion to reduce it to a sentence or two of it basically being debunked, rather than the tempest in a teapot of "someone moved genetic info, another person noticed, and some other people freaked out". Bakkster Man (talk) 18:57, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, agreed. We are basically extremely WP:UNDUE by drawing out the entire saga instead of just saying how much of a nothingburger it is.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:27, 2 July 2021 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: again, the Nature Magazine article does not say that the sequences were republished. Goldstein’s comments can be quoted using WP:INTEXT attribution, but using them in place of statements made by the authors of the article or to twist the meaning of their statements is WP:MISINTERPRETATION. Bloom’s latest updates to his preprint clarify questions, including those from Goldstein, but they do not change his allegation that the SRA deletion was to obscure the existence of the data.

@Bakkster Man: your claim that this genetic information had simply been published in an alternate location is false, as the sequences were not republished, which I have repeatedly pointed out above. Bloom’s preprint certainly > hasn't been debunked as you also claim, and by "it" I mean its main finding, which was that the deletion of the sequence data constitutes prima facie evidence of the Government of China’s gag order on Chinese scientists in effect. Even Goldstein conceded that in his Disqus comments on the preprint, calling on Bloom to focus his claim on the Chinese government and not Chinese individual scientists.

Shibbolethink please can you explain why a story reported by Science Magazine, Nature Magazine, USA TODAY, The Daily Telegraph, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, South China Morning Post, Business Insider and El País is a nothingburger? More importantly, now that you are here, please can you respond to the point I made in the header of this subsection titled lab leak likely/unlikely is completely besides the point. We are discussing the removal of sequence data intended to obscure their existence, as reported by our reliable sources. Dr Bloom was careful to qualify his findings as informative but not transformative and that the attention his preprint got was because of how people are hungry for any data [25] - something which there is a severe lack of here. Some editors here seem to be misremembering the paucity of data here, possibly in a bid to downplay Bloom’s findings. CutePeach (talk) 07:27, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, Please see your talk page. It isn't enough to be covered by all those RSes, what matters is "do they cover it in reference to the virus' origins?" and more specifically, "do the WP:BESTSOURCES cover it in relation to the virus' origins?" I'm not convinced they do, given that everyone here is quick to mention how little it does to change the estimate. Purely as my expert opinion: "that table wouldn't have been enough for Bloom to do a phylogenetic analysis" is not true. SNPs, if they are comprehensive (synonymous & non-synonymous, genome-wide) are exactly what you need to do a phylogeny.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 07:42, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: I ask you again to please respond to the point I made at the start of this subsection. As to your WP:AGF warning on my talk page, it is clearly evident that there are editors here WP:MISINTERPRETING our sources in order to downplay the significance of Bloom’s findings and delete all mention of them from our article. If you want to achieve WP:BALANCE, you can cite expert WP:OPINIONs as quoted in our WP:RSs, instead of citing only your own expert opinion. The Science Magazine article quotes W. Ian Lipkin as saying There may have been active suppression of epidemiological and sequence data needed to track its origin. On the relevance of Bloom’s findings to the subject of the article, Lipkin is quoted as saying This is a creative and rigorous approach to investigating the provenance of SARS-CoV-2. I really don’t know why you are trying to argue over every aspect of COVID-19 origins that might point to a laboratory incident. CutePeach (talk) 09:13, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

We can look again at what the Nature Magazine article says:

Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, points out that the sequences Bloom recovered were not hidden: they are described in detail, with enough sequence information to know their evolutionary relationship to other early SARS-CoV-2 sequences, in the Small paper. (emphasis added)

The use of "points out" indicates that Nature Magazine agrees with the statement, and even putting that aside, the above statement is simply true. Table 1 of the paper contains the SNPs, which is what you need to know the sequences. But again, we're talking about a pre-print here, not a published paper, and that pre-print is undergoing significant changes in real time. It's already been significantly modified just while we've been discussing it, and it's unclear if and in what form it will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. We should not have an entire section on a pre-print. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:39, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach the deletion of the sequence data constitutes prima facie evidence of the Government of China’s gag order on Chinese scientists in effect. Even Goldstein conceded that in his Disqus comments on the preprint, calling on Bloom to focus his claim on the Chinese government and not Chinese individual scientists. Sounds like WP:OR to me. Based on the most reliable of sources, Disqus comments! You're making quite the case for removing the sentences outright. Bakkster Man (talk) 20:04, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

It is or ought to be it rrelevant ot his discussions whether or not COVID19 originated in a lab, and, if so, how it became released. It'ss an interesting question, and , like many questions about the specific origin of diseases, of interest both to epidemiologists in the narrow sense, and scientists generally, and the general public. For the general public is interested in this sort of information even when the disease is not a current threat, and is very certainly interested in this particular information, because of the general and still uncontrolled threat to mankind. This requires determining in detail the science and also the factors that might tend to obscure the science, and a wide range of specialist will be involved. Personally, as a biologist with my doctoral training in the only non-medical school Department of Virology in the US, I'm inclined to (over) value the molecular biological evidence, but that's just me. as a biologist, not me as a Wikipedian. We report not the truth, but the verifiable information, and in this case, the verifiable information about the various hypotheses that people consider. Whatever the origin prove to be, and based on the molecular evidence so far, I doubt it was the Wuhan laboratory, we still need to discuss the various hypotheses; and, considering the world-wide interest in this issue, and its political and science-policy implications, people would seem likely to continue this interest and discussion indefinitely. Certainly, the mere possibility that it is laboratory origins and the especially the remote possibility that the strain was deliberate produced in a gain-of-function experiment whether true or false, will have very grave implications for the ability to do further research of this sort in China or anywhere else, and proving this was not the case will not and should not diminish the social concern about such research.

It requires neither political nor scientific sophistication to see this. That we do not cover it fully because it it possibly not the more correct hypothesis is a disgrace, and an example of OR in WP running amuck.Perhaps OR is not the right term, but the unaccountable prejudice that anything ever espoused by a far right wing source is inherently ludicrous and not worth further discussion. The principle of free inquiry is that everything ,however unlikely, and who ever supports it, is open to discussion. And if the discussion is substantial , whether in scientific or lay sources, it must be covered by Wikipedia. DGG ( talk ) 10:27, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

DGG the particular problem in this discussion is that Thucydides411 is claiming - falsely - that the sequences were republished, and Shibbolethink, is claiming that the table of mutations which were republished (not the sequences) are enough for a phylogenetic analysis. As I have explained in my indented post immediately above yours, the first claim is patently false, and the second claim is tedious, but both are WP:OR. These kind incredibly tedious discussions are what made Normchou ignore talk page discussions altogether, which Shibbolethink got him banned for. Tagging Johnuniq and HighInBC. CutePeach (talk) 11:07, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, a full description of the sequences was published, as you can verify by either opening up the paper or by reading the Nature news article about it. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:31, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Description of the sequences is not the same thing as raw sequence data! Deleting such data from NCBI is not normal! Francesco espo (talk) 12:26, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

The sequences and the raw reads are not the same. The former were fully described in the journal article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:32, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

As I said, that's none of our business. Deciding whether a scientific hypothesis is sufficiently supported by th evidence is not the role of WP. We repport the proposal, and we report what others say about it. my main point remains, that, if, as I expect, the proof is sufficient and the sequence is known, and it does not seem compatible with lab transmission, the lab transmission hypotheses should be covered just the same, as disproving it would have been part of the scientific information. We can report he claims, however thr truth may eventually be. If there's a question of balance or doubt, I support including material (with the only 3 exceptions BLP, unsourced, and advertising, neither of which is relevant here). If we do include, people can judge. If not ,we give them no information. It, like all experimental or observational scientific information should be presented in the terms of "apparently confirmed hypothesis" , not "proof". Proof in science is transient. DGG ( talk ) 11:26, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man:I respectfully disagree with the "tempest in a teapot" characterization. As CutePeach put it, the role of phylogenetics is key to the origin question. I'm including the first paragraph of the ""Discussion" section of the preprint because it is really quite accessible to readers who wish to understand the impact of this story:

I have identified and recovered a deleted set of partial SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the early Wuhan epidemic. Analysis of these sequences leads to several conclusions. First, they provide further evidence Huanan Seafood Market sequences that were the focus of the joint WHO-China report are not representative of all SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan early in the epidemic. The deleted data as well as existing sequences from Wuhan-infected patients hospitalized in Guangdong show early Wuhan sequences often carried the T29095C mutation and were less likely to carry T8782C / C28144T than sequences in the joint WHO-China report. Second, given current data, there are two plausible identities for the progenitor of all known SARS-CoV-2. One is proCoV2 described by Kumar et al. (2021), and the other is a sequence that carries three mutations relative to Wuhan-Hu-1. Crucially, both putative progenitors are three mutations closer to SARS-CoV-2’s bat coronavirus relatives than sequences from the Huanan Seafood Market. Note also that the progenitor of all known SARS-CoV-2 sequences could still be downstream of the sequence that infected patient zero—and it is possible that the future discovery of additional early SARS-CoV-2 sequences could lead to further revisions of inferences about the earliest viruses in the outbreak.

I also want to emphasize that "lab leak" is really besides the point here. The fact that early Guangdong viruses are closer to SARS-like bat CoVs agrees with the author of this widely cited phylogenic analysis published in PNAS who has stated publicly that scientists should look for patient zero in South China. In other words, just in case anyone here is under the impression that inclusion of this story is somehow "POV pushing" they're missing the point entirely. No matter where the virus came from, sequences like these are among the most important evidence to answering the question.KristinaLu (talk) 17:25, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@KristinaLu: And once the pre-print is reviewed and published, then his allegations might be credible. Until then, I'm incredulous (and I'd suggest WP policy requires us to be incredulous until then). And, per quotes in RS, seems he may have jumped the gun. Hence the 'tempest in a teapot'. Bakkster Man (talk) 20:00, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: please respond to the point made by CutePeach in the header of this subsection entitled Why lab leak likely/unlikely is completely besides the point.KristinaLu (talk) 17:49, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

hi KristinaLu I'm starting a long wikibreak as I enter the phase of medical school that starts to consume all of one's waking time in order to figure out what kind of doctor one wants to be. Wiki will unfortunately get in the way of that. Please help me maintain my wikibreak by not tagging me again. I'm sure one of the many other helpful users around here can answer any questions as well as I can. I also would like to note, it may help them answer if it were posed in the form of a question or a specific change that you or CutePeach would like to propose. From a cursory glance, I don't see either in the lead of this section. --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 17:59, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

What to do with the Bloom paragraph

Regarding the section titled "Independent Investigations", should we keep as is, condense it, or remove it? –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:59, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

• I think we should remove the entire section/paragraph. It doesn't seem particularly related to investigating the origins of COVID-19. It is a self-published preprint. And it requires 5 sentences of explanation. Giving this much WP:WEIGHT to a minor story seems kind of WP:PROFRINGE to me. We're amplifying this "controversy" way more than it deserves. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:59, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

• Remove or reduce heavily. We even say explicitly that it has no real bearing on the origins investigation (especially since the sequences were almost immediately reposted under the publication). Why are we bending over backwards to include something we even say has no bearing on the main subject of this article? --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:11, 3 July 2021 (UTC)
• Remove: not reasonably an investigation into COVID origins. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 15:09, 3 July 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. According to a recent news article in The Washington Post on 7 July 2021, reviewing patient zero (S01), the Bloom study is sufficiently mentioned, in context re the virus origin, to gain a note at least in the main article I would think - iac - Stay Safe and Healthy !! - Drbogdan (talk) 16:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

References

• Invalid Motion. Please see WP:NOTVOTE and WP:NOVOTE. Looking at the comments in this discussion and the #Early Chinese Virus sequencing deleted discussion, I do not see a consensus to remove this section and I’m thoroughly unimpressed with those trying to downplay the significance of Bloom’s finding and dismiss their relevance to the subject of this article. CutePeach (talk) 09:20, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

  There's a lot of text above this section (more than I'm willing to grok). And people may also have changed their minds during the discussion. This format makes consensus easier to evaluate. –Novem Linguae (talk) 09:36, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

  Not invalid, read the policies above. This is a worthwhile method to gauge consensus in addition to a large conversation. Bakkster Man (talk) 11:29, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

  @Novem Linguae: I don't see anyone changing their mind other than Bakkster Man, who was never of the mind to include it in the first place, and isn’t voting here to remove it. Including Drbogdan who first added the report, I count more editors in support of including Bloom’s findings than those opposed. But even then, I've heard it said that we should base our editorial decisions on WP:PAGs, and not WP:POLLS. If we have new sources which say the actual sequences were indeed published in a new venue like some here are claiming, then that might change the consensus here. Until then, we should just quote Robertson and/or Goldstein for WP:BALANCE. CutePeach (talk) 03:14, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

• Reduce significantly as proposed above, or remove. This level of weight definitely seems WP:UNDUE now. Not just for the lack of relation to the origins (per author), but because it's a pre-print. Fine to mention it so readers find content, but shouldn't be WP:PROFRINGE. Bakkster Man (talk) 11:29, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Wait. How is this not related to origins if Bloom’s main findings is that the origins are being covered up by Chinese government? I am in the beach now but I can explain you deleting sequences from NCBI this is not normal! Francesco espo (talk) 14:06, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

Because Bloom said this didn't relate to the origins, and it isn't a 'cover-up' when the data just changes publishing venue. That you've jumped straight to it's a coverup means either you haven't read our article or the sources, or the article is insufficient to describe it (and the WP:PROFRINGE problem is worse than I thought). Bakkster Man (talk) 16:09, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

• I'd like to see how Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:China COVID-19 cover-up gets closed. If it's kept, remove it from here. If not kept, keep it, because I'm of the opinion that one can't stop an article being created and simultaneously remove the same RS-sourced content from all existing articles per WP:UNDUE. It's reliably sourced and should be somewhere on the English Wikipedia, even though I agree it's not integral to the investigation. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:57, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

• Firstly, I can only emphasise that Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion. As soon as you ask a question and offer a limited set of options to pick from, you narrow the discussion to just those options. And as soon as one answers one's own question with a statement that contains a bold option choice the whole thing becomes a vote.

Secondly, you guys are quoting WP:WEIGHT and WP:DUE and WP:UNDUE at each other without reading them. (OK, I know you guys have read them, but really, look again). The policy says "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources". It does not say that weight is determined by the wise judgement of editors opinions about a research publication. This is entirely a matter for whether reliable sources publish (and continue to publish) about this topic. We give it similar prominence within the wider topic as they do. So I'd expect to see editors cite articles at each other rather than WP:UPPERCASE.

Wrt the paper being a pre-print, I think that is a red-herring in this discussion. Neither a pre-print nor a primary research paper published in the most prestigious journals such as The Lancet or Nature can establish their own weight. WP:PSTS says "Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources" and WP:PRIMARY says "Primary sources are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved....e.g. a scientific paper documenting a new experiment conducted by the author is a primary source on the outcome of that experiment. So even once Bloom's paper is published, we can't use it as a source, and it is itself irrelevant wrt weight arguments.

I also caution against citing WP:PROFRINGE. Firstly, it just gets people cross when you start saying the word "fringe" wrt a scientist who isn't a crank. But mainly because that's an argument about whether we should say "Sequences of the Covid-19 genome were surreptitiously deleted from a database as part of a cover-up by the Chinese government". And we don't say that.

I don't think the biomedical science or data forensic aspects of Bloom's paper warrant publication in Wikipedia. What I did think was notable, the other week, was the stramash among scientists discussing those claims. That found notability in a number of highly regarded magazines and newspapers. And in order to discuss that dispute we of course needed to, as briefly as possible, describe what the fuss was about using those secondary sources. Readers of those other publications may turn to Wikipedia to see what it says about it, and I think an information vacuum was not serving our educational mission. Add to that the high degree of conflict among editors interpreting this delay in reporting current affairs as "censorship" rather than editorial restraint about what may end up being, as some put it, a nothingburger. IMO, I'd rather Wikipedia had a few lines of nothingburger for a few weeks, than editors get so frustrated with each other that they start attacking precious guidelines.

For that reason, I think we should keep a paragraph on this Bloom-deletion fuss on Wikipedia for now, and revisit it in a few weeks. If, for example, at the end of July, all the reliable sources have a June 2021 date on them, then it clearly hasn't retained sufficient enduring notability. And it will have served its purpose in providing information to readers who were reading about it elsewhere. -- Colin°^Talk 14:09, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I also caution against citing WP:PROFRINGE. Firstly, it just gets people cross when you start saying the word "fringe" wrt a scientist who isn't a crank. With all due respect, I find it strange that you admonished other editors for failing to read policy, then turned around and used the word "fringe" differently than the policy uses it. For the record, my reference refers entirely to the advocacy above that it needs to remain because as one editor interpreted it, the preprint concludes the origins are being covered up by Chinese government. That's the pro-fringe I'm worried about, especially since it suggests the wording in the article gives this impression rather than a truly NPOV wording. Bakkster Man (talk) 13:01, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, both you and Novem Linguae cite WP:PROFRINGE in your argument to reduce/remove the text. However our article text does not actually mention the contentious aspect of the story at all (that the sequences were deleted "surreptitiously" and that this is part of a "cover up by the Chinese government"). The claim that some parts of the sequences were removed from a database is not, as far as I can see from the secondary sources, contested by anyone. Everyone seems to accept that Bloom's forensic analysis was decent science, though we do need to be cautious about that since it hasn't been published. If you are aware that this claim that sequences were removed actually "departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views", per WP:PROFRINGE, then some sources would clarify that for me.

One could argue that Bloom's most inflammatory claims (that the sequences were deleted "surreptitiously" and that this is part of a "cover up by the Chinese government") are not scientific claims at all, but political speculation of a very human and social kind. I even wonder if those claims will make it to the published edition at all.

The WP:PROFRINGE section says "if the only statements about a fringe theory come from the inventors or promoters of that theory, then "What Wikipedia is not" rules come into play." but Blooms paper and its various claims are covered by independent reliable sources, not just Bloom's preprint and promoters of the Lab Leak theory.

But as well as being irrelevant to our actual article text, while I do appreciate you are using the term per policy, Wikipedia Fringe theory tells us The term fringe theory is commonly used in a narrower sense as a pejorative, roughly synonymous with pseudo-scholarship.", which is why I say that it makes people cross. Both writer and reader of a WP:UPPERCASE shortcut can make the mistake of thinking it means something it doesn't. A careful writer will both try not to say something incorrect but also to try not to say something that is perceived to be incorrect. In an area where tensions are high, it doesn't help to say what some will read as WP:TOTALNUTCASE.

Lastly, I found this article interesting. Part of it says "Last month, 18 scientists writing in the journal Science called for an investigation into Covid-19’s origins that would give balanced consideration to the possibility of a lab accident. Even the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the lab theory hadn’t been studied extensively enough. But it’s U.S. President Joe Biden’s consideration of the idea—previously dismissed by many as a Trumpist conspiracy theory—that has given it newfound legitimacy." And that article is not alone in noting this shift in how it is regarded. Regardless of what you and I think about the origins, and no matter how correctly you think you are citing guidelines, there will be folk who skim down this page and see a bunch of pro-science editors shouting "FRINGE" and wonder if our NPOV policy is being respected. -- Colin°^Talk 14:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: The claim that some parts of the sequences were removed from a database is not, as far as I can see from the secondary sources, contested by anyone. I agree, but perhaps I can better explain my concern to clarify.

Let's consider some other hypothetical bit of information which was removed from a database and republished elsewhere. Would that change alone be notable enough to spend five sentences of the article explaining? Or, would the notability be dependent on the circumstances surrounding the deletion and republishing? I'd argue the answer is "no, unless the circumstances surrounding it are what's actually due".

My concern is that the only reason people are considering the move notable is the allegation of a 'Chinese government coverup'. If there's no coverup, the deletion and republishing isn't notable (IMO). By considering it notable, we're implying the coverup allegation. Especially on this article about the origin. As such, we should either remove the text (not notable), shrink it (to merely the deletion and republishing, no mention of the preprint), and/or more directly address the allegation (as supported by RS, I'd suggest the mainstream view is that it's a nothingburger). If you don't like the phrasing of WP:PROFRINGE, then let's stick with WP:UNDUE which PROFRINGE directs us to: Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects... Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to depth of detail, quantity of text, prominence of placement, juxtaposition of statements and use of imagery. In articles specifically relating to a minority viewpoint, such views may receive more attention and space. However, these pages should still make appropriate reference to the majority viewpoint wherever relevant and must not represent content strictly from the perspective of the minority view. Specifically, it should always be clear which parts of the text describe the minority view. In addition, the majority view should be explained in sufficient detail that the reader can understand how the minority view differs from it, and controversies regarding aspects of the minority view should be clearly identified and explained... To give undue weight to the view of a significant minority, or to include that of a tiny minority, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute.

The lack of coverage to other minor investigatory topics on the article suggests it would be more in keeping with the rest of the article's DUE weight threshold not to include the topic. And if we do, it seems it should basically be to debunk the WP:SELFPUB's claims. Maybe I'm missing a major argument that the deletion and republication would be WP:DUE without relating it to a cover-up, but it seems most of the arguments in favor are related to that cover-up. Hence my suggestion that the section would at least need to be reworded so as not to give that impression (which would indeed be UNDUE and PROFRINGE inclusion of SELFPUB). Bakkster Man (talk) 15:07, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

You are still trying to work out WEIGHT by your own judgement. I don't agree that us considering the dispute notable (for now) we are implying there is truth in the cover up. The dispute among scientists is notable simply because reliable sources are covering it when discussing "Investigations into the origin of COVID-19". For example, Trump's comments about injecting ourselves with bleach were and remain an enduring aspect of the history of Covid-19 politics (though, fortunately, not medicine). I would imagine that would form part of any comprehensive article on that topic. I don't think any respected journalist reporting on it felt they were giving credence to the idea.

I wonder if it would help to try to look at the coverage as though they were reporting on something you really don't give a s**t about. Like something about the British royal family or a sport you don't even know the rules for. To make this talk page a lot less about what we as editors think about the deletion or the cover up or whether this might fade away or that Bloom is on a path to be Time Person of the Year 2021.

I also think we are overthinking this whole thing wrt DUE thresholds and being strict about policies. With a wiki we should be able to take a more agile approach to this, and I'm trying to suggest we be a bit more flexible wrt Covid lest we find our precious guidelines are wrecked by a mob. Regardless of all the WP:RULES, there will be readers coming to Wikipedia expecting us to cover this story, at least in July 2021 there will, and our text educates them briefly about the dispute, as well as providing reliable sources for them to read about it some more. That's our mission. Job done. At the same time, the huge pressure to mention "OMG scientist found smoking gun proving Chinese scientists deleted data as part of government cover-up" can be solved without being accused of censorship. We can say that, yes, we do cover that story, but here's what reliable sources think about it. -- Colin°^Talk 16:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with agility. That's why I added the text originally. But agility should go both ways, adding and removing. "Well, it's in there now, we should keep it" is not agile.

The dispute among scientists is notable simply because reliable sources are covering it when discussing "Investigations into the origin of COVID-19". I continue to disagree strongly with this. See WP:VNOT. For instance we don't cover Li-Meng Yan on this page, despite considerable media attention. While I'm actually in favor of adding other, similarly notable (but minor) topics to this section of the article (which will help with DUE, by sharing the spotlight a bit more), I think you go to far by suggesting that mere news coverage makes a topic notable and due. Especially since WP:DUE applies as much to the quantity of text we give a topic (hence my preference for reduction, not elimination).

I also still hold that trying to appease the "OMG scientist found smoking gun proving Chinese scientists deleted data as part of government cover-up" crowd is a terrible strategy, as they won't ever be appeased. If you think policies and guidelines mean inclusion makes for the best article, that's fine. But bending policy to make the conspiracy theorists happy is the literal definition of WP:PROFRINGE... Bakkster Man (talk) 16:38, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is saying "Well, it's in there now, we should keep it". But I do think it is a little premature to be ditching it. WP:VNOT is very much agreeing that a single reliable source isn't enough to guarantee inclusion. If this was some exclusive story in the middle pages of the WSJ then we wouldn't be discussing it. But WP:VNOT doesn't tell editors how to figure out whether and where to include something. It links to several other policies, including WP:UNDUE which talks about how prominent this is among reliable sources. I'm not saying this is easy and Wikipedia is generally very cautious about including events that are briefly in the news. Nor am trying to appease "conspiracy theorists", but I also don't think labelling people "conspiracy theorists" is helpful. What we included isn't acceding to unreasonable demands any more than is giving a child demanding an ice cream an apple instead. And I'm not trying to bend policy either: at the top of our policy pages is a link to WP:COMMONSENSE, which I certainly think is worth a read.

Wrt prominence in reliable publication, the story has certainly peaked, but the NYT still includes Bloom's claims in its "Here’s what you need to know:" box. And Science Mag reworked their story on 2nd July. -- Colin°^Talk 17:31, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man I am not opposed to reducing and clarifying the text. I am opposed to the blatant WP:MISINTERPRETATION of our sources and the claims that Bloom’s findings aren’t significant or relevant to investigation into the virus. May I remind you that there are a number of very reputed scientists who are of the WP:OPINION that there isn’t enough data to determine whether the virus has natural origin or laboratory origin. If the virus does indeed turn out to be of laboratory origin, then Bloom’s findings will have been proven to be very significant and relevant at this time. CutePeach (talk) 14:05, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I'll be much more inclined to agree on the significance and relevance once the paper has been peer reviewed and approved for publication. Until then, there arguably aren't any "findings" we can reliably source to Bloom (since it's WP:SELFPUB). Bakkster Man (talk) 14:14, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, you really need to keep your talk page discussions focused on actual article text and cite actual reliable sources, rather than just commenting generally and offering your opinion of the state of affairs. All the text in the paragraph is reliably sourced, as far as I can see. If there is text that is wrong or should be reworded, propose an alternative and give reliable sources. That's how it works. If you do continue to soapbox on these pages, then I think I shall be asking for admin intervention. It isn't productive to turn these pages into a forum where two sides debate Covid 19's origins for themselves. -- Colin°^Talk 14:25, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man:, I hear you, but this case is similar to the Pangolin paper which did not provide any supporting data, which we have discussed before without resolution [26]. This is a matter of Data publishing, and many journals today require supporting data, yet the authors of these papers haven’t responded to anyone on why they deleted their sequence data. If Bloom’s paper passes peer review, it will mount pressure on the SMALL journal to retract Wuhan University researcher’s paper, which will give us another sentence to add. We will also have more to write about the phylogenetic analysis, but not more than a sentence, as it's not transformative. This incident shows how hungry the scientific community is for data, which the Chinese Government continues withholding, which is why I and other editors have countered other editors here claiming Bloom’s findings aren’t significant or relevant to the subject of this page. CutePeach (talk) 15:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@CutePeach: If Bloom’s paper passes peer review Bring up the topic if that happens, stop wasting everyone's time with WP:CRYSTAL. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:07, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

As Colin pointed out, even if it does pass peer review, it would still be a primary source. The significance of Bloom’s findings and their relevance to the subject of the article, as I said directly above, does not gain more weight with peer review. CutePeach (talk) 15:25, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

If that's how you feel, I agree. We shouldn't give Bloom any weight in the article, because his preprint is unreliable. Sounds like consensus to me, I'll make the change. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:23, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Just because it doesn’t add more weight, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a lot of weight already now. CutePeach (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: perhaps you’ve missed parts of the discussion here about the WP:V of the phrase Thucydides411 added to the Independent Investigations part of the article, and the little "failed verification" tag that ProcrastinatingReader added to it? I would edit it out myself, but I don't want to get maligned and banned in ANI or ARE. This is a seriously egregious case of WP:OR which goes to show what the larger problem is here. CutePeach (talk) 15:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Feel free to double check my attempt to better reflect the source.[27] Bakkster Man (talk) 15:15, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with your edit. Case closed. CutePeach (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@CutePeach: Please remove the failed verification tag if you feel it's appropriate. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:42, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, I don't think this edit represents our sources at all. Basically, you've personally decided which parts of the story are relevant and snipped out the bits you'd rather we didn't mention. You don't want to mention Bloom and his claims because you are focused on thinking our source for that is a PDF on some pre-print database ("because his preprint is unreliable") and because you disagree with Bloom's suspicions and regard them as a fringe view. The text remaining ends up being some confusing pointless statement about deleted data and a comment about the "conclusion" of a paper that is no longer even mentioned. But Bloom's paper is not our source. Our reliable secondary sources have titles "Seattle scientist digs up deleted coronavirus genetic data, adding fuel to the covid origin debate" and "Deleted coronavirus genome sequences trigger scientific intrigue". Our reliable secondary sources mention Bloom and his claim and they cover the story because of the heated scientific debate it provoked. You and CutePeach are still playing the game of decided for yourselves what has weight, when Wikipedia policy is to give that problem to our secondary sources. Try to regard Bloom's paper as inadmissible evidence in court -- you have to pretend you didn't read it and care nothing about its contents or its reliability or publication status. Focus on what our reliable secondary sources are saying, and cover the story in proportion they give to the details. -- Colin°^Talk 16:08, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: If you disagree, revert it. But you appear to be the only one opposed to that part of the change, and consensus doesn't require unanimity. Try to regard Bloom's paper as inadmissible evidence in court -- you have to pretend you didn't read it and care nothing about its contents or its reliability or publication status. Focus on what our reliable secondary sources are saying, and cover the story in proportion they give to the details. IMO, that's exactly what I did. Removed any mention of the preprint, covering only the removal of raw reads from NIH database, republishing in different form, and response from a scientist. Bakkster Man (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, wrt disregarding the paper, I mean as a "source" from which we make judgements and extract quotes. I don't mean you can disregard Bloom or his claims when our reliable sources do mention it. You can pretend you didn't read the paper but you can't pretend you didn't read the secondary sources. They mention Bloom and his claims in their headlines, and Bloom and his claims are the meat of the story. So removing that is just very very weird. You haven't based your text on what reliable sources say, but instead on simply what bits of the story you yourself want to mention or don't want to mention. Our readers frankly won't have a clue what that section is about because it describes things that are secondary and mentions random other people. For example, you give weight to virologist David Robertson but zero weight to Bloom. How is that in proportion per WP:WEIGHT? Our sources don't do that. The source, businessinsider.com, says "Prof David Robertson, an expert on viruses at the University of Glasgow, said in a statement..." As far as I know Robertson's views haven't made headlines around the world, so what's your justification, per policy, for quoting him and not Bloom? Robertson's statement seems to come from Science Media Centre.

Let's consider the example I mentioned elsewhere: Trump in April 2020 said that because disinfectant "knocks [Covid-19] out in a minute", "is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning". This is a White House press briefing, not a pre-print or a peer-reviewed research paper or any other formal kind of publication, but ramblings by a president who fails WP:V's requirement for a reputation for fact checking an accuracy. So by the standards you are applying to Bloom's claims, Wikipedia should not mention this at all. The idea of treating Covid-19 by injecting bleach certainly comes under the scope of MEDRS (whether one thinks that is biomedical claim or health advice or anything else). So apparently must say nothing and wait for "A systematic review of household cleaning products and their efficacy as intravenous Covid-19 therapeutic agents". Or, per your recent edit, we write something like "In April 2020, a White House press briefing caused Deborah Birx to shuffle her feet in awkward frustration and shocked commentators around the world", which is factual but pointless.

Instead, editors applied common sense, and realised this was a big political news story, not a medical claim. We have a huge section at Trump administration communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Significant coverage at COVID-19 misinformation by the United States. A mention at White House COVID-19 outbreak and Miracle Mineral Supplement. A paragraph at Trumptini. A sentence at Kayleigh McEnany. A table row at Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency (2020 Q2). A section at Bleach. A paragraph at Virucide. I could go on because Google had many more pages of results. -- Colin°^Talk 14:30, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: Which is it? Do you want us to regard Bloom's paper as inadmissible evidence in court, or merely not cite the preprint directly? Because hearsay about inadmissible evidence seems worse to me.

They mention Bloom and his claims in their headlines, and Bloom and his claims are the meat of the story. So removing that is just very very weird. Sounds like good reasons to support removing the topic entirely from the article. Unless you intend to propose an improved paragraph wording in search of better consensus?

As far as I know Robertson's views haven't made headlines around the world, so what's your justification, per policy, for quoting him and not Bloom? Because Bloom's claims were made in WP:PREPRINTS, which are not reliable, we should treat them as such. Simply repeating an unreliable claim in an unreliable source because it was reported on could be considered WP:Fact laundering, and we mustn't give WP:UNDUE weight to such a claim. As part of discussing the WP:FRINGELEVEL of an unreliable minority claim, we must place the claim in context with the mainstream. The Robertson quote is one way of doing so (I'd suggest the simplest, but not the only person we could quote nor the only way to provide that context). Robertson's quote is acceptable because his opinion was not made as a WP:RSSELF or under the guise of WP:SCHOLARSHIP which we hold to higher standards (which is the answer to the Trump bleach comment, DJT didn't publish a pre-print of the claim so we followed different sourcing rules), and we attributed the quote rather than wikivoicing it. This is all assuming we haven't blown the whole thing out of WP:PROPORTION, and decide to remove the topic entirely. Bakkster Man (talk) 15:15, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man you are still trying to weigh Bloom and Robertson yourself, not per the proportion given to views in reliable sources. And you are still confusing a political story with a biomedical one. As biomedical claims or scientific claims that we might put in Wikipedia's own voice, neither Bloom nor Robertson's original publications meet the grade (the pre-print server or the sciencemediacentre's random list of scientists they found at short notice who wanted to express an opinion) and they are not our sources either per WP:V nor per WP:WEIGHT. And some of our reliable sources interviewed Bloom. The only way you guys are ever going to stop banging heads against each other and wrecking MEDRS is if you accept this is a political story. I don't understand at all that you seem to think that because Trump's bleach comment sprang from his own brain during a press conference that somehow it is more reliable than if he'd spent the morning reading a pre-print server for the latest daft ideas. The solution to many disagreements on Wikipedia is to make it "somebody else's problem". We cover this political story per what reliable sources on political stories say, in similar proportion to how the reliable sources do it. -- Colin°^Talk 13:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man: Your edit removes the fact that the Small paper includes the sequences. Despite what CutePeach has repeatedly claimed, the paper contains the sequences, in the form of the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). CutePeach is confusing raw reads with sequences, but the SNPs are in the paper, and they fully specify the sequence. -Thucydides411 (talk) 16:49, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Thanks for the fix. I was trying to describe that the vital info was there, just not in raw form, but you explained it much more clearly. Bakkster Man (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: The sequences were deleted from NCBI database, from which Science Magazine most virologists expect to be able to download whole viral genomes. But this is not even the main point of the story.

@Bakkster Man: I have to agree with Colin here. I was very tired last night, so I didn’t read all the edits, and I think your text doesn’t fully represent the sources. Here is a full chronology of events as detailed in our reliable sources:

1. Curtains open slowly, swooping up from the center as they draw, revealing the stage, with a spotlight: In a world starved for data to clarify the origin of COVID-19, a study claiming to have unearthed early sequences of SARS-CoV-2 that were deliberately hidden was bound to ignite a sizzling debate. [28]

2. On 6 March 2020 researchers from Wuhan University’s Renmin Hospital posted a preprint on medRxiv describing early COVID-19 patients and the specific mutations in their viruses.

3. Some time before 31 March 2020 the researchers posted sequences the NCBI's Sequence Read Archive (SRA).

4. On 24 June 2020, the paper was published in Small, a journal more focused on materials and chemistry than virology. According to the Journal’s records, the paper was submitted to them on 03 April 2020.

5. Fast forward to an unknown date, Bloom Bloom wanted to do his own analyses of the viruses detected in the earliest cases [29] which led him to a study [30] that listed all SARS-CoV-2 sequences submitted before 31 March 2020 to the SRA [31], but "when he checked the SRA for one of the listed projects, he couldn’t find its sequences.

6. Bloom goes about Googling some of the project's information whereupon he found a study from a scientist we need not name, from the Wuhan University's Renmin Hospital, that low and behold had been posted as a preprint on 6 March 2020 on medRxiv and published in June of that year in Small, a journal little known to virologists. Needless to say, this is the same paper as in 2..

7. Bloom then sets about internet sleuthing leading him to discover that the SRA backs up its information in Google's Cloud platform, which turned up files containing some of the [WU team]'s earlier data submissions. As the Science Magazine explains, the Small paper mentions no corrections to the viral sequences that might explain why they were removed from the SRA. For Bloom, this reinforced suspicions that the Chinese government has tried to hide how the pandemic started, and Ian Lipkin is quoted as saying This is a creative and rigorous approach to investigating the provenance of SARS-CoV-2.

8. But now critics are given the stage and they call his detective work much ado about nothing because the Chinese scientists later published the viral information in a different form, and the recovered sequences may add little to the origin hunt. Andrew Rambaut is quoted as saying The idea that the group was trying to hide something is farcical. Another critic is Stephen Goldstein and Bloom acknowledges them, and toned down this sentence and other accusatory language but says most virologists expect to be able to download whole viral genomes from a database like the SRA.

9. Science Magazine concludes with a quote from genomicist Sudhir Kumar saying Many people feel that there is a lot more Chinese data out there, and they don't have access to it. Nature Magazine concludes with a quote from Bloom saying There are probably more data out there [32].

10. Bloom bows. Curtains close. Audience applauds.

Can we fit all of this into five or six sentences? One part I missed out is Bloom’s phylogenetic analysis, which Rambaut disagreed with, but that would require another sentence. CutePeach (talk) 14:50, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, I really appreciate that the green text all comes from the sources (at least, the ones I checked did). I think Bakkster Man did a fair job in his initial edit of condensing the story and writing in encyclopaedic form rather than journalistic prose. But I suspect his patience is growing thin at working on a story he thinks is a "nothingburger" so probably unfair to expect him to redo it all. There isn't really an appetite for making the text longer than it was originally. You could propose some text here if you want to have a go. -- Colin°^Talk 15:21, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I think Bakkster Man did a fair job in his initial edit of condensing the story and writing in encyclopaedic form rather than journalistic prose. But I suspect his patience is growing thin at working on a story he thinks is a "nothingburger" so probably unfair to expect him to redo it all. Accurate assessment.

Two sets of inputs. First one would be to suggest that whatever we end up with should be no longer than it was before, and probably shorter (this appears to be the consensus across the breadth of the discussion, and I don't think that's a stretch in the slightest). I'd also argue that any discussion of Bloom's phylogenic analysis should wait until the preprint is reviewed and published, as the media sources primarily focus on (and only give us reliable validation of claims regarding) the data deletion from the SRA. Finally, I'd suggest that we copy edit any suggestion here on the Talk page prior to going on the article to avoid past issues with POV.

Alternate consensus suggestion: does it make more sense to have a "Data Availability" section instead? This seems to be the primary concern: who has what data in what format with how much access? We echo this regarding the WHO report and most of the notable open letters have referenced this is an issue. Both calling for China to be more forthcoming, and warning against accusations leveled at China making such data less likely to be shared. The text we write about the SRA kerfuffle might not change much, but it would definitely put it into better (and broader) context. Bakkster Man (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think reliable sources are covering this as a "data availability" story. Or do you have examples? But I agree that revised text should be proposed here. -- Colin°^Talk 13:50, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

I think it's clearly being covered primarily as a data availability story. I did a Google News search for 'bloom preprint' and most of the headlines mentioned the data being "deleted"/"removed"/"hid"/"obscured", and few mentioned the phylogenic analysis (which, per above, I don't think we can reliably use until peer review, unlike the independently verified NIH SRA removal). Even if we need to agree to a different synonym of "availability" (I thought that was the most neutral term, but I'm sure there's other options I didn't consider). I'd be interested in hearing an alternate synonym, if you have one to propose. Examples from the quotations immediately above:

• "In a world starved for data to clarify the origin of COVID-19, a study claiming to have unearthed early sequences of SARS-CoV-2 that were deliberately hidden was bound to ignite a sizzling debate"
• "virologists expect to be able to download whole viral genomes from a database like the SRA"
• "Many people feel that there is a lot more Chinese data out there, and they don't have access to it."

The other big advantage of this reframing, is it would better link us to the thread running through the WHO study's reactions about "more timely and comprehensive data sharing", and even the prevalence of pre-prints and open access to improve the speed with which the origins were able to be investigated. As can be seen above, that seems to be the reason this preprint got the attention: everyone was primed to discuss whether or not we have the data from Chinese researchers to independently evaluate. We also seem to have more examples of data availability topics worth writing about than "independent investigations". Bakkster Man (talk) 14:48, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Agree, I'm just cautious that sources aren't saying "data availability", and it is fairly nerdy language. Whether making data available or information sharing or some other phrasing, we should consider negatives and positives. There's the quite remarkably early and open sharing of the genome by Chinese scientists, which has benefited us all in giving the vaccine researchers such a head start. If this is a new angle to consider "investigations", then one wonders what else fits into that pot? -- Colin°^Talk 15:13, 9 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man and Colin, the main story here is definitely lack of data, but Bloom’s phylogenetic analysis is quite central to it too. In their critique, Lipkin, Goldestein, Wertheim are quoted as concurring with Bloom’s analysis, confirming what was speculated WRT to the virus circulating before the market outbreak. This is uncontroversial, but where we need to exercise more care is in describing the disagreement between Bloom and Garry WRT to what Bedford calls the "rooting issue", and passing review won't change that. I don’t see any need to omit details for the sake of shortening the section and I don’t see any consensus here to do that. I think reports of Bloom’s findings should stay in the Independent Investigations section, as there will be more publications from independent scientists, such as the new paper from Nikolai Petrovsky in Scientific Reports [33] [34] [35] [36], which I will add tomorrow. CutePeach (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

• Remove.

  The partial genome sequences address an evolutionary conundrum about the early genetic diversity of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, although scientists emphasize that they do not shed light on its origins.
  — Callaway, Ewen (2021-06-24). "Deleted coronavirus genome sequences trigger scientific intrigue". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01731-3.

  TrangaBellam (talk) 16:15, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Edit proposals

I will put an edit proposal here tomorrow morning. CutePeach (talk) 14:31, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

@CutePeach: It has been a week, and you seem to have moved on to other non-neutral editing. Should I remove the paragraph, now? Bakkster Man (talk) 22:57, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man: please restore the text you deleted. There is no consensus here to delete this section and doing so is a WP:POVDELETION. I started writing the edit proposal but due to the way our last round of edit proposals went [37], I have been somewhat despondent. Now with the way our discussions are going in COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis, where you are claiming that the premise of the hypothesis isn’t WP:DUE there, it seems to me you are abusing WP:BRD process, which is why I - for the first time - became bold myself, which immediately resulted in you filing a case on WP:ARE. I am tagging here Mr Ernie, Atsme and Dervorguilla, so that they understand how this began. CutePeach (talk) 16:41, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Given the ongoing ARE, I'd prefer if a 3rd party (Colin, or any of the users you've tagged) requested that I restore the content, which I would abide by. Otherwise, I prefer to wait for the ARE to resolve, and/or your proposed rewrite. Bakkster Man (talk) 01:22, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

CutePeach, can you please not continue to WP:CANVAS like this? --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 02:06, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, I'm not following this page closely, but got pinged. I see the section was "removed pending rewrite, see talk page" on 20th July, and it is now the 24th. I may be missing something, but I don't see a pending rewrite. Perhaps it, or something, could be restored, "pending rewrite". I mean, unless the text is egregiously incorrect or misleading, then the wiki way is generally to edit in situ, or at least propose alternatives (particularly when editors are repeatedly failing to make consensual edits) to the existing text. Btw, Prejudice doesn't have any use in science is an article in China Daily dated 22 July (it is critical of Bloom). I mention this purely to point out there is still ongoing discussion of this controversy. I still think Wikipedia should briefly mention the scientific controversy. CutePeach, where Bakkster Man is right is that Bloom's science is not ripe for inclusion on Wikipedia: it is just a preprint. At this point it is just a controversy-story that has sufficient mainstream media coverage to warrant inclusion IMO, but it is not a scientific-development story (yet, and may never be). -- Colin°^Talk 09:08, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: Appreciate your weighing in. I restored the paragraph per your comment: I still think Wikipedia should briefly mention the scientific controversy. My concern was mostly that I postponed working to either improve the text or build further consensus, pending the offer above to propose a rewrite the following day. I gave it an extra week (I understand that WP is low on most of our priority lists), and was frustrated to find that rather than the proposed rewrite here CutePeach had instead been proposing multiple other paragraphs on other articles, without chiming in here to mention whether they still intended to rewrite this paragraph or not. While I'm sure it was a mere oversight by CutePeach, it's naturally a frustrating one. Nobody else seemed to mind the removal, with no other comments here disputing it or proposing a different solution. Hence why I wanted to ping you, as I've appreciated your 3rd opinion over the course of the dispute. Bakkster Man (talk) 12:55, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

My problem with the current text as a stand in is that it does not mention or imply any investigation into the origins of COVID-19. We say:

1. Virus data was removed from an archive
2. The removal was standard and had a reason
3. Someone published a study on the data but not the raw data
4. The whole thing was mundane

As is, a reader would reasonably wonder why the section is included in this page at all. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 14:26, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

This is similar to my comment above at 16:08, 7 July 2021. Perhaps we should rewind to an earlier version, that does at least mention Bloom. -- Colin°^Talk 09:56, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I think we're all in agreement that the current text just doesn't make a meaningful link. A rollback isn't my first preference, but I'm not necessarily opposed. At some point after AR/E, I'm considering seeking wider input on how we handle this kind of sourcing: scientific claim with unreliable sourcing (preprint) that has significant reliable news media sourcing. This isn't the first time we've run into this issue, and won't be the last. Bakkster Man (talk) 12:00, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Bakkster Man, I think what we need is more attributed quotations about how this event was interpreted by notable parties, namely scientists like Relman, Ebright, et al. who found this concerning but also the scientists who didn't think it was an issue on that TWIV episode I mentioned on your talk page. In proportion to how common those views are. Basically we need to make it an attributed quote section.

I recognize in some cases this may mean including some UNDUE material, but at this point it seems appropriate to allow a complete picture and connection back to the subject of this article to outweigh a small amount of UNDUE. As long as we write it in an NPOV style (no easy task), it will be okay. We either need to include it mostly with quotations, or not at all, is my take. Otherwise it just feels too vague to be useful.

Leaning heavily on quotations will help. We just need to describe the notable controversy in the voice of the experts who find it notable. It was notable enough for that TWIV episode, so I suspect more quotes exist that we haven't found yet...

Tell me if that makes any sense, I know it's a convoluted solution.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:57, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I would strongly caution against a wider debate (i.e. RFC) on "scientific claim with unreliable sourcing (preprint) that has significant reliable news media sourcing" any time soon. In my experience there are (a) far too many Covid-related RFCs and (b) the voting (it's always a vote) is primarily focused on supporting whichever side you favour wrt Covid conspiracies/etc rather than giving one iota of thought to other biomedical articles (non-contentious and contentious) and (c) nobody takes the advice of the RFC team about how to formulate a good question. Covid is a topic where editing is not following the norms and where trying to establish general guidelines in order to resolve disputes there is really unwise. Look at the fallout from the MEDRS RFC, where we have some editors interpreting the result as "MEDRS sourcing is not required".

IMO the main thing is to stop thinking of the preprint as a source at all, just like I discussed earlier about Trump's bleach comment. We do have to watch that "discussing the controversy" doesn't become a mechanism to push fringe or novel/unaccepted viewpoints as though all scientists and their thoughts are equal. One of the tools used to push minority viewpoints is to persuade the public that scientists cannot agree, that there is no consensus and that all views are valid. My feeling was that this particular story reached a threshold of coverage by mainstream media. Not just the usual suspects who credulously report contentious opinions more than boring consensus opinion because it sells papers, but science magazines and respected science writers. There are and will be many other stories that don't make that threshold. So I'm afraid I don't think there will be a neat answer. -- Colin°^Talk 13:57, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Colin, Oh yes I am definitely not interested in any RFC about this, for exactly the reasons you describe. I'm sorry if that's how my comment sounded, it is definitely not my intention.

I think we need to cover this topic entirely sourced from secondary RSes about the "reaction" to the whole sequence database removal thing. (I'm sorry, controversy is the only real word that comes to mind). And mostly, in that way, as quotes from people whose opinions are relevant, in proportion to how widely shared those viewpoints are among experts. -- Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:02, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Recently I was reading Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign, the very last sentence of that lead is arguably a biomedical claim, sourced to a preprint on GitHub. It's by esteemed academics, though, and so I didn't think it was enough of a problem for removal. But the issue with scientific claims sourced to preprints spreads widely IMO. There does need to be a more general policy discussion on it at some point, but I agree with Colin's caution against such a change at this time. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:41, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, my indentation was confusing. I was reply to Bakkster Man. ProcrastinatingReader, that sentence on the Trump page is indeed a biomedical claim and shouldn't be sourced to primary research whether uploaded to github, a preprint server or published with fanfare in the Lancet. I'm not sure why anyone is in any doubt that it fails our sourcing requirements (whether MEDRS or core policy, which make the same demands). But I'm not about to start editing American politics articles. I do wish those editing covid topics would stop thinking "We disagree therefore we need a general policy discussion to resolve things". The disagreement arises from parties not wanting to follow guideline and policy because it prevents them pushing their agenda and POV on the project, not from those guideline and policy being unclear. There is an aspect where those fighting against such constant pushing can end up being too dogmatic and restrictive as a consequence of battle fatigue. But both are behavioural problems, not content guideline problems. -- Colin°^Talk 20:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it's that clear. A lot of respectable editors add this stuff in good faith, and it's all over the place. That one is more obvious because it's biomedical, but it's usually scientific claims sourced to preprints or to news sources regurgitating a preprint. I personally think it's a grey area; though I've generally found it bad practice myself, I know others take different views. I have no vested interest in the question either way and I suspect others don't either, so I think your assessment that it's to push a preferred version is a bit off. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:15, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Colin, Yes I agree that Trump page sentence is BMI and should be covered by MEDRS. It's almost explicitly mentioned in BMI re: incidence and prevalence. It's just an inconvenience with the PAGs, those darn rules! But agree that I would personally not have sourced it that way. It is clearly not a MEDRS.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:28, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

ProcrastinatingReader, the fact that you don't think it is clear doesn't mean that it is not clear. In the past, the usual practice was to post a question at WT:MED or some other noticeboard. These days, on anything covid related, folk seem to think to start an RFC. Wrt this practice I was speaking generally, and no doubt some other editors have just picked up the pathological practice. It doesn't stop it being pathological, and having roots in essentially disrupting Wikipedia by bogging things down in meta discussions about sourcing guidelines. -- Colin°^Talk 07:59, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

We should not use Global Times as a source

@Pakbelang: we should not use Global Times as a source for controversial content like this, and this is likely why multiple users have reverted your addition. See WP:GLOBALTIMES. I also want you to know that your edits are messing with the Bloomberg news references, causing them to display the "Are you a robot?" title instead of the actual article title. Please don't use the Ref Toolbar that way, it doesn't work for Bloomberg. --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:03, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink:f Thanks. I see now that there's a problem. Is the UPI reference okay for this do you think? --Pakbelang (talk) 00:08, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Happy to help :) If you mean the United Press international, I would say that also probably is unreliable for this claim, as it's owned by the same people as The Washington Times, and often has a very similar political bend. Likely not useful for determining whether such content is WP:DUE. I would personally suggest a more mainstream source for that.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:24, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

The Chinese claims have been reported in enough independent sources that we don't need to cite their official mouthpiece (there's a subsection about the claims at the misinformation article). However, it still brings up the question whether this is something that really needs to be reported here (as opposed to keeping it at the misinformation article, where it rightfully belongs as an example of disinformation). Additionally, the Chinese claims (which are not even remotely plausible, unlike the more familiar version promoted in US media, which at least is possible although extremely unlikely) do not appear to have lead to any significant political or scientific developments, unlike those in the Western media. I'm not sure they're proper for this article. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 00:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

@RandomCanadian: The Chinese disinformation is an important development in the framing of the Wuhan lab-leak investigations. Pakbelang (talk) 23:18, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Framing would merit inclusion here, but we would need a source explicitly talking about that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:26, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

True. The recent NYT article mentions the Chinese demands in this context – I'll add it as a reference. Pakbelang (talk) 08:08, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

I couldn't access the NYT article, I found a similar article in Foreign Policy and have added that.Pakbelang (talk) 08:29, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Broken citation in lead

Someone extended-confirmed needs to fix the missing ref tag. Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 18:25, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Ekpyros, Is it still there? I couldn't find one missing... Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 23:57, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink, nope—seems to have been resolved! Thanks! Elle Kpyros (talk) 15:10, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the Member State Information Session on Origins

16th July remarks of WHO Director-General are out. Link here. Transcription here:

Honourable Ministers, Excellencies, dear colleagues and friends,

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening to all Member States, and thank you for joining us for this special briefing on the steps that WHO is taking to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

As you know, at the end of March this year, the WHO-led international scientific team delivered its report following its mission to China in January, in line with World Health Assembly resolution 73.1.

That report filled in several knowledge gaps, and identified areas for further study.

Earlier this week, Member States received a circular letter detailing the proposed next steps that the Secretariat will take to advance those studies, in several areas:

First, integrated studies of humans, wildlife, captive and farmed animals, and environment, as part of a One Health approach.

Second, studies prioritizing geographic areas with the earliest indication of circulation of SARS-CoV-2, and neighbouring areas where other SARS-related coronaviruses have been found in non-human reservoirs;

Third, studies of animal markets in and around Wuhan, including continuing studies on animals sold at the Huanan wholesale market;

Fourth, studies related to animal trace-back activities, with additional epidemiology and molecular epidemiology work, including early sequences of the virus;

And fifth, audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019.

The Secretariat will continue to develop operational plans and terms of reference for the next series of studies, in collaboration and consultation with Member States and the international scientific community.

I thank China and the other Member States who wrote to me yesterday, and I agree that finding the origins of this virus is a scientific exercise that must be kept free from politics.

For that to happen, we expect China to support this next phase of the scientific process by sharing all relevant data in a spirit of transparency. Equally, we expect all Member States to support the scientific process by refraining from politicising it.

Finding where this virus came from is essential not just for understanding how the pandemic started and preventing future outbreaks, but it’s also important as an obligation to the families of the 4 million people who have lost someone they love, and the millions who have suffered.

But we also know that SARS-CoV-2 will not be the last new pathogen with pandemic potential. There will be more, and we will need to understand the origins of those pathogens too.

It is therefore our view that the world needs a more stable and predictable framework for studying the origins of new pathogens with epidemic or pandemic potential.

Accordingly, I am pleased to announce that the Secretariat is establishing a permanent International Scientific Advisory Group for Origins of Novel Pathogens, or SAGO.

SAGO will play a vital role in the next phase of studies into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the origins of future new pathogens.

Members of this new advisory group will be selected based on their technical expertise, taking into account geographical representation and gender balance.

We will soon be launching an open call for nominations, including from Member States, for highly-qualified experts to join SAGO. As required, the Secretariat will also appoint technical advisors to SAGO.

Dr Mike Ryan and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove will say more about this new approach shortly.

As always, we are grateful for your engagement, and we look forward to your questions, comments, input and guidance.

I thank you.

Since this is a controversial area of editing, please read carefully the statement above, and comment on whether some of it merits inclusion here. Forich (talk) 18:45, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Forich, I think it's a very good statement, and i think it's great that that is the official position of Tedros. I hope the WHO is able to actually conduct all the investigations he details here, that would be really good. But I'm not sure anything in here is novel enough to merit inclusion in this article. We must avoid undue quotations, and especially avoid WP:RECENTISM. I think covering everything Tedros says with a fine tooth comb would not be appropriate. What specifically did you have in mind?--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:22, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Looks promising. Do we have some links to secondary sources we can take a look at, to see what secondary sources think are the most important parts of this statement? –Novem Linguae (talk) 10:28, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink:, I plan on including this fact Finding where this virus came from is essential not just for understanding how the pandemic started, because it is sometimes challenged by journalists and commentators that say that it changes nothing to know where the virus comes from, and that is simply wrong. Forich (talk) 17:17, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Forich, I would tell you to put it in attributed quotation, but yes I agree that is definitely DUE for inclusion. It's heavily covered as an opinion of Tedros.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:27, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Changing stance of experts regarding possible lab leak

Yesterday I inserted the word "initial" into the "Laboratory leak" subsection. It was reverted. I've restored it and added a source.

I had not looked at the Talk page before making the simple addition and had no idea this was such a big deal. Now I've skimmed this page.

Yesterday I had intended to add an update to that subsection to note that the WHO Director-General said, "The second is there was a premature push to especially reduce one of the options like the lab theory. As you know, I was a lab technician myself, an immunologist and I have worked in the lab and lab accidents happen. It's common; I have seen it happening and I have myself had errors so it can happen." (Find it at 00:26:30 on this transcript or videotaped here.) I ran out of time. YoPienso (talk) 17:32, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Please give me a few minutes to add an update. YoPienso (talk) 17:36, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Has the WHO formally retracted the report or its findings? Have the report's authors issued an official statement saying that they no longer believe the lab leak is "extremely unlikely" ? If neither of those things are true, then we cannot say that the WHO report considered it unlikely in the past, but no longer. We cannot say it "formerly" considered it unlikely. Because the report still considers it unlikely. Tedros does not speak for the report's authors. We do not quote President Biden to decide what "America" thinks, and even moreso what a commission of american experts think. We must be precise when we refer to these things. We cannot conflate Commissioner General Tedros with the WHO report's authors, they are quite distinct.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:11, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

No, they haven't. This is a case where a spokesperson, while making "official statements", injected a personal comment that may not be representative of the organization itself. By definition, a "lab technician" and spokesperson is not the type of "expert" we look to for determining scientific consensus. The stance of experts has not changed and this is just another case of trying to strongarm something into this article to fit one's personal beliefs. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 19:45, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Berchanhimez: Please retract your misguided ad hominem remark. YoPienso (talk) 21:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: Thanks for your work here. I see your point about conflating the Director-General with the authors. One suggestion, which I'll go ahead and implement in the lead, is to change "has said" to "later said." YoPienso (talk) 21:07, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

It makes no sense to say that a report "initially" said something unless it was later revised under the same title. And what Tedros said has no bearing on what the content of the report is. He is just another public figure, including the biologists who wrote the letter to Science, who have said that there was a rush to judgment and that further investigation is warranted. I think these statements are clearly germane to this article, which has "Investigations" in its title (while the content has become more like "what most scientists think is the origin and why"), but they have to be carefully framed and they aren't really about the lab leak hypothesis per se. On that score, I believe that there is missing material, for instance statements from reliable sources (not to be found in the pre-concluded WP:NOLABLEAK) arguing for the plausibility of the lab leak hypothesis, and RS statements that the establishment of a lab leak depends on the sort of data that has been destroyed (largely for aggressively defensive political reasons, so the destruction itself lends no support to the hypothesis), so even if the hypothesis is veridical, we will likely never know. OTOH, if the origin is zoonotic, we may eventually find the vector. Unless and until that happens, it is unlikely that there will be a scientific consensus about the origin; certainly nothing like the degree--or, I would argue, the type--that we have for AGW (which is a statement of fact, not mere likelihood) that can be established by concurrence of over 97% of authors and peer-reviewed papers in a very large collection of same. -- Jibal (talk) 21:10, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

The problem is that there's not a single scientific paper in reputable journals which "supports" the lab leak. Of the few that do mention it, their description of it ranges from "conspiracy theory" to "unnecessary to explain the pandemic" to "possibly but [varying degree of] unlikely". I mean, yes, sure, you can find a few dubious papers supporting the lab leak - as you can find dubious publications denying climate change, or promoting various similar things like anti-vax or the like. Doesn't mean that there is no scientific consensus. WP:FALSEBALANCE is rather clear that "plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship". I don't think there's any dispute possible that

• A) The majority hypothesis amongst the scientific community is zoonotic origin; and
• B) The one scenario of a lab leak that is plausible (i.e. not ruled out by scientists) is also certainly "currently unaccepted" by the same scientific community.

So, yes, the lab leak is a notable idea, and certainly warrants mention where its omission would be a major error of omission, such as in the description of the four hypotheses covered by the WHO report, or when discussing the political and social ramifications of this. But writing of it as equally credible to the mainstream view would mislead the reader and not serve any encyclopedic purpose whatsoever. See WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:Academic bias. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:57, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

References

A problem is that you cannot prove your first statement, and I am not certain that is true. And any paper that calls some hypothesis a conspiracy theory is not a scientific paper--at least not in biology; possibly sociology. As for credibility, I have never argued that they are equally credible, and it would certainly be very wrong to leave that impression, and my measure of the credibility of the lab leak hypothesis has decreased after reading and studying https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/07/16/lab-leak-evidence/. But my view is that zoonotic origin cannot be scientifically established until the vector is identified, that "X is likely" is not a scientific claim and a consensus that X is "likely" is certainly not a scientific consensus of X. In any case, my personal views aren't relevant, and I am not at this point calling for any changes to the article, so I'm going to stop commenting or responding until/unless that changes. -- Jibal (talk) 18:10, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

@Jibal: You're likely correct that I can't prove a negative (that there exists no credible paper which supports this). What I can tell you with certainty is that, of those sources I have found and have had time to check, none do. What I have also done is add some to support the statements above, if you were not sure. In particular, the paper by Frutos et al., which focuses on this topic, is an interesting read and might give you a hint at where I'm coming from with this. The recent article from Snopes you mention also makes a good debunking of most claims regarding this. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:34, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Science 101: If a statement can not be proven even if it is true, but can be easily disproven if it is false, then the statement is the default, and the burden of proof lies on those who claim it is false.

Find that "single scientific paper in reputable journals which "supports" the lab leak", and you win: yes, it is a scientific hypothesis. Until then, you lose. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:30, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

It's not new and various sources have documented the inconsistency between the director's statements and the team's conclusions and have reported about the team complaining that he should support them instead, some are in the history of this page. It would indeed be inappropriate to attempt to balance the two. —PaleoNeonate – 00:03, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Reactions to the Phase 1 WHO report - again

The current text says:

Nature news described the 300-page report as the result of a "major investigation," stemming from the work of 34 international scientists, SARS-CoV-2 genome tests in early patients, analyses of nearly 1,000 samples from the Huanan Market and from hundreds of market animals, analyses of death certificates, and interviews with researchers at the WIV. A small number of researchers said that they would not trust the report's conclusions because it was overseen by the Chinese government, but other scientists found the report convincing, and said there was no evidence of a laboratory origin for the virus.

After the publication of the report, politicians, talk show hosts, journalists, and some scientists advanced unsupported claims that SARS-CoV-2 may have come from the WIV. In the United States, calls to investigate a laboratory leak reached a "fever pitch," fueling aggressive rhetoric resulting in antipathy towards people of Asian ancestry, and the bullying of scientists. The United States, European Union, and 13 other countries criticised the WHO-convened study, calling for transparency from China and access to the raw data and original samples. Chinese officials described these criticisms as an attempt to politicise the study. Scientists involved in the WHO report, including Liang Wannian, John Watson, and Peter Daszak, objected to the criticism, and said that the report was an example of the collaboration and dialogue required to successfully continue investigations into the matter.

In a letter published in Science, a number of scientists, including Ralph Baric, argued that the accidental laboratory leak hypothesis had not been sufficiently investigated and remained possible, calling for greater clarity and additional data. Their letter was criticized by some virologists and public health experts, who said that a "hostile" and "divisive" focus on the WIV was unsupported by evidence, and would cause Chinese scientists and authorities to share less, rather than more data.

The main sources of this text are:

• Maxmen (March, 2021) in Nature News
• Maxmen (May, 2021) in Nature News

In my opinion, Wikipedia's coverage of the reception of the report needs to account for these:

1. Tedros comments to the report in March 2021
2. The reception from scientists at the time it got published in March 2021
3. The reception from the 14 countries who issued a statement in March 2021
4. The reception from open letters of scientists a few days after the report was released

Some of these receptions received counter comments from the Chinese government and the members of the WHO team, and its fair to include them too.

In the next comments I will post suggestions to improve each of the reception items above, pingin @Darouet:.Forich (talk) 04:34, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Tedros comments

Maxmen (March, 2021): After the report’s publication, the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was not directly involved with the investigation, posted a statement saying that he looks forward to future studies of the coronavirus’s animal origins — but that he wasn’t content with the examination of a potential laboratory leak. “I do not believe that this assessment was extensive enough,” he wrote. “This requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.”

Sciencemag: At a briefing today on the report, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emphasized that further studies are needed to understand the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and criticized the access given to its international team on their fact-finding mission to China. Tedros said he expected “future collaborative studies to include more timely and comprehensive data sharing. … Although the team has concluded that a laboratory leak is the least likely hypothesis, this requires further investigation, potentially with additional missions involving specialist experts, which I am ready to deploy.”

Al Jazeera: Separately on Tuesday, WHO’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also demanded further research to reach “more robust conclusions”.

NY Times: Some members of the expert team have raised concerns about China’s refusal to share raw data about early Covid-19 cases. In an unusual move, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director-general, acknowledged those concerns while speaking about the report on Tuesday. He said he hoped future studies would include “more timely and comprehensive data sharing.”

CNN: "As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement Tuesday. "This report is a very important beginning, but it is not the end. We have not yet found the source of the virus, and we must continue to follow the science and leave no stone unturned as we do."

Sciencenews: Some explanations may be more probable than others, but for now all possibilities remain on the table, says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

My suggestion are:

1. Include a mention of Tedros comments in the "Reaction" subsection. It is currently in the "Findings" subsection.
2. Alternatively, leave Tedros comments in the "Findings subsection, with the clarification used in Maxmen (March, 2021): "who was not directly involved with the investigation"
3. Include a direct mention of how Tedros addressed the potential of a laboratory leak. I propose either: i) Citing Maxmen (March, 2021): "he looks forward to future studies of the coronavirus’s animal origins — but that he wasn’t content with the examination of a potential laboratory leak."; or ii) replace the "unturned stones" text we have with a cite from Sciencenews': "Some explanations may be more probable than others, but for now all possibilities remain on the table, says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.". This addition would improve NPOV, I think.
4. Include a more precise quote of Tedros mention of "further research". In my opinion, he says they are "required". The current text in wikipedia omit that precise qualification (the WP article currently only says "as part of future investigations" and "being ready to deploy more teams").

Reception from scientists at the time of release in March 2021

This is the immediate reaction from scientists, which excludes the open letters that came later, to be clear.

Maxmen (March, 2021): Eddie Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia, says that the report does a good job of laying out what’s known about the early days of the pandemic... The WHO report also concludes that it’s highly unlikely that the coronavirus escaped from a lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology... Nevertheless, the findings are likely to be contested by some. A small group of scientists have sent letters to the media saying that they wouldn’t trust the outcome of the investigation because it was closely overseen by China’s government.

Sciencemag: Where SARS-CoV-2 came from before it began its 15-month rampage around the globe is the biggest pandemic puzzle of all. But an eagerly awaited report on the question released today may satisfy few readers, especially given unrealistic expectations about how quickly the source of the coronavirus could be pinpointed... That’s long been the favored hypothesis of many virologists, but the team convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) reports little fresh evidence to support it, and members acknowledge several other scenarios, including an accidental release from a lab, remain possible. The report does, however, lay out plenty of next steps. “We still don’t know where the virus came from, but there’s a clear plan to continue investigating,” says virologist Angela Rasmussen of Georgetown University, who was not on the WHO team... The report’s most definitive conclusion is also its most controversial: that it is “extremely unlikely” SARS-CoV-2 leaked out of a Chinese laboratory that was already studying coronaviruses, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)... More investigations into the earliest days of the pandemic are also needed, says Thea Kølsen Fischer, a virologist at the University of Copenhagen and part of the international team. It’s still unclear when people started to get sick... From the beginning, scientists on and outside the WHO team have pushed back against the idea that a short mission would quickly pinpoint the pandemic’s origins. The politically charged environment surrounding the WHO probe hasn’t helped matters, Rasmussen notes... The report is just a first step, Fischer adds. “It feels like I’m standing in front of this wall and I’m now holding this piece of string in my hands, but I don’t know how long that string is on the other side of the wall. Maybe it’s short, and this will be done in months or maybe it’s long and this will take years.”

Al Jazeera: The inability of the WHO mission to conclude yet where or how the virus began spreading in people means that tensions will continue over how the pandemic started – and whether China has helped efforts to find out or, as the US has alleged, hindered them.

PBS: Nick Schifrin[China policy adviser in the State Department during the Trump administration, and is now a fellow at the Hoover and Hudson institutes.]: And do you believe today's WHO report answers some of the questions that you asked? Miles Yu: No. The international organization has lost its credibility by believing one government narrative.. Also the title lets us infer that PBS editorialized the reception of the WHO report as: "but critics claim the study was biased".

Sydney Morning Herald: Unsatisfyingly, their joint report, snappily titled Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part, does not reach any definitive conclusions. It does not identify Patient One. It does not specify the origin of the virus that has so far killed 2.865 million people and shattered economies and communities around the globe... So does the report tell us anything at all? The first person to publish the genome of the virus, Professor Eddie Holmes of Sydney University, gave me his expert interpretation of the 120-page report and its 196 pages of annexures. It was naive to expect definitive answers from a three-week visit to China, he said, but the report does point the way ahead.

National Geographic: Although the WHO report may not have shed much light on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, Robertson says this is just the beginning of what can sometimes be a long process.

NY Times: Some critics have suggested that the team seemed to take the Chinese official position at face value and did not adequately investigate lab officials’ assertions... Raina MacIntyre, who heads the biosecurity program at the Kirby Institute of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, said the report seemed to dismiss the idea of a lab leak “without strong evidence.”

Sciencenews: Overall, the report offers few clear-cut conclusions regarding the start of the pandemic. Instead, it provides context for the possibilities and helps home in on the studies researchers should tackle next.

My suggestions are:

1. Include a direct mention of the quality of evidence of the conclusions. Al Jazeera said it was "unable to be conclusive". Sciencemag says the report "brings little fresh evidence to support [a conclusion]". Also Sciencemag says "The report’s most definitive conclusion is also its most controversial: that it is “extremely unlikely” SARS-CoV-2 leaked out of a Chinese laboratory that was already studying coronaviruses, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)". PBS says "critics claim the study was biased" and by critics they interviewed Miles Yu. SMH says "[The report] does not reach any definitive conclusions. It does not identify Patient One.". Nat Geo says "the report may not have shed much light on the origins of SARS-CoV-2". NY Times says that critics claim the study failed to audit the Chinese official position at some parts of the report, and by critics they interviewed Raina MacIntyre. Sciencenews says "the report offers few clear-cut conclusions regarding the start of the pandemic"
2. A common counter to the previous criticism is that it was irrealistic to expect quick and huge results from the WHO report
3. Also common in most sources is to praise how the report details the pathways that can shed light on the origin if explored later
4. The current phrasing is equivocal: "A small number of researchers said that they would not trust the report's conclusions because it was overseen by the Chinese government, but other scientists found the report convincing, and said there was no evidence of a laboratory origin for the virus" because it is taken out of context. It is taken from Maxmen (March, 2021) to refer to the open letters from scientists, but we cite it as if it was an independent and separate reaction from scientists at the time of the release of the report. It is clear, I think, that the we can not say that scientists praised too much the quality of evidence of the conclusions of the report, thus, the "other scientists found the report convincing" has to go, in my opinion.Forich (talk) 06:18, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Recent review article

For consideration: Mitra, Anirban (10 July 2021). "Investigations into the origin of SARS-CoV-2: an update" (PDF). Current Science. 121 (1): 77–84. doi:10.18520/CS/V121/I1/77-84. ISSN 0011-3891. --Animalparty! (talk) 19:17, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

@Animalparty: Just to be thorough, given that credentials from some countries can be though to verify. Briefly:

1. Published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, which looks to me like a legitimate organisation (see reference on indian gov website).
2. Journal is not in MEDLINE, although it previously (half a century-ago, nearly) was (see NCBI).
3. Seems like he does have relevant expertise (would be in a prime spot to comment about any claims of genetic engineering) - the university affiliations/everything look legitimate (see IGE website); which is listed, as indicated, as an affiliated institution of the West Bengal University of Health Sciences (here, search for "genetic", the addresses match)

Back to the journal. It has a low impact-factor (just under one); but a decent h-index (above 100, indicating it occasionally produces significant/well-cited papers) (Scimago). This is comparable, in fact sometimes even better, to other journals published by national institutes from India (cf. Proceedings of the Indian National Science Academy).

So, basically, it's a paper by an Indian scholar published in an average Indian journal. Nothing that disqualifies it (unless we're intent on furthering WP:BIAS issues), and it does not appear on Beall's list or on the updated site (there's a potential attempted clone, but it's clearly not this one). That makes it useable for our purposes, although it's not a top of the field journal (seems somewhat comparable to the Italian journal Forich was objecting to) so likely shouldn't be used for anything exceptional. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:25, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Shibbolethink Re. since a different piece from Current Science was mentioned over at the lab leak article. Your comments here are welcome. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:20, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah I largely concur with your evaluation, RC. It’s a review, which distinguishes it from the other article, which was a commentary.

That said, the close association between the editorial staff and that other OpEd gives me pause. Overall doesn’t raise to the level of a COI or anything like that, though.

I would say this is a a useful review, that should be cited except where it conflicts with the preponderance of evidence. Its probably not reliable for anything controversial, because exceptional claims require exceptional evidence. Journals that have no relevant editorial expertise are much worse at picking reviewers. And if they also have a really low IF, it means the paper likely won’t be read by enough people to adequately critique the findings in open post-publication peer review.

The readership and editorial angle is pretty important. To get an idea, I would say Current Science is much worse than PLoS ONE, but slightly better than Medical Hypotheses or Scientific Reports. As another anecdotal benchmark, I probably would have gotten a stern talking to if I cited anything from this journal in my dissertation or in a virology manuscript. And that’s just based on the IF/non-topic relevance, not even factoring in the other fringe COVID angle.

In academic settings in the US, it's usually okay to cite topic-relevant low-IF journals, since they're low IF because they're so specialized! For example, I've definitely cited a few really obscure low-IF journals about vole biology (because certain hantaviruses use voles as hosts. also fun fact did you know vole mating behaviors are actually really similar to human ones?). But if your journal is A) very generalized, but also B) very low IF, that's a huge red flag. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 17:58, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Can someone correct the reference to my article?

I'm Owen Dyer, I wrote the British Medical Journal article on Aug 13 that is referenced at note 76. The text says that: In an interview on August 13, 2021, Ben Embarek, the chief investigator of the WHO team, told BMJ news that the team felt pressured from Chinese authorities to put "extremely unlikely" as their assessment. That's not quite correct. Peter Ben Embarek voiced his concerns in a Danish TV documentary that aired on 12 Aug on the channel TV2. He didn't speak directly to us. We merely reported his comments from the program. Could somebody with editing privileges correct this please? Also, Ben is not his first name, it's part of his surname. Puzer-Mama (talk) 18:02, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

 Done. I will fix this because I agree that is a mistake, but typically claims of identity like this need to come in the form of direct emails with verifiable addresses of the person in question (Owen Dyer). See: Wikipedia:Expert_help --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:37, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks!— Preceding unsigned comment added by Puzer-Mama (talk • contribs)