Stuart Newman
@sanewman1
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Biologist; EiC Biological Theory; Unrecognized Device ; ;
Joined January 2009
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Can someone explain why investigations into possible evidence for a lab leak of
#SARS_CoV2
is met with such hostility by many with no personal stake in the outcome? Do they deny that genetic modification of bat coronaviruses to identify human pathogenicity determinants was 1/3
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If
#Covid19
was caused by a lab construct that escaped, it would be the worst catastrophe caused by a small group of humans (in contrast to wrecking the climate) in history. It's not surprising that many scientists resist confronting the possibility. But it is necessary to do so.
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Richard Lewontin (1929-2021) and John Maynard Smith (1920 -2004). (Thanksgiving day, 1971.)
It is with profound sadness I relate the news that I just heard. Richard Lewontin died this morning. He was in poor health and passed away three days after his wife of many years, Mary Jane. He left an indelible mark on the field and will be remembered with deep admiration.
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When I read Andersen et al.'s Proximal Origins paper four years ago, I found it suspicious entirely on internal evidence and immediately conveyed this to the chair of the Institutional Biosafety Committee I serve on.
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Richard Levins (1939-2016) and Richard Lewontin (1929-2021). (Late 1970s).
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All the U.S. athletes should.
Black athletes should just boycott team America since team America has such an issue with Black athletes.
#ShacarriRichardson
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After 4 years, three simple things stand out concerning the origin of Covid:
1. There was a 2018 US-Wuhan lab plan to insert a feature into bat viruses that appeared, uniquely, in 2019, in SARS_CoV2.
2. NO intermediate animal hosts have been found in the wild or in captivity. 1/2
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identified? Do they think the possibility of a genetically engineered origin of the virus is an intrinsically unscientific undertaking? Do they wish to let sleeping dogs lie to preserve the reputation of scientific research? Do they think looking into the question is racist? 3/3
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going on at
#WIV
? Do they deny that inadvertent release from laboratories ever occurs? Do they think all relevant documents have been disclosed by the WIV and its US collaborators? Do they believe that intermediate hosts, essential for confirming a zoonotic origin, have been 2/3
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@S_Saeen
No surprise, based on his poor understanding of evolutionary theory, and eugenicist ideas.
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William Bateson (1861-1926) suggested that oscillations like those that produce these "Chladni patterns" (discovered in the 18th century), were the basis of spatially periodic structures in animals and plants (e.g., vertebrae, petals). He was ridiculed for this, but was right.
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Some observations:
1. Dr. Alina Chan represents the scientist as truth teller and responsible citizen in their highest forms.
2. The
@nytimes
could and should have published this piece 3 years ago. Much of the information contained in it was available by then and Alina Chan 1/2
Ahead of today's hearing in Congress: my opinion piece with the
@nytimes
on why Covid-19 was likely caused by a lab accident.
My hope since 2020 has been for leaders, especially scientists, to lead the charge in investigating a plausible lab
#OriginOfCovid
- as opposed to
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1/N I've never used Twitter to present a new scientific view. But these ideas span evolutionary & developmental biology and philosophy, so it won't be published in any widely read journal, and even if it is, it will take several years to happen, and few will see it. So here goes.
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If you're a conspiracy theorist and it turns out that there was actually a conspiracy, are you then just a theorist?
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#SARSCoV2
is either an evolutionary anomaly or a chimera, since no other sarbecovirus has a furin cleavage site. If an anomaly, why did it emerge in a city with a lab working on bat coronaviruses? The lab had grant proposals to insert such sites, favoring the chimera hypothesis.
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The use of "humanized" mice (i.e., genetically engineered mice with a human ACE2 receptor or other susceptibility or resistance components) by
@EcoHealthNYC
and other groups to study virus pathogenicity is even more dangerous than gain-of-function modifications of the viruses.
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Animal forms originate in the inherent morphogenetic properties of cell aggregates. Where do animal functions come from?
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For people who have not been following this closely, this new preprint says that the furin cleavage site in the spike protein of
#SARSCoV2
most resembles one in a genetically manipulated MERS virus that was adapted to human cells in vitro in 2017.
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Pete Buttigieg and Andrew Yang join
@billmaher
in praising Trump for bringing peace to the Middle East. Good that the new generation of Democratic leaders are showing themselves capable of reaching across the aisle when this all blows over (in support of apartheid, but still).
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Despite the Democrats holding the presidency for 16 out of the last 30 years, and having gained the majority in 2 of the 3 presidential elections won by the Republicans, our miserable condition appears to be due to Ralph Nader, the Russians, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Avenatti.
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The
@NatureMedicine
"Proximal origins" paper by Andersen et al. looked fishy to me as soon as it appeared in March 2020, as indicated in this email to my Institutional Biosafety Committee. It is now apparent that the authors were "protesting too much," having seen the obvious.
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@fcabello1
, a pioneer in recombinant DNA research and specialist in the molecular biology of pathogenicity, and I sent this letter to
@thenation
in response to their opinion piece disparaging
@nytimes
articles by
@Ayjchan
and
@zeynep
. The Nation has not acknowledged the letter.
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Moderna is making billions from their Covid vaccine, which was developed with tax money, while denying manufacturing licenses to other countries. Their enforcement of their patents and "intellectual property" is killing people, including Americans.
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5/5
Even in the absence of all that has accumulated in the subsequent period: the DEFUSE proposal, the Mojiang miners data, the manipulation signatures, the PO authors' Slack chats and responses to prepublication pressure by NIH officials, the document itself reeked of bad faith.
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Dr.
@flodebarre
, what's more shameful behavior for an academic scientist: dismissing a reasonable hypothesis out-of-hand, while supportive evidence keeps rolling in, or complaining to a junior scientist's bosses because they called you out?
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@ChrisMurphyCT
He didn't mention the 2nd Amendment at all, but the notes did contain a warning against future stupidity of elected officials.
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A lab leak of SARS-CoV-2 is a ridiculous idea, notwithstanding that
1. It emerged near the WIV, where they genetically engineer bat viruses
2. SARS2 is the only virus of its type that has an FCS
3. The DEFUSE grant, submitted in 2018, proposed adding FCSs to bat viruses
1/3
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3. The scientists involved in 1 and their allies say the case is closed in favor of natural origin and to look into it further is crazy. 2/2
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There is zero evidence for a zoonotic origin of Covid. Zero.
The evidence we lack for a zoonotic origin suggests a lab origin is more likely
... and the evidence we have for a lab origin is overwhelming, reaching the most stringent standards for probable cause.
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"188 animals from 18 species sold at the market tested negative for coronavirus, while 1,000 samples taken from surfaces at the market overwhelming tested positive for SARS-CoV-2." So it was the animals.
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An excellent article that dispels not only the flaws of Harari's books but the genetic determinism they share with vast swaths of supposedly enlightened contemporary thought.
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Evolution in a new key: Fitness-free, but now with Agency and Inherency.
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This is excellent and should be widely read:
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Robert Reid's Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment is a remarkable, undercited book. It stands with Susan Oyama's Ontogeny of Information and Mary Jane West-Eberhard's Developmental Plasticity and Evolution as a foundation of post-Darwinist evolutionary theory.
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Letter to
@thenation
on COVID origins by
@fcabello1
and me. Gonsalves's Moore's response calls Kristian Andersen's rehash of discredited evidence for a zoonotic origin "new evidence."
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No one would attempt to construct a so-called genotype-phenotype map for metabolism and its evolution without considering biochemical processes. So why does almost everyone discuss genotype-phenotype maps for morphological evolution without considering the physics of materials?
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The popularity of autopoiesis in philosophy of biology is strange to me, since it is typically discussed with no effort to relate it to phylogenomics and active matter physics. Just Aristotle+. If philosophers just stay in their lane, such concepts will have no impact on biology.
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This is absurd. The complainants have been hammering away publicly at Ebright, Nickels, Chan, and others with allegations of conspiracy mongering and worse while their own pet theories unraveled, and their deceptions and private reservations have continued to come to light.
Important to do. Discussion is fine but the way these professors act online towards scientists they disagree with is totally unprofessional
@RutgersU
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Notice to all concerned about Covid origins. The article contains the statement that
#SARS_CoV2
is of zoonotic origins, and a group of aggressive editors deletes any reference to the question being unsettled.
@GMWatch
,
@BioSRP
,
@jbloom_lab
,
@Ayjchan
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sarbecoviruses, but bizarrely neglected to note that that very paper used genetic engineering to insert an FCS into a modified sarbecovirus.
3. They used the unconvincing argument that any accidentally released SARS derivative with an FCS would necessarily have an insert
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I don't think a single person defending
@sapinker
against calls to remove his honorific status from an academic society (aka "silencing" him) ever complained when scholars like Norman Finkelstein and
@stevesalaita
were fired through the efforts of the Israel lobby.
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Darwin’s theory works perfectly with 19th century physics. With no nonlinearity or self-organization every one-step change in an organism will barely make a difference. Natural selection is then the main creative force. With modern physics, it’s not selection that does the work.
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@megelison
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single boat, in possession of a large hull, must sail straight or get stuck in the Suez Canal."
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optimized according to the best design algorithms.
4. They asserted that experimenters would only use standardized virus backbones for manipulations, and never wildtype viruses (e.g., patient isolates), when such strategies are well established.
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Whatever the origin of
#SARSCoV2
might have been, anyone who says that current evidence makes a lab origin implausible, or that it settles the question in favor of a zoonotic or wet market origin, either doesn't know what they are talking about or are just being dishonest.
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.
@thenation
published a defamatory opinion piece about
@Ayjchan
's detailed, well referenced, up to date
@nytimes
account of the likely origin of
#Covid_19
. My colleague
@fcabello1
and I, with long experience in infectious disease research and cellular and evolutionary 1/3
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@realDonaldTrump
Yes, but that's Dershowitz. You may want to Google him before you quote him again.
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1. They strangely avoided citing earlier research into optimizing the SARS receptor binding domain for binding to the human ACE2 receptor: .
2. They cited to the effect that furin cleavage sites had not been found in any other
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Do these virologists suggest that the technology to modify coronaviruses by adding new sites was unavailable in 2019? Or are they suggesting that there was no research motivation to do so? Or that the Wuhan lab did not have this capability? If not, why "conspiracy theory"?
I wrote this article in
@ForeignPolicy
with
@angie_rasmussen
.
In it, I describe why I decided it was not wise to engage with a "Lancet Commission" chair, Jeffrey Sachs, who is not competent to lead an evaluation of the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Biden is better than Trump on many, not all, domestic issues. On foreign policy he's actually worse - keeping Trump's regressive decisions in place, while neutralizing any liberal pushback.
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People complaining about shadow-banning on Twitter probably never submitted a paper to Nature or applied for an NIH grant advocating a slightly new idea.
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The whole painting is strange, but this part is really strange.
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"[T]he evidence towards zoonosis is overwhelming." What evidence is that? The human cases that passed through the Wuhan seafood market? Doesn't zoonosis involve non-human animals? In the absence of even one of these, how can this be the favored hypothesis?
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A meta-comment on this thread: interested observers should compare the rhetorical style of scientists open to the lab-leak scenario with those, e.g., MW, AR, etc. who consider zoonosis to be the "only plausible scenario" [in all caps].
An August 30th date of the briefs on an ongoing biosafety emergency at the WIV analyzed by
@VanityFair
+
@propublica
would provide an explanation for the WIV coronavirus database going offline in early September.
This would raise some more questions...
1/
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We don't have to worry about gene editing of people then. We already have the trait.
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Iceland started testing at the end of January, a month before they identified their first case. "Why did you do that?"
@camanpour
asks Prime Minister Katrin Jacobsdottir. "Because we knew it was coming."
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Even more miraculous: there was a research group with written plans to insert a furin cleavage site in bat coronaviruses at the WIV lab in Wuhan in 2018, but this variant spontaneously appeared there in 2019 with no help at all.
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Synthetic biology to understand the origins of cognition
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Richard Lewontin (1929-2021): Leaving the modern synthesis behind; opening up new ways of thinking about evolution
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Organisms can change dramatically without genes doing the same (e.g., Lake Victoria cichlids) and genes can change dramatically without organisms doing the same (e.g., Lake Tanganyika cichlids). The gene's eye view is fine if your interest is genes rather than organisms.
This is a great essay, although I have disagreements. The advantage of the genes eye view is also its disadvantage. It blinds us to equally important and harder to answer questions about evolution such as, "where do novel forms come from?"
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Twitter is one of the greatest inventions of the modern age. No one can read all the journals, all the periodicals, all the blogs. But you can find experts to curate them for you. You can't text insightful people you don't know and expect them to comment on breaking news.
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@atuntable
@Biorealism
My job was never in jeopardy, though I know those of others are. My university administration is not punitive over issues like this. I am a long-term member of our Institutional Biosafety Committee, and I sent the chair and institutional officer this email on March 23, 2020:
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Abstract for an upcoming symposium on “Rethinking Genetics, Epigenetics, and Inheritance.”
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As the zoonosis supporters say, this is totally taken out of context. The context on this date was a private discussion based on available evidence. The context a few weeks later in the Proximal Origins paper was the need to deceive the public.
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Why hasn't the zoonotic hypothesis for COVID origins led to a growth industry of grantmaking at the NIH and other funding agencies? Here are some suggestions:
1. Virology: what is the sequence of steps leading to the appearance of a furin cleavage site in a wild animal
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Richard Lewontin: Demolition Man of the Modern Synthesis -
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And the CIA headquarters after Patrice Lumumba?
BREAKING: Biden administration proposing changing name of J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building to Fred Hampton FBI Administrative Campus
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I am very sorry to report the death of my friend and colleague Sheldon Krimsky. Shelly was a scholar who chronicled corruption in, and misuse of, science, and an activist of the highest integrity in opposition to these practices.
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Still nothing about the physical determinants of morphogenesis? Without them how is evolutionary theory supposed to explain the evolution of form? Random search?
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@Ayjchan
is the target of incessant trolling, leading to occasional sarcasm but never unprofessionalism. Unlike her antagonists, she has been performing a major service to science,
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I don't think that a new evolutionary synthesis is needed. The so-called Modern Synthesis is not really one. Its neo-Darwinian core is presented as the "theory of evolution" to the public but is readily ditched by adherents when exceptions come up, which is often. Strangely, 1/4
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As predicted by the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis: the tail was lost in human ancestors gradually, over many generations, in populations where too-long a tail reduced reproductive fitness.
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The pandemic virus is behaving extremely strangely as well. We have centuries of experience with natural pathogens, and have never seen anything as genetically unstable, immune-evasive, and evolvable. This is unacknowledged additional evidence for the virus's monstrous nature.
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In parallel to the Soviet's negating the gene, the "West," both before and after WWII, elevated it to the secret of life and its primary determinant, since it suited capitalism's racial & mechanistic inclinations. Both should have paid attention to Engels' "Dialectics of Nature."
26 years before Watson, Crick & Franklin's DNA discoveries, a Russian scientist, Nicolai Koltsov, with extraordinary intuition, said that inheritance should be stored in double-stranded giant molecules using each strand as a template. Hats off.
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6. There are no intermediate hosts supporting a zoonotic origin
7. Journals, major media, and professional societies have avoided mentioning 1-6.
So, its ok to mock and excoriate scientists and others who discuss 1-6, but vulgar and unprofessional for them to reciprocate.
3/3
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Has anyone every seen a
@nytimes
op-ed opposing gain-of-function research, or any form of genetic engineering, for that matter? Not the right kind of "alternative view"?
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Did Trump say that the only asylum seekers that show up to immigration courts are the ones with low IQs? Or was I distracted.
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Lab-leak-is-a-conspiracy-theory crowd: "No one told us this crap was going on. Inferring that it was 18 months ago was still a conspiracy theory."
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In summary, our study suggests that from the beginning of this pandemic the SARS-CoV-2 S protein already had very high, optimal binding to hACE2.
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It's striking how much of the philosophy of biology - not just evolutionary psychology - is distorted by adaptationism.
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I'm currently writing an article on "self-organization" in developmental biology. Although the concept has clear meanings in mesoscale physics, I think its facile applications in embryology and stem cell research will be seen in the future to be as misleading as gene determinism.
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As an outside observer of cognition and consciousness studies, but with the analogy of developmental biology at hand, I look back at many years of misplaced efforts in trying to identify "genetic programs" of development in the collectivity of gene regulatory networks. Real 1/3
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Science reporting,
@nytimes
-style: listen to just one side on a controversial subject and then blame them when you get the story wrong.
Senior US journalist attacks leading scientists for 'misleading' him over Covid lab-leak theory
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It's beginning to seem that the proper role of physics in cell and developmental biology is to define the range of possibilities. The idea that biological effects and outcomes are strictly determined by physics is just a bit of 19th century ideology.
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Non-conspiracy theory attempt: A MERS virus supplied by a Dutch gain-of-function researcher to a US lab, which then passed it through a humanized mouse, wound up in a pangolin which was bitten in the Wuhan seafood market by a racoon dog infected with a bat SARS-type coronavirus.
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One of the most puzzling aspects of animal evolution, completely at odds with the standard gradualist narrative, is the appearance of unprecedented genes with no counterparts in other life-forms at the initiation of major transitions: classical cadherins, Wnt: non-metazoan 1/
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The flame would have been safer.
An asbestos mask worn by an Italian flamethrower soldier in World War 1.
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@mbalter
I (an evolutionary biologist) was recently called a creationist for thinking a laboratory construct was a plausible scenario. Anyone else getting that?
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Toward the end of his life the immensely creative theoretical biologist J.B.S. Haldane said that he took greater satisfaction in his discoveries being part of accepted scientific knowledge than in being personally credited for them.
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