Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, p.938 [SLACK_001152] · slack_pm:msg:09758

Date: 2021-06-09 17:35
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Edward C. Holmes
Topics: Intelligence community assessments Natural origin / zoonotic spillover Proximal Origin paper

Recipients on this medium are inferred from channel membership, not per-message addressing.

Looks good. A few things: (i) our Nature Medicine article was not an official policy document or an official statement -it was a just a scientific paper by a group of scientists; (ii) he is focused on one line in the paper but we also clearly say that is 'currently impossible' to prove or disprove other theories so were obviously open to more data and changing evidence; (iii) might say that the pangolin data - which coincidentally appeared at the same time because Iwas an author on the Lam et al. paper - was very helpful in suggesting a natural origin; (iv) it's ludicrous to suggest that our paper shut down research into a lab escape as the govt bodies were obviously still going on with this. Ifscientists want to publish counter data/evidence they had ever right to. We're not stopping them. We don't control and police the whole field. We are being assigned some sort of power that we just don't have!!

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

2021-06-09 16:50 Edward C. Holmes open

Yes, pure hate. I'd take my CV down but then I'll just get accused of covering things up.
2021-06-09 17:03 Kristian G. Andersen open

Bob / Eddie (and Andrew - but I assume he's :zzz:) - any chance the two of you would have time to take a quick lookat a document I'm preparing for Jim / NYTimes. It's about recent events and it's the only interview I'll take, so just want to make sure I don't get anything wrong.
2021-06-09 17:03 Edward C. Holmes open

Sure, pass it on.
2021-06-09 17:04 Kristian G. Andersen open

Thanks - just shared the doc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F7T48AATRUu2ItnzDqIBaakxDYSVGWlwAXYzAZz7dhU/edit?usp=sharing
2021-06-09 17:35 Edward C. Holmes

Looks good. A few things: (i) our Nature Medicine article was not an official policy document or an official statement -it was a just a scientific paper by a group of scientists; (ii) he is focused on one line in the paper but we also clearly say that is 'currently impossible' to prove or disprove other theories so were obviously open to more data and changing evidence; (iii) might say that the pangolin data - which coincidentally appeared at the same time because Iwas an author on the Lam et al. paper - was very helpful in suggesting a natural origin; (iv) it's ludicrous to suggest that our paper shut down research into a lab escape as the govt bodies were obviously still going on with this. Ifscientists want to publish counter data/evidence they had ever right to. We're not stopping them. We don't control and police the whole field. We are being assigned some sort of power that we just don't have!!
2021-06-09 17:37 Kristian G. Andersen open

Very good, thanks Eddie. Yeah, it's ludicrous to suggest we somehow shut down the conversation - come on! Race to the bottom.
2021-06-09 17:41 Edward C. Holmes open

Agreed. That point needs to be made very clearly and very strongly.

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