A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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Here's my drafted reply - suggestions? ```I can only speak for our own investigations, however the idea that any of our investigations were influenced bypolitics or political ramifications of particular hypotheses is false and, frankly, absurd. The idea that there was a"prefered narrative" and that people like Drs. Fauci and Farrar had influence over our scientific conclusions (i.e., the idea that there is a conspiracy) is also false - which is clear from e.g., FOIA'd emails and news articles at the time. For example, it is public knowledge that the "origin question" was directly discussed at the level of the White House early in the pandemic - e.g.:https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-asks-scientists-investigate-origins-coronavirus/story?id=68807304ABCABChttps://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2020/02/national-academies-provide-rapid-response-to-white-house-on-coronavirus-data-needsAs others have stated, our conclusions - published in two peer reviewed scientific papers - have been driven strictlyby science. That was true in 2020 when the pandemic started and that is true today. Our earlier conclusions have only been further strengthened by additional scientific evidence and analyses - and the absence of evidence from the recently completed investigations by the US intelligence community. For hypotheses that have been "unduly influenced" by "political ramifications" you need look no further than the narrative around the "lab leak" theory or the many conspiracy theories currently being amplified, including the ones suggesting that scientific investigations were "unduly influenced by the political ramifications of the hypothesis". Best, Kristian```
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It's good - no suggestions. I got the almost same email. My response will be shorter and perhaps not as collegial.
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Just updated my last paragraph - because, fuck this - time to call a spade a spade.
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Dear Professor Garry, I hope you are well. I am a reporter with The Sunday Times newspaper and I am writing an article for this weekend's paper about the scientific community's investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. In this article I suggest that the scientific consensus reached around the possibility of a laboratory origin for SARS-CoV-2, driven in large part by the seminal Proximal Origin paper, may have been unduly influenced by the political ramifications of the hypothesis. Sorry to say this, but your suggestion is misinformed and completely inaccurate.I mention that the authors have maintained that the process behind the paper was strictly scientific.It was - I concur.I also mention that on a February 1 teleconference you felt a natural scenario to be implausible. Again apologies, but that's completely ridiculous. We were looking at the various SARS-CoV-2 origins scenarios -natural and lab-based - agnostically. I was simply putting the best argument forward in the moment that the FCS might have been engineered - it wasn't. Amongst all the other arguments/emails/discussion on this topic I was having it's cherry-picking and completely out-of-context. There were dozens of other contemporaneousemails/conversations where I was arguing the opposite. It's how science is done.If you would like to respond, please could you do so by my deadline at midday tomorrow? I cannot guarantee that any response will be printed in the piece. Very best,Madeleine
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2022-01-20 10:27
Robert F. Garry
This Sunday Times will be bad - I think Wade's will be much worse.
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Yup, I think it'll be complete junk - with more junk to come. "completely inaccurate" - I'd say "false" - as it's not really "inaccurate" it's just totally false.
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"I also mention that on a February 1 teleconference you felt a natural scenario to be implausible" This is also false - you did not mention that you felt that a natural scenario was implausible on the call. The quote she's referring to was from a very early email, taken out of context, and did not reflect your opinions on the "origin" question - it's another example of science in progress.
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On that last point, I'd probably stick to a version of Andrew's language - "We provided some initial assessments ofthe plausibility of the various hypotheses and then undertook a more detailed analysis and review of data (including new data from the Pangolins). All of our conclusions were written in our published and peer-reviewed papers (i.e., inNature Medicine and then updated in Cell late last year). All of the emails show the establishment of the hypotheseswe later outlined in the Proximal Origins paper and then the assessment of these based on the available evidence. Opinions simply shifted as the result of analysis and the examination of new data. Since then more data has been published that further supports our conclusions from that initial review."
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good suggestions