Reading Room Production — page 311

From: wh.iov.cn wh.iov.cn> Sent: Saturday, April 30,2022 9:22 PM EDT To: Peter Daszak ecohealthalliance.org> CC: zlshi wh.iov.cn>; Hongying Li ecohealthalliance.org> Subject: Re: Matters Arising regarding your Nature paper Thanks Peter, sorry to hear that. Maybe these constant attacks are also damaging the international effort on pathogen discovery, which will eventually hurt the preparedness of future pandemic. I don't think Nature is happy to see that. --~ EA RABYE -- BAEK Peter Daszak{@ecohealthalliance.org> ARR 20224705014 05:40 War A Ailes <A wh.iov.cn>, Hongying Lifj@ecohealthalliance.org> piK FS EE own iov.cn> +a RE: RE: RE: Matters Arising regarding your Nature paper Hi Zhengli and Peng, Sorry to read this -- looks like Nature are falling into the trap of responding to these demands for more and more information as if they are genuine scientific concerns. I think the best way to deal with this is to write a strong letter (and I will help by editing it and inserting the references), but I think you should probably also make the additions to the database. The problem is that, whatever the reason for these people writing into Nature, the editor is now asking for you to either: 1) have a correction to the paper, or 2) make edits and additions to the database that give further details on the methodology used and timing of sequencing etc.. If you don't do the changes to the database, the editor might then force you to make a correction to the paper. I think your response to Nature should say that this is unnecessary and inappropriate, and it is not normal scientific practice for such detailed information to be demanded. However in the interests of helping Nature deal with the letters they are receiving, you will reluctantly further information in the database. You could make the additions to the database very short and simple, because these requests are not really to help anyone understand the issue better, they're largely designed to claim that you didn't provide full information. We've had the same thing with our Nature Communications paper, and with the 'competing interests' statement on our lancet paper ("Statement of support for scientists in China"). The original Lancet paper said 'no competing interests', but the editor made me draft 380 word statement that was longer than the actual letter, mainly because people had written to him to complain. I think this is going to happen for many others papers in the past and in the future. Every time we publish work, the lab leak people get ready to attack and demand corrections/changes. We've also had to respond to so many political attacks here in the same way. For example, NIH has made us change the language in our subcontracts, even though we already had language that covered their concerns. They're doing it because some politicians who believe in the lab leak theory write to them and make the letters public. They cover themselves by showing politicians that they are making us do more than others to continue our work. It's awful, but our response is always like this: "We first would like to point out that we have already addressed this issue. However, because you insist on us changing the wording, we will of course do that". It's the same thing with this request from Nature. Give me a couple of days to go through the background documents and I'll edit the so it says that you find these constant attacks on the credibility of your work unnecessary and inappropriate, and that these are part of a series of online attacks on you and other scientists from China. I'll also put in links like you suggest. Cheers, Peter Peter Daszak President EcoHealth Alliance 520 Eighth Avenue, Suite 1200 New York, NY 10018-6507 USA Tel: as Website: www.ecohealthalliance.org Twitter: @PeterDaszak