Slack / Private Message Drop — page 117

probably gets 10k+ emails a day?). [2020-07-29 07:58:40] [Andrew Rambaut] I agree about contacting Clare given she is named in the 'missive' and it is possible he will try doing something with Nature next. [2020-07-29 08:06:15] [Robert Garry] Agree and also the Editor of NatMed - It's very clearly a breach of peer review - not to mention the rewrite of history to create a slanderous narrative. Thanks Eddie for pointing out the UnDark article :exploding_head: - I'm not feeling too sorry for the "Old Guard" coronavirologists in terms of their funding situation. Daszak and the Predict krewe got >$200M and found only one over-hyped human non-pathogenic virus BASV. If Deep Throat pushes Nature maybe Amy Maxmen of Nature can write the real story.... [2020-07-29 08:06:39] [Andrew Rambaut] A couple more points we should remember here: we posted it to virological on the 17th before we sent it to Nature. Also this is a 'letter' not a research paper. [2020-07-29 08:34:14] [Robert Garry] BTW - Proximal Origins is at 4.87m accesses - seems destined to cross 5m in a few weeks, which is actually quite remarkable. [2020-07-29 12:50:17] [Kristian Andersen] Okay, so I have pretty much settled on us needing to contact Nature - it's the right thing to do. We should alert them to the problem, make it clear that they have divulged private and confidential information from the review process (and implicated high-ranking US officials) in a factually wrong narrative about a scientific study on a sensitive subject. We will mention that we have strong reason to believe that we know the identity of the person, but that we will not identify him - but that he is either reviewer 2 himself, or received (confidential) information from reviewer 2. What I'm less certain about is whether this should be supplemented with a 'friendly' and carefully crafted email to Baric's Proton email alerting him to the issues ( (1) releasing private and confidential information on a sensitive subject, (2) implicating high-ranking US officials in a meeting that may or may not have occurred, (3) writing libel with defamatory and incorrect statements about a scientific study). We would not name Ralph in the email, but thank him for his "many important scientific contributions to SARS and SARS2, including GoF, which we believe to be critically important work"). We'd suggest that he refrain from pushing his libel any further and that we would also not go any further to keep the focus on the science and outbreak response (but make it clear that we contacted the journal already). The purpose of the email would be to stop him from going any further with this. Our enquiry to Nature could achieve the same, assuming Clare would contact Reviewer 2 with the concerns raised. I might prefer that option, but I want to leave the other option on the table too in case we need it. Thoughts? [2020-07-29 13:26:27] [Robert Garry] Contacting Nature is the right thing to do. They will have little recourse other than to contact Reviewer #2 and figuratively rap her or him on the knuckles. I'd include the E/K email, which responds to the libelous accusations decisively, but not name Jon Cohen. Responding to the protonmail is less obvious - it would be satisfying, but - trust me on this one - Deep Throat is already convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that he or she is doing the right thing even if it means breaking every rule of confidentiality and peer review. Furthermore, even though the E/K email outline responds to the libelous accusations decisively, when Cohen shares it with DT [I think JC will] it will just be encouraging. Facts will be selectively extracted from the E/K email to confirm DT's pre-existing narrative. [2020-07-29 13:32:49]