Slack / Private Message Drop — page 279

I'm glad to see their new-found interest in virus genomes. You sorta just take all the stuff you learned in Human Genetics 101 and apply it - because, why waste time building a tree or whatever? [2020-11-24 18:59:06] [Eddie Holmes] Who is reviewing these? It ain't me. [2020-11-24 19:06:27] [Kristian Andersen] Not me either... Total junk. [2020-11-24 19:09:05] [Kristian Andersen] I wonder if this is what NEJM meant when they talked about "Research Parasites"... Maybe they had a point :wink:. Actually, no, they didn't - the issue isn't the data here, it's just shit science. Can't totally shield against that. [2020-11-24 23:13:42] [Andrew Rambaut] That twitter thread was literally what I emailed them when their preprint was on Researchsquare. But they still submitted it to biorxiv. It is also pretty much the review they got reject from Nature with. They are suckers for punishment. Next step is Harvard puts out a press release. [2020-11-24 23:38:11] [Andrew Rambaut] So arrogant too - I emailed the first author originally but he sent a really patronising reply, CC'ing in all of his coauthors, that they were 'aware of the issue' but had controlled for it by doing a Sao Paulo only analysis. I replied to explain how that didn't fix the non-independence but certainly revealed it. Then no reply before the BioRxiv came out. Hopefully editors and reviewers will have seen the twitter thread. [2020-11-25 05:08:13] [Robert Garry] Amateurs: 1. Amateur aerobiologists: saRESPIRATORYsv-CoV-2 is NOT airborne [just wash you hands, masks don't work]. 2. amateur epidemiologists: Don't worry about social distancing [just wash your hands]. 3. Amateur molecular biologists: PCR is sooooo easy, just ask the CDC. 4.amateur virologists: just wait it will go away in the summer. 5. amateur evolutionary biologists/detectives: look a unicorn (FCS), look a restriction enzyme site, look a mutation (we are all going to die). 6. Amateur pulmonary doctors: treat/prevent with HQC. etc... where is Ed Yong on this when you need him? [2020-11-25 05:12:52] [Andrew Rambaut] Oli Pybus came up with a nice quote, which I paraphrase: "Virologists look at a mutation and assume it is adaptive, evolutionary biologists assume it isn't. Neither are right all the time" [2020-11-25 13:05:52] [Eddie Holmes] Nice one. [2020-11-26 06:12:08] [Robert Garry] *project-wuhan_pangolin* - Jul 27th View in channel