For the people who moan about democracy. This is how dictatorships work. Information is hidden to protect the regime at the cost of the population.
Yes, it happens in democracies too, but a lot less, and if it’s a functioning democracy, with a free press, government cover ups can be exposed.
The world needs to know how covid 19 started, and it’s highly likely that the Chinese government knows, or at least has useful information about it, but they will never share it.
Apologies for late response. The publications which accepted this particular study should examine its ethics threshold and consider its position on further studies.
Its bad enough a rogue scientist developing such nonsense, its a whole other thing publishing it.
Formal retraction has long been a part of the publishing process, but is unfortunately pretty ineffective at correcting the record. It often has a negative impact on the career of the involved authors, but it can be difficult to get the rogue info out of circulation and has only been made more problematic with the increased dissemination of information outside of the scientific community via social media.
This is a really good discussion on the challenge
I started work as a publishing scientist in 2001. I left in 2016. In that time the field had changed beyond recognition. Back in the day there would be a list of maybe 10-15 journals we would consider for our own work, and a list of maybe 30-40 that were commonly relevant to us. It was rare you would see work pop up that was relevant to you in a journal where you unfamiliar with it and were not able to speak to its scope and reputation (rigor and expected impact/reach).
By the time I left I was receiving 15 emails a week inviting me to submit my work to journals with sciencey sounding titles that I’d never heard of. A lot of this was legit growth in the sector reflecting the need to accommodate the new work coming out of China that was riding an scientific investment boom, but a lot of was pure scam. Scientists have long had to pay the publishing cost for getting their accepted work in print and there has been a lot of debate about how to navigate that exchange between the scientists and publishers without incentivizing pay for play - scientist agrees to pay exorbitant fees using lab funds to publish their work they need to get published for career advancement and were struggling to get accepted elsewhere. While publishers with respected journals engaged in that debate, a whole new class sprung up in the new internet era that existed for little else than to be a destination for manuscripts that wouldn’t get accepted anywhere else and paid only lip service to the concept of peer review.
I am receiving ten to twenty emails a week from “journals” to sumit articles. Journals giving me titles that I have never had, and journals in fields I have zero connection to.
You are correct, these are vehicles for people to say “Im published”.
But the respected peer reviewed publications that publish the articles mentioned in the discussion render it easy for the spurious journals to flourish.
And yes, retractions make no difference.
Damage is done.
Karen on Facebook has done her research and heres the facts etc
You will likely see a renewed interest in the lab leak theory over the next few weeks. It will be presented as there being increased confidence in this being what happened. Dont be fooled though. Nothing new has been learned. All that has happened is ideologues now control US intelligence and are promoting the CIA view that has long been a low confidence preference for it being lab leak.
Also note, the CIA position is based on “intelligence” only. No attempt is made to reconcile it with other types of investigation. Their intelligence shows a path that means it was plausible this sort of virus could have leaked out of the lab and been covered up based on the way things are run there. But it has no evidence it did and that story does not align with the story the scientific investigation tells, and it makes no attempt to try to reconcile that.
Scientists promoting their evidence for zoonotic transmission never denied that lab leak was theoretically viable in general, just that in this case it didn’t match the evidence that had been collected.
Considering the anti vax movement hasnt really gone anywhere, I can well believe that will be empowered even more.
My real concern is what happens to science in general. There is widespread distrust for it now and that also exists in government.
https://x.com/GWH_NHS/status/1898644931188797698?t=DaJ4DeZkK4V6mgtniFE2jw&s=09
It has been 5 yrs since Covid 19 changed our lives forever💔 . I still have the haunting voice message from my Nurse friend saying that i had to isolate with mum" now. It was really frightening and terrible time for all of us.
We all lost loved ones or know people who lost loved ones, lost their jobs, faced financial hardship, were separated from their partners, parents, children, friends became depressed, and the world changed forever.
My thoughts and prayers of all the people mourning today. I just feel so emotional today.
I will never, ever forgive those politicians in government at the time for being so negligent and causing the deaths of so many people, especially healthcare personnel, key workers who risked their own lives helping others and who were not given enough protection.
