
Unusual Features of SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggests Sophisticated Lab Modifications - biscottigelato
https://zenodo.org/record/4028830#.X195knUzZhG
======
andreskytt
Let’s weigh the probabilities. Event A: no journal in the world (including the
myriad of tiny ones all over the place) is willing to honestly peer review an
article about artificial origins of the virus. Event B: the authors know the
article to be incorrect and unlikely to pass a fair review. Event A assumes a
vast conspiracy incolving effectively all virologists in the world. Event B
assumes the authors simply being human.

~~~
akvadrako
It’s not exactly a conspiracy because it doesn’t require coordination.

The idea is that if Covid came from a lab, it will make the field of virology
as a whole look bad, because it implies studying viruses actually makes us
less safe.

It can also be explained by respect of your colleagues - to accuse them of
lying may hurt your career even if tue.

I’m not defending this paper - it raises too many red flags - but it’s easy to
see why such theories are likely to come from outside the field.

------
jkhdigital
Duplicates:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476929)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476300)

Near duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24477045)

------
tasty_freeze
The paper was published by four authors at "Rule of Law Society & Rule of Law
Foundation". So I looked it up and found this:
[https://www.rolsociety.org/](https://www.rolsociety.org/)

Is the paper true? I am not qualified to pass judgement, but I'm not naive
enough to see Steve Bannon is behind it and suspect this might be motivated by
politics more than science.

~~~
D13Fd
Some observations:

\- This is a paper published by members of an anti-China advocacy
organization.

\- It advocates actions against China in its abstract ("Our work emphasizes
the need for an independent investigation into the relevant research
laboratories")

\- It includes a number of conspiratorial-sounding speculations ("However,
this template virus ideally should not be one from Dr. Zengli Shi’s
collections, considering that she is widely known to have been engaged in
gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses. Therefore, . . . novel bat
coronaviruses discovered and owned by military laboratories, would be suitable
. . .")

\- Some of its citations appear suspect. For example, it cites a previous
study for the idea that certain variants were "discovered and owned by
military laboratories," but the cited study says nothing like that.

\- It criticizes "peer-reviewed" journals for rejecting its theories

\- It is in a highly-technical subject area that is difficult for lay people
to understand

In short, to me this looks like a piece of advocacy, not science.

That's not to say that it might not also be right. But personally I would
trust mainstream scientists publishing in established journals. Those
scientists--as the paper itself notes--have so far not adopted this idea.

~~~
gridlockd
Trusting the "mainstream" and the "establishment" is historically a poor bet
when it comes to science that is controversial by nature.

Consider what a humanist scientist would _want_ to believe to be true:

\- _Nature_ bestowed yet another pathogen upon humanity

or

\- _Science_ caused an accident that killed a million people

Even if it was a lab accident, it would be difficult to blame the whole of
China for it. More likely, scientific work itself would be blamed, which could
eradicate entire lines of research, threatening the livelihood and reputation
of many scientists and lab workers.

Though I am skeptical, I myself would like to believe the first scenario to be
true. I might even be inclined to believe that misleading the public on it is
_the right thing to do_ , all potential consequences considered.

------
wensheng
Why is this flagged?

This is a scientific paper written by 4 Ph.D's. It uses "rule of law society"
as affiliation because this is the organization that helped the main author
Dr. Yan escape from Hongkong. Dr. Yan has published in Nature, Lancet,
Virology as first authors. The 3 other authors don't want to list their real
affiliations because they want to remain anonymous. One of them is a professor
at a US University. The other two are accomplished scientist in their own
fields.

This is not conspiracy theory, this is candid scientific study and discussion
of upmost importance.

Why is this buried?

~~~
archibaldJ
> ...this is candid scientific study and discussion of upmost importance.

Maybe it is not. Lots of discussions & discourses are going on in another
thread actually:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24476300)

As a Chinese myself I appreciate this paper and the bravery of Yan putting
herself in the spotlight in the name of science for this somewhat
controversial claim with geopolitical implications. I'm no virologist so I
can't comment on the claims that the sequence blast indicates the Orf8 protein
of ZC45/ZXC21 share 94.2% identity with SARS-CoV-2 Orf8, and that no
coronaviruses (discovered so far) share more than 58% identity with SARS-CoV-2
on this protein, etc, as well as the significant of these claims in supporting
their thesis.

But after reading myriads of comments on HN and skimming through the paper a
few more times, I have to admit the paper itself is not particularly
interesting. It may even appear to some as a poorly written scientific paper,
or in the words of djaque's, "a political hit piece cosplaying as a scientific
article".

And now I find this whole thing much more intriguing from a meta perspective
i.e. reading and making sense of people's reactions to the paper, their
comments, perspectives, etc.

~~~
wensheng
oh, thanks. That post is also flagged.

HN community are extremely liberal. When they see Steve Bannon name, they
automatically reject the paper. I wouldn't trust the comments, even if they
claim they are subject experts here.

~~~
archibaldJ
I think what's interesting is the tone of the paper, and how people react to
it differently.

It has occured to me in written Chinese, sentiments often get easily
"embedded" in words v.s. in English. (i.e. perhaps a feature of logographic
languages?) English expressions on the other hand are easier to stay
"neutral".

When I first read the paper I actually found the articulation to have a
"neutral" tone to it. But after knowing that it is afflicted with Bannon and
realising that the paper implies of all scientists & researchers in the world,
only those backed by an anti-CCP advocacy organization, are willing to do
serious research to expose the cover-up (assuming there is one!), the words in
the article now gives off an odd vibe. It is now a partisan piece.

~~~
wensheng
I didn't notice the tone, but there must be some of it. I think the author
tried their best to sound neutral but if they strongly believe what they
believed it, it's unavoidable for letting personal opinion slip in. I once
asked one of the author - nerdhaspower, to remove such words as "中共" from his
site because they show confirmation bias. He refused. But in this paper, they
did a much better job.

I don't believe the paper implied what you said. The first reference for
example, also a well-written paper, is from a Harvard researcher, who has
nothing to do with the organization.

------
marccantwell
The "Rule of Law Foundation", who sponsored this paper, was established by Guo
Wengui.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Wengui](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guo_Wengui)
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/26/guo-wengui-chinese-
bill...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/26/guo-wengui-chinese-billionaire-
emigre-links-steve-bannon/)

~~~
cameldrv
Personally, after reading a lot about the virus, I think there's a good chance
that it has an artificial source. I'm very wary about this paper though, both
because I can't fully understand all of the arguments, and because it comes
from a political, rather than academic institution, and because it's being
pushed by groups and people that obviously have no idea whether or not it's
scientifically valid or not, but they like the conclusion.

------
YruDrone5
All the authors of this paper are from the "rule of law society," which
features Steve Bannon on their home page.

------
ramon
In the beginning some said that there was a bioresearch facility in Wuhan. But
there is always secrets around these things.

~~~
danielheath
There's a bioresearch facility in almost every city with a population over a
few million people; it would be quite a surprise if there weren't one in
Wuhan.

~~~
senectus1
there are several there, specifically there because they're used to study
cornoavirus in bats because bats seem to have so many of them. you setup base
where your source is, that's just logic.

None of that means it was ENGINEERED there.

~~~
akvadrako
Actually the bats they suspect of carrying this virus aren’t from nearby.

------
jkhdigital
(I put this comment on all duplicates of this post)

I posted what appears to be the top comment on the previous submission of a
similar paper describing the probable laboratory origins of SARS-CoV-2
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758)),
so I'll try and do another quick summary here. (Caveat: I have no particular
expertise in this area, I just read a lot of scientific research)

The lead author here is an immunologist who, unlike the authors of prior
papers alleging laboratory origin, is Chinese and was trained in Chinese
institutions. At the time of the outbreak Dr. Li-Meng Yan was working in a
public health lab at Hong Kong University and was asked to investigate. She
claims that she fled to the US after realizing that there was a cover-up going
on and she knew too much already.

The most striking and novel claim made here is that the bat coronavirus
RaTG13, which is a 96% genetic match to the novel coronarivus, is a total
fabrication. This argument is based upon a few key observations:

1\. RaTG13 was supposedly discovered in 2013 but not publicly reported until
after the outbreak already started, in a paper (published by researchers
closely affiliated with the WIV) that claimed it as evidence SARS-CoV-2 likely
originated from bats.

2\. A number of independent preprint papers raise significant concerns about
the veracity of RaTG13, and one published paper indicates that the RaTG13
spike protein is actually ineffective at binding to ACE2 receptors in
horseshoe bats (the supposed reservoir).

3\. After excluding RaTG13, the next closest relatives are two bat
coronaviruses (ZC45/ZXC21) that were discovered and characterized by Chinese
military research labs. A Chinese lab published research near the start of the
outbreak which identified these viruses as the closest relatives, and that
same lab was apparently closed for "rectification" shortly thereafter.

The paper goes on under the assumption that ZC45 or ZXC21 was the backbone for
engineering the SARS-CoV-2 virus, noting how the particular characteristics of
the genomic match (100% E protein, 94% Orf8 protein) align with what one would
expect after the gain-of-function modifications that produced the unusual RBM
and furin cleavage site which were also identified in the Sørensen paper. This
paper goes into much more detail on those two points, and provides
counterfactuals to describe how unlikely these observations would be in a
naturally-evolved virus.

In the second half of the paper the authors describe in detail how a lab with
sufficient technical acumen could engineer a virus like SARS-CoV-2 through a
sequence of well-defined steps, with references to published research
demonstrating these capabilities. Then they postulate the exact components
involved in engineering the actual SARS-CoV-2, along with a projected timeline
of six months for the whole process.

