
Ask HN: Why are Covid-related peer-reviewed articles flagged down? - paganel
I&#x27;m talking about this article (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2258702&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC2258702&#x2F;</a>) which seemed legit, from a relatively well-trusted and official source. The discussion that got flagged down can be found in here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22662574" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22662574</a>
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throwanem
The article is fine. But it's unrelated to the current crisis, and has proved
a fertile basis for conspiratorial confabulation among people anxious to find
someone to blame for the coronavirus.

Specifically, the paper does _not_ describe the construction of a novel virus
from HIV and SARS, as has been claimed by such scientifically literate
publications as the New York Post. The paper describes the assembly of
proteins from the SARS coronavirus and some of its close relatives, as a way
of testing whether such recombination _in vivo_ , as occurs in coinfection of
a single host by multiple strains, would be likely to enable a strain
previously not infectious to humans to become so. The only way such a
constructed protein can in any way affect human cells is in a plate, with
extensive lab support. The protein isn't a virus, and cannot become so. It's
the biological equivalent of a unit test, rather than of application code.

The trouble is that you need to be able to follow the paper to understand that
this is the case. If you can't, and you're already frightened enough to be
foolish - or inclined to tendentiousness for some other reason - then it's
very easy to incorrectly conclude, based on the 10% of the words in the
abstract that you do understand, that the current pandemic is the result of,
at minimum, an accidental release of a pathogen deliberately created in a
Chinese laboratory for some negligent or nefarious reason.

To be painfully clear, that is false. Everything about that is false, and the
paper supports absolutely none of it. But a lot of people are pointing to it
as though it did, and that probably explains the flags.

~~~
paganel
When all this will be said and done people/international organisations will
have to look at this with fresh eyes. Just look at this Rai3 reportage from
2015 [1] (RAI is the Italian national television), where starting with minute
5 you can see a piece on Chinese scientists "playing" with that horseshoe bat
coronavirus mentioned in the study, trying to combine it with another animal's
not deadly yet "polmonite" (pneumonia in English).

Again, this is not fake news, and we're talking about the Chinese scientists
still giving it a go 8 years after that first study I was linking to and 5
years before a global pandemic that consists in the exact two things they were
studying (coronavirus + pneumonia), originating in the exact same city where
those scientists were based.

Saying that all this is just a "coincidence" or "paranoia" or a "conspiracy"
is pure lunacy.

[1]
[https://www.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-5e32...](https://www.rai.it/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-5e3275ba-475c-4cf4-b402-1e27dc47565b.html#p=39)

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jerome-jh
From what I can see there is a flagging epidemic on HN. I have seen valid
statistics about flu (from the CDC or equivalent, I am not a US citizen) being
flagged, on the ground of being conspiracy inspired. But knowing the actual
numbers is not conspiracy. I too had my "ahah" moment when learning about the
flu statistics.

Some subjects simply cannot be discussed: there is a Paul Graham's blog post
about it. That is a bit sad that the moment, however urgent, dictates what can
talked on a pretty harmless forum.

~~~
throwanem
There is a misinformation epidemic on HN and lots of other places, and part of
that has been the use of flu stats to tendentiously argue everything from "the
current measures are an overreaction" to "REX-84 FEMA black sites New World
Order". It's possible you are mistaking flags on such tendentious claims for
flags on raw data presented without interpretation - the latter of which, I'll
admit, I haven't really seen anywhere lately.

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Lewton
The one you were linking to was probably flagged for the flamebaiting title

Which is great, because misleading titles is one of the bigger problems here
on HN, made worse by 90% of people not reading anything but the title and the
comments

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TeMPOraL
Probably raised a "conspiracy theory-prone discussion" red flag in enough HN-
ers.

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DrScump
It's live here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663029)

Sometimes people see the older article second and flag it as the dupe.

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6nf
Covid overload

