所以说，闫那些胡说八道的东西只能糊弄外行，给稍微懂行的一看她就露馅了。 文章有点长，有兴趣的自己看。 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/coronavirus-origins-misinformation-yan-report-fact-check-cvd/ Why misinformation about COVID-19's origins keeps going viral Another piece of coronavirus misinformation is making the rounds. Here's how to sift through the muck. BY MONIQUE BROUILLETTE AND REBECCA RENNER TWENTY YEARS AGO, data scientist Sinan Aral began to see the formation of a trend that now defines our social media era: how quickly untrue information spreads. He watched as false news ignited online discourse like a small spark that kindles into a massive blaze. Now the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Aral believes that a concept he calls the novelty hypothesis demonstrates this almost unstoppable viral contagion of false news. “Human attention is drawn to novelty, to things that are new and unexpected,” says Aral. “We gain in status when we share novel information because it looks like we're in the know, or that we have access to inside information.” Enter the Yan report. On September 14, an article was posted to Zenodo, an open-access site for sharing research papers, which claimed that genetic evidence showed that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was made in a lab, rather than emerging through natural spillover from animals. The 26-page paper, led by Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, a postdoctoral researcher who left Hong Kong University, has not undergone peer review and asserts that this evidence of genetic engineering has been “censored” in the scientific journals. (National Geographic contacted Yan and the report’s three other authors for comment but received no reply.) A Twitter firestorm promptly erupted. Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific. Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The experts also pointed out that the report whipped up wild conspiracy theories and wrongly accused academic journals of plotting with conspirators by censoring important evidence. In July, , a viral genomics researcher at University of Glasgow, authored a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Medicine that showed the lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known ancestor, a virus called RaTG13, have been circulating in bat populations for decades. Virologists think this relative, which is 96-percent identical to the novel coronavirus, probably propagated and evolved in bats or human hosts and then went undetected for about 20 years before adapting its current form and causing the ongoing pandemic. The Yan report claims this hypothesis is controversial, and that RaTG13 was also engineered in a lab. But that flies in the face of the about SARS-CoV-2 and its progenitors. What’s more, the report was funded by the Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit organization founded by former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been arrested for fraud. That’s yet another reason many virologists are questioning the veracity of its claims. “It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.” National Geographic reached out to other prominent virologists and misinformation researchers to better understand where the Yan report came from and what it got wrong. Along the way, they offered tips for overcoming misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.
What do we know about SARS-CoV-2’s origins? Coronaviruses exist in nature and can infect many different creatures. SARS-like coronaviruses are found in bats, pigs, cats, and ferrets, to name a few. The most widely agreed upon origin of SARS-CoV-2, based on its genetics, is that its ancestors moved around in wild animals—swapping genetic features as they went along—before they jumped into humans. Scientists have yet to find the direct parent of SARS-CoV-2 in feral beasts, though its closest relatives exist in bats. The virus may have passed through an intermediate animal——and then evolved to become better at infecting humans. Or it may have made the jump directly from bats to humans, given past examples of such occurrences. After the original SARS outbreak in China 20 years ago, researchers began surveying wild bats in local caves and the people who live near them. A 2018 study found the genetic relatives of the original SARS virus in the winged mammals—as well as specific antibodies, a residual sign of infection, in their human neighbors. Finding answers to the precise events that led to a spillover pandemic is a “needle in a haystack proposition,” says , an epidemiologist from Columbia University, who co-authored an early research paper in Nature Medicine about the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2. The Yan report claims this Nature Medicine report had a “conflict of interest” due to Lipkin’s work in containing the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, for which he received an award from the Chinese government. Lipkin says this accusation is “absurd,” and when asked for his view on the role of bioengineering in the origins of SARS-CoV-2, he adds: “There is no data to support this.” Uncovering the natural source of the coronavirus will likely require large-scale sampling of animals—including bat and human populations—in China to trace the evolution of the novel coronavirus. The World Health Organization is readying a team to conduct such an investigation in China, though a timetable has not been released.
What does the Yan report say? The Yan report attempts to tackle this question in a different way, starting with the murky claim that SARS-CoV-2 is bad at infecting bats, therefore it could not have come from them. But scientists point out that viruses are constantly evolving and passing between species. The initial spillover from bats to humans could have happened decades ago, allowing the virus ample time for its spike protein, the part it uses to enter cells, to optimize through natural selection to infect humans. Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations. “I'm going to scream if I have to explain the fact that many viruses have cleavage sites,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. The report also asserts that SARS-CoV-2 is “suspiciously” similar to two strains of bat coronaviruses, called ZC45 and ZXC21, that were discovered by scientists at military labs in China. The authors claim these strains could have been used as a template to clone a deadlier virus. But other scientists balk at this idea. First, the two strains differ by as much as 3,500 nucleotide base pairs, the chemical “letters” used in genetic code. As such, they would be a poor starting point for bioengineering SARS-CoV-2. Engineering a virus in which you had to replace more than 10 percent of its genome is inefficient, if not impossible, according to Rasmussen and several other virologists. The fact that these strains were identified at a Chinese military lab is also “just circumstantial,” says Robertson. The bat coronaviruses were circulating in wild bats and could have been discovered by anyone. The report also argues that SARS-CoV-2 has “restriction-enzyme sites,” or genetic sequences that can be cut and manipulated by enzymes. These genomic features are sometimes used in cloning, and the report claims their presence is indicative of an engineered virus. But scientists point out these sites naturally occur in all types of genomes, from bacteria to humans. “It looks legitimate because they use a lot of technical jargon. But in reality, a lot of what they're saying doesn't really make any sense,” says Rasmussen. She adds that the type of cloning that uses restriction enzymes is very outdated, and so it is unlikely to be used to make a viral bioweapon. And on a basic level, making an engineered virus is not a trivial matter. Scientists are still just trying to understand the molecular and genetic reasons why some viruses are more infectious than others. Adding features to a virus to make it more transmissible, for example, is called gain-of-function research. It is highly controversial for its potential to make bioweapons and was even banned in the U.S. for a time, limiting the data available on how it works. So how was the Yan report published? A hallmark of the pandemic has been a rapid influx of research and free sharing of information to increase the pace of discovery. This practice of posting “preprints”—reports that haven’t been reviewed by academic peers—has its advantages. “For the scientific community [it] has been very useful,” says Robertson, since more researchers can quickly analyze the available data. But preprints have a dark side too. Misinformation has been another hallmark of the pandemic, and preprints have played a role in fueling news coverage of unproven claims, including the virus mutating into a more deadly form, coming from snakes, or being less deadly than it truly is. “It can be very hard to disentangle when that's real news and when it's not news,” he says, citing the fact that even some peer-reviewed papers on coronavirus have made errors in the rush to publish. This mixture of honest mistakes and insidious ones may just be indicative of a larger trend with publishing during a rapidly evolving crisis. “I don’t think the preprint system is being weaponized so much as all channels of information are being used to disseminate misinformation: everything from social media to manipulating the mainstream media to preprints to peer-reviewed journals,” says Rasmussen. Bad news travels fast Despite the objections of experts, the Yan report and other similar instances of coronavirus misformation, such as the Plandemic documentary, have gained traction on social media because they take advantage of vulnerable human emotions. Those feelings can drive the viral spread of hoaxes. Back in 2018, Aral and his team at the MIT Media Lab put their novelty hypothesis to the test by analyzing 11 years of data from Twitter, or about 4.5 million tweets. Their calculations showed a surprising correlation: “What we found was that false news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in every category of information that we studied, sometimes by an order of magnitude,” Aral explains. More is at play than just novelty, as Aral discusses in his new book The Hype Machine. The way people react to emotional stories on social media is intense and predictable. Vitriol fills the replies, and false news then becomes 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth. A complicated combination of psychological factors is at work whenever a reader decides to share news, and otherwise smart people can become part of the cycle of disinformation. One factor is knowledge neglect: “when people fail to retrieve and apply previously stored knowledge appropriately into a current situation,” according to Lisa Fazio, an assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. The human brain seeks out easy options. Readers cut corners, often sharing stories with grabby headlines before looking deeper into the story itself. Even when social media users do read what they share, their rational mind finds other ways to slack off. For instance, humans are prone to confirmation bias, a way of interpreting new information as a validation of one’s preconceived notions. Motivated reasoning switches on too, and the brain tries to force these new conceptual puzzle pieces together, making connections even when they don’t fit. The most potent factor that warps critical thinking is the illusory truth effect, which Fazio defines with this scenario: “If you hear something twice, you're more likely to think that it's true than if you've only heard it once.” So prevalence turbocharges false news, and echo chambers then turn into self-perpetuating whirlwinds of misbelief. If the news involves politics, it gets yet another virality boost. “Political news travels faster than the rest of false news,” says Aral. “We can speculate that it’s such a lightning rod because it’s so emotionally charged.” And to Aral, the Yan report has every attribute of a false news story that was primed to go viral. “In terms of that specific story, I would say all of these analyses of why false news spreads apply,” Aral explains. “It’s shocking; it’s salacious. It's immediately relevant to political debates that are happening, but obviously coronavirus is on everyone’s mind. Trying to understand its origins is a big story.”
“It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.” 评论中肯。
Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific. 在你看来，这两人水平还不如闫丽梦了。
所以说，闫那些胡说八道的东西只能糊弄外行，给稍微懂行的一看她就露馅了。 文章有点长，有兴趣的自己看。 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/coronavirus-origins-misinformation-yan-report-fact-check-cvd/ Why misinformation about COVID-19's origins keeps going viral Another piece of coronavirus misinformation is making the rounds. Here's how to sift through the muck. BY MONIQUE BROUILLETTE AND REBECCA RENNER TWENTY YEARS AGO, data scientist Sinan Aral began to see the formation of a trend that now defines our social media era: how quickly untrue information spreads. He watched as false news ignited online discourse like a small spark that kindles into a massive blaze. Now the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Aral believes that a concept he calls the novelty hypothesis demonstrates this almost unstoppable viral contagion of false news. “Human attention is drawn to novelty, to things that are new and unexpected,” says Aral. “We gain in status when we share novel information because it looks like we're in the know, or that we have access to inside information.” Enter the Yan report. On September 14, an article was posted to Zenodo, an open-access site for sharing research papers, which claimed that genetic evidence showed that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was made in a lab, rather than emerging through natural spillover from animals. The 26-page paper, led by Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, a postdoctoral researcher who left Hong Kong University, has not undergone peer review and asserts that this evidence of genetic engineering has been “censored” in the scientific journals. (National Geographic contacted Yan and the report’s three other authors for comment but received no reply.) A Twitter firestorm promptly erupted. Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific. Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The experts also pointed out that the report whipped up wild conspiracy theories and wrongly accused academic journals of plotting with conspirators by censoring important evidence. In July, , a viral genomics researcher at University of Glasgow, authored a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Medicine that showed the lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known ancestor, a virus called RaTG13, have been circulating in bat populations for decades. Virologists think this relative, which is 96-percent identical to the novel coronavirus, probably propagated and evolved in bats or human hosts and then went undetected for about 20 years before adapting its current form and causing the ongoing pandemic. The Yan report claims this hypothesis is controversial, and that RaTG13 was also engineered in a lab. But that flies in the face of the about SARS-CoV-2 and its progenitors. What’s more, the report was funded by the Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit organization founded by former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been arrested for fraud. That’s yet another reason many virologists are questioning the veracity of its claims. “It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.” National Geographic reached out to other prominent virologists and misinformation researchers to better understand where the Yan report came from and what it got wrong. Along the way, they offered tips for overcoming misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.
What do we know about SARS-CoV-2’s origins? Coronaviruses exist in nature and can infect many different creatures. SARS-like coronaviruses are found in bats, pigs, cats, and ferrets, to name a few. The most widely agreed upon origin of SARS-CoV-2, based on its genetics, is that its ancestors moved around in wild animals—swapping genetic features as they went along—before they jumped into humans. Scientists have yet to find the direct parent of SARS-CoV-2 in feral beasts, though its closest relatives exist in bats. The virus may have passed through an intermediate animal——and then evolved to become better at infecting humans. Or it may have made the jump directly from bats to humans, given past examples of such occurrences. After the original SARS outbreak in China 20 years ago, researchers began surveying wild bats in local caves and the people who live near them. A 2018 study found the genetic relatives of the original SARS virus in the winged mammals—as well as specific antibodies, a residual sign of infection, in their human neighbors. Finding answers to the precise events that led to a spillover pandemic is a “needle in a haystack proposition,” says , an epidemiologist from Columbia University, who co-authored an early research paper in Nature Medicine about the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2. The Yan report claims this Nature Medicine report had a “conflict of interest” due to Lipkin’s work in containing the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, for which he received an award from the Chinese government. Lipkin says this accusation is “absurd,” and when asked for his view on the role of bioengineering in the origins of SARS-CoV-2, he adds: “There is no data to support this.” Uncovering the natural source of the coronavirus will likely require large-scale sampling of animals—including bat and human populations—in China to trace the evolution of the novel coronavirus. The World Health Organization is readying a team to conduct such an investigation in China, though a timetable has not been released.
What does the Yan report say? The Yan report attempts to tackle this question in a different way, starting with the murky claim that SARS-CoV-2 is bad at infecting bats, therefore it could not have come from them. But scientists point out that viruses are constantly evolving and passing between species. The initial spillover from bats to humans could have happened decades ago, allowing the virus ample time for its spike protein, the part it uses to enter cells, to optimize through natural selection to infect humans. Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations. “I'm going to scream if I have to explain the fact that many viruses have cleavage sites,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. The report also asserts that SARS-CoV-2 is “suspiciously” similar to two strains of bat coronaviruses, called ZC45 and ZXC21, that were discovered by scientists at military labs in China. The authors claim these strains could have been used as a template to clone a deadlier virus. But other scientists balk at this idea. First, the two strains differ by as much as 3,500 nucleotide base pairs, the chemical “letters” used in genetic code. As such, they would be a poor starting point for bioengineering SARS-CoV-2. Engineering a virus in which you had to replace more than 10 percent of its genome is inefficient, if not impossible, according to Rasmussen and several other virologists. The fact that these strains were identified at a Chinese military lab is also “just circumstantial,” says Robertson. The bat coronaviruses were circulating in wild bats and could have been discovered by anyone. The report also argues that SARS-CoV-2 has “restriction-enzyme sites,” or genetic sequences that can be cut and manipulated by enzymes. These genomic features are sometimes used in cloning, and the report claims their presence is indicative of an engineered virus. But scientists point out these sites naturally occur in all types of genomes, from bacteria to humans. “It looks legitimate because they use a lot of technical jargon. But in reality, a lot of what they're saying doesn't really make any sense,” says Rasmussen. She adds that the type of cloning that uses restriction enzymes is very outdated, and so it is unlikely to be used to make a viral bioweapon. And on a basic level, making an engineered virus is not a trivial matter. Scientists are still just trying to understand the molecular and genetic reasons why some viruses are more infectious than others. Adding features to a virus to make it more transmissible, for example, is called gain-of-function research. It is highly controversial for its potential to make bioweapons and was even banned in the U.S. for a time, limiting the data available on how it works. So how was the Yan report published? A hallmark of the pandemic has been a rapid influx of research and free sharing of information to increase the pace of discovery. This practice of posting “preprints”—reports that haven’t been reviewed by academic peers—has its advantages. “For the scientific community [it] has been very useful,” says Robertson, since more researchers can quickly analyze the available data. But preprints have a dark side too. Misinformation has been another hallmark of the pandemic, and preprints have played a role in fueling news coverage of unproven claims, including the virus mutating into a more deadly form, coming from snakes, or being less deadly than it truly is. “It can be very hard to disentangle when that's real news and when it's not news,” he says, citing the fact that even some peer-reviewed papers on coronavirus have made errors in the rush to publish. This mixture of honest mistakes and insidious ones may just be indicative of a larger trend with publishing during a rapidly evolving crisis. “I don’t think the preprint system is being weaponized so much as all channels of information are being used to disseminate misinformation: everything from social media to manipulating the mainstream media to preprints to peer-reviewed journals,” says Rasmussen. Bad news travels fast Despite the objections of experts, the Yan report and other similar instances of coronavirus misformation, such as the Plandemic documentary, have gained traction on social media because they take advantage of vulnerable human emotions. Those feelings can drive the viral spread of hoaxes. Back in 2018, Aral and his team at the MIT Media Lab put their novelty hypothesis to the test by analyzing 11 years of data from Twitter, or about 4.5 million tweets. Their calculations showed a surprising correlation: “What we found was that false news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in every category of information that we studied, sometimes by an order of magnitude,” Aral explains. More is at play than just novelty, as Aral discusses in his new book The Hype Machine. The way people react to emotional stories on social media is intense and predictable. Vitriol fills the replies, and false news then becomes 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth. A complicated combination of psychological factors is at work whenever a reader decides to share news, and otherwise smart people can become part of the cycle of disinformation. One factor is knowledge neglect: “when people fail to retrieve and apply previously stored knowledge appropriately into a current situation,” according to Lisa Fazio, an assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. The human brain seeks out easy options. Readers cut corners, often sharing stories with grabby headlines before looking deeper into the story itself. Even when social media users do read what they share, their rational mind finds other ways to slack off. For instance, humans are prone to confirmation bias, a way of interpreting new information as a validation of one’s preconceived notions. Motivated reasoning switches on too, and the brain tries to force these new conceptual puzzle pieces together, making connections even when they don’t fit. The most potent factor that warps critical thinking is the illusory truth effect, which Fazio defines with this scenario: “If you hear something twice, you're more likely to think that it's true than if you've only heard it once.” So prevalence turbocharges false news, and echo chambers then turn into self-perpetuating whirlwinds of misbelief. If the news involves politics, it gets yet another virality boost. “Political news travels faster than the rest of false news,” says Aral. “We can speculate that it’s such a lightning rod because it’s so emotionally charged.” And to Aral, the Yan report has every attribute of a false news story that was primed to go viral. “In terms of that specific story, I would say all of these analyses of why false news spreads apply,” Aral explains. “It’s shocking; it’s salacious. It's immediately relevant to political debates that are happening, but obviously coronavirus is on everyone’s mind. Trying to understand its origins is a big story.” gvcc 发表于 2020-09-20 21:55
Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations. 这还不是科学证据？Yan号称COVID19病毒里这种基因突变在其他冠状病毒里没见到过，所以是人造的，这是她论文非常核心的论据，这篇国家地理文章直接链接出了同样的基因突变在其他蝙蝠冠状病毒里早就发现了的论文。这种时候还低着头塞着耳朵”我不听我不听没有科学证据“的，不是坏就是完全没有科学素养了。
Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations. 这还不是科学证据？Yan号称COVID19病毒里这种基因突变在其他冠状病毒里没见到过，所以是人造的，这是她论文非常核心的论据，这篇国家地理文章直接链接出了同样的基因突变在其他蝙蝠冠状病毒里早就发现了的论文。这种时候还低着头塞着耳朵”我不听我不听没有科学证据“的，不是坏就是完全没有科学素养了。 computer101 发表于 2020-09-21 18:09
路德和那群博士团那叫明骗，知道你们这些人傻，不懂英文，不会看英文，我就明着颠倒黑白，知道你们除了从我这得到信息也没有其他别的地方，我说啥你信啥。最后还要利用大家急于灭共的心理大行敛财之道，最傻的就是还有一堆人傻乎乎的被骗了钱还跟着吆喝，完全没有头脑，没有独立思考的精神，无论说啥最后加一句ccp你完了！就一堆人上去跟着喊CCP你完了，可搞笑了。 francis 发表于 2020-09-21 18:28
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/coronavirus-origins-misinformation-yan-report-fact-check-cvd/
Why misinformation about COVID-19's origins keeps going viral Another piece of coronavirus misinformation is making the rounds. Here's how to sift through the muck.
BY MONIQUE BROUILLETTE AND REBECCA RENNER
TWENTY YEARS AGO, data scientist Sinan Aral began to see the formation of a trend that now defines our social media era: how quickly untrue information spreads. He watched as false news ignited online discourse like a small spark that kindles into a massive blaze. Now the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Aral believes that a concept he calls the novelty hypothesis demonstrates this almost unstoppable viral contagion of false news.
“Human attention is drawn to novelty, to things that are new and unexpected,” says Aral. “We gain in status when we share novel information because it looks like we're in the know, or that we have access to inside information.”
Enter the Yan report. On September 14, an article was posted to Zenodo, an open-access site for sharing research papers, which claimed that genetic evidence showed that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was made in a lab, rather than emerging through natural spillover from animals. The 26-page paper, led by Chinese virologist Li-Meng Yan, a postdoctoral researcher who left Hong Kong University, has not undergone peer review and asserts that this evidence of genetic engineering has been “censored” in the scientific journals. (National Geographic contacted Yan and the report’s three other authors for comment but received no reply.)
A Twitter firestorm promptly erupted. Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific. Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
The experts also pointed out that the report whipped up wild conspiracy theories and wrongly accused academic journals of plotting with conspirators by censoring important evidence.
In July, , a viral genomics researcher at University of Glasgow, authored a peer-reviewed paper in Nature Medicine that showed the lineage behind SARS-CoV-2 and its closest known ancestor, a virus called RaTG13, have been circulating in bat populations for decades. Virologists think this relative, which is 96-percent identical to the novel coronavirus, probably propagated and evolved in bats or human hosts and then went undetected for about 20 years before adapting its current form and causing the ongoing pandemic.
The Yan report claims this hypothesis is controversial, and that RaTG13 was also engineered in a lab. But that flies in the face of the about SARS-CoV-2 and its progenitors. What’s more, the report was funded by the Rule of Law Society, a nonprofit organization founded by former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who has since been arrested for fraud. That’s yet another reason many virologists are questioning the veracity of its claims.
“It’s encroaching on pseudoscience, really,” says Robertson. “This paper just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario.”
National Geographic reached out to other prominent virologists and misinformation researchers to better understand where the Yan report came from and what it got wrong. Along the way, they offered tips for overcoming misinformation surrounding the coronavirus.
What do we know about SARS-CoV-2’s origins? Coronaviruses exist in nature and can infect many different creatures. SARS-like coronaviruses are found in bats, pigs, cats, and ferrets, to name a few. The most widely agreed upon origin of SARS-CoV-2, based on its genetics, is that its ancestors moved around in wild animals—swapping genetic features as they went along—before they jumped into humans.
Scientists have yet to find the direct parent of SARS-CoV-2 in feral beasts, though its closest relatives exist in bats. The virus may have passed through an intermediate animal——and then evolved to become better at infecting humans. Or it may have made the jump directly from bats to humans, given past examples of such occurrences. After the original SARS outbreak in China 20 years ago, researchers began surveying wild bats in local caves and the people who live near them. A 2018 study found the genetic relatives of the original SARS virus in the winged mammals—as well as specific antibodies, a residual sign of infection, in their human neighbors.
Finding answers to the precise events that led to a spillover pandemic is a “needle in a haystack proposition,” says , an epidemiologist from Columbia University, who co-authored an early research paper in Nature Medicine about the natural origins of SARS-CoV-2. The Yan report claims this Nature Medicine report had a “conflict of interest” due to Lipkin’s work in containing the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic, for which he received an award from the Chinese government. Lipkin says this accusation is “absurd,” and when asked for his view on the role of bioengineering in the origins of SARS-CoV-2, he adds: “There is no data to support this.”
Uncovering the natural source of the coronavirus will likely require large-scale sampling of animals—including bat and human populations—in China to trace the evolution of the novel coronavirus. The World Health Organization is readying a team to conduct such an investigation in China, though a timetable has not been released.
What does the Yan report say? The Yan report attempts to tackle this question in a different way, starting with the murky claim that SARS-CoV-2 is bad at infecting bats, therefore it could not have come from them. But scientists point out that viruses are constantly evolving and passing between species. The initial spillover from bats to humans could have happened decades ago, allowing the virus ample time for its spike protein, the part it uses to enter cells, to optimize through natural selection to infect humans.
Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations.
“I'm going to scream if I have to explain the fact that many viruses have cleavage sites,” says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University.
The report also asserts that SARS-CoV-2 is “suspiciously” similar to two strains of bat coronaviruses, called ZC45 and ZXC21, that were discovered by scientists at military labs in China. The authors claim these strains could have been used as a template to clone a deadlier virus. But other scientists balk at this idea.
First, the two strains differ by as much as 3,500 nucleotide base pairs, the chemical “letters” used in genetic code. As such, they would be a poor starting point for bioengineering SARS-CoV-2. Engineering a virus in which you had to replace more than 10 percent of its genome is inefficient, if not impossible, according to Rasmussen and several other virologists. The fact that these strains were identified at a Chinese military lab is also “just circumstantial,” says Robertson. The bat coronaviruses were circulating in wild bats and could have been discovered by anyone.
The report also argues that SARS-CoV-2 has “restriction-enzyme sites,” or genetic sequences that can be cut and manipulated by enzymes. These genomic features are sometimes used in cloning, and the report claims their presence is indicative of an engineered virus. But scientists point out these sites naturally occur in all types of genomes, from bacteria to humans.
“It looks legitimate because they use a lot of technical jargon. But in reality, a lot of what they're saying doesn't really make any sense,” says Rasmussen. She adds that the type of cloning that uses restriction enzymes is very outdated, and so it is unlikely to be used to make a viral bioweapon. And on a basic level, making an engineered virus is not a trivial matter. Scientists are still just trying to understand the molecular and genetic reasons why some viruses are more infectious than others. Adding features to a virus to make it more transmissible, for example, is called gain-of-function research. It is highly controversial for its potential to make bioweapons and was even banned in the U.S. for a time, limiting the data available on how it works.
So how was the Yan report published? A hallmark of the pandemic has been a rapid influx of research and free sharing of information to increase the pace of discovery. This practice of posting “preprints”—reports that haven’t been reviewed by academic peers—has its advantages.
“For the scientific community [it] has been very useful,” says Robertson, since more researchers can quickly analyze the available data. But preprints have a dark side too. Misinformation has been another hallmark of the pandemic, and preprints have played a role in fueling news coverage of unproven claims, including the virus mutating into a more deadly form, coming from snakes, or being less deadly than it truly is.
“It can be very hard to disentangle when that's real news and when it's not news,” he says, citing the fact that even some peer-reviewed papers on coronavirus have made errors in the rush to publish. This mixture of honest mistakes and insidious ones may just be indicative of a larger trend with publishing during a rapidly evolving crisis.
“I don’t think the preprint system is being weaponized so much as all channels of information are being used to disseminate misinformation: everything from social media to manipulating the mainstream media to preprints to peer-reviewed journals,” says Rasmussen.
Bad news travels fast Despite the objections of experts, the Yan report and other similar instances of coronavirus misformation, such as the Plandemic documentary, have gained traction on social media because they take advantage of vulnerable human emotions. Those feelings can drive the viral spread of hoaxes.
Back in 2018, Aral and his team at the MIT Media Lab put their novelty hypothesis to the test by analyzing 11 years of data from Twitter, or about 4.5 million tweets. Their calculations showed a surprising correlation: “What we found was that false news traveled farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in every category of information that we studied, sometimes by an order of magnitude,” Aral explains.
More is at play than just novelty, as Aral discusses in his new book The Hype Machine. The way people react to emotional stories on social media is intense and predictable. Vitriol fills the replies, and false news then becomes 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth.
A complicated combination of psychological factors is at work whenever a reader decides to share news, and otherwise smart people can become part of the cycle of disinformation.
One factor is knowledge neglect: “when people fail to retrieve and apply previously stored knowledge appropriately into a current situation,” according to Lisa Fazio, an assistant professor of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University.
The human brain seeks out easy options. Readers cut corners, often sharing stories with grabby headlines before looking deeper into the story itself. Even when social media users do read what they share, their rational mind finds other ways to slack off.
For instance, humans are prone to confirmation bias, a way of interpreting new information as a validation of one’s preconceived notions. Motivated reasoning switches on too, and the brain tries to force these new conceptual puzzle pieces together, making connections even when they don’t fit.
The most potent factor that warps critical thinking is the illusory truth effect, which Fazio defines with this scenario: “If you hear something twice, you're more likely to think that it's true than if you've only heard it once.” So prevalence turbocharges false news, and echo chambers then turn into self-perpetuating whirlwinds of misbelief.
If the news involves politics, it gets yet another virality boost. “Political news travels faster than the rest of false news,” says Aral. “We can speculate that it’s such a lightning rod because it’s so emotionally charged.” And to Aral, the Yan report has every attribute of a false news story that was primed to go viral.
“In terms of that specific story, I would say all of these analyses of why false news spreads apply,” Aral explains. “It’s shocking; it’s salacious. It's immediately relevant to political debates that are happening, but obviously coronavirus is on everyone’s mind. Trying to understand its origins is a big story.”
🔥 最新回帖
风水先生 转行 专治疑难杂症？
对啊，做科普的对象就不是专业背景很强的。闫博士是在Nature上发过文章的，国家地理找几个三流教授，哥大post doc来站台，就是因为他的观众好忽悠。真正的专家都没人出来反驳呢，因为人家看懂了。
🛋️ 沙发板凳
香港大学前雇员闫丽梦多次在美指责中国“隐瞒疫情”，并发表论文提出“新冠病毒（SARS-CoV-2）人造论”，引发日本舆论关注。对此，日本专家质问其“有何居心”。
据美国《赫芬顿邮报》当地时间9月17日报道，该报日本分社记者高桥史弥，将闫丽梦的相关论文拿给日本生物基因组研究专家，并听取了专家的看法。
日本生物基因专家、东海大学医学部讲师中川草看完后总结对这篇论文的整体印象称，“花大力气写出这么荒唐无稽的东西，到底有何居心？我认为这篇论文里没有科学的议论，而是为了政治而作。”
中川草首先质疑闫丽梦论文的样式称，“所属机构不是研究机关，是一个基金会，而且也不是个人署名。是谁写的，谁对这篇论文负有责任？这点上很含糊，不是一般科学论文的样式。”
报道补充说，“论文的所属单位与在美开展反共活动的一个男性有关，且闫丽梦已从香港大学离职。”
对于论文论据之一、所谓“新冠病毒发生了其他近亲病毒中不存在的特有变异”这一说法，中川表示：“今年5月，《当代生物学》（Current Biology）杂志上发布了一种名为‘RmYN02’的、来自蝙蝠的冠状病毒，也有（与新冠病毒）类似的序列，这在领域内专家中是众所周知的。如果真的对新冠病毒的起源进行调查的话，很难不知道那篇论文，因此我怀疑（论文作者）刻意地不去触及那方面内容，选择性地书写想让人看到的信息。”
值得注意的是，虽然香港大学早已表示“她不是从事病毒研究的学者，主张也没有科学根据”，且推特（Twitter）已对其发布论文的账号进行了封号处理，但其言论已对日本社会造成一定的影响。据称，在推特日本搜索“武汉研究所”，闫丽梦博客的相关谣言有超过3万次转发。
随着闫丽梦推特被封号，又有美国媒体曝光，前白宫高级战略顾问班农是闫丽梦多次抹黑中国、发表“新冠病毒人造论”的幕后黑手。
国家地理被蓝金黄了，日本生物基因专家中川草是五毛！
标准答案，我替有些人说了吧。
会有人养她的，你放心好了。养着她又不要多少钱，留着她那张嘴多少对有些人有用。
要比让民众信服 你总得谈谈为什么和解放军的舟山蝙蝠相似度那么高呗.
独轮运正拿着砖头赶来。
佩服，这是怎样的逻辑。
评论中肯。
继续出丑。
Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersen from Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific.
在你看来，这两人水平还不如闫丽梦了。
她的publication list是没有独立做研究的credibility的，美国做病毒的大牛为啥要招她？给个理由？
她就是一根筋政治挂帅导致不能理性思考，加上的确不是这个专业的。以为发现了别人都发现不了的大料，结果自己沦为一个笑话。
拿政庇卡，又快又好。 和班农文贵混在一起的"科学家"，也就川粉会信了。
Kristian Andersen 你都没听说过？
救中国只能是科学+民主，德先生和赛先生。
不要科学的，不尊重科学的，只能造就一帮义和团。
不长久啦，何况这么多专业人士出来反驳 见过高开低走的，没见过这么高开低走的，太没谱了
他比yan limeng hongkong老板牛吧，LOL https://andersen-lab.com/
本老认为赛先生名副其实，德先生嘛，有点虚有其名了 德先生对选民的素质要求还是很高的，能满足这么高要求的国家不多 这点有点像共产主义，理想是好的，实施起来。。。一锅粥
标准答案，我替有些人说了吧。
https://www.google.com/amp/s/api.nationalgeographic.com/distribution/public/amp/animals/2020/03/pangolins-coronavirus-covid-possibility
回想起头几个月各种诡异和不合逻辑，疫情始发地 传说中的中间宿主至今没找到也不想找，这两天石正丽还跳出来说 “也许中间宿主永远找不到” 比起穿山甲，还是 Lab Leak 更 make sense ~
为什么用个地理杂志？也太不专业了吧？ 就跟用方舟子来反驳一样，不严肃
精彩回复留个影
陆博士又来了哈，天气冷了注意保暖啊
穿山甲也是ccp推的啊，反正就是海鲜市场里面找
精彩回复，你太牛了。
福齐，讨论病毒相关的，一般也是去《国家地理杂志》
你太幽默了
查了一下2015年成立的。 还是做进化基因组的擦边球， 你说比香港的牛， 笑掉大牙了。
反闫的也闭嘴好吧。大家没你们想的那么蠢。我这么笨都能看出来，你们搞一堆我们不知道的大科学家出来，反而显得你们没低气。
至少不够严谨？作为一个科学家，下结论就必须有足够的证据。至少现在我不觉得她有足够的证据来支撑她的结论。
一个所谓三流日本东海大学的专家更是没提出什么专业反驳意见。说闫是什么背景资金支持的还需要砖家来说吗？
继续抱住你们的阎博士别放哈
为什么一定要你认识？你不认识只能证明你对这一领域不太了解。默认
现在最该上场的中国顶级专家们安静如鸡，为什么别的领域这么鸡冻，留点敌后潜伏为将来多好。
为什么不是cell nature science 而是国家地理杂志？
这是科研人的想法，可惜，闫丽梦在踏出第一步的时候，就已经不再是一个科研人了，而是一个野心家。
发几篇福奇在地理杂志上的文章？
Cell nature science 这种级别的纯科研journal，要发文驳这样荒诞无稽的假论文也太掉价了。国家地理这样的科普性质的杂志虽然也掉价，但好歹是面对普通读者。但凡有一点分子生物学背景的人，都看得出来闫列举的所谓论据，没有一条站得住脚，这人以后在科学界是没法混了。
因为人家不愿意？
你一篇没科研单位没peer review 的东西， 凭什么叫nature cell science 来review?
找natures science, cell review 有正规途径， 投稿就是了。 正规发表的科研论文都是用这个办法。
人家好歹是个论文，是个研究员写的，这地理杂志这篇吧唧吧唧的长文作者是谁啊！
我猜是在香港受港人运动影响早就对土共有了成见，疫情初期看不惯武汉湖北两级政府想捂盖子保政绩内紧外松处理，再加路德文贵忽悠，就主观陷入了土共邪恶病毒人造释放的阴谋论的逻辑误区，加上业务水平低下，也许真心认为发现了秘密，被路德英雄科学家无畏吹哨人什么的一吹捧就自我陶醉晕了。另外感觉真的有点精神不是很正常，连自己丈夫因为不同意她的选择就会认为自己丈夫也是有谋杀自己的企图的，就走上了这条路。
可怜。这么努力交投名状，还被马蹄子踢。
我早就说了，是个笑话，蹦得越高，丢人越大。可惜有人是要利用她搞事情的，把她忽悠到美国来，她也没退路了。
真的是服了，真的服
反正只要戴上反中的帽子，就算是坨狗屎，也要绕来绕去说那个是黄灿灿的冰淇淋
我还是觉得侯德健说得很对，对付共产党的专制独裁封锁新闻等等恶行，难道用真相还不够有战斗力吗？为什么要用谎言来作为自己的武器呢？这样到底是帮助了谁？你这种人，才真真正正是共产党派来的五毛！
虽然你说的道理非常高大上，可惜，你正好做了你自己批判的事情。
那阁下也去上个Tucker访谈，再去和朱利安尼合个影？
哈哈哈，闫是可怜人，被人当枪用的。不好找那么naive的人的。她是被某种势力推上去的，她有中国，病毒学者，博士，defector这几个标签就够了，水平高低根本不重要。
错。 是华尔街资本通共
赞同。被人操纵了，也挺惨的。
这个就是证据？太可笑了，原来你觉着和名人合个影，去个访谈节目就不得了了，🐸
哈哈哈，这个所谓反驳在专业上还是纯粹的胡说八道。还是在忽悠战友们给他们打气的，他们不懂行啊，用专用名词做个”科学“讨论的样子就够了。
大家都是成年人，会为自己的选择负责。就象你，出卖灵魂为邪恶的ccp站台，我们不会说你被别人利用了，那是你自己的选择。Dr. Yan把自己知道的说出来，我们都知道她要面对的何止是你们这些出卖灵魂的渣们的侮辱谩骂，更多的是你们背后那个邪恶的政权。你们相信美国司法公正，不是在告总统禁微信吗？大可以来美国告Dr. Yan啊，双方举证让世人看到真相，我们只想知道病毒来源真相，以防下次被精准打击。
总比被自杀被跳楼被暗杀好。
有些人不值得
就算阎是为了拿政治庇护,有没有想过为啥美国的政治庇护即使在你这样的人眼里，也是可以放弃所有而竭尽全力争取的，为啥中国的权贵们要把钱转来美国？为啥没人绞尽脑汁放弃所有去中国呢？
等着看笑话更新
啥玩意，上来就扣帽子，你的业务很强。是在美国告的吗？给个case number, 我这就去关注 一下。
看来你是自己极度想拿美国绿卡啦，心里想什么，就以为别人也想
闫博士被人当枪使了
能来美国出名
说得真好！闫博士就好像一面照妖镜，照出一群出卖灵魂人格小丑赤裸裸的丑态。 看看在这帖子里群魔乱舞侮辱诋毁她2020 后翻墙注册的一群，再看一眼它们与North American culture 格格不入的网名，正好一网打尽全屏蔽。
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https://www.youtube.com/embed/ukOCh4O2WiA 首先第一个发言的是康教授。康教授，用中文英文讲。 20：39：45 康教授：好的路德先生。 这篇文章，我评价总体上来说是，确实如同路德说的，它在打击闫博士这个报告的时候，用了很多论点，其实是歪曲了闫博士论文中的原意，然后说你这个是错误的。所以我们最有力的回击就是把它文中的每一个错误指出来，然后说它为什么错了，为什么它是在歪曲事实。它这个文章公信力自然就没有了。 它写这这文章的目的，因为它的读者不是真正的病毒学家的，也不是有这种特别强分析能力的经过科学训练的人。这些读者容易被误导，所以采用一些断章取义，甚至扭曲事实的说法来做这事的时候，他们很安全，因为读者没法回到闫博士的原始论文去看。所以只能被它误导。我就是第一点吧大概总结了一下。 20：40：56 第一点， 这个错误是，它说闫博士报告里面，战友们知道RaTG13是石正丽捏造的。国家地理杂志这篇文章却说，RaTG13这个病毒也是在实验室被改造过。这个完全是胡说，因为我查看了闫博士的论文，里面根本没有这么讲。闫博士报告里面根本没有讲RaTG13病毒在实验室被改造。这不是闫博士论文说到的，完全是歪曲事实。闫博士报告明确说这个病毒序列是伪造的，根本不存在。不存在的病毒更不不可能被改造。没有这个实体，怎么来改造？对不对，所以这是它第一个错误，歪曲事实。
楼主是受过大外宣训练的。
Another argument made by the Yan report centers on the presence of a “furin-cleavage site” on the spike protein, a critical genetic feature that is thought to enhance the virus’s ability to enter cells. The report claims this feature is found on no other coronavirus and therefore must be engineered. But this statement contradicts findings: similar cleavage sites are found on bat coronaviruses in wild populations.
这还不是科学证据？Yan号称COVID19病毒里这种基因突变在其他冠状病毒里没见到过，所以是人造的，这是她论文非常核心的论据，这篇国家地理文章直接链接出了同样的基因突变在其他蝙蝠冠状病毒里早就发现了的论文。这种时候还低着头塞着耳朵”我不听我不听没有科学证据“的，不是坏就是完全没有科学素养了。
路德和那群博士团那叫明骗，知道你们这些人傻，不懂英文，不会看英文，我就明着颠倒黑白，知道你们除了从我这得到信息也没有其他别的地方，我说啥你信啥。最后还要利用大家急于灭共的心理大行敛财之道，最傻的就是还有一堆人傻乎乎的被骗了钱还跟着吆喝，完全没有头脑，没有独立思考的精神，无论说啥最后加一句ccp你完了！就一堆人上去跟着喊CCP你完了，可搞笑了。
你还真是个睁眼瞎，要么就是以为别人是睁眼瞎。
投资农场了没？七哥说没投资农场的都是特务伪类
已经几亿人搜索闫博士，想知道更多真相 习包子自己估计都觉得无力回天了，这两天跑湖南去了，不知道有没有找他湘潭的亲爹哭一通，红色江山怕是要毁到他手里了