There are other evolutionary mutations spread across the genome, but they are minor by comparison.
This would be easy to find out given that their names are public and so are the projects/papers/publications. What does the data indicate?
How many distinct samples do we have of the wild-type variants from that region?
The idea that people aren't allowed 'second thoughts' is probably the worst thing to happen to general discourse.
Updating opinions based on evidence is good. Insulting and slandering people because they have different opinions is bad.
It's still possible that they are wrong/bad actors; but that can't be determined based simply on a single change of opinion.
Edit: I've definitely seen people on Twitter and people in the media be overzealous when denying the lab-leak theory; but that's not the same as the scientists themselves doing it (which again, I don't know about either way).
If we're only ever allowed to change our minds by a little bit we'd all be struck in the neighbourhood of whatever (silly) opinions we had as five year olds.
Also, who's in charge of deciding what constitutes a 'complete' mind change vs the apparently-ok minor mind change?
If you want a fair discussion of theories you can’t label the other one a conspiracy theory.
So, should they be able to change their mind? Sure. Should they be less dismissive of opposing views? Also yes. There's no contradiction there.
Here, there are hints that the leak was of, explicitly, samples cultured from the 2013 clinical cases.
This letter would be appropriate if people were proposing some terrible danger. It was always a stupid thing to do and the people who signed it never should. They will likely be thought of by their peers as idiots for the rest of their careers.
Seems it takes a high-ranking defector to suddenly get everyone sweating and carefully walking back written statements.
What information are you referring to that's not public? Most scientists' research areas, publications are public knowledge. Science relies on this to make progress.
OP claimed people signing the letter had a conflict of interest and/or were somehow complicit. Rather than getting into an argument, why not put forth the data. I'd suggest OP to look up their names, papers, labs, funding sources, etc and put forth a real argument.
(Just kidding. Orange man is obviously evil.)
Relevant excerpts:
> The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.
> Conspiracy theories do nothing but create fear, rumours, and prejudice that jeopardise our global collaboration in the fight against this virus. We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture.
Their reputation now irreparably damaged.
Vox called COVID overblown and then stealth edited those articles, only marking them as edited after being called out for it.
New York Times has called lab leak theory "racist", repeatedly, including by their chief COVID reporter as recently as two weeks ago(!!!).
Dr Fauci knowingly lied about the efficacy of masks, then railed against border closures from COVID embattled China, then knowingly lied about US funding of gain-of-function research to Congress.
WHO has spent the last 18 months running crisis management for the Chinese Government ("no sign of person-to-person transmission" in late January), which has spent the same amount of time destroying evidence and covering up as much as possible.
Facebook and Google until months ago was censoring lab leak theory left and right.
Public and news media institutions collectively have revealed their complacency, political bias and ineptitude.
Scientists confusing absence of evidence with evidence of absence (i.e. "we don't have evidence of lab leaks, so anyone claiming it's a lab leak is definitely wrong") -> joke of a scientist
Scientists making a statement not from scientific evidence but due to political expediency (see sibling post, i.e. "conspiracy theories are making China unhappy and they might not share data with us") -> political actors
The fact that people still believe "scientists" after all those flip-flops is astounding. It's like those "scientists" believe their reputation (individual and as a group) is invincible and they can get away with making unsubstantiated claims without being called out -- and surprisingly that's exactly what happens, mostly.
I'm not "anti-science" by any means and I don't believe in "conspiracy theories" but I can see why people are starting to view the scientific establishment with suspicion.
I strongly agree. I am not sure why, but there seems to be a terrific bias towards any explanation that requires a conspiracy.
Every pandemic and epidemic since the dawn of history was caused by humans living and working in close proximity to animals. Here is a list of epidemics [1]. None of them were caused by a lab breach. There have been plenty of leaks from biolabs in the last 120 years [2], and some pretty nasty stuff has escaped. Nothing came of those breaches, no epidemics, no global pandemics. One stands out as the worst of the lot [3], a major release of weaponized anthrax, yet it still pales in comparison to the deaths and illnesses caused by SARS-CoV-2. If anything is learned by examining a list of lab breaches, it is that any particular person is far more likely to get struck by lightning a dozen times before they'd be infected or die from a contagion inadvertently released from a biolab.
Are the conspiracy theorists banking on the law of averages? "It's never happened before, so that must be what happened this time."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity...