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Originally Posted by Fuzz
I think there are some subtitles to the specific discussion I'm not prepare dot understand, or argue, which is why I was deferring to sources to explain it. Since we don't have specialists here(that I know of) you are probably best to pose to the question to the guy who wrote the Medium article. As is, I'm prepared to accept his explanation and that of Andersen's over Wards, for obvious reasons.
Are there other experts(not journalists) repeating what Ward is suggesting that could provide better insight? I'm sorry but I just have trouble accepting a journalist in such a complicated subject, without backing of experts, and when it appears he made numerous mistakes.
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Fair enough, there's a lot of complicated stuff there. I'm not going to pretend like I'm a virology expert or that I knew what an ACE-2 receptor before last week.
I'm noticing a disturbing trend in science and science journalism though, where someone takes a kernel of truth that only someone extremely technical in that field would know, strecthes the conclusion you can make off that kernel in an illogical way, and then claims their conclusion is based off of science and experts when only one specific part is. It's basically science conclusion laundering.
For example, this author takes the kernel of truth that the virus' spike protein is not *exactly 100%* ideal for ACE-2 receptor. That's the conclusion of the world renowned virologist both he and Wade have quoted. Something only a handful of people in the entire world are qualified to say, and something neither I nor wade nor this author are quarreling with. That's accepting science, but it's also as far as science takes us in this debate before the strains in logic start getting exacted. The author's argument after this is that IF this was human engineered then the spike protein would therefore have been 100% ideal. That is the point where I, as a layperson, can interject and say wait, hold on a minute, that seems like a big assumption to make. There's no reason for that to be a truism at all, especially if the whole point of the research was the search for the threshold point at which this virus could theoretically attain spillover from bats to humans. And saying that because it was not 100% ideal means this could not have been engineered is complete faulty logic. So that's how this author starts with something scientific and technical, but has a flawed conclusion that is not scientific or really, proof of anything.