Camille Fournier
Timothyhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/opinion/covid-pandemic-lab-leak.html
Tufekci continues to be one of the least trustworthy narrators of "the science" on covid and lab leaks
Just as an example, take this quote from Kristian Andersen -- you'll notice she highlights the word "likely," like that's going to send you to a transcript of this private Slack chat. It doesn't, but if you keep clicking through citation links, you eventually get to a bunch of screenshots in a PDF (https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Proximal_Origin_Slack_OCRd.pdf)
Anyway, you can read the screenshotted Slack chats (maybe the hair is rising up on the back of your neck already) and yeah, there on Feb 1st 2020, that's the quote.
What's clear though, is that Andersen is one of a number of genomics researchers who are collaborating here, and this is a side chat -- working under extreme pressure in *February 2020* for chrissakes, and they barely have anything more than rough sequences of the virus
Furthermore, here's his testimony to Congress, under oath, two years later -- with *muuuuuuch* more sequence data available: https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Dr.-Kristian-Andersen-Written-Testimony-Corrected-Version-1.pdf
Jfc what Tufekci is doing is close to malpractice, if there were any professional standards of practice whatsoever here
Every time she writes one of these op-eds I get a link to it in the mail from my dad, who is a retired scientist and who I love very much
And no matter how much we talk about it, every time she writes another one he sends it again. Each time he thinks it’s new evidence, not just the same arguments about cleavage sites and leaked DMs and accusations of “burner phones” (and Tufekci cares, in other contexts, and privacy and harassment)
“Lab leak” is a brain worm, pure and simple
First person to send me a screenshot of some chat AI saying that “the evidence is indecisive” on lab leaks, or that “lab leaks are more likely than not” gets auto-blocked
Eric Gerlach@arthegall This is sad. Tufekci's work, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, was a shining light in a sea of rumors and hypotheses.
Jon Stewart got infected by that brain worm as well, but it seems to be at least under control, if not cured.