Nate Silver calls for Fauci COVID origins paper to be RETRACTED after new chat messages suggest scientists “engaged in gross misconduct”

by The Right Scoop

Nate Silver is calling for the Fauci “Proximal Origins” of COVID paper to be retracted after new evidence has come out that suggests the scientists who wrote the paper ignored the lab leak even though they thought it was plausible.

But first, before we show Silver’s tweets, here’s the Slack messages from February of 2020 that reveal how these scientists chose to ignore the lab leak theory because they thought it was too political to make this accusation against China.

The man who released them on Twitter wrote this:

Now there are so many messages from this slack that I simply can’t post them all, or even most of them. A lot of what is discussed is very technical and difficult to understand.

Instead I’m going to post several of them that reveal how some of these scientists thought the lab leak theory was possible but decided to ignore it.

We’ll start with this one from the slack. It’s Andrew Rambaut saying that he “literally swivels day by day thinking it is a lab escape or natural.”

This same Andrew Rambaut also says that because of politics, they should just ignore the lab leak theory altogether and just say it was natural evolution:

“Given the shit show that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is that we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes.”

Note that Kristian Anderson completely agrees but laments how politics has been injected into science. But he says it’s impossible not to inject politics into it because of China.

Now read this from Anderson which makes clear that he believes the virus could have been cultured in a lab. He rejects the bioweapon theories or that it was engineered for research. He favors the evolved in nature theory, but hasn’t rejected that it wasn’t cultured (click to make larger):

Okay, here’s where Nate Silver comes in. He read all the messages from the slack and wrote this on Twitter:

“This is a huge scandal. Scientists like @K_G_Andersen believed a lab leak was extremely plausible, if not likely, they concocted a plan to deceive the public about it, and they’ve been caught red-handed. There’s not really any ambiguity here. They are unethical as it gets.”

An associate professor responded suggesting he should forget about 2020 and just focus on 2023 and what we know about COVID origins now:

“Hi Nate, because it is 2023, why not check out this great paper by @LawrenceGostin and me about what we actually know about the origin of COVID. People who are upset that the scientific evidence is not supporting their preferred theory are just trying to change the subject.”

Silver responded with fire:

“Hi Gigi, a group of scientists published the “Proximal Origins” paper in Nature with conclusions that they knew to be false, that were expressly crafted for political purposes. It had an enormous influence on the public debate. Quit hiding the ball.”

Gronvall responded that the lab leaders weren’t silenced and that evidence suggests they were incorrect:

The lab leakers weren’t silenced (by the previous administration, by reporters like Josh Rogin, by many of the LL, by outlets like Bulletin of atomic scientists, by you) and furthermore evidence suggests the LL were incorrect.

Silver suggests that these scientists in 2020 were engaged in gross misconduct and we can’t simply wipe the slate clean and ignore it.

“Also the notion that we can just wipe the slate clean and assess the current state of the COVID origins debate as though everyone has been acting in good faith is obviously wrong. One side (natural origins) has engaged in gross misconduct to manipulate public opinion.”

Silver then calls on the “Proximal Origins” paper to be retracted so we can begin go have an honest conversation about it:

“Let’s start by 1) retracting the “Proximal Origins” paper; 2) having scientists like you (i.e. people sympathetic to the natural origins case) call out Andersen et al for their gross misconduct. Then we might have the semblance of an honest discussion.”

Some leftist who puts his pronouns in his bio and clearly wasn’t paying attention asks this:

“For what possible scientific reason could you possibly demand that paper be retracted?”

Silver responded:

“That we have a record of their internal communications, and that they’re extremely explicit that they think a lab leak is plausible if not likely, and also extremely explicit that they’re going to say the opposite in the paper for political reasons, and also lie to reporters.”

I’ll end by reminding you of this:

New emails reveal Dr. Fauci commissioned paper to DISPROVE lab leak theory



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