July 26, 2023

Dear Editors:

On March 17, 2020, Nature Medicine published a Correspondence entitled “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” (1). The paper assessed the genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 and concluded, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus” and “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”

The paper played an influential role—indeed, the central role—in communicating the false narrative that science established that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans through natural spillover, and not through research-related spillover (2-7). The paper was promoted by Joao Monteiro the chief editor of Nature Medicine, as an exceptionally important and definitive research study (“great work”; “will put conspiracy theories about the origin of #SARSCoV2 to rest “; 8). The paper has been cited more than 5,800 times, making it the 68th most cited publication in all fields in 2020, the 16th most cited publication in biology in 2020, and the 8th most cited publication on the subject of COVID-19 in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Email messages and Slack direct messages among authors of the paper obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process or by the U.S. Congress and publicly released in full in or before July 2023 (2-7), show that the authors did not believe the core conclusions of the paper at the time it was written, at the time it was submitted for publication, and at the time it was published. The authors’ statements show that the paper was, and is, a product of scientific misconduct.

It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature.

We, as STEM and STEM-policy professionals, call upon Nature Medicine to publish an expression of editorial concern for the paper and to begin a process of withdrawal or retraction of the paper.

Signers (in alphabetical order)

Amir Attaran, University of Ottawa Paul Babitzke, Pennsylvania State University Alina Chan, Broad Institute Richard H. Ebright, Rutgers University Mohamed E. El Zowalaty, Higher Colleges of Technology David Fisman, University of Toronto Andrew Goffinet, University of Louvain Richard N. Goldstein, Harvard University Elisa D. Harris, Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland Neil L. Harrison, Columbia University Laura Kahn, One Health Initiative Hideki Kakeya, University of Tsukuba Justin B. Kinney, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Tatsu Kobayakawa, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Yanna Lambrinidou,Virginia Tech Milton Leitenberg, University of Maryland Allen A. Lenoir, Bioterrorism/Pediatrics Infectious Disease Center Jamie Metzl, Atlantic Council David L. Nelson, Baylor College of Medicine Bryce E. Nickels, Rutgers University Takeshi Nitta, University of Tokyo Andrew Noymer, University of California, Irvine Roger Pielke Jr., University of Colorado, Boulder Harish Seshadri, Indian Institute of Science Rick Sheridan, Emske Phytochem Eric S. Starbuck, Save the Children Tyler Stepke, Johns Hopkins University Atsushi Tanaka, Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University Hiroshi Tauchi, Ibaraki University Anton van Der Merwe, University of Oxford Alex Washburne, Selva Analytics Andre Watson, Ligandal Roland Wiesendanger, University of Hamburg Susan Wright, University of Michigan

References

(1) Kristian G. Andersen, Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes & Robert F. Garry, The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2, Nature Medicine, volume 26, pages 450–452 (2020)

(2) Interim Majority Staff Report – The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up: Did the “Bethesda Boys” Downplay a Lab Leak?, July 12, 2023

(3) Amid Partisan Politicking, Revelations on a Covid Origins Article, The Nation, July 12, 2023

(4) House Republicans Accidentally Released a Trove of Damning Covid Documents, The Intercept, July 12, 2023

(5) Top Scientists Misled Congress About Covid Origins, Newly Released Emails And Messages Show, Public, July 18, 2023

(6) “So Friggin’ Likely”: New Covid Documents Reveal Unparalleled Media Deception, Racket News, July 18, 2023

(7) Covid Origins Scientist Denounces Reporting On His Messages As A “Conspiracy Theory, Public, July 20, 2023

(8) https://twitter.com/JMinImmunoland/status/1239966983279366145

Sicily - which has already been brought to its knees by a prolonged heatwave - is battling wildfires that are threatening towns and cities across the island.

Sicily - which has already been brought to its knees by a prolonged heatwave - is battling wildfires that are threatening towns and cities across the island. Temperatures of more than 47.5C (117F) were recorded in Catania on Monday.

Several resorts and tourist hotspots around the island have begun evacuating their guests.

Palermo Airport was temporarily closed to air traffic on Tuesday morning after wildfires in the hills around it reached the airport perimeter.

The fires are causing deaths across southern Italy. Local media reported that two bodies were found charred in a house near Palermo airport.

In Sicily, an 88-year-old woman died after falling ill, as the fires prevented emergency services reaching her.

A 98-year-old man in the region of Calabria died when the flames from a wildfire reached his home where he was bedbound.

In Sardinia, a firefighter died of a stroke after spending hours battling a blaze.

A firefighter was seriously injured near Palermo while trying to tackle one of the blazes, which are being fuelled by high winds, local media reported.

More than 200 people in Palermo have already sought medical attention for smoke inhalation. Two hospitals have suspended routine appointments to ensure people suffering from smoke inhalation or other illnesses related to the extreme heat can be looked after.

Half of the bus network in Palermo has been suspended as the vehicles are overheating and cannot cool down because of consistently high temperatures.

Hospital Cervello, in the north of the city, is being threatened by the flames, while some wards have been evacuated, Italian media said.

The farmers' association, Coldiretti, said Sicily was facing an "unprecedented catastrophe and incalculable environmental damage".

The minister for civil protection, Nello Musumeci, wrote on Facebook: "This is one of the hardest days in Italy's history for 10 years. Climate change has hit our nation and demands that we all change our ways. There are no excuses." "We knew that today would be the hardest day," Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told Italian radio RTL 102.5. "We have a situation where very high temperatures are combined with wind, which makes using Canadair [firefighting aircraft] impossible."

"We are following the situation, which is very delicate, minute by minute.".

Did somebody say we had the hottest day in world history 2x this week? Did I get that right?

Reddit just became a lot more friendly to bots, and a lot less friendly to humans. Their block list covered 144,926 bot accounts. All those and more are going to get unleashed.

I was just trying to access Feddit.UK via a popular VPN. It looked like the site didn't even exist. Just a gray error page.

I'm not sure this is a good policy.

EDIT: I have clarification from ProtonVPN about what the problem is with accessing Feddit.uk. They have a service called NetShield which blocks IP addresses associated with malware and trackers. There is a false positive for Feddit.uk. Their team is aware of it, and will hopefully fix it. In the meantime, people can access Feddit.uk using ProtonVPN by turning NetShield off. It works for me.

1. Someone (Reddit administrators?) was caught using chatGPT bots to flood the site with pro-admin comments.

2. After /r/Programming exposed this, the subReddit was closed down.

3. Rumor: the admins were the ones who close down the sub. Regardless, the astroturfing is evident.

SOURCES

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36361247

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/146wn9s/meta_who_is_astroturfing_rprogramming_and_why/

3. https://web.archive.org/web/20230612080526/https://i.imgur.com/4e9jO7P.jpg

To our users, AMA guests, and friends,

You may have noticed that, in spite of our history of past protests against Reddit's poor site management, this subreddit has refrained from protesting or shutting down during the recent excitement on Reddit.

This does not imply that we think things are being managed better now. Rather, it reflects our belief that such actions will not make any significant difference this time.

Rather than come up with new words to express our concerns, I think some quotes from the NYT Editorial we wrote back in 2015 convey our thoughts very well:

Our primary concern, and reason for taking the site down temporarily, is that Reddit’s management made critical changes to a very popular website without any apparent care for how those changes might affect their biggest resource: the community and the moderators that help tend the subreddits that constitute the site. Moderators commit their time to the site to foster engaging communities.

Reddit is not our job, but we have spent thousands of hours as a team answering questions, facilitating A.M.A.s, writing policy and helping people ask questions of their heroes. We moderate from the train or bus, on breaks from work and in between classes. We check on the subreddit while standing in line at the grocery store or waiting at the D.M.V.

The secondary purpose of shutting down was to communicate to the relatively tone-deaf company leaders that the pattern of removing tools and failing to improve available tools to the community at large, not merely the moderators, was an affront to the people who use the site.

We feel strongly that this incident is more part of a reckless disregard for the company’s own business and for the work the moderators and users put into the site.

Amazing how little has changed, really.

So, what are we going to do about this? What can we change? Not much. Reddit executives have shown that they won't yield to the pressure of a protest. They've told the media that they are actively planning to remove moderators who keep subreddits shut down and have no intentions of making changes.

So, moving forward, we're going to run IAmA like your average subreddit. We will continue moderating, removing spam, and enforcing rules. Many of the current moderation team will be taking a step back, but we'll recruit people to replace them as needed.

However, effective immediately, we plan to discontinue the following activities that we performed, as volunteer moderators, that took up a huge amount of our time and effort, both from a communication and coordination standpoint and from an IT/secure operations standpoint:

Active solicitation of celebrities or high profile figures to do AMAs. Email and modmail coordination with celebrities and high profile figures and their PR teams to facilitate, educate, and operate AMAs. (We will still be available to answer questions about posting, though response time may vary). Running and maintaining a website for scheduling of AMAs with pre-verification and proof, as well as social media promotion. Maintaining a current up-to-date sidebar calendar of scheduled AMAs, with schedule reminders for users. Sister subreddits with categorized cross-posts for easy following. Moderator confidential verification for AMAs. Running various bots, including automatic flairing of live posts Moving forward, we'll be allowing most AMA topics, leaving proof and requests for verification up to the community, and limiting ourselves to removing rule-breaking material alone. This doesn't mean we're allowing fake AMAs explicitly, but it does mean you'll need to pay more attention.

Will this undermine most of what makes IAmA special? Probably. But Reddit leadership has all the funds they need to hire people to perform those extra tasks we formerly undertook as volunteer moderators, and we'd be happy to collaborate with them if they choose to do so.

Thanks for the ride everyone, it's been fun.

Sincerely,

The IAmA Moderator Team (2013-2023)

Note, this is a copy of the moderator post. I (GoodKingElliot) am not a moderator of that community.