AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
These decisions were made by career bureaucrats and political appointees, not scientists. Many of the scientists were silenced early on if you recall.Someone needed to take decisions. We were relatively fortunate that for once, politicians relied on scientists.
Please. The corruption of big science has been ongoing for decades. And regulatory capture is real.From what I could observe locally, most fraudsters were caught pretty fast. And afaict, it's only Pfizer that has been in the crosshair. Scientists are usually easy to corrupt as they depend on a lot of goodwill to finance their projects. And most of them aren't used to keep their eyes open for scams and blackmail opportunities.
Not sure what point you're trying to make. The research happened, illegal or not.I've been looking for other customers of the Wuhan lab. There aren't any, besides China and the USA. And the Chinese ones complain about having to wait. Mainly the biologist who first introduced samples from bats. And she had so many samples, she wasn't even hoping to have all of them studied. She also needed to stay quiet, after a few remarks about the dangers of GOF research and the minute progress of science it delivered.
And yet you think scientists are making the decisions...Then there was that report from India, suggesting COVID 19 showed signs of GOF research. That report quickly vanished from the net. Without any comments from peers.
Huh. I wonder who's making sure these voices are ignored.It is a "no go" zone for most researchers these days, as it isn't beneficial to their careers. Just some older, retired virologists dare to comment on it, but they are getting ignored.
They had bat coronavirus researchers and plenty of new bat viruses to study from other provinces. Not hard to understand.China seems like an unusual choice,