The “Boys Will Be Boys” of Science

“… [I]n order to understand the history of the Covid-19 pandemic, a pandemic most likely caused by risky research, it’s important to learn the history of scientists’ disagreements over gain-of-function research…

 On one side, there were scientists with very good reasons to be concerned that such risk-taking, with no tangible benefits, could cause a pandemic that kills millions of people.

 On the other side, there were researchers who received fame and funding for their scientific stunts enhancing potentially pandemic pathogens, researchers who claimed that this risky work could potentially lead to insights even if it hasn’t yet, and there were funders who were able to increase the size of their portfolios by pointing to the threats conjured into existence by the scientific minds they funded…

 In July of 2014, a group of scientists… The Cambridge Working Group … signed a consensus statement discouraging the enhancement of potentially pandemic pathogens…

 Immediately afterwards, a group sprung up to oppose the Cambridge Working Group. This group called themselves ‘Scientists For Science.’ As the name suggests, they were effectively the ‘boys will be boys’ of science calling to let scientists do science.

Scientists For Science claimed, without evidence, that they were confident risky research could be conducted safely, that such work is essential for understanding microbial pathogenesis, prevention, and treatment, yet they provide no justification for those claims, no counter to the empirical evidence that such research has led to accidents and no concrete countermeasures or preventions. They claim the benefits are unanticipated and accrue over time – in other words, they admit they can’t anticipate the benefits of such work, and they just need more time to demonstrate these nonexistent, unanticipated benefits. It was for academic interest and unanticipated benefits that they wished to resume work that endangered humanity…

Scientists For Science conflate research on potentially pandemic pathogens with research enhancing potentially pandemic pathogens. Nobody is saying ‘Don’t study Ebola’, we’re saying ‘Don’t make Ebola any worse than it already is!’ There are no federal laws against mining uranium – after all, it exists in trace amounts in many commonplace soils and rocks – but there are very strict laws against enriching uranium.

After conflating studies of natural pathogens and the enhancement of pathogens to make non-natural biological agents, Scientists For Science proposed that risk can be mitigated by giving them more funding for state-of-the-art equipment and more staff, as opposed to limiting the types of experiments that are to be done...

As a pandemic infected the world, most members of the public were desperate for safety and security. Fauci became ‘America’s Doctor’ without disclosing his conflicts of interest, a small network of academic scientists presented themselves as scientific saviors in the midst of a global crisis their colleagues may have caused, and this highly conflicted set of scientists from one side of the 2014 chasm used their reach to ‘defend science’ and ‘defend public health’ by organizing ‘devastating take-downs’ of diverse views and suppressing the very credible theory that the research they lobbied for may have caused the catastrophic accident everyone warned them about.

The Pathogenic Academic Lobby

... The short, compressed version of this history is that some scientists conducted risky research with a positive feedback loop: the greater the risks taken, the more they scared the crap out of managers, the more funding they would receive. The academics conducting risky work enhancing potentially pandemic pathogens acquired institutional power, including connections at the head of the Wellcome Trust and at NIH/NIAID all the way to the top. They successfully lobbied Fauci and Collins to overturn the moratorium on their work not for clear benefits, but for fame, funding, and other non-industrial, academic wants.”