{"id":103430,"date":"2023-04-09T17:05:06","date_gmt":"2023-04-09T15:05:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=103430"},"modified":"2023-04-08T13:57:51","modified_gmt":"2023-04-08T11:57:51","slug":"15-00-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=103430","title":{"rendered":"Treason of the Science Journals"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/tablet-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\"><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><span><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/treason-science-journals\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Treason of the Science Journals<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>ASHLEY RINDSBERG<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><strong>How Anthony Fauci manufactured consensus on the origins of COVID-19 with the help of science writers and the media.<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\n.<\/h4>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/39fc760d0c68c1ddb6ca8e379485c889dabfcea3-4000x2667.jpg?auto=format\" width=\"100%\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is interviewed by CBS News about the Trump administration\u2019s response to the global coronavirus outbreak outside the White House on March 12, 2020CHIP SOMODEVILLA\/GETTY IMAGES<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">At the government level, pandemic preparedness is as much about protecting critical supply chains as it is about administering medical treatments. What the COVID-19 pandemic showed is that the flow of information, which may be the single most vital resource in the supply chain, is utterly broken. In many cases, it was actively undermined by senior public health officials including the former chief medical adviser to the president, Dr. Anthony Fauci.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">New emails&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/oversight.house.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf\">released in a congressional probe<\/a>&nbsp;show that Fauci helped direct the publication of \u201c<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-020-0820-9#article-info\">The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2<\/a>,\u201d an influential scientific paper published in&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>&nbsp;on March 17, 2020, that claimed COVID-19 could not have leaked from a laboratory. Fauci then cited the paper\u2014in effect quoting himself, since he coordinated the article behind the scenes and was given final approval before it published\u2014as if it was an independent source corroborating his assertions that COVID could only have come from a bat and not from a lab.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cThere was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve,\u201d Fauci said at a&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov\/briefings-statements\/remarks-president-trump-vice-president-pence-members-coronavirus-task-force-press-briefing-april-17-2020\/\">presidential briefing<\/a>&nbsp;on April 17, 2020, exactly one month after \u201cProximal Origin\u201d was published. \u201cAnd the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">But why would Fauci go to so much trouble to control the information surrounding the origins of the virus while sending the message to Americans that the idea that COVID had come from a lab was a conspiracy theory? And why would science journalists and peer-reviewed science publications go along with the effort?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Fauci, it appears, may have been trying to hide his connections to the Wuhan Laboratory of Virology (WIV). For years, according to a report at The Intercept, the National Institutes of Health (where Fauci served as a director) directed&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/09\/09\/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research\/\">government grants<\/a>&nbsp;to the Chinese facility where multiple investigations by federal agencies have now concluded the virus likely originated\u2014specifically to fund the controversial gain of function (GoF) research that intentionally engineers deadly viruses in order to study them. Even if this was all merely a coincidence, it certainly looked bad. Fauci seemed so alarmed by the optics that in January 2020, he sent an email to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the single-word, all-caps subject line \u201cIMPORTANT\u201d\u2014something he does not do in the hundreds of pages of other emails released to the public via FOIA requests. The email Fauci sent contained a link to a scientific study that was then spreading across the internet, which had originally been published in 2015 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV\u2019s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. In the body of the email, Fauci wrote to Auchincloss, \u201cIt is essential that we speak this AM. Keep your cell phone on \u2026You will have tasks today that must be done.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">What were those tasks? It\u2019s impossible to know from the email but one can speculate that if Fauci wanted to control the narrative about the outbreak of COVID-19 it would have been a monumental and near impossible task. Reporters could find public records showing the connections between his office at the NIH and China\u2019s WIV. Fauci might be able to find a few journalists credulous enough to simply dismiss the fact that COVID was first reported in the city containing China\u2019s largest facility for producing coronaviruses, but surely there was no way he could get the entire media to go along. If he had, he may have revealed just how dysfunctional and bought-off science journalism has become, a reality that Americans would be well advised to confront before the next pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The deeper phenomenon at work, however, is that in the U.S. a large number of professionals who cover science for general readers and for news publications like&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;or&nbsp;<em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em>&nbsp;are not\u2014and do not pretend to be\u2014journalists per se. They are science writers whose field is science communications\u2014a distinction with a huge difference. They see their role as translating the lofty work of pure science for a general audience, rather than as professional skeptics whose job is to investigate the competing interests, claims, and billion-dollar funding streams in the messy world of all-too-human scientists.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"ArticleView__content-switch bradford text-article-body-md font-300 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">From the beginning of the pandemic,&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>The Washington Post<\/em>, CNN and other leading mainstream outlets were taking their cues\u2014including their facts and their seemingly unflappable certainties\u2014from peer-reviewed publications with authoritative professional reputations like&nbsp;<em>Nature<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>Science<\/em>, and&nbsp;<em>The Lancet<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It was this small handful of peer-reviewed science and medical journals\u2014and to a shocking extent just these three\u2014on which the consumer media based key narratives, like the idea that SARS-CoV-2 could not possibly have come from a lab. Boiled down, \u201cthe science\u201d on a given issue was often conclusively reduced to whatever these journals published.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">But for the establishment science publishing community, the pandemic also had an unintended consequence. Through journalistic investigations, often powered by FOIA requests that ensnared hundreds of email exchanges with scientists and science writers, a spotlight was turned on science journalism itself. Writers like Paul Thacker, a contributor to&nbsp;<em>The BMJ<\/em>, Emily Kopp, a reporter for the watchdog group U.S. Right to Know, Michael Balter, who has contributed dozens of pieces to&nbsp;<em>Science<\/em>&nbsp;magazine, and the powerful decentralized group of COVID investigators called&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/drasticresearch.org\/\">DRASTIC<\/a>, exposed the inner workings of an industry that claims to speak for science but often works for political and corporate interests.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In many instances, pandemic-related science journalism smacks of questionable motives. The most high-profile example of this was the now infamous letter by 27 scientists&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7159294\/\">published<\/a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>The Lancet<\/em>&nbsp;on March 7, 2020, asserting that they \u201coverwhelmingly conclude\u201d that the pandemic had a natural origin, and condemning the suggestion that the virus emerged in a lab as \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d that put scientists lives at risk. What the 27 scientists neglected to mention is that their statement was organized by Peter Daszak, a co-author of the letter who is also the president of the NGO that facilitated U.S. government funding to the lab in Wuhan that the FBI and Department of Energy have concluded is the likely source of the pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">While Daszak\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Lancet<\/em>&nbsp;letter resembled a partly savvy (and partly clumsy) effort at PR-style crisis management, a paper published in one of the world\u2019s most prestigious science journals would be both more significant in its impact and possibly more compromised in its creation. That paper, the aforementioned \u201c<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-020-0820-9\">The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2<\/a>\u201d published in&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>, a peer-reviewed (and less prestigious) sister publication of&nbsp;<em>Nature<\/em>, in March of 2020, was authored by a distinguished but relatively young evolutionary biologist named Kristian Andersen, along with a number of equally accomplished virologists. The paper is filled with complex analyses of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, but in its short abstract it stated the upshot in language even a harried consumer journalist could easily grasp: \u201cOur analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Putting aside problems with that claim (for example, a&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/usrtk.org\/covid-19-origins\/preprint-covid-19-shows-fingerprint-of-laboratory-engineering\/\">wave-making preprint<\/a>&nbsp;last year pointed to indications that SARS-CoV-2 was indeed made in a lab), the origins of this paper, which became a touchstone for those arguing against the lab-leak theory, were deeply unethical.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Most of the questions surrounding \u201cProximal Origin\u201d concern a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference called by Fauci and joined by his boss, NIH then-Director Francis Collins, and other top scientists, including Andersen and a number of his \u201cProximal Origin\u201d co-authors.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">As emails obtained from Freedom of Information requests&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/oversight.house.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/2023.03.05-SSCP-Memo-Re.-New-Evidence.Proximal-Origin.pdf\">revealed<\/a>, Fauci arranged the call just days after receiving an email from Andersen expressing concerns he shared with several other prominent virologists that parts of the virus looked engineered. Andersen wrote that he and a few fellow researchers \u201call find the [SARS-CoV-2] genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">If that claim ever reached the public, it might have permanently altered the discourse surrounding the origins of the pandemic. But after the conversation with Fauci, it never did get out. Instead, Andersen, Holmes, and Gary (in addition to Andrew Rambaut) began circulating a draft of \u201cProximal Origin\u201d three days later, making claims that contradicted the findings Andersen had presented to Fauci in his initial email less than a week prior. In&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/usrtk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/NASEM_Andersen-Email_Baric-1.pdf\">a Feb. 4 email to Peter Daszak<\/a>, Andersen communicated that he and his co-authors had already begun circulating drafts of a paper proposing the exact opposite\u2014that COVID-19 had emerged naturally\u2014which would become \u201cProximal Origin.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Andersen would later&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/06\/14\/science\/covid-lab-leak-fauci-kristian-andersen.html\">explain to&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;that his initial conclusions were made \u201cin a matter of days, while we worked around the clock\u201d and the subsequent revised position was the result of \u201cmore extensive analyses, significant additional data, and thorough investigations to compare genomic diversity more broadly.\u201d Despite this claim, however, \u201cProximal Origin\u201d was written \u201cin a matter of days,\u201d with a draft complete by Feb. 4 and the paper accepted by&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>&nbsp;by March 6.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cThank you for your advice and leadership as we have been working through the SARS-CoV-2 \u2018origins\u2019 paper,\u201d Andersen&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2023\/01\/19\/covid-origin-nih-emails\/\">wrote<\/a>&nbsp;to Fauci and Collins. \u201cWe\u2019re happy to say that the paper was just accepted by&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>&nbsp;and should be published shortly (not quite sure when).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The question about what, exactly, happened on that crucial conference call has remained a subject of intense speculation. Virtually all the sections of FOIA-released emails related to the call were redacted by the NIH, leaving large blocks of blacked-out text that remind one of the 9\/11 Commission Report.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Just as suggestive, however, was the chain of events that set the conference call in motion. On the evening of Friday, Jan. 31, 2020, Fauci received an email from an NIH communications officer that contained, copied in full,&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/mining-coronavirus-genomes-clues-outbreak-s-origins\">a&nbsp;<em>Science<\/em>&nbsp;article<\/a>&nbsp;published that day. The article, written by one of the magazine\u2019s senior correspondents, Jon Cohen, explored various theories concerning the origin of the pandemic. The article made mention of the&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nm.3985\">aforementioned 2015 scientific study<\/a>&nbsp;at the Wuhan Institute of Virology by the WIV\u2019s Shi Zhengli and pioneering American GoF researcher Ralph Baric. This might very well have triggered the email that Fauci sent to his deputy, Hugh Auchincloss, with the subject line \u201cIMPORTANT.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">That paper, which would later be described by the&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/thebulletin.org\/2021\/05\/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-wuhan\/\"><em>Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;as providing a \u201cprototype\u201d for making SARS-CoV-2 in the Wuhan lab, evidently alarmed Fauci. In response to emails received from Fauci, Auchincloss wrote back on the evening of Feb. 1. \u201cThe paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since [NIAID official] Emily [Erbelding] is sure that no Coronavirus work has gone through the P3 [Potential Pandemic Pathogens] framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.\u201d&nbsp;And, as it turns out, they did: The NIAID\/NIH had&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nm.3985\">funded the study<\/a>&nbsp;in question.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Today, the 2015 paper resulting from that study resembles a kind of publishing Frankenstein, with a series of amendments, including an editor\u2019s note, author correction, \u201cCorrigendum,\u201d and update, all stitched onto the original version. On its own, any one of these features would be noteworthy. Together, they are almost comical.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Among the amendments is a revelation that the genome produced by the study was never uploaded to GenBank, the NIH\u2019s global database for genetic sequences. The paper also mislabeled the name of the virus created by the study, part of a pattern of oddly mislabeled papers, or of missing&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/deleted-coronavirus-genome-sequences-trigger-scientific-intrigue\/\">genomes<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.europarl.europa.eu\/doceo\/document\/E-9-2022-000608_EN.html\">viruses<\/a>&nbsp;in WIV studies related to COVID-19.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The editor\u2019s note, published less than two weeks after \u201cProximal Origin\u201d was originally published in&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>, offered readers a stern warning: \u201cWe are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.\u201d As we now have good reason to assume, it only appeared that they did because journals like&nbsp;<em>Nature<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>The Lancet<\/em>&nbsp;acted as gatekeepers of \u201cthe science,\u201d while taking direction and performing public relations for Fauci, Collins, and other members of the U.S. government.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Furthermore,&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>&nbsp;had failed to note that the 2015 study had received U.S. government funding allocated to the WIV by EcoHealth Alliance, an NGO run then as now by Peter Daszak, the organizer of the&nbsp;<em>Lancet&nbsp;<\/em>letter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"PullQuote PullQuote--center flex flex-col items-center pt1_5 pb3 mt1_75 mb_75 border-bottom-black\">\n<p class=\"PullQuote__text PullQuote--center__text text-center\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">What the COVID-19 pandemic showed is that the flow of information is utterly broken.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"ShareButton relative inline-flex block items-center justify-end PullQuote__share-button mt3 ShareButton--subtle-transition\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">While Fauci\u2019s discovery of Jon Cohen\u2019s article set off the flurry of events that would lead to \u201cProximal Origin,\u201d it would be Cohen who\u2014inadvertently, and, seemingly, involuntarily\u2014provided the most insight into what had taken place on the decisive Feb. 1 conference call with Fauci, Andersen, and other key scientists.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In July 2020, Cohen received an email from an anonymous source, which was revealed in one of the NIH FOIA releases. In the first line of&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23206190-nih_foia_56403_10272022_amended_response_redacted\">the email<\/a>, the anonymous source wrote, \u201cHello Jon, Given your recent mentions of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 I thought you might be interested to hear the bizarre back-story of the paper \u2018The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Noting the \u201cincredibly\u201d strange history of the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d paper and the Fauci-led conference call, the anonymous source alleged that Andersen and the other writers of the paper were not its true authors. \u201c[A]sk yourself how this group of authors, none of whom work on coronaviruses, could have such detailed arguments about why SARS-CoV-2 was not human-engineered,\u201d the anonymous source wrote. \u201cThe answer is that they couldn\u2019t (and didn\u2019t)\u2014they were schooled by the coronavirus experts on the call.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The coronavirus experts that the anonymous source alluded to include Dutch virus researcher Ron Fouchier and his boss, Marion Koopmans, and German virologist Christian Drosten. These scientists were named in a&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/oversight.house.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Letter-Re.-Feb-1-Emails-011122.pdf\">letter issued by House Republicans<\/a>, and all&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/nm.3985\">have ties<\/a>&nbsp;to the lab in Wuhan. Marion Koopmans, Fouchier\u2019s boss, is director of Erasmus University\u2019s viroscience department, which lists EcoHealth Alliance\u2014the funding vehicle that funneled NIH money to the lab in Wuhan\u2014as first on its list of collaborators. According to U.S. Right to Know, the public accountability nonprofit, Christian Drosten \u201cserved on a bat conference advisory committee with the Ecohealth Alliance and Dr. Zhengli Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.\u201d More importantly, they have all had a hand in developing some of the world\u2019s most deadly lab-engineered viruses.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">It was a grenade of an allegation\u2014that the claims in the most important paper concerning the origin of the pandemic were shaped by GoF researchers who had, in some instances, partnered with the Wuhan lab. Moreover, those arguments were formulated on a call with Fauci, who had overseen NIAID, which is one of the world\u2019s largest funders of risky virus research. This would be a conflict of interest of massive proportions.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of\u2014a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source\u2014and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story. Additionally, he forwarded the anonymous email to Kristian Andersen, writing: \u201cHere\u2019s what one person who claims to have inside knowledge is saying behind your backs \u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Asked about this decision, Cohen told Tablet: \u201cThe people who have exaggerated the significance of the anonymous email\u2014which, I will reiterate, offers no insights whatsoever about the origin of this pandemic\u2014have used my decision to not write about the credit dispute as a cudgel, manufacturing wildly inaccurate and unfair assertions about my motives and my credibility. It speaks to the mob mentality that Twitter encourages, to the certainty some people have about the lab leak, and to the deep emotions that surround the origin debate, which too often has led to speculations pretending to be evidence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Nevertheless, it was Cohen\u2019s decision to send this email to Andersen that ultimately made the email public since Andersen promptly forwarded it to Fauci, making it susceptible to a future FOIA request. Around the time that the NIH was going to remove the redactions from the anonymous source\u2019s email, Cohen published a blog post titled \u201c<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/joncohen.org\/2022\/10\/22\/obtain-but-verify\/#:~:text=Just%20because%20information%20is%20difficult,the%20Advancement%20of%20Science%20Writing.\">Obtain but verify<\/a>,\u201d which included the full text of the email. (Cohen told Tablet he published the post \u201cin sync with&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/casw.org\/news\/media-coverage-of-sars-cov-2s-origin\/\">this panel<\/a>&nbsp;I helped organize about media coverage of origins.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">In the post, Cohen defended his actions, and claimed that the foreboding message he sent to Andersen was a \u201ccheeky\u201d way of asking for a reply. However, in the original version of the \u201cObtain but verify\u201d apologia, Cohen left three critical paragraphs out of the anonymous source\u2019s email. In these paragraphs, the anonymous source claims that \u201cProximal Origin\u201d was initially submitted to&nbsp;<em>Nature<\/em>\u2014not its more specifically focused (and less prestigious) subsidiary,&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>. This makes sense. Given that this was a group of the world\u2019s foremost virus researchers issuing a key paper on the origin of the worst pandemic in generations, one would expect it to appear in the largest possible outlet.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">According to the anonymous source, the editor at&nbsp;<em>Nature<\/em>&nbsp;responsible for handling the submission had heard about what went on during the teleconference and had also found that the \u201cProximal Origin\u201d authors had been \u201cschooled\u201d by scientists whose names weren\u2019t on the paper. She, according to the tipster, then rejected the paper. When contacted for comment as to whether they would be adding Anthony Fauci to the list of contributors to the \u201cProximal Origins\u201d paper, a spokesperson from&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>&nbsp;told Tablet:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">\u201cI hope it\u2019s helpful to note that the publication you are referring to is a correspondence published in&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine.<\/em>&nbsp;The correspondence section provides a forum for discussion or to present a point of view on issues that are of interest to the readership of&nbsp;<em>Nature Medicine<\/em>. We work with the manuscript and accompanying information as it is presented to us and all authors are expected to fulfil the criteria laid out in our&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"https:\/\/shared.outlook.inky.com\/link?domain=www.nature.com&amp;t=h.eJxFjdtuwyAQBX8l4rk2ufhGnvIrG9jAqmuwYB3LivrvLa3UvB2NjmZeas2srgcVRJZy1XrbtjaCrBlbm2b9N5slZXkkpqTRkaRMwD-MyRIWDauElEugRX0c1Ge1PYEJogjaEBMnvzcCd0aZwWtXVg95hnj7Z78pi3AZzNGOOODUdWbq0ZyPpnenoc6LPg3jdJ5MP3atMTWFNQUlMO6Zoit3zP7mZyCuwvpw9fEmX990WlAr.MEUCIQCezMELlUkpCqqkk99AopZeAVBfqGdkA0OWqA3WniKWFAIgCb2vkhsGMOdnaRQdyBVuC0Ffi4uE0p4ZrlsBZn2sEyA\">authorship policy<\/a>. The responsibility for reflecting substantive contributions to manuscripts through authorship lists lies with the authors themselves and we have received no communications from any researchers suggesting that their contributions have not been appropriately recognised.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Cohen, for his part, told Tablet that he never took a position on the origins of COVID-19, and points to his publications at&nbsp;<em>Science<\/em>, which he says covered the \u201clab origin possibility and also question [the] role of the Huanan market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The same FOIA dump that revealed Cohen\u2019s letter to Andersen also reveals that&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u2019 former lead pandemic reporter, Donald McNeil, wrote a ponderous Feb. 25, 2020, email (in which he also accuses Americans of acting like \u201cselfish pigs\u201d) to Fauci in which he flatters the pandemic czar\u2019s performance at a press conference. \u201c[The] only time the tone was right [was] when you were the third to take the mike and explain things \u2026\u201d In another email, McNeil confesses that he has purchased not one but two Fauci bobbleheads, one for himself and one for someone whose name is, weirdly, redacted.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Fauci was not immune to the flattery, and returned it in kind. At one point he dashed off a missive to McNeil about an interview the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em>&nbsp;reporter had conducted. \u201cDonald: Your interview with [WHO official] Bruce Aylward was the best discussion of COVID-19 that I have seen thus far. Great job!\u201d Fauci signed the email \u201cTony.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000080;\">As a product of its own hype, the science media has been granted a kind of epistemological special status on science-related issues. On matters related to science, the thinking among consumer journalists goes, surely the science writers will have more, and better, things to say. That might be true, but on issues where science, money, power and crisis collide, it almost certainly is not. And no issue brought together those four horsemen of enlightened corruption more dramatically than the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"ArticleEndNote BlockContent col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 mxauto bradford text-article-body-md italic font-300\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">A previous version of this article suggested that the use of the plural \u201cbacks\u201d in Jon Cohen\u2019s email to Dr. Kristian Andersen indicated that Cohen believed other people mentioned in the anonymous source\u2019s letter would read the email. Cohen has clarified that he had sent this message to Dr. Andersen and Dr. Eddie Holmes, and thus used \u201cbacks\u201d in the plural.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock col-12 lg:col-10 xl-wide:col-8 w100 mt6 mxauto\">\n<div class=\"AuthorBioBlock__container graebenbach mt1_5 text-section-details-sm font-300 color-red\">\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em><strong>Ashley Rindsberg<\/strong> is the author of&nbsp;<a style=\"color: #808080;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrications\/dp\/1736703315\">The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times\u2019s Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History<\/a>&nbsp;(2021).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\">\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Treason of the Science Journals ASHLEY RINDSBERG How Anthony Fauci manufactured consensus on the origins of COVID-19 with the help of science writers and the media. . Dr. Anthony Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is interviewed by CBS News about the Trump administration\u2019s response to the global coronavirus outbreak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103430"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103430"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103464,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103430\/revisions\/103464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}