User:CutePeach/AESTATEMENT3

Response to Shibbolethink’s complaint: First, I would like to note the irony of Shibbolethink notifying me that AEs are limited to 500 words [1]. I’m unsure why ToBeFree allowed him to turn this AE into a 1800 word free for all slugfest, right after I complained to him about Shibbolethink and his WP:NOLABLEAK crew, which he ignored. I also do not know why ToBeFree moved my policy based WP:YESLABLEAK essay from mainspace, denying us the possibility of ending WP:FACTIONalisation around this issue on Wikipedia. The inevitable outcome of leaving it in mainspace would be renaming it to WP:LABLEAK, with participation from Shibbolethink, for neutrality's sake. Incidentally, Shibbolethink’s first reaction to my essay was filing the redirect for deletion [2]. ToBeFree’s actions have thus encouraged fractionalisation in the community and has not behaved as an impartial admin. Since I have been defacto topic banned - by ToBeFree - from the COVID-19 lab leak page, editors have taken over there, trying to alter the timeline of events, put words in Trump’s mouth, and disqualify BOAS as a reliable source so as to make it WP:SYNTH to tie together elements of the story that Wade spins together. Since I - like all ITPPR participants have read all the sources there are on COVID-19 origins, topic banning me, is essentially a site ban. I would not even be able to complete my drafts on the ITPPR, IPPPR, the WHO-convened study, and the new Sago that replaces it.

Shibbolethink’s complaint and his list of diffs - as others here have noted - is an exercise in spaghetti flinging, hoping that something sticks. Most ironically, Shibbolethink accuses me of WP:SOAPBOXing when it is he who has been shamelessly plugging his 34 page WP:SELFPUB non scientific paper [3] to in multiple discussions [] [] [] [], placing his own WP:OPINIONs above those of top experts quoted in high quality WP:RSs, in such a way that seeks to effect our editorial decisions. Shibbolethink denies this, saying WP:OR is allowed in talk pages []. Shibbolethink also denies he plugged his paper [].

However, Shibbolethink’s plugs are meant to effect content and policy edits. For example, in this post on El_C’s talk page [4], Shibbolethink claims that the relevant experts have said that SARS-COV-2 was extremely likely not engineered, based on their analysis of the genome, when in fact, the most relevant expert there is - Ralph Baric - told RAI you can do it without leaving a signature yes, using three or four different approach for coronaviruses, which were developed by different researchers, you can leave no trace that it was made in a laboratory [5]. In PMID: 32392464, Baric and Graham write about a possible laboratory manipulation and deliberate and/or accidental release of SARS-CoV-2 concluding that Transparency and open scientific investigation will be essential to resolve this issue, noting that forensic evidence of natural escape is currently lacking, and other explanations remain reasonable. Shibbolethink then cites the Menachery et al (PMID: 26552008, co-athored by Baric) on El_C’s page, asserting that the experiments on SHC014 and WIV1 are not considered to be gain-of-function - according to the scientist who conducted them (Baric) - even though that 2015 paper is 1) only one of three papers on GoFR published by the WIV as mentioned by Milton Leitenberg in this BOAS piece [6] and 2), considered by experts like Richard Ebright and Simon Wain-Hobson to be gain-of-function research, as mentioned in this Nature article [7]. Baric has himself referred to this experiment as gain of function - here [8] - but that is besides the point as we have experts in a high quality RS who calls it GoFR, and even GoFRoC, but let’s not get hung up on this point, as Baric has clarified his view in a new interview with the MIT Tech Review, as you will see below.

Shibbolethink, seemingly unawares of the WIV’s further studies on SHC014 and WIV1 on humanized mice as detailed in the 2016 (PMID: 27170748) and 2017 (PMID: 29190287) papers that Leitenberg mentions, goes on to assure El_C that - based on the 2015 Menachery et al paper - that things at the WIV were up to CDC's safety standards, in direct contradiction to what experts like Baric, Lipkin say in RSs like the New York Times [9], Wall Street Journal [10], MIT Technology Review [11] and Vanity Fair [12] and Vox [​​https://www.vox.com/22453571/lab-leak-covid-19-coronavirus-hypothesis-wuhan-virology-china]. In a previous discussion on this exact point, Shibb says he has great respect for Lipkin and Baric, but... [13].

Note that despite the aforementioned word from Baric, Shibbolethink has put this ambiguous "man made" phrase in the lead the COVID-19 lab leak page [14], citing the Hakim paper which offers a conclusion that isn’t even in line with this statement, and which will of course spark another 15k word discussion with whoever takes him up on that. I won’t.

Considering what now know about WIV holding yet undisclosed viruses, as described by Relman in this MIT Tech Review article [15] in relation to clade 7896, and that they possibly worked on them in undisclosed ways [] - Shibbolethink assurance of the WIV’s safety practises is WP:OR. Shibbolethink implies that journalists like Rowan Jacobsen of the MIT Tech Review- because they don’t have PhDs in virology or biosafety - don’t know what they’re talking about, yet Jacobsen has just published a follow on piece interviewing Baric who clarifies all of this in much greater detail [16]. This is a really complex subject, but Shibbolethink’s tendency to engage in WP:OR makes it really difficult for us to tell the story based on what our sources say, and present it on different pages where they are WP:DUE in different ways.