They aren't a monolith but there is a pretty large overlap between the set of scientists that would be negatively impacted by major policy changes in virus research and those who's opinion is considered useful in the discussion of possible origins of SARS-CoV-2.
There is also a pretty large overlap between the set of scientists who would be positively impacted by major policy changes in virus research. "We need more money to research coronaviruses because we can't trust our counterparts in China" and "Funding should be restricted to labs in $homecountry with better biosecurity controls" are fairly natural conclusions to draw from discovering it was Chinese error, and "this is an arms race we have to fund to win" from discovering it was Chinese malfeasance.
This kind of research was already banned in America, which is why American money was funelled towards WIV research grants to continue the research with less oversight and off American soil [1].
>This body did give money to an organisation that collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
>That organisation - the US-based EcoHealth Alliance - was awarded a grant in 2014 to look into possible coronaviruses from bats.
>EcoHealth received $3.7m from the NIH, $600,000 of which was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
>In 2019, its project was renewed for another five years, but then pulled by the Trump administration in April 2020 following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
>Senator Paul believes the research did qualify as "gain-of-function" research, and referred to two academic papers by the Chinese institute, one from 2015 (written together with the University of North Carolina), and another from 2017.
Yeah, right, but it may also backfire if all gain-of-function research is banned. Imagine if we accidentally invented a rogue AI that caused as much disruption worldwide as covid did? Would you trust the general public and policymakers to come up with conclusions "it is fine, we continue AI research only in big corps based in SF, we can trust those" rather than "AI bad, ban AI research!"?
I remember when this controversy about NIH grants just started, Fauci said: "if you want to ban gain-of-function research, you may just as well ban the virology entirely". And honestly, I am fine with that. I advocate for banning all gain-of-function research. If virologists can't do anything else except engineering deadly viruses on purpose, it is their problem.
I suspect you are mostly right in that many are more concerned about funding - and publication - at the micro (personal) level, and this might discourage many from going against the establishment armed only with speculation.
As for the scientific establishment (eg the NIH in the USA), it is very politically aware and was apparently determined to speak with a single voice. Somewhat ironically, this may have made it impossible for them to put an end to lab-origin hypotheses, even if they are false.
> If you say scientists are not a monolith, then you don’t get to make sweeping generalizations about them.
Sure you can. Humans are not a monolith but humans don't worship the Dark God-Eater Yglocth-Tyr. Both statements are accurate.
Largely because he doesn't exist, in much the same way as there's no such thing as a macro level threat to scientists ability to ask for funding. It's not a real concept.
If you feel compelled to argue that there may be some people who do act this way despite it being irrelevant, great, you win points on pedantry and nothing changes.
This line:
> Remember all it takes a single dissenter to bury a paper.
The discussion of how Big Science presents a macro level threat has been ongoing since at least WWII. It's no secret that the way things are funded have introduced bias or in some cases completely undermined the scientific method. There's the opportunity cost of Big Science displacing smaller, more independent researchers, the replication crisis, the publish or perish culture that has developed, etc. It's because of the concerns raised by the scientific community that the paltry checks and balances we do have even exist. So it's totally off base to write off this history of concern as non-existent, or pedantry.
It's also wrong to say a single dissenter can't bury a paper. It depends on the field, but in some fields there will only be one referee, and even when there are multiple referees, if the dissenter is a "leading authority" then they can absolutely bury the paper single-handedly.
> It's also wrong to say a single dissenter can't bury a paper. It depends on the field, but in some fields there will only be one referee, and even when there are multiple referees, if the dissenter is a "leading authority" then they can absolutely bury the paper single-handedly.
The implication of the phrasing "It only takes one" tends to imply that anyone can do something. Not that there exists a single entity that can do it. You wouldn't say "remember, it only takes one person to pass an executive order". I also just don't agree with the claim that one person can bury a paper across an entire field. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen so many idiot papers being published about covid from quacks.
> So it's totally off base to write off this history of concern as non-existent, or pedantry.
There is no big science. There's DARPA, sure. But it's hardly "big science"
