Is This How Science Works These Days? Why the Wuhan Cover-up in America?

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Scientist Who Emailed Fauci About COVID-19 Being ‘Potentially Engineered’ Deactivates Account

BY JACK PHILLIPS

Epoch Times

June 7, 2021

A scientist who emailed top U.S. infectious diseases official Dr. Anthony Fauci about COVID-19 being possibly engineered in a laboratory suddenly deactivated his Twitter account over the past weekend.

Kristian Andersen, a virologist at California’s Scripps Research Institute, emailed Fauci in January 2020 about the possibility of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus being engineered, in documents that were released by the federal government via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last week.

Andersen, according to the email, made note of a Science magazine report about viruses, and told Fauci: “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” He later continued in saying that “we have to look at this much more closely and there are still further analyses to be done, so those options could still change.”

Weeks later, Andersen published a study that claimed the virus has a natural origin and reportedly received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

That's a remarkably quick turnaround for a scientist. One wonders if he had gone public with his concerns rather than emailing Fauci,  would he have received an NIH grant? Is this how science works these days - if you produce a report supporting the approved narrative, you get grant money? If you don't, you don't! Is this how politics controls science? If so, we cannot believe anything in the name of science that supports the acceptable narrative.

This brings up another question - Why was protecting Wuhan from blame the acceptable narrative in America? Was it because Trump was blaming Wuhan and anything Trump said was unacceptable narrative and had to be countered? Or was there some other reason?

So many people I know think so highly of science but have no idea how much it is being controlled.

“These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2,” Andersen said in a news release in March.

Over the past weekend, users on Twitter noted that Andersen—who had deleted thousands of tweets in recent days—deleted his account. The Epoch Times has contacted the social media platform for comment. A spokesperson for Twitter told news outlets that his “account was deactivated by the user. No action was taken on Twitter’s part.”

David Baltimore, the President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, told the Wall Street Journal over the past weekend that the email from Andersen is a smoking gun and “a powerful challenge to the idea of a natural origin for SARS2,” referring to another term for the CCP virus.

Fauci, the head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has frequently given interviews about the pandemic since early last year, has drawn considerable criticism in recent days after his emails were published. Critics have said that he appeared to have had more knowledge about the theory that the virus may have “escaped” from the secretive Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have called for Fauci’s ouster since his emails were published.

“I mean, everything we’re finding there, how can the president—and I know the American people don’t have trust in Dr. Fauci,” McCarthy said during an interview with Breitbart News on Saturday. “Let’s find a person we can trust. Take politics aside. I mean we’re talking about American lives here.”

Andersen has not responded to a request for comment.

Peter Ridd: Scientific Misconduct At James Cook University Confirms My Worst Fears

Dr Peter Ridd

Seven scientists expose massive scientific incompetence –  or worse – at James Cook University

The paper by Timothy Clark, Graham Raby, Dominique Roche, Sandra Binning, Ben Speers-Roesch, Frederik Jutfelt and Josefin Sundin (Clark et al., 2020) is a magnificent example of a comprehensive and very brave scientific replication study. The 7 scientists repeated experiments documented in eight previous studies on the effect of climate change on coral reef fish to see if they were correct.

This is, of course, the very basis is science - being able to replicate experimental findings!

Clark et al. (2020) found 100% replication failure. None of the findings of the original eight studies were found to be correct.

All the erroneous studies were done by scientists from James Cook Universities highly prestigious Coral Reef Centre. They were published in high profile journals, and attracted considerable media attention.

The major findings of the original studies that were found to be wrong were that high CO2 concentrations cause small reef fish to

* lose their ability to smell predators, and can even become attracted towards the scent of predators,

* become hyper-active,

* loose their tendency to automatically swim either left or right, and,

* have impaired vision.

This is the second time these 7 authors have got together to reveal a major scientific scandal. They were the whistle blowers of the infamous Lonnstedt scientific fraud in 2018. Lonnstedt, originally a PhD student at JCU, is also one of the scientists involved with these latest erroneous studies. She was found guilty of fabricating data in Sweden.

JCU has failed to properly investigate possible scientific fraud by Lonnstedt. Government funding agencies should insist that the highest responsible officer at JCU be sacked to send a message that institutions must take fraud seriously and not try to cover it up.

I was fired from JCU in 2018 after stating that work from JCU’s coral reef centre was not trustworthy. The latest work by Clark et al. (2020) is more evidence that those comments had considerable substance.

I was awarded $1.2M for wrongful dismissal by the Federal Circuit Court in 2019. JCU has appealed the decision which will be heard in May.

VICTORY: Climate Skeptic Scientist Peter Ridd Wins Big!

Replication and Science Quality Assurance

Clark et al. (2020) is exactly the type of replication study that I have been requesting for other scientific evidence regarding the Great Barrier Reef.

Such replication studies have been opposed by all the major GBR science institutions.

Clark et al. (2020) shows a 100% failure rate of the replication tests, which is higher than the science standard of about 50% failure rate for most peer reviewed literature.

Clark et al. (2020) demonstrates, yet again, the inadequacy of peer review as a quality assurance check for scientific evidence that may be used to develop important public policy decision.

I have been proposing an “Office of Science Quality Assurance” that would be in charge of replication and audit studies to test scientific evidence to be used for government policy decisions.

James Cook University (JCU) Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (ARCCoE)

The replication tests were performed on work mostly authored by scientists from JCU’s ARCCoE.

The 100% failure rate of these tests indicate that there is a serious quality assurance (QA) problem within that organisation.

I have been saying since 2015, in both public statements and the scientific literature, that the ARC COE has a QA problem. The head of the ARC COE made complaints to the Vice Chancellor of JCU about these public comments.

Those complaints led to my dismissal from JCU in 2018 after an almost unbroken 40 year association with the university.

Clark et al. (2020) demonstrates beyond doubt that my statements on Quality Assurance had considerable substance.

Scientific Fraud

No direct evidence of fraud was presented in Clark et al. (2020)

There is, however, considerable evidence of very lax scientific standards such as the lack of videoing of the behavioural experiments. This is a remarkable omission considering that videoing experiments is very easy. Combined with a 100% replication failure rate, it is clear that there was not an institutional culture of high scientific standards and integrity at the JCU ARCCoE.

Oona Lönnstedt, a PhD student at JCU, was trained within this lax institutional culture. She is an author of one of the studies tested in Clark et al. (2020).

She was later proven to be fraudulent by the very same authors of Clark et al. (2020) for work she did in Sweden.

There is compelling evidence that other work she did at JCU on Lionfish may be fraudulent.

The response of JCU to Lonnstedt’s fraud

JCU has failed to properly investigate Lonnstedt’s PhD and Post-Doc work at JCU since she was found guilty of fraud in Sweden. JCU has repeatedly said it would investigate with an external review but it appears that the committee to do this has not been appointed almost 2 years after she was found guilty of fraud in Sweden.

Scientific fraud is a serious issue. The integrity of science is at stake.

Failure to investigate fraud when there is a strong prime facie case that it has occurred is a far greater crime than fraud itself. It is a failure at the highest levels of an institution.

It demonstrates that fraud will be tolerated at James Cook University.

Suggested response by funding agencies

JCU receives large sums of tax payer funds and there is an expectation by science funding organisations that fraud would be properly investigated.

Science funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council, should insist that a high penalty be paid by the highest officers of the University who were ultimately responsible for the failure to investigate possible fraud. 

If this does not occur, funding bodies should withdraw all support for JCU.

A message must be sent to other science organisations and universities that there is an expectation that fraud will be investigated properly.

Other

The results of Clark et al. (2020), as the authors mention, do not mean that ocean acidification is not a serious environmental threat. They reveal that the effect of high CO2 levels on reef fish behaviour is not a concern. As an aside, in my opinion ocean pH changes are a credible, though not proven, threat to the GBR. This is in contrast to other well publicised threats, such as from agriculture or modest temperature increases, which I do not believe are a significant threat.

Dr Peter Ridd — peterridd@yahoo.com.au

Newly-Discovered ‘Monster Planet’ Upends Theories on Astronomy

Don't you just love it when scientific theory is proven to be wrong? Paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy are all based on assumptions and educated guesses which often prove to be completely false. Now, how planets form goes back to the drawing boards.

© warwick.ac.uk

A team of researchers has discovered a gas giant roughly the size of Jupiter orbiting a companion star smaller than our own sun. The discovery has upended current thinking on the limitations of planet formation in the universe.

NGTS-1b is the largest planet relative to its star ever discovered in the universe and dispels pre-existing theories that average-sized stars could not form gas giant planets of such immense size. It’s also the first planet discovered by the the Next-Generation Transit Survey observatory which hunts for new planets as they traverse their stars.

"The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us – such massive planets were not thought to exist around such small stars. This is the first exoplanet we have found with our new NGTS facility and we are already challenging the received wisdom of how planets form,” said Daniel Bayliss, the lead author of the research said in the University's press release.

I'm not sure 'wisdom' is the appropriate word here.

“Our challenge is to now find out how common these types of planets are in the galaxy, and with the new NGTS facility we are well-placed to do just that,” he added.

NGTS-1b is 600 light years away from us and is a gas giant roughly the same size as Jupiter but orbits a star only half the size of our own sun in terms of radius and mass. It’s as hot as Jupiter (530 degrees Celsius, 986 Fahrenheit)  and at least as large but possesses approximately 20 percent less dense. (density?)

However, it lies at just three percent the distance between Earth and our sun, meaning a year on the planet lasts just 2.6 days. The planet orbits a red M-dwarf star, the most common type of star in the universe, which leads researchers to believe there may be far more gas giants waiting to be found.

“NGTS-1b was difficult to find, despite being a monster of a planet, because its parent star is small and faint. Small stars are actually the most common in the universe, so it is possible that there are many of these giant planets waiting to found,” said Professor Peter Wheatley, head of the NGTS team.

“Having worked for almost a decade to develop the NGTS telescope array, it is thrilling to see it picking out new and unexpected types of planets. I'm looking forward to seeing what other kinds of exciting new planets we can turn up,” Wheatley said.

The observatory monitors the night sky and detects red light emanated by stars using ultra-sensitive cameras. In this particular instance, the system detected a break in starlight every 2.6 days. The team then tracked the planet's orbit around the star, allowing them to calculate the size, position and mass of NGTS-1b by measuring the radial velocity or the anomalies in its orbit due to variations in the planet's gravity.