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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

I'm not talking about the stated conclusions of the report. I'm talking about the stated facts in there that raise, to me, questions. There are a lot of "circumstances" here and a lot of opportunities for people to tamper with forensic evidence post hoc.

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

Here is summary of evidence that seems legit (US gov) and that raises uncomfortable questions regarding what they were doing with coronavirus variants in WIV just near where the outbreak happened. Call this a Baysian prior, which raises some questions about the posterior

www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

PNAS concrete enough for you?
"SARS-CoV-2 is, to date, the only identified member of the subgenus sarbecovirus that contains an FCS, although these are present in other coronaviruses"
www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

As in, these question are not concrete questions? Say, regarding the suggesting gain of function experiments? Said cleavage site?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

There are many questions. about collection of CoV samples from bats, suggestions of gain of function experiments that happen to coincide with this specific virus, etc. These questions remain unanswered to the best of my knowledge.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

Thanks this was useful. I would like to consider it before replying in more detail. However, in principle, any claims made on data that could have been post-hoc adjusted by interested parties are to be treated as such. Regarding genome - why would it look different from gain of function in the lab?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

The original post had specified that lab leak theory has been "contradicted by already available evidence". By contrast "intelligent design" is too vague a concept to contradict.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Mar 1

As far as I understand there is no single shred of evidence that "contradicts" the lab leak theory. Is there one? Would you like to enlighten me? Emphasis on contradict.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Jan 9

There is a deeper problem. By focusing on "justice" - a subjective concept defined by values that may or may not be shared - the focus on "climate change" is lost.
Saying "justice" a lot is *great* for virtue signaling.
Conversely, the climate is everyone's problem and should not be subjective.

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Jan 4

Excellent review, summarizing a lot of the difficulties encountered and a lot of the techniques used.

Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · Jan 3

Happy to share our new review paper, on computational tools and approaches for host-microbiome data integration 👇

By UChicago grad student Ashwin Chetty:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Jan 4

Excellent review, summarizing a lot of the difficulties encountered and a lot of the techniques used.

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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · Jan 3

Happy to share our new review paper, on computational tools and approaches for host-microbiome data integration 👇

By UChicago grad student Ashwin Chetty:

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 26

This is a straw-man argument. Nobody said Arts & Humanities are useless. But there are astounding uses for large language models, yes, including generating text for e.g. sales and marketing. Ignore this technology at your own peril. Adapt or go extinct.

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 26

What is the *problem* your paper *addresses*. Assume that nobody wants to read your work, but they might *have to* because it will help them with their problem. So simple. So important.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIz...

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 26

What is the *problem* your paper *addresses*. Assume that nobody wants to read your work, but they might *have to* because it will help them with their problem. So simple. So important.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIz...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 19

Well, yes, but there is a broader definition: in the economic sense where several independent players "divide-up the cake" to exclude other competitors from entering the market.

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Ben Good @benjaminhgood.bsky.social · Dec 18

Excited to share some new work led by John McEnany. We generalize random matrix approaches from community assembly theory to predict how the fitness benefits & fates of new mutations should scale with the diversity & metabolic overlap of their surrounding community. We'd love to hear your comments!

First-step mutations in randomly assembled communities

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 18

How could that possibly work in experimental labs? (Most of science). Also - many student complain of remote work/zoom and request in-person meetings. Finally - local universities will never be on par with major centers because prestige breeds prestige. Even if possible (it isn't), it won't happen.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Dec 17

Barrow's goldeneyes fly across the Brothers of the Olympic Range. 🪶

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · Dec 14

Evolution in microbial microcosms is highly parallel regardless of the presence of interacting species https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.14.571477v1

During laboratory evolution, replicate bacterial populations often follow similar trajectories, thus

www.biorxiv.org

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 17

Indeed. For me, the biggest shift was the "I believe her unless she's Jewish" regarding the rape victims of Oct 7.
The woke hide not only a ton of antisemitism, but also a ton of hate for anyone perceived wrong, in a world view that neatly divides the world to right and wrong with zero nuance.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 16

I love that several of the replies I got accused me of being a man and of being white. So predictable.
Others just called me an idiot, ad-hominem as it gets. Also predictable.
For the record, I'm not conservative in the least. I am a left wing, liberal, and feminist. I've always voted so.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 16

Woke means seeing every human interaction naïvely as oppressor and oppressed, with the judgement who is who based solely on skin color and gender.
This makes the "woke" *dangerous fools* who can be weaponized by cynical political activists.
Don't agree with me? Just ask Liz Magill.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 15

Beautiful paper. Communicates well with the notion of "Microbial Cartels".
elifesciences.org/articles/22644

Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · Dec 15

More diverse microbiome communities provide protection against infection, but how?

New paper in Science shows this is achieved by nutrient blocking -- diverse communities will consume all the nutrients an incoming pathogen needs to colonize

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 15

Beautiful paper. Communicates well with the notion of "Microbial Cartels".
elifesciences.org/articles/22644

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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · Dec 15

More diverse microbiome communities provide protection against infection, but how?

New paper in Science shows this is achieved by nutrient blocking -- diverse communities will consume all the nutrients an incoming pathogen needs to colonize

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 13

So now you want to actively discriminate against people coming from somewhere else? That's a slippery slope. What if the place a candidate came from has no academic options at all?

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 13

Wouldn't normalizing *not moving* be damaging for people who *don't live* near major academic centers? Surely the locals have an advantage, and if a large percentage of PD are local, how much of a chance would the outsiders have?
I'm not saying things are ideal now, but every policy has costs.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 11

Surely the university presidents should be accountable for the disgusting outbursts of antisemitism they have allowed? Since they are so trigger happy to ostracize *all other* forms of racism, at the very least they should be held to their own standards? No matter who is holding them and what for.

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · Dec 6

It's not so easy to fix. The entire global economy relies of fossil fuels. Ozone was just about a single molecule with very specific uses. Acid rain was about adjusting what we burn, not the fact that we burn something.