Fact-checking Matt Ridley’s “Scientific Freedom Lecture” at NIH (Part III) This post is the third and final part of my debunk of Matt Ridley’s inaugural Scientific Freedom Lecture at NIH. The first part can be read here and the second part here. Ridley’s lecture is available...

Fact-checking Matt Ridley’s “Scientific Freedom Lecture” at NIH (Part III) pandemonium.hypotheses.org/1260

Bob Kadlec: "I call it virological Russian roulette" And if you believe that, he has a half-billion-dollar air conditioner to sell you

In 2022, @vanityfair.com and @propublica.org reported a "Complex and Grave Situation" in Wuhan.

Analysis by @katherineeban.bsky.social and @jeffykao.bsky.social was based on a farscical investigation led by Bob Kadlec.

This post shows how they were duped by a half-billion dollar air conditioner.

Fact-checking Matt Ridley’s “Scientific Freedom Lecture” at NIH (Part I) Matt Ridley, global warming skeptic and co-author with Alina Chan of a book promoting a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2, was invited by Jay Bhattacharya, the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NI...

In March, Matt Ridley gave the inaugural "Scientific Freedom Lecture" at NIH, on a lab leak origin of COVID-19.

The talk was so full of misrepresentations, omissions, falsehoods and lies that I will need several blog posts to debunk it. Here's Part I:

pandemonium.hypotheses.org/995

🧪 #covidorigin

Når debatten om vitenskap blir personlig – og hvem som egentlig taler for forskningen Sigrid Bratlie har en rolle som er politisk, ikke vitenskapelig. Det er ikke det samme som å være en forsker som blir sensurert for sine funn.

www.khrono.no/nar-debatten...

Svak kildekritikk i Khrono Khrono burde undersøkt hos flere relevante kilder – blant annet foredragsholder eller arrangør – som kunne gjort framstillingen av foredraget med Kristian Andersen mer balansert.

I have written about how one-sided @kgandersen.bsky.social lecture from 2024 was portrayed in Khrono. I doubt that he agrees with Sigrid Bratlie’s representation of the lecture. www.khrono.no/svak-kildekr...

Matt Ridley gave the inaugural "NIH Scientific Freedom Lecture Series" earlier today and I just wanted to run through some of the main claims he made - you'll be unsurprised to learn that almost all of them are false.

Here's his summary slide - let's start there.

🧵👇

Episode #1080 | The Skeptics Guide to the Universe News Items Cannabis Review AI Agent Breaks Out Of Testing Environment Life on Exomoons Strongest Carbon Fiber Bigfoot Hoax Revealed Interview with Professor Kristian Andersen https://www.scripps.edu/f...

I have been listening to @theskepticsguide.bsky.social since I was a graduate student!

It was therefore a great pleasure to join this weeks show to talk about the origin of COVID-19. One of the most succinct and on-point interviews I have done on the topic!

www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/epi...

Brilliant work. Taking the time to dismantle these narratives is vital. Please keep it up! 👏

Read @flodebarre.bsky.social's original analysis: pandemonium.hypotheses.org/898.

While the original WeChat post is bonkers, it points to unreleased data from the market, including:

1️⃣ Potentially infected animals in "Stall A" - the hot-spot inside the market.
2️⃣ +Serology of vendor from Stall A.

This is a pretty interesting unsolved mystery. How did a 2021 social media post linked to a state propaganda campaign know accurate details about SARS-CoV-2 origins that only came to light later? And if the details we know about were right, could the other fairly shocking details also be true?

Mener UiO driver bevisst hemmelig­hold for å redde eget omdømme Molekylærbiolog Sigrid Bratlie mener Universitetet i Oslo (UiO) forsøker å stoppe debatten om pandemiens opphav. — Ikke riktig, svarer universitetet.

Kanskje dine meningsfeller har trukket seg fra debatten fordi de har skjønt at du sprer reinspikka konspirasjonsteorier?
www.khrono.no/mener-uio-dr...

A new little tidbit on the origin saga:

@flodebarre.bsky.social uncovered possibly real insider knowledge within blatant Chinese disinformation

"The maps identify specific stalls as having live animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and vendors with antibodies to the virus—data China has never shared"

NIH director launches "Scientific Freedom" lectures with non-scientist First speaker minimizes climate change, COVID risks—and is a lab leak proponent.

arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Scientists Get a Glimpse of How New Pandemics Are Made

Scientists Get a Glimpse of How New Pandemics Are Made www.nytimes.com/2026/03/09/s...

Anders Haakenstad dummer seg ut på Instagram. Igjen. Denne gangen om vaksiner. Wannabe-intellektuelle Anders Hakkenstad postet nylig sitt "dypdykk" i vaksinenes verden på Instagram, som en serie med bilder med hans tanker og spørsmål rundt barnevaksinasjonsprogrammet. Han skriv...

"Men de stiller ikke spørsmålene i søken etter svar. Svarene er uinteressante. De vil bare stille spørsmålene for å kunne gi inntrykk av å være kritiske. Gi inntrykk av å virke nysgjerrige, åpne og kunnskapssøkende."

It's coming together nicely.
#ScienceCounterpunch

If you want to know what two nerdy EU #scicomm guys are doing to @standupforscience.bsky.social, we created a podcast where people in the fight against anti-science share their stories, experience, learnings.

Every friday 5pm UK new amazing guests.

illustration: collage of tweets about the article

Are you familiar with the story of the EMI article?

If not, good for you, you did not waste time with a manufactured controversy aimed to sow distrust.

For the curious, here's how lab leakers tried (and this time, failed) to generate outrage: ▫️1/6 🧵 #covidorigin

COVID Origins: Debunking the Grift, Pseudoscience, and Politics of the Lab Leak Theory YouTube video by Professor Dave Explains

Here is a strong-worded takedown video on many lab leak conspiracy peddlers.

I worked with @profdaveexplains.bsky.social on this and it will hit the lableak believers like a meteor.

Please enjoy "scicomm unfiltered":

youtu.be/ra0WKNhQZ0U?...

illustration image, made of a map of Antarctica (NASA svg) and SARS-CoV-2 virus (NIH BioArt)

Are you familiar with the story of the Antarctica sequences?

If not, good for you: you didn't clutter your brain with yet another Covid-origin damp squib, where innocuous data were made to look suspicious by misrepresenting a date.

For the curious, here's the story. ▫️1/9 🧵 #CovidOrigin

Ep 0: The Rise of the Science Populists YouTube video by Bad Boy of Science

My friend @badboyofscience.bsky.social has an awesome new video out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQnO...

English transcript available below the original text

A divergent betacoronavirus with a functional furin cleavage site in South American bats Bats are natural reservoirs for a wide range of RNA viruses. Members of the genus Betacoronavirus , including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrom...

Disse funnene passer mildt sagt ikke så godt med fortellingene til Sigrid Bratlie om covid‑pandemiens opphav.. @langsiktsenter.bsky.social
Med mindre koronavirusene i jungelen i Brasil har satt inn et "furin cleavage site" på pur f som del av en stor konspirasjon
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

"SARS-CoV-2 is too well-adapted to humans [hence, insert your favorite conspiracy theory]".

That was never right because, for one, SARS-CoV-2 is a pandemic virus so it necessarily had to be "well-adapted".

Now, a new study shows the same is true for BANAL-236 - a related virus isolated from bats.

Dr. Susan Monarez—Former CDC Director, First Live Interview An American hero for standing up for science and public health

My interview with Dr. Susan Monarez, former CDC Director, who was fired for doing her job, standing up for public health and science. Learn about her resilience and optimism.
erictopol.substack.com/p/dr-susan-m...

Graphic annotating some of Dr. Andersen's main points from his post onto his figure for prediction of MRCA date. Titled "Estimated date when pandemic genomes started diverging".

Great post. Enough people with minimal background try to over-interpret this that I thought it might help make good faith (but not inside baseball) interpretation easier to quickly annotate your graph with more general explanatory language.

The Brazilian clue Or: another L for lab leak believers

A new bat coronavirus discovered in Brazil confirms what we already knew: nature handles furin cleavage sites just fine.

Lab leakers, don’t worry, you've got the track record to pivot seamlessly to a career in creative fiction writing.

Quick update on the news:
open.substack.com/pub/protagon...

This is 💯 Origin inside baseball, but I've always been perplexed by Baric's claim that our "market" studies could not be correct because, according to him, the molecular timing of the pandemic in in October, not later.

That was always wrong, but where did he get this October date from?

Well... 🧵👇

22-Oct 2022 headline from The Economist A new paper claims SARS-CoV-2 bears signs of genetic engineering But it has yet to be peer reviewed. And others strongly disagree

🧵Remember the preprint claiming SARS-CoV-2 has a "synthetic fingerprint"?

It said a restriction map was "extremely unlikely to have arisen by random evolution.”

I took its claims seriously.

The "synthetic fingerprint" hypothesis collapses. My new preprint explains why.

arxiv.org/abs/2510.23833

A divergent betacoronavirus with a functional furin cleavage site in South American bats Bats are natural reservoirs for a wide range of RNA viruses. Members of the genus Betacoronavirus, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome...

We’ve identified a highly divergent betacoronavirus from South American bat that encodes a functional furin cleavage site.
Another fascinating reminder of how diverse coronavirus evolution is in wildlife reservoirs.
#Virology #VirusEvolution #Bats #Coronavirus

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Forskningen peker mot våtmarkedet – ikke laboratoriet Sigrid Bratlie forsøker å fremstille debatten om pandemiens opphav som en kamp for akademisk ytringsfrihet. Men hun går på tomgang i de faglige argumentene.

www.aftenposten.no/meninger/deb...