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Nice of @NYMag to give @nicholsonbaker8 a 5000 word marketing package for his most recent nonfiction book...which is partly about lab accidents in the 1950s. https://twitter.com/NYMag/status/1346083776594636804
"I hadn’t interviewed scientists about SARS-2 or read their research papers. But I did know something about pathogens and laboratory accidents; I published a book last year, Baseless, that talks about some of them."
Baseless is an entire book of his theories on FOIA requests for military records from the 1950s. Comparing Cold War-era anthrax weaponization to genomic investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is the biosafety equivalent to comparing a Commodore 64 to an iPhone 12.
And digging through FOIA records is basically his sole qualification. Mr. Baker has no background in science, he has a BA in English, and apart from Baseless, he's best known for writing insufferably pretentious literary erotica.
And it's charitable to call that "erotica" since one of those books is about a dude who gets the ability to stop time and becomes a serial sexual predator. If Baker wrote an essay on nonconsensual voyeurism and stalking, I'd say he'd have more expertise than on emerging viruses.
So the bottom line is that there is SO MUCH about this he factually and scientifically gets wrong (including but not limited to):
-Misrepresents documented lab accidents
-Completely misunderstands how BSL-3/4 work is regulated
-Defines pathogenicity as "godawfulness"
-Misrepresents documented lab accidents
-Completely misunderstands how BSL-3/4 work is regulated
-Defines pathogenicity as "godawfulness"
-Omits large context-dependent chunks of the state department memo
-Says Stephen Morse is at Rockefeller (he's a former colleague at Columbia)
-Implies that hamster adaptation of MHV is "gain of function"
-Implies that reverse genetics systems are sinister and evil
-Says Stephen Morse is at Rockefeller (he's a former colleague at Columbia)
-Implies that hamster adaptation of MHV is "gain of function"
-Implies that reverse genetics systems are sinister and evil
-HEAVILY implies that Bruce Ivins is exemplary of biodefense researchers
-Makes absolutely laughable claims that "a whole lot of government money" is causing researchers to do gain-of-function research just because
-Invents new terms like "zoonoticist" and "natural-originist"
-Makes absolutely laughable claims that "a whole lot of government money" is causing researchers to do gain-of-function research just because
-Invents new terms like "zoonoticist" and "natural-originist"
-Seems to think that furin cleavage sites are the ultimate determinants of pathogenicity
-Doesn't get adaptive mutation AT ALL
-Thinks that 96% identity means that only one chunk of the genome is different (RaTG13 is different throughout the genome)
-Doesn't get adaptive mutation AT ALL
-Thinks that 96% identity means that only one chunk of the genome is different (RaTG13 is different throughout the genome)
-Treats that shitty snake preprint from last February as if it's a serious research paper when in reality it was a deeply flawed codon usage analysis done in silico
-Engages in a WHOLE LOT of sinophobic jeering at wet markets, civets, and Shi Zhengli
-Engages in a WHOLE LOT of sinophobic jeering at wet markets, civets, and Shi Zhengli
-Uncritically parrots statements from very biased lab-leak proponents (Ebright)
-Heavily criticizes long-disclosed COI from those who actually have done this work (Baric and Daszak)
-Amplified conspiracy theories and called Yuri Deigin's Turner Diary-esque manifesto "lucid"
-Heavily criticizes long-disclosed COI from those who actually have done this work (Baric and Daszak)
-Amplified conspiracy theories and called Yuri Deigin's Turner Diary-esque manifesto "lucid"
-Described the Baric lab's work as "the Anarchist's Cookbook" for gain-of-function
-Calls the current regulatory environment a "climate of gonzo laboratory experimentation"
-Says Ralph Baric's voice is "gravelly" when it's actually quite sotto voce
-Calls the current regulatory environment a "climate of gonzo laboratory experimentation"
-Says Ralph Baric's voice is "gravelly" when it's actually quite sotto voce
Baker is in no way qualified to write a deep dive about this topic unless it is regarded as the work of fiction this is. After all, this is the searing insight of a man who once published a entire collection of Literary with a capital L fantasies about people fucking trees.
Just adding this here. It's a review of "Baseless" (which, full disclosure, I have not read and now don't intend to). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/books/review/baseless-nicholson-baker.html
"Yet too often, Baker’s search for the truth dissolves in his own prejudices and rampaging sense of moral superiority. “Baseless” is framed as a work diary he kept for three months in 2019, in which we are also treated to tidbits about his children, his wife, the two small...
"dachshunds they adopted from the Humane Society in Bangor, Maine; the weather; what he’s eating — potatoes, a granola bar, bean soup, yellow lentils and ginger, noodles, “a baked good from the cafeteria” and “a crunchy baked good”; as well as any number of grating maxims."
"His distortions, speculations and omissions outstrip any effort to note them all. Suffice it to say that in his view there is not a calamity anywhere in the world that was not caused by a United States government program."
"he muses that “Rabbit fever, Q fever, bird flu, Lyme tick disease, wheat stem rust, African swine fever and hog cholera all look, to my nonscientist’s eye, like unnatural epidemics that owe their outbreaks to the laboratory” — an American laboratory, that is."
My favorite zinger is this: "Baker concedes that “Americans individually have done good things,” a gesture followed by a banal list that includes “sunglasses,” “topiary,” “no-hitters” and “the midcentury New Yorker.” Yes, and also little baby ducks and old pickup trucks."
So it seems now he's extended his own self-righteous suspicion beyond the CIA and the US govt to China and then the entire global virology community. He covers his own spectacular bias with a pretense of virtue signaling by aw-shucks regular guy folksiness, but it's still bias.
