Ep26 “Investigating Implausible Theories: The Case of COVID” with Matt Ridley
All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions
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Gain of Function Research Continues Even After COVID
There is no evidence that we've slowed down the rate of doing these experiments as a result of the pandemic, he says. The incentive is always to produce a paper that can be published in a high impact journal,. And to do that, you have to do something that's pretty spectacular - and this experiment was one of them. There ought to be more regulation on research into SARS-like coronaviruses or MERS. In chemistry, if you produce a thousand people with a full teaspoon of poison for mankind, at least you've still got an awful lot of poisonous chemicals left over. But I think there should be some regulation. None of things I was saying three years ago
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