Talk:SARS conspiracy theory

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Comment

I know that it is very hard to avoid using the term "conspiracy theory" because its surface meaning - a hypothesis that a group of people have been making and executing plans in secret - does get to the point fairly neatly. However in practice the term is a pejorative one that is often successfully used to imply that the theory is poorly reasoned and unsupported by evidence, and that those who entertain such theories are simple-minded, malicious and/or unhinged. In other words the article heading "SARS conspiracy theory" is in itself a value judgement and could do with being replaced.

What it should be replaced with I don't honestly know. Although I find "SARS conspiracy theory" to be highly problematic, I have to admit that it is very very concise and I can't think of anything better. So for the moment I have just added "Conspiracy theory" to the internal links because that article covers the issues I am addressing here very well, I think.

Page Incorrect

Even though every major country in the world has accused the other of creating this virus, it has been pretty much proven that it crossed the xenographic barrier from civet cats to humans naturally. PETN 13:16, 19 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

not that I doubt the truth of that statement, but i'd like to see a link to that study or conclusion. 68.225.26.210 02:23, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[1], [2], [3], other links found by [4]. Yes, article ought to cite supporting sources. I'm busy with other stuff at present but perhaps I'll come back later and take a whack at improving this article a bit, especially as regards WP:V. -- Boracay Bill 02:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is not incorrect because the title of this article is "SARS conspiracy theory" and many conspiracy theorists believe this. No one is saying that this is the truth it is just a theory. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.71.80.42 (talk) 16:11, August 22, 2007 (UTC)

The article asserts: "... hinting that the Americans have the cure for SARS if they are in fact the creators of this disease.[citation needed] The United States government has officially denied that it has any relationship to the development and spread of the SARS virus.[citation needed]", but cites no sources hinting that the U.S. has a cure for SARS and cites no source supporting the claimed so-called official denial by the U.S. government. I have spent a little time looking for supporting sources without success. Unless someone supplies supporting sources for these assertions, I will probably remove them from the article in the next few days, along with another unsupported assertion: "Notably, an expert from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of China, Hou Yunde, who initially denied that SARS could be man-made, later admitted in a SARS seminar held by the Chinese Ministry of Health in December 2003 that it was possible.[citation needed]". -- Boracay Bill 00:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The phrase "conspiracy theory" is a non-neutral way of describing something (not appropriate for an encyclopedia article's title))

I have proposed that articles titled with "conspiracy theory" be renamed at Wikipedia:Conspiracy theory titles, please direct all comments to the proposal's discussion page, thanks. zen master T 22:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see what is supposed to be biased about that word. It is an "alternative" explanation to a historical event that differs from the accepted or official one, usually in a way that suggest a certain motivation by someone behind it. Alleging that an epidemic is caused by man-made virus with the intention of harming others while the medical community insists that that is not the case is the perfect example of a conspiracy theory.There-is-life-on-mars (talk) 11:16, 27 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Zen-master and There-is-life-on-mars: honestly, the article could stand to go further in pointing out that it's pseudoscientific bunkum. A bare claim that it's genetically engineered would be challenging to disprove, like claiming that the fire ant Solenopsis invicta is an artificial bioweapon. But claiming it's a hybrid of mumps and measles is as laughably preposterous as claiming that the fire ant is a hybrid of the black widow spiders Latrodectus hasseltii and Latrodectus mactans. You don't get an ant by crossing two spiders, and you do not get a coronavirus by crossing two paramyxoviruses.

Although both are single-strand RNA viruses, coronaviridae are positive sense, while paramyxoviridae are negative sense. Very different.

And that's far from the only difference. Paramyxoviridae have a simple linear genome 15–19 kilobases with 6–10 genes. Coronaviridae have large (26–30 kilobsase) segmented genomes with two large primary genes which code large polyproteins that are cleaved into smaller functional proteins and a unique subgenomic mRNA mechanism.

All three viruses have been sequenced and published. The SARS virus is clearly closely related to some wild coronaviruses, and clearly unrelated to mumps or measles.

It's a ridiculous allegation which directly contravenes numerous established facts. 196.247.24.12 (talk) 03:21, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No such thing as cause or suggest that, say any no matter what. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Telemx (talk • contribs) 03:02, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Telemx: Your comment is incomprehensible gibberish to me. If you have a point to make, please try again in a grammatically correct way. Thank you. 196.247.24.12 (talk) 06:39, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote to the Russian scientist who is alleged to have claimed that the SARS virus is a cross between measles and mumps and he responded, in fluent English, that he made no such claim, only that the SARS virus could have been created in the laboratory. He wrote that did not make the stronger claim that it was made in the lab and that he did not claim it was a cross between measles and mumps. I asked him if there were anywhere where his true position is stated on the Net, and will report back if there is. --Timtak (talk) 22:41, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Timtak: I was responding to what's written in WP; if the WP article is making crap up, we have a second issue. (Maybe you'd like to correct it?)

As I wrote, if you take away the easily disproved specifics, refuting the claim is much more difficult, but I think "consipiracy theory" remains an accurate characterization. Dr. John Campbell recently said about SARS-CoV-2, "all viruses are bioweapons, but not a man-made one." The genetic homology to known wild coronavirii is strong enough that no artificial intervention is required to explain its evolution. (And if some conspiracy theorist says "see how subtle the genetic engineers were?" I laugh, because if it's so subtle that it could arise naturally, we don't have to be prepared for anything more than plausible natural mutations.) I could do a bunch of research and back that up with citations, but that's a lot of work; do I need to? 196.247.24.12 (talk) 09:37, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lede with odd, impossible claim

In the lede, there is a claim that Nikolai Filatov, with Wikilink to information on him, stated that SARS was artificially constructed. That's rather odd, given that Nikolai Filatov, per the Wikipedia article on him, died in 1935. Can someone kindly look into the issue or are we now championing conspiracy theories that require a time machine to work?Wzrd1 (talk) 03:08, 24 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The archived News24 article definitely mentions "Nikolai Filatov". The simple answer to your question is that there are two different people who have the same name. I have removed the Nikolai Filatov link. CowHouse (talk) 14:31, 4 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed accuracy and original research

Does anyone oppose removing these tags? All the sentences have citations, and a random selection of sources appears to bear out the claims. It appears that, at the time the tags were added, there was a paragraph about Tong Zeng's claims that wasn't backed by its citation, but the offending text has since been trimmed. There's also an article in the external links which should probably be either incorporated in the text as a source or removed. Am I missing anything? Daß Wölf 14:13, 18 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]