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Censorship China Medicine Science

How China Censored Research About Covid-19 (seattletimes.com) 229

Posted by EditorDavid from the chilling-effects dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 spotted this story in today's New York Times. (Also re-published in the Seattle Times.) In early 2020 a team of U.S. and Chinese scientists "released critical data" on the speedy spread and lethality of the coronavirus, remembers Times, "cited in health warnings around the world... Within days, though, the researchers quietly withdrew the paper, which was replaced online by a message telling scientists not to cite it...

"What is now clear is that the study was not removed because of faulty research. Instead, it was withdrawn at the direction of Chinese health officials amid a crackdown on science."

It's not the only retraction. The Times also points out a paper published on March 9 of 2020 relying on patient samples from mid-December of 2019, which "added to evidence that the virus was spreading widely before the Chinese government took action." Two months later the journal that published an update that "said that the Wuhan samples were not collected in December after all, but weeks later, in January... After Jesse Bloom of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle tweeted about the discrepancy, the journal's editors posted a third version of the paper, adding yet another timeline. This revision says the samples were collected between Dec. 30 and Jan. 1." Beijing's stranglehold on information goes far deeper than even many pandemic researchers are aware of. Its censorship campaign has targeted international journals and scientific databases, shaking the foundations of shared scientific knowledge, a New York Times investigation found. Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions. Western journal editors enabled those efforts by agreeing to those edits or withdrawing papers for murky reasons, a review by The Times of over a dozen retracted papers found.

This scientific censorship has not universally succeeded: The original version of the February 2020 paper, for example, can still be found online with some digging. But the campaign starved doctors and policymakers of critical information about the virus at the moment the world needed it most. It bred mistrust of science in Europe and the United States, as health officials cited papers from China that were then retracted. The crackdown continues to breed misinformation today and has hindered efforts to determine the origins of the virus.
The article notes an international team's discovery last month of genetic sequence data collected in January of 2020 at Wuhan market, "withheld from foreign experts for three years — a delay that global health officials called 'inexcusable.'" The sequences showed that raccoon dogs, a fox-like animal, had deposited genetic signatures in the same place that genetic material from the virus was left, a finding consistent with a scenario in which the virus spread to people from illegally traded market animals... Soon after the group alerted Chinese researchers to their findings, the genetic sequences temporarily disappeared from a global database. "It's just pathetic that we're in this stage where we're having cloak-and-dagger conversations about deleted data," said Edward Holmes, a University of Sydney biologist who was part of the group that analyzed the sequences containing raccoon dog DNA.
The Times cites retracted coronavirus papers flagged by Retraction Watch, which tracks withdrawn research. Amid tighting government censorship in 2020, Chinese researchers began asking journals to retract their work, the Times reports, and "a review of more than a dozen retracted papers from China shows a pattern of revising or suppressing research on early cases, conditions for medical workers and how widely the virus had spread — topics that could make the government look bad." Journals are typically slow to retract papers, even when they are shown to be fraudulent or unethical. But in China, the calculus is different, said Ivan Oransky, a founder of Retraction Watch. Journals that want to sell subscriptions in China or publish Chinese research often bend to the government's demands. "Scientific publishers have really gone out of their way to placate the censorship requests," he said...

The journal retractions continued, and for unusual reasons. One group of authors noted that "our data is not perfect enough." Another warned that its paper "cannot be used as the basis for the origin and evolution of SARS-CoV-2." A third said its findings were "incomplete and not ready for publication." Several scientists promised in retraction notices to update their findings but never did.
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How China Censored Research About Covid-19 More

How China Censored Research About Covid-19

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  • We assume humans are habitually honent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by davecb ( 6526 ) <davecb@spamcop.net> on Monday April 24, 2023 @07:54AM (#63472336) Homepage Journal

    So papers which are retracted or amended are typically treated as honest science, independent of the country they come from.

    However, in some countries, habitual obedience is what one should assume. If the government of the days says "hop" you say "how high". And it doesn't even need to be conscious: if your boss says fix your paper, you assume it's broken.

    It's related to the odd phenomenon of most-wanted professional criminals being caught in traffic stops. They're so habituated to breaking the law, they don't remember to drive legally when they're trying to avoid notice.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      I don't disagree with the general conclusions of your post, but I think it contains a number of questionable assumptions. First, I don't think pmost eople assume others are habituatlly honest, unless they're paticularly gullible. Anyone who's been on a jury will see that his fellow jurors are very aware that witnesses mislead in self-serving ways.

      I don't think people are habitually *obedient* either. Wanted criminals aren't particularly likely to get caught in traffic violations because they are more like

  • What was always clear (Score:4)

    by Poisonous Drool ( 526798 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @07:55AM (#63472338)
    "What is now clear" -> "What was always clear"

    • The only thing as dangerous as trusting information from China is not trusting information from China. No to say "what was always clear" is dangerous as you're saying scientific papers shouldn't stand on their own but rather entirely on the reputation of who published them (or rather what government they were working under).

      This is an absurdly anti-science approach.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

      Right. Didn't we already know about the retractions, or is this one new? Or is it the same one resurfacing because the NYT, as a matter of policy, does not give credit to previous reporting by other publications? I think the NYT does broadly good work, but this particular foible is petty and sad.

  • For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

    Thank you Richard P. Feynmann, just as relevant today as it ever was. You can even replace "technology" with many other words and the quote is still relevant. E.g. "nation" or "rapid vaccine rollout" etc.

  • No, not China... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chthon ( 580889 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @08:05AM (#63472360) Journal

    The Chinese Communist Party

    Politicians and journalists should learn to say "Chinese Communist Party" instead of China, because China is the Chinese people, which are the victims of that parasite "Chinese Communist Party".

    • Re:No, not China... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @09:30AM (#63472500)

      Yes, but.

      It's more complicated than that. There are a lot of mainland Chinese who swallow whole everything they're fed by the cccp / Poohbear.

      That's what happens when everything is highly censored and controlled and distributing real information or complaining can fuck up your life.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Why not say the Chinese Government, like we do for Israel?

      I'm just saying that maybe there is value in being consistent. We can't really not do it for Israel because the government is a coalition. Another reason is because the word "communist" is rather emotive for a lot of people, and the CCP isn't communist anyway which is the source of a lot of misconceptions about China.

      Obviously not conflating their actions with the Chinese people is good either way.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Erioll ( 229536 )
        Ah yes, a No True Scotsman [wikipedia.org] as applied to Communism. Yet again.

        • Yes, but words have definitions, and Communism is relatively well defined. In what ways do you think the CCP acts communist, other than having it in the name?

        • Sure, and The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democracy: it's right there in the name and you clearly believe what repressive regimes tell you about themselves!

          Regardless of whether Communism is fundamentally unstable and always doomed to collapse, how is China communist in any meaningful manner? It's a repressive fascist state. There's certainly no ownership of the means of production by "the people", and people are not granted anything according to their need. It's pretty capitalistic but the r

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Erioll ( 229536 )

            Your "regardless" is my original main point actually, but I'd say that you're making a compelling argument that the only difference between "fascism" and "communism" is who owns the means of production, up until the moment the government slaps you down for going against them (real or imagined). That's a fairly supported position historically IMO.

    • Politicians and journalists should learn to say "Chinese Communist Party" instead of China, because China is the Chinese people, which are the victims of that parasite "Chinese Communist Party".

      A distinction without a difference.

      • Re:No, not China... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @10:13AM (#63472604)

        Actually it is a distinction with a clear difference. Because as long as we continue to have cold conflict with "China" as opposed to the CCP, our opposition towards Chinese government and government policy is weaponized by the CCP against their own people. Xi, for example, sees and has set himself up as a god to the Chinese people, and actually the world. His goal---and he's been successful in ways that make Donald Trump exceedingly jealous---is to make sure there's no distinction between Xi, the CCP, and China the nation, in the minds of his own people and in the mind of people everywhere. If you think of China, you think of Xi, and vice versa. If we oppose something "China" is doing, it's not hard for him to take that attitude and weaponize it, and convince Chinese citizens that the west is out to get them and he will protect them.

        By the way this same thing is true generally for other antagonistic governments in countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Just look at what Putin is doing and saying right now. It's pretty insidious, and we play right into the hands of such evil people.

        It's an easy shortcut to say China or Russia, but it would serve us all better if we focused publicly on their governments and leaders as the source of our quarrels.

        • Because as long as we continue to have cold conflict with "China" as opposed to the CCP

          Ok, exactly how the fuck do you propose we deal with the "Chinese people" rather than their government?

          It plain doesn't and can't happen.

          Until the Chinese people change their government and throw out the fucking CCP, they are one in the same.

          • Until the Chinese people change their government and throw out the fucking CCP, they are one in the same.

            Before judging the Chinese people as responsible for everything their government does, it might be worth considering just how difficult it would be to overthrow such a brutal, repressive regime from within.

            It would kind of make fighting in the American Revolution look cute in comparison.

            • Before judging the Chinese people as responsible for everything their government does, it might be worth considering just how difficult it would be to overthrow such a brutal, repressive regime from within.

              In that case I go back to my argument that China the country == CCP.

              There is no difference.

      • Correct. Unremitting apologetics for the CCP despite such evidence to the contrary, that the CCP rules and directs China without internal opposition.

        Watch carefully, these sad sycophants have other closely held beliefs that expose their flaws, though none of us are without some philosophical flaws, no?

      • It's a pretty clear difference. It's similar to how you can like Americans but dislike the American government.

        • It's a pretty clear difference. It's similar to how you can like Americans but dislike the American government.

          Geez, this is a play in semantics that is REALLY a stretch.

          No one is mentioning or referring to individual Chinese people....

          In conversation, when someone mentions the world "China", they are referring to the COUNTRY...I would have thought that even with falling educational standards that this would be understood as a given.

          And China (the country) is == CCP....that's who runs the place, rules t

          • Geez, this is a play in semantics that is REALLY a stretch.

            Maybe, but it's also pretty common. When people say they hate the CCP but not China, that's what they are referring to. They want to emphasize that they don't dislike the Chinese people (or Chinese culture, or Chinese land, all of which can be referred to as China).

            Some people even love China but hate the CCP. Arguably those who love China the most also hate the CCP most for what it's done.

    • Nothing about China is communist. Calling them a Communist party is tantamount to spreading their propaganda. Just say the Chinese government. If you want to be more specific you can save the authoritarian Chinese government.
      • Let me guess, because it failed it can't actually be real communism when the communism devolves into a complete authoritarian shit show like it has once again.

        They may have opened up and adopted some market practices, but there's still plenty of central planning and other idiotic communist policy still in place. The only reason China is successful to the degree that it is at present was due to abandoning communism and allowing for private ownership and freer markets.

        • Let me guess, because it failed it can't actually be real communism when the communism devolves into a complete authoritarian shit show like it has once again.

          Yes? Communism being unstable and doomed to failure doesn't mean that whatever it devolves into when it fails is still communism. For some reason a lot of people who think "communism" is a curse word think that pointing this out is a positive value judgement on communism.

          They may have opened up and adopted some market practices, but there's still plen

    • Just like absolutely no Russian people are pro aggression against Ukraine, huh?

      Do not make excuses for the people so quickly, the reality is much more complex. Many of them are royally and happily benefitting from the insanity the CCP is pushing⦠and would not want it any other way.

  • If the want to win back any Trust (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @08:10AM (#63472364) Journal

    If these journals, news media, research institutions, and US government organs like NIH and want to win back any real trust they need to start treating the CCP as the adversary it is, not feeding us all bullshit about how they are partners! One they we should CERTAINLY be done with is sending tax dollars to worlds second largest economy (if they havn't already eclipsed us), to do fund research

    It does not matter if you believe the CCP cynically was trying to export their COVID problem to the rest of the planet so as not to disadvantage themselves or if you think it was simply about avoiding embarrassment. China's reckless and inhumane approach to governance, needs to be met head on with a zero tolerance policy - that is nothing other than regime change should be an acceptable objective. Opening China and encouraging reform has not worked and won't work, it has had a full 50 years to deliver and all its done is weaken us.

    We need strict sanctions, like with have on Russian that bar institutions from working, funding, and generally doing business with the CCP. The rest of the world can't be allowed to act as a money laundering facility either; its time to tell our allies as far as China goes you are with us or you are against us - the EU needs to have that made especially clear to them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      NiH funds research in other countries because that's where infections can first arise. Yes, it means having an agreement with the host country but that's the game. The U.S. does this because it is in the U.S.'s self-interest to do it. Looking at it with 20-20 hindsight is silly. And the U.S. will tighten restrictions on how that research is conducted and reported. Up until now, there was no reason to do that.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        If a another country expects us to grant visas to their people or engage with them in trade; we should reasonably be expected for them to share what they know about infection pathogens, if they can't or won't no admittance.

        In many place it might make sense for NIH to support research. China though has plenty of their own money with which to do public health research, they should not be handing us the bill.

    • If we've learned anything over the past 3 years, we have a web of governments, big pharma, and research facilities where laws are skirted by moving research overseas and obfuscating true intentions and national interests. I can't see how or how it came into existence benefited the world, was it a research project gone wrong? We'll never know for sure because where the outbreak occurred is under the control of a nation that has done everything including threatening the world with more nukes if you keep pushi

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        If by "research project gone wrong" you mean an attempt to *engineer* a novel infectious virus, we can be virtually certain that's not the case by looking at the genome of the virus. Sure, scientific opinion never reaches the level of certainty, and from that extremely thin thread anyone can spin as large and far-fetched conspiracy theory as they like, but since those theories are based on extremely *unlikely* assumptions, they don't qualify as anything mysterious.

        There *is* a real mystery here though, whi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They won't do that because it would make the next pandemic much worse. If it starts in China we will need the help of the Chinese. If it starts in many other countries we may need the help of the Chinese, if they decide they are going to work with China instead of us. Why might they do that? Because China will not do what you propose, and shared COVID vaccines with them when the West didn't.

      For our own sakes we need to keep politics out of global health efforts. The WHO was right to avoid it at all costs. N

  • Chinese aren't stupid (Score:5, Informative)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @08:20AM (#63472378) Journal

    ...this is a simple case of the dog that didn't bark, or my suspiciously-empty browser history when my wife borrows my laptop.

    If their data showed this was a case of a mutated natural virus transmitted from an animal host....why are they working so hard to obfuscate that?

    • The CCP operate as if they are infallible. To have a pandemic start and no action taken until 4 months later shows incompetence.

      At the end when the rest of the world had moved on but CCP kept doing strict localized lock downs, the only way they loosened the regulations was by saying they had defeated the virus.

      All governments had fragile egos and will lie or bend the truth as needed to save face, CCP takes it to a whole new level.

      • "The CCP operate as if they are infallible."

        They have to. Every government has to convince the majority of its people that it deserves to be running things; if it can't, it will collapse as no one will follow its orders. You can bolster this with force but you can't replace it; force alone can't do the job and, anyways, your enforcers are people who have to be convinced too. Democracies, broadly, do this by showing they are doing what its people want. The CCP does this by proclaiming that they always p

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          How do you square that with the government giving in to protests over their zero COVID policy?

          They clearly admitted they were wrong and bowed to public opinion. Many commentators were expecting a massive, violent crackdown, but they caved in fairly quickly and long before any military intervention.

          The reality is that like every government, and particularly dictatorships, they are vulnerable if things get bad for a large proportion of the population. Thus far China's massive economic growth has lead to rapid

          • "They clearly admitted they were wrong and bowed to public opinion."

            They have bowed to public opinion, but they have tried to make it look like that's not why they stopped zero COVID. In particular, they have *not* admitted that they were wrong. It is still the CCP's official position that zero COVID was the right policy and that they ended it because it had become the proper time to end it. You will not find one official statement that zero COVID was wrong. In fact, you will see the entire weight of th

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Our former Prime Minister speed ran crashing the economy, and she still insists she did nothing wrong. I'm sorry, but bad as the CCP is, not admitting mistakes is SOP for politicians.

    • Why did I learn about the epidemic sweeping through Wuhan in Nov '19 for the virus that didn't strike and begin to spread until Jan '20 according to official sources that must be believed or you'll be canceled? (non-political evidence points to ~Oct as the start of spreading) Surely though... we can all agree that the CCP searching for and destroying all samples from '19 is the sign you can take everything they say at face value.

      It really was an odd experience to have the CCP, WHO and NIH at least all uni

      • And the CDC, the majority media and public broadcasting and the US government engines, etc etc etc

        At least here in the US half the populace was simping hard based on politics, ironically screaming "follow the science!" the whole time.

    • If their data showed this was a case of a mutated natural virus transmitted from an animal host....why are they working so hard to obfuscate that?

      Why do you think that is the reason they are working hard to obfuscate the paper? This was a paper about spread. The source (if it even was a discussion topic of the paper) may have nothing to do with it.

      It's like saying "If the tankman picture showed a well dressed Chinese man carrying groceries, why are they working so hard to obfuscate that? What do the Chinese have against pictures of men wearing a white shirt!"

      We're having a debate about scientific papers, please leave your conspiracy in the 3rd draw d

    • Re:Chinese aren't stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Monday April 24, 2023 @11:16AM (#63472794) Homepage

      If their data showed this was a case of a mutated natural virus transmitted from an animal host....why are they working so hard to obfuscate that?

      For several reasons, like:

      The Chinese government does not want to be blamed for bungling the second global pandemic linked to their markets in less than two decades.

      They don't want to admit that they were selling wild animals that they said was illegal and that they banned and enforced since the first pandemic.

      They don't want to withholding information on the magnitude of the disaster, and not taking enough containment actions, when it was still a local outbreak in one city.

      There is also the fact that like any authoritarian regime, they tend to be secretive for no other reason than the info may in some way be damaging at some point in the future.

      The list goes on and on ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Because as I said above, there's a high liklihood that the emergence of the virus will be linked to some kind of government economic development initiative.

      Eating bush mean isn't a widespread traditional Chinese cultural practice, it's somethign the government promoted, then after SARS tried *unsuccessfully* to backtrack on. China has also been working hard to unseat US as the world leader in scientific research, and Chinese research safety practices have long been criticized as lax, which is *another* iss

  • Then many other provinces followed suit.

    Instead of calling to implement sensible measures, Western media talked about how the lockdowns were an abuse of human rights, and were a conspiracy by the CCP to clamp down the country.

    No matter how widespread the virus actually was in China at the time, the fact is it wasn't widespread in the West. The West could have stopped the virus from spreading in their own countries. The West, collectively, CHOSE NOT TO.

  • Does the CCP ever make a scientist publish an intentionally misleading paper just to slow down the rest of the world?

    • We should assume that everything out of China requires confirmation by a trusted third party before caring.

      That's good science anyway, though if you weren't worried about the CCP exerting influence over Chinese scientists, you might accept corroboration from a second Chinese team... and we shouldn't.

      Beyond that, this could be a problem for Chinese expats working in labs outside China. It's not like the CCP wouldn't pressure them just because they're not on China's soil.

      And it's all so incredibly stupid.

  • How this whole thing was handled makes me lose all trust.

    I will be very, extremely, hesitant to get any medicine from now on. The global scientific community ruined everything.

    I am a physicist who hates the covid conspirationists and vaccine refusers.

    I am ashamed for this.

    • I will be very, extremely, hesitant to get any medicine from now on

      Wow, hope you don't catch scarlet fever.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gTsiros ( 205624 )

        isn't that streptococus?

        from what i know there is no vaccine for it and the only treatment is antiobiotics, which are already on the way out?

        sooo, you too?

        • You may not be aware of this, but antibiotics are medicine.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gTsiros ( 205624 )

            And you are so aware that you missed the part where antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. That is what I meant by "on their way out".

            I mean.

            If we are to trust them.

  • As I read this story, I went down the rabbit er.. Racoon Dog hole and began searching for the first scientific/medical reports associating SARC and genertic research of Racoon Dogs. Using the google wayback machine there are posts from both China and US NiH going back to 2003 on SARS transmissability related to Racoon dogs, their ties to bats (and birds and pigs and normal dogs and...) and then interestingly there are a flood of reports about
    "racoon dog invasions" in the UK and minnesota, of all places. The

  • i see a lot of assumptions and accusations, and very little proof or fact, and the little fact there is is hugely exaggerated (like the correction of the examples taken in december, which is corrected to have happened 2 days earlier than stated, which is ofc totally irrelevant) to suggest ... i don't know what exactly.

    sounds like a lot of bullshit and i'm not even bothering to circumvent the nyt's paywall. if there is an actual fact to be known i'll appreciate anyone to summarize, else i'll leave u guys bic

  • The timeline is the very evidence on which lab leak debunking rests. Now unreleased data 3 year after the fact to make a lab leak even less likely ... how can you not trust all this evidence?

  • Why would China go to such great lengths if this virus was entirely naturally occurring in bats in a cave somewhere?

    Now if it had escaped from a Chinese lab, it would make more sense that they'd try to censor everything.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      I imagine it has something to do with China's desire to be seen as a modern, science-based society. Rather than more than a billion superstitious peasants seeking food and medicine from witch doctors in the form of bush meat, pangolin scales and tiger penis.

  • If this isn't proof to everybody that the Beijing State is an existential threat to humanity, I don't know what is. The Beijing State Must Fall.

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