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From The New York Times... Chinese Censorship Is Quietly Rewriting the COVID-19 Story (the Yahoo version).
We won't talk about the 'theories' promoted by the media, including in this article, however. But, it's nice to have a Government, other than our own, to shift all the blame to... right?
...That the Chinese government muzzled scientists, hindered international investigations and censored online discussion of the pandemic is well documented. But 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Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions.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.
Groups including the World Health Organization have given credence to muddled data and inaccurate timelines...
It is impossible to ascribe a single motive to the crackdown. Beijing controls and shapes information as a matter of course, particularly in moments of crisis. But some of the censorship changed the timeline of early infections, a delicate topic as the government faced criticism over whether it responded to the outbreak quickly enough.
There is no evidence that the censorship is designed to conceal a specific scenario for the origins of the pandemic. Some scientists believe that Covid-19 spread naturally from animals to humans. Others argue that it may have spread from a Chinese laboratory. Both sides have pointed to censored data to support their theories.
But they have come to agree on one point: The Chinese government?s grip on science has stifled the search for truth...
Under pressure from their government, Chinese scientists have withheld data, withdrawn genetic sequences from public databases and altered crucial details in journal submissions.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.
Groups including the World Health Organization have given credence to muddled data and inaccurate timelines...
It is impossible to ascribe a single motive to the crackdown. Beijing controls and shapes information as a matter of course, particularly in moments of crisis. But some of the censorship changed the timeline of early infections, a delicate topic as the government faced criticism over whether it responded to the outbreak quickly enough.
There is no evidence that the censorship is designed to conceal a specific scenario for the origins of the pandemic. Some scientists believe that Covid-19 spread naturally from animals to humans. Others argue that it may have spread from a Chinese laboratory. Both sides have pointed to censored data to support their theories.
But they have come to agree on one point: The Chinese government?s grip on science has stifled the search for truth...
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