Top all-time · #12216
Alex Washburne
Personal blog · alexwasburne.substack.comsciencephilosophy
Alex Washburne writes A Biologist's Guide to Life, a personal blog at alexwasburne.substack.com about science and philosophy. Since 2022, 6 different Hacker News readers have linked it 13 times, most often “The totality of the circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-13, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link Alex Washburne's Substack posts: a popular-science summary of a paper arguing SARS-CoV-2 may have a synthetic origin based on restriction-enzyme cut sites, and a post on scandals in Chinese forensic genetics papers.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Alex Washburne's efforts to make sense of Life.
Most-linked posts?
- The totality of the circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-11-03
- A synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2: What we know, and what we don't3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-10-20
- Zoonotic Origin Evidence We Don't Have2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-22
What Hacker News says?
Your summary of the paper is unfair. From one of the author's blog: > Recap: BsaI/BsmBI are particularly useful restriction enzymes to use if you wanted to study a bunch of chimeric coronaviruses like the close relatives of SARS-CoV-2. The SARS-CoV-2 BsaI/BsmBI cutting sites look regularly-spaced (ish). The maximum fragment length is in the bottom percentile of all CoVs digestions in the idealized fragment-number ra…
Comment linking /p/a-synthetic-origin-of-sars-cov-2
on “Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?”Submitted A follow-up on our analysis of the anomalous restriction map of SARS-CoV-2 as a story · 49 points
HN discussionPopular science summary of paper from one of the authors: https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/a-synthetic-origin-of-sa...
Comment linking /p/a-synthetic-origin-of-sars-cov-2
on “Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2?”Submitted A synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2: What we know, and what we don't as a story · 38 points
HN discussionHow readily does reputation change with scandals ? Because we seem to be in the middle of a pretty big one, where the functioning of the whole system is in question. Starting with a milder example : https://www.ageofinvention.xyz/p/age-of-invention-how-to-be-... Followed by a more... radioactive one : https://alexwasburne.substack.com/p/the-sausage-factory-of-p... BTW for this last one, HN seems to be outright block…
Comment linking /p/the-sausage-factory-of-peer-review
on “Mass Retraction of unethical Chinese Forensic Genetics Papers”Submitted Zoonotic Origin Evidence We Don't Have as a story · 17 points
HN discussionSubmitted The totality of the circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Totality of the Circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The case for a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Totality of the Circumstances surrounding SARS-CoV-2 emergence as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Science is not to be trusted as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Zoonotic Origin Evidence We Don't Have as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Banality of Science as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
