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Waist Trainers
Definition: Appeal to Authority is a very deceiving method that many companies use for their products. It contains 'reputable' doctors or celebrities that endorse their product. Without any actual science to back it up they use influencers and science looking words that may really be hollow, for example they could claim they have done a clinical study which means they have done a single study they they may not have the results they say the products cause.

Connection: Many social media  influencers and celebrities advertise waist trainers to give the illusion of an hour glass look. Some celebrities include, Blacc Chyna, Amber Rose, Farrah Abraham, Jessica Alba and all of the Kardashian sisters except Kendall Jenner. These brands use influential women to advertise their products because their bodies are idolized, but this isnt just another unhealthy beauty standard, its dangerous! It has been known to cause damage to some of your most vital organs and it also constricts breathing. It can get as serious as passing out.

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Waist trainers and corsets have been used for centuries to create a svelte, hourglass figure. Yet despite everything we've learned about their life-threatening side effects, influencers continue to promote their usage on social media.

Most recently, Keyshia Ka'Oir shared pictures on her Instagram promoting her waist trainer, the Ka'Oir Waist Eraser, to her 5.4 million followers. In one picture, she wrote,

"I want you guys to wear your waist eraser 23 hours per day! Sleep in it! Only remove to shower!!!!!"

The caption also promises her followers that they could lose two inches in just one day.

In another picture, she suggested that if her followers wanted to lose more inches and maximize their weight loss, they should add her detox tea and body slimming cream to their fitness regimen. And in the comments, she told a pregnant woman to bring her waist trainer with her to the hospital so that she can wear it after she gives birth (which is something you should definitely not do).

On top of waist trainers, she also sells arm and thigh compression bands, detox tea, and clothes that purposefully raise your body's temperature while working out.

But Keyshia is far from the only influencer urging their followers to lose weight in one of the most unhealthy ways possible.

>Kim Kardashian - whose family helped popularize the waist trainer craze in 2014 - announced in an Instagram video that a waist trainer was the newest addition to her shapewear brand Skims.

"You know I've been so vocal about these, I've worn waist trainers for years. To me, they make me just feel really snatched."

Of course, you'd feel that way. Especially since waist trainers have been proven to constrict your breathing, push your organs together in unnatural positions, dehydrate the body, and cause digestive problems like acid reflux and indigestion.

According to the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, waist trainers and corsets can cause damage to some of your body's most vital organs. When you wear a waist trainer, your body constricts. Organs like the lungs, stomach, liver, esophagus, intestines, and kidneys are then pushed together causing overcrowding and difficulty for the organs to function correctly.

Trainers can also cause difficulty in breathing, which can "result in low energy and discomfort, but scarier consequences-passing out, fluid buildup in the lungs, inflammation-are also a real possibility. Binding yourself in a corset for weeks on end also restricts your lymphatic system, which relies on deep breathing and normal range of motion to properly remove waste products and toxins from your body."

But the dangers of waist trainers have not stopped people from purchasing them.

Make no mistake, the only way to properly lose weight and be successful on your fitness journey is by eating right, listening to your body, and exercising regularly. The results may take a little longer, but at least they won't cost you a trip to the hospital.

READ THIS NEXT
Fashion Nova Loves Marketing to Black Women - So Why Won't They Hire Dark Skin Models?

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Instagram Influencer Gives Horrifying Advice on Waist Trainers and Detox Teas to Millions of Followers | Femestella

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Waist trainers and corsets have been used for centuries to create a svelte, hourglass figure. Yet despite everything we've learned about their life-threatening side effects, influencers continue to promote their usage on social media. Most recently, Keyshia Ka'Oir shared pictures on her Instagram promoting her waist trainer, the Ka'Oir Waist Eraser, to her 5.4 million followers.

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Tumeric
Definition: No traces of synthetic or artificial ingredients. All natural does not always mean healthy or real benefits

Connection: Tumeric is commonly used for cooking, flavouring and adding colour. Turmeric has been popularized as a medical remedy and the research done to it has brought up many different things like its an anti-inflammatory,  and help an upset stomach. The property in the tumeric that does this is the ingredient Curcumin. This has been used mainly throughout the ages in Southeast Asia but studies show today that it has little to no effect but doesnt harm the body. What could harm us would be not seeking serious medical help when we need it and using tumeric instead.

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June 2, 2016

The supplement industry historically is a conga-line of promoters selling unproven or disproven health products. Supplement claims are crank whack-a-mole for the most part-knock one down and another comes up. It is an industry that markets with a constant drone of miracle cures that fail to deliver the miracle. Turmeric is a newly popular herbal supplement. I see patients using it in ever-increasing numbers. Most of my patients are taking turmeric as an osteoarthritis remedy, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Historically there have been rare exceptions to the failure of herbal supplements; let's take a look at turmeric and see if it's good for something other than a tasty dinner.

Turmeric grows wild in southeast Asia. It's commonly used as a flavor and color additive. Although it has a long history as a folk remedy, it is more commonly used as a spice. The plant's roots are boiled and then dried in hot ovens; eventually they are ground into a orange-yellow powder with a variety of uses in cooking.

Due to its folk remedy status it has been popularized as a medical remedy. There is a lot of research evaluating the possibility of a medical benefit. Most of the medical research focuses on the primary ingredient curcumin. It is assumed to be safe for consumption since it is commonly used as a spice, at least in those typically small amounts. So is there any good reason to suspect that turmeric has escaped prior detection by the medical industry?

Turmeric has many positive attributes ascribed to it. Evaluating claims critically you will see most of it is either implausible or mutually exclusive. Interestingly there is a large volume of research associated with turmeric. Promoters provide endless links to peer-reviewed research. I estimate one turmeric site alone offered at least 1,700 different research papers, which were all disappointingly similar. A random sample of 20 varied topics in the bibliography revealed exclusively in vitro research, meaning kind of test tube research, rather than demonstrations in living organisms. I decided to independently research turmeric and I found thousands of individual studies. Since I do not realistically have the time to review 30 years of research I used the Natural Medicine Comprehensive Database. It provides a list of the leading research claims.

Their evaluation of turmeric research is generous. The authors feel it might possibly be effective for upset stomach, and may have anti-inflammatory properties. I reviewed the best evidence as compiled by their authors, but it was sadly disappointing. Although I can agree that turmeric is probably a low-risk supplement, there were problems for gall bladder patients or surgical patients. The disappointing part stems from the quality of the research. There were failings commonly found in alternative medicine. The research was primarily in vitro, or they were preliminary studies without replication. Additionally, most of the research had results consistent with normal variation as opposed to significant findings. All the research suffers from a lack of replication. I have written extensively in a prior post about the common failings of preliminary or in vitro studies, and why less than 1% of substances with positive in vitro/preliminary research ever eventually result in anything useful.

There is one piece of research often quoted as proof of turmeric benefit as an anti-inflammatory. This was a study comparing it to diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug available by prescription. This poorly structured study fails to have proper controls and it used a faulty system for measuring results. The researchers took 80 people off of anti-inflammatory medications, rested them, and then put them on curicumin and diclofenac randomly. Although the administration of medication was blinded, the COX-2 monocyte samples from synovial fluid used to determine relative inflammation of the joint were un-blinded. This undermines controls for researcher bias in any way. There is a multitude of other issues as well: the subject numbers were too few, there were no baseline comparisons, and no patient reported symptoms. Needless to say, I was not impressed and wondered why they didn't just do a simple comparative study, double-blinded with three groups: one using diclofenac, one using curicumin, and one taking nothing. All you can glean from this study is that the "best research" is a disappointingly structured preliminary index study.

In my opinion this is huge red flag that turmeric is not effective. Anytime a promising substance has tons of research surrounding it, done over decades, yet has no replication or rigor, that combination is almost universally synonymous with "does not work," even though a casual glance might lead one to assume "All that research must mean there is something to it."

My answer is two-pronged. Normally, the progression of research is common with effective treatments. Lack of progression in research means that the results for more rigorous studies are withheld or unpublished. So repeating endless preliminary work is window dressing without substance. Secondly, constant retreading of preliminary work happens only when it is being done by researchers who either lack expertise or are deliberately trying to avoid further questions. Good research does not retread preliminary research when you have something promising. Replication of results would make turmeric very valuable. That substance would be snatched up by a pharmaceutical company, become drug patented, and be turned from a million-dollar supplement into a billion-dollar drug. That may sound cynical, but it is accurate to say that most supplements are produced by the supplement wings of pharmaceutical giants. So why do you think they don't move it from a less-profitable division to a more profitable one? If turmeric had been proven effective for any condition it would be a medical boon. Medicine is always hoping to find new treatments but historically very few available folk remedies have escaped evaluation. Most of the low hanging fruit (or roots, in this case) has been plucked.

So why has the research stagnated? The combination of easy-on-the-stomach and good-for-inflammation is a pharmaceutical gold mine: safe, effective, and better than current drugs in use. It would be widely used without question. None of this means absolutely that turmeric is useless, rather it is tremendous red flag that it underperforms.

A quick Google search will reveal another glaring red flag for pseudoscience. Turmeric is promoted as a safe and effective treatment for an impossibly large number of maladies. An abbreviated list of medical issues that turmeric is recommended for: anti-inflammatory, anti-coagulant, anti-platelet, anti-depressant, cholesterol lowering, antioxidant, deep vein thrombosis prevention, myocardial infarction prevention, dementia, memory loss, cancer, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and chronic pain. The hallmark of quack treatment is the cure-all treatment.

Far too many alternative medicine treatments offer such panaceas. The items on that list are extremely varied medically. You have cancer, genetic diseases, neurological dysfunction, psychological illness, all with vastly differing causes and mechanisms of action. The truth is that anything which claims to be a wonder drug for such an incredibly varied list of problems is impossible. The human body just doesn't work that way.

Turmeric also has potential side effects. Reasonable evidence exists that it can give you gall bladder problems at high doses and may thin your blood. It should be avoided as a concentrated supplement prior to any surgery since it may have anticoagulant properties.

If you point at a drug and say X substance has Y problem it is because it has good research behind it. Remember that a drug has a history, that at one time it was a promising substance that had unknown dosage, side effects, and toxicity. If doctors started using Drug X when it was a promising substance rather than a proven drug it would just mean rolling the dice with your life. When you are taking something that you know nothing about, that ignorance does not make it safer. Unknown is just that: unknown. It does not in fact makes it less dangerous than a drug. Additionally, calling something a supplement yet promoting it as a drug because you lack evidence doesn't make it a better option. It just makes your claims less reliable. Claiming that turmeric is safe merely because it is naturally derived and doesn't have any good research is just plain wrong. "Natural" does not at all mean "safe" or "effective."

For example, the anticoagulant warfarin (a.k.a. Coumadin) was originally derived from sweet clover. Sweet clover was unknowingly causing livestock to die from internal bleeding when they grazed on it. It was a mystery that perplexed farmers who didn't realize for decades. When they eventually determined that the clover was the cause it was initially used as a rat poison. Eventually, with proper research it evolved into a drug that saves lives. Although natural, it was not safe until it was properly researched and dosed. Compare this to the pain medication acetaminophen, commonly called Tylenol in the United States. It is a completely synthetic compound derived in the laboratory. Yet it is arguably one of the safest of all available pain medications today. So a preliminary natural plant without dosing and research equals rat poison, and good solidly researched synthetic chemical equals safe drug. The point is this, tagging something as all natural is a marketing trick to make you feel good, distracting consumers from possible severe risks. The moral of the story is simple: an unknown natural substance is always more dangerous than a drug because the risks are unknown. All pharmacoactive substances have a downside. Natural doesn't equate with no risk. It is illogical to assume that nature doesn't want to kill or injure us, because more often than not it does.

Turmeric is a food additive for both color and flavor. We know that at those dosages it seems safe. What we don't know is if it really does anything at those doses. We also don't know if it has any benefits, dangers, how much it takes to get the supposed benefits, and we don't know how much is dangerously too much.

I can't recommend turmeric as a medical treatment. It is an unknown with many worrisome red flags and volumes of poor quality research. Its major appeal seems to be the appeal to nature fallacy, which is demonstrably false. But I can recommend turmeric as a spice. I have personally researched it and give it the Skeptoid blogger Seal of Approval. I recommend you try it. Here is one of my favorite Curry Chicken recipes, and for you vegetarians out there a nice Sweet Potato and Curry soup. Dose your food according to taste!

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Disclaimer: This post is my personal opinion, it is not a substitute for medical care. It is for informational purposes only. Information on the Skeptoid blog is not intended nor recommended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your own physician or other qualified healthcare professional regarding any medical questions or conditions. This post does not reflect the opinion of my partners, professional affiliates, or academic affiliations. I have no financial conflicts of interest to disclose.

@Skeptoid Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

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Skeptoid: Turmeric: What is it Good For?

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June 2, 2016 The supplement industry historically is a conga-line of promoters selling unproven or disproven health products. Supplement claims are crank whack-a-mole for the most part-knock one down and another comes up. It is an industry that markets with a constant drone of miracle cures that fail to deliver the miracle.

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Politician Tactic
Definition: A deflection from a question using non relevant and misleading information.

Connection: A lot of politicians use red herring in debates with other politicians, interviewers and civilians. They totally avoid the controversial subject with empty words. They want to avoid the question because the truth may hurt their image. It would reflect badly on politicians like trump to flat out ignore this questions so he acts like he's fulfilling the question but is indeed totally changing the subject to something irrelevant.

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There's something fishy going on in Washington. And any high school or college debater knows what it is. Of all the dozens of debating techniques used in hopes of confounding and confusing debate opponents, the "red herring" is one of the best known and most commonly used.

The red herring technique involves introducing an irrelevant topic to divert opponents from the original or real issue. How the small and ubiquitous herring came to be associated with this particular form of debate trickery is an interesting story worthy of a brief sidebar for readers who like to collect trivia.

The term is said to have been popularized in 1807 by English journalist William Cobbett, who claimed to have used a kipper - a strong-smelling smoked herring - to divert hounds from chasing a hare. For the record, herring are not red - until they are smoked.

Incidentally, the use of herring to distract pursuing scent hounds was tested on the television series "Mythbusters." The hound used in the test couldn't resist stopping to eat the fish and, as a result, temporarily lost the scent. But it eventually backtracked and located the target. The show, therefore, classified the myth as "busted."

The use by politicians of diversionary tactics to distract the public from real problems or issues is as old as politics itself. But rarely has the public been so assaulted with distractions and irrelevancies as during the reign of Donald Trump. He has raised the use of the red herring to an art form.

Subtlety has never been a Trump strong suit. His use of this technique has become so pervasive in efforts to blow smoke to hide the moral, ethical and policy failures of his administration that the public - minus the sliver of those still in his thrall - increasingly refuses to be distracted.

This column isn't sufficiently long to provide more than a few of the more recent and egregious examples of Trump's attempts at red herring-ism.

One is his long-running assault on journalism - at least that which is practiced by those news media seeking to provide fair and balanced news coverage. He calls them "an enemy of the people." But the "fake news" he decries is that which accurately reports on the ineptitude and corruptness that are hallmarks of his administration. The real "fake news" (Is that an oxymoron?) is that which Trump creates in an attempt to distract from his administration's failures, his multiple legal issues, his lack of scruples and to keep his "base" hanging on.

Tired of Trump's continued abuse and its potential for damaging the news media's ability to function effectively as the Fourth Estate - the government watchdog - about 350 newspapers penned editorials last Thursday decrying his description of the media as the peoples' enemy.

Recently the "smoke" also included an attack on basketball superstar Lebron James because he accused Trump of being a "divisive" force in the country. James uttered this relatively mild and accurate charge during an interview with Trump CNN nemesis Don Lemon, who has accused the president of racism in the past. Lemon was interviewing James about a school for underprivileged kids he funded. In a tweet, Trump insulted the intelligence of both men, ignoring James' philanthropy.

Suddenly, the media-wide conversation was all about the James-Lemon "dis," a meaningless sideshow designed to distract from manifestly more important issues such as Paul Manafort's conspiracy and fraud trial and Trump's abject failure to improve the lives of "forgotten Americans," as promised in his campaign.

(That the news media allow themselves to be taken in by Trump's smelly distractions may be the topic for another column.)

In response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, Trump has long maintained there was "no collusion" between the Kremlin and his campaign for the presidency in 2016. But, in an attempt to throw the public off the scent, lead attorney Rudy Giuliani has gone one step further, contending that "collusion" wouldn't be illegal in any case, claiming that "collusion" is not explicitly cited in U.S. legal code.

"It's a red herring by Giuliani," Bradley P. Moss, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer specializing in national security, told Business Insider.

He noted that, while the term "collusion" doesn't appear in the memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointing the special counsel and providing parameters for the investigation, certain interactions between a presidential campaign and a foreign government could be illegal under other existing statutes.

"Mueller isn't investigating 'collusion.' He's investigating possible coordination between the campaign and the Russians, particularly any actual crimes committed in the context of that coordination," Moss said.

So, beware the seemingly harmless - albeit smelly - red herring. When deployed by Trump, view it as a pitiful and irrelevant distraction. Like the hound on "Mythbusters," do not let it take you off the scent.
Lorin R. Robinson, Ph.D., is a writer and former chair of the journalism department at UW-River Falls. His current book is "The 13: Ashi-niswi." Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

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Lorin R. Robinson: Donald Trump and The Art of the Red Herring

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There's something fishy going on in Washington. And any high school or college debater knows what it is. Of all the dozens of debating techniques used in hopes of confounding and confusing debate opponents, the "red herring" is one of the best known and most commonly used.

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Autism and Organic Food
Definition: Correlation and Causation is the belief that something new you started taking/doing helped or treated a preexisting ailment. This is just one example of confusing correlation and causation.

Connection: This graph shows how it connects but doesn't connect. Doctors can now tell and easily diagnose autism unlike before but now that it is easily diagnose and organic food sales are on the rise as well as you can see in the chart they are close together but they actually don't connect to one another because autism you're born with and food has nothing to do with it.

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CoronaVirus Man Made?
Definition: Suppression of authority is the concept that for whatever reason people in control do not want a cure/information to leak. That authority figures want our ignorance to keep their pockets full of money.

Connection: One theory on the recent virus called the coronavirus is that the virus was man made, meaning that we were told that bats ate fruit that contained the virus and we ate the bats which started the virus. But some theories say it was actually made by humans to start the spread. But the connection to this would be why would humans have a reason to start this what's the meaning.

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Quick Take

Several online stories inaccurately claim that the new coronavirus contains HIV "insertions" and shows signs of being created in a lab. But there is no evidence that the new virus was bioengineered, and every indication it came from an animal.

Full Story

We've seen , but this time many claims are being fueled by an unpublished - and highly dubious - scientific paper. By delving into the genetic or protein sequences of the virus, many of these stories have an aura of scientific credibility. But scientists who study viruses say they are incorrect.

One , subsequently Facebook, inaccurately asserts a link between the new coronavirus, also as 2019 novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, and HIV, largely based on an unpublished manuscript by scientists in India.

The paper, which was posted on the preprint website (pronounced "bio-archive") on Jan. 31, claimed to have identified very short "insertions" in the virus' protein sequence that had an "uncanny similarity" to HIV. scientists , however, immediately pointed out flaws in the analysis, noting that the sequences are so short, they match a bevy of other organisms - and there's no reason to conclude they derive from HIV. The paper was voluntarily by its authors just two days later, with one , "It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories and no such claims are made here."

But the speedy withdrawal wasn't fast enough to prevent some websites from picking up the story and concluding that the new coronavirus had been crafted in a laboratory.

A ZeroHedge with the headline, "Coronavirus Contains 'HIV Insertions,' Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon," pounced on some of the language in the preprint to argue that the scientists were saying the virus might be "man-made." The story also cited tweets from a visiting scientist at Harvard who had commented on the preprint and stated that the scientist's tweets suggested that the virus "might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon."

Originally published the same day of the preprint, the ZeroHedge article was updated the following day to include tweets from the Harvard visiting scientist, who by then had seen some of the criticisms of the preprint and was now advocating for additional studies to be done before jumping to any conclusions. The Harvard scientist, it should be said, is an epidemiologist, health economist and nutritionist, and does not have expertise in virology or bioinformatics. The bulk of the article, however, remains unchanged.

Separately, a blogger a different bogus analysis - also making the on Facebook - that posits a portion of the new coronavirus genome is similar to part of a viral vector that was used in previous research on the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, virus. Based on this, the author argues that the new virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab working on a vaccine. The SARS virus caused a global in 2003 and is similar but distinct from 2019-nCoV.

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars and the Sandy Hook school shooting false idea that the in 2012 was a hoax, also waded into the coronavirus misinformation pool. his talk show address both of these groundless theories and claim there is evidence that "proves" the new coronavirus was "man-made."

The HIV study, he said, was a "misunderstanding of how to perform these types of analyses" that also cherry-picked its findings. The short proteins the Indian scientists found to be similar to HIV are not from HIV at all, Andersen said, but are the result of the natural evolution of coronaviruses. "Had the authors compared nCoV to related bat viruses (and not just SARS as they did)," he wrote, "they would have realized that the peptides are also present in the bat viruses - and most certainly don't come from HIV."

Only one "insertion" is not fully shared with the bat virus, Bedford explained, and "in no way suggests engineering" since it is consistent with the types of insertions and deletions that happen in coronaviruses. "There is absolutely no evidence for either (1) sequence insertions or (2) their relationship to HIV," he concluded.

The blogger's contention that the new coronavirus may have been engineered using a SARS viral vector, Andersen said, is "just as absurd" as the HIV theory. The vector, he said, was used to understand coronaviruses and develop vaccines - but is different from 2019nCoV.

"While they're similar (like worms and people are similar) there is absolutely no way that nCoV is in any way related," he said. "If one were to look at the two genomes side by side, it's very easy to show that they're obviously not the same - or that one somehow led to the other."

HIV Drugs

As we've just established, there's no connection between HIV and the new coronavirus, but the fact that are using HIV drugs to treat the new coronavirus is included in many of the social media posts to lend credence to the bogus theory.

Many existing antivirals, he said, are HIV medications, so it's natural to turn to those. And there is some precedent for HIV drugs possibly working against coronaviruses.

During the SARS outbreak, for example, scientists performed a drug screen and identified the HIV drug cocktail of lopinavir and ritonavir as having potential antiviral activity against SARS. That drug combo was also associated with better outcomes among a small group of SARS patients, although it was never tested in a clinical trial, so it's hard to say if it was truly effective. It is also currently in a clinical trial in Saudi Arabia against another disease caused by a coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS.

No Signs of Bioengineering

"The genetic data is pointing to this virus coming from a bat reservoir," he said, "not a lab."

And not only are there no HIV "insertions" in the virus, but by looking at the virus' genome, scientists also see zero signs of human tampering.

, the Fred Hutchinson computational biologist, pointed out on Twitter that the virus' genetic differences to its most recent common ancestor are "consistent with differences expected to arise during natural evolution."

An engineered virus, he explained, would likely have a "distorted" amino acid to nucleotide ratio, and also have changes focused in on a "subset of genes." In other words, when engineering occurs, it's usually to bring about a meaningful change to the virus - but there's no evidence of that in the 2019-nCoV genome.

Typically, scientists change nucleotides in a targeted way to create changes in the amino acids they code for. Since amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, that's the way to change the proteins the virus produces.

But as Bedford said, out of all the nucleotide changes, relatively few - around 14% - alter the corresponding amino acid, or about what you would expect in a naturally evolving virus. This ratio also matches that of the bat virus that's found to be the most similar to 2019-nCoV.

Further, when comparing the amino acid changes that do exist, the number of changes in the respective genes in both 2019-nCoV and the bat virus are highly similar. Again, if the virus had been engineered, one might expect many of the changes to cluster in one or two genes, but that's not the case here. All of this argues against the idea of the new virus having come out of a lab.
Update, June 29, 2021: Please see our June 25 story "The Facts - and Gaps - on the Origin of the Coronavirus" for a detailed examination of the debate over the origin of the pandemic. Editor's note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
Sources

Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) . World Health Organization. Accessed 7 Feb 2020.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) . CDC. Accessed 7 Feb 2020.

Andersen, Kristian. Associate Professor, Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 3 Feb 2020.

Sheahan, Timothy. Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Interview with FactCheck.org. 5 Feb 2020.

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Baseless Conspiracy Theories Claim New Coronavirus Was Bioengineered - FactCheck.org

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Several online stories inaccurately claim that the new coronavirus contains HIV "insertions" and shows signs of being created in a lab. But there is no evidence that the new virus was bioengineered, and every indication it came from an animal.

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Aliens Built the Pyramids in Egypt
Definition: The belief of an invisible being who created life and watch us. Or alternatively a secret organization that rules the world.

Connection:
Ever since the widespread showcasing of Ancient Aliens the television show more people across the world have adopted it as fact. for a specific example they claim that ancient aliens built the pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Many episodes include the underwater temple ruins in Peru, the pyramids in Mexico and a medieval church in France.  When critically thinking about aliens helping in 2589 and 2504 BC, why wouldn't they still be prevalent today. Another alternative would be considering the purpose the aliens have in mind to help the building of the pyramids, without legitimate proof of any of this.

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Ancient Aliens: What are the Pyramids | History

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Thursdays at 10/9c Some ancient alien theorists believe the Great Pyramid was the world's first power plant.

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Lost Tomb of Cleopatra
Definition: Unexplained happening that we cant make sense of.

Connection: One common known unexplained thing is Cleopatra lost tomb. According to the video below number 10 it talks about different theories on where Cleopatra could be or how someone could have found the tomb but kept it a secret and we believe that truly no one knows where the tomb is and that this link connects to Unexplained8 because no one truly knows where Cleopatra is buried.

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Cleopatra's Lost Tomb May Have Been Found!

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Vintage Beauty Ad
Definition: Emotional connection can make ourselves want to believe in something that comforts us. This messes with our views and beliefs.

Connection: According to the ad below, freckles were advertised towards women as being something that is ugly. The definition of Emotional Connection states that it can make ourselves want to believe in something that comforts us, in the ad it clearly connects by telling us that by buying this 69 cent product it will clear our "ugly embarassing freckles", making our skin apparently clear, soft, smooth and beautiful.

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The problem is the coronavirus spreading and becoming a worldwide problem. Coronavirus started off from animals that were eaten in china that had the virus, and the virus spread from human contact with one another and spread from one country to another when infected people flew with the virus. They did not right away shut down airports to prevent it from spreading from china.  This virus was never a problem before which brings us back to it being man made or even being made as a war act.
Recognize Assumption: We are thinking that this is a way to easily kill people off or a way to make people sick. We could find a different way to prevent the spread like make small hospitals to keep everyone in or try out different medications on them to see if anything works. Overall the best way to prevent more deaths and more of the virus spreading around the world is to close down flights and major places like airports to stop infected people from moving from place to place as well confining them in newly made hospitals would help

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Quick Take

Several online stories inaccurately claim that the new coronavirus contains HIV "insertions" and shows signs of being created in a lab. But there is no evidence that the new virus was bioengineered, and every indication it came from an animal.

Full Story

We've seen , but this time many claims are being fueled by an unpublished - and highly dubious - scientific paper. By delving into the genetic or protein sequences of the virus, many of these stories have an aura of scientific credibility. But scientists who study viruses say they are incorrect.

One , subsequently Facebook, inaccurately asserts a link between the new coronavirus, also as 2019 novel coronavirus, or 2019-nCoV, and HIV, largely based on an unpublished manuscript by scientists in India.

The paper, which was posted on the preprint website (pronounced "bio-archive") on Jan. 31, claimed to have identified very short "insertions" in the virus' protein sequence that had an "uncanny similarity" to HIV. scientists , however, immediately pointed out flaws in the analysis, noting that the sequences are so short, they match a bevy of other organisms - and there's no reason to conclude they derive from HIV. The paper was voluntarily by its authors just two days later, with one , "It was not our intention to feed into the conspiracy theories and no such claims are made here."

But the speedy withdrawal wasn't fast enough to prevent some websites from picking up the story and concluding that the new coronavirus had been crafted in a laboratory.

A ZeroHedge with the headline, "Coronavirus Contains 'HIV Insertions,' Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon," pounced on some of the language in the preprint to argue that the scientists were saying the virus might be "man-made." The story also cited tweets from a visiting scientist at Harvard who had commented on the preprint and stated that the scientist's tweets suggested that the virus "might have been genetically engineered for the purposes of a weapon."

Originally published the same day of the preprint, the ZeroHedge article was updated the following day to include tweets from the Harvard visiting scientist, who by then had seen some of the criticisms of the preprint and was now advocating for additional studies to be done before jumping to any conclusions. The Harvard scientist, it should be said, is an epidemiologist, health economist and nutritionist, and does not have expertise in virology or bioinformatics. The bulk of the article, however, remains unchanged.

Separately, a blogger a different bogus analysis - also making the on Facebook - that posits a portion of the new coronavirus genome is similar to part of a viral vector that was used in previous research on the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, virus. Based on this, the author argues that the new virus could have leaked from a Chinese lab working on a vaccine. The SARS virus caused a global in 2003 and is similar but distinct from 2019-nCoV.

Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind InfoWars and the Sandy Hook school shooting false idea that the in 2012 was a hoax, also waded into the coronavirus misinformation pool. his talk show address both of these groundless theories and claim there is evidence that "proves" the new coronavirus was "man-made."

The HIV study, he said, was a "misunderstanding of how to perform these types of analyses" that also cherry-picked its findings. The short proteins the Indian scientists found to be similar to HIV are not from HIV at all, Andersen said, but are the result of the natural evolution of coronaviruses. "Had the authors compared nCoV to related bat viruses (and not just SARS as they did)," he wrote, "they would have realized that the peptides are also present in the bat viruses - and most certainly don't come from HIV."

Only one "insertion" is not fully shared with the bat virus, Bedford explained, and "in no way suggests engineering" since it is consistent with the types of insertions and deletions that happen in coronaviruses. "There is absolutely no evidence for either (1) sequence insertions or (2) their relationship to HIV," he concluded.

The blogger's contention that the new coronavirus may have been engineered using a SARS viral vector, Andersen said, is "just as absurd" as the HIV theory. The vector, he said, was used to understand coronaviruses and develop vaccines - but is different from 2019nCoV.

"While they're similar (like worms and people are similar) there is absolutely no way that nCoV is in any way related," he said. "If one were to look at the two genomes side by side, it's very easy to show that they're obviously not the same - or that one somehow led to the other."

HIV Drugs

As we've just established, there's no connection between HIV and the new coronavirus, but the fact that are using HIV drugs to treat the new coronavirus is included in many of the social media posts to lend credence to the bogus theory.

Many existing antivirals, he said, are HIV medications, so it's natural to turn to those. And there is some precedent for HIV drugs possibly working against coronaviruses.

During the SARS outbreak, for example, scientists performed a drug screen and identified the HIV drug cocktail of lopinavir and ritonavir as having potential antiviral activity against SARS. That drug combo was also associated with better outcomes among a small group of SARS patients, although it was never tested in a clinical trial, so it's hard to say if it was truly effective. It is also currently in a clinical trial in Saudi Arabia against another disease caused by a coronavirus, Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS.

No Signs of Bioengineering

"The genetic data is pointing to this virus coming from a bat reservoir," he said, "not a lab."

And not only are there no HIV "insertions" in the virus, but by looking at the virus' genome, scientists also see zero signs of human tampering.

, the Fred Hutchinson computational biologist, pointed out on Twitter that the virus' genetic differences to its most recent common ancestor are "consistent with differences expected to arise during natural evolution."

An engineered virus, he explained, would likely have a "distorted" amino acid to nucleotide ratio, and also have changes focused in on a "subset of genes." In other words, when engineering occurs, it's usually to bring about a meaningful change to the virus - but there's no evidence of that in the 2019-nCoV genome.

Typically, scientists change nucleotides in a targeted way to create changes in the amino acids they code for. Since amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, that's the way to change the proteins the virus produces.

But as Bedford said, out of all the nucleotide changes, relatively few - around 14% - alter the corresponding amino acid, or about what you would expect in a naturally evolving virus. This ratio also matches that of the bat virus that's found to be the most similar to 2019-nCoV.

Further, when comparing the amino acid changes that do exist, the number of changes in the respective genes in both 2019-nCoV and the bat virus are highly similar. Again, if the virus had been engineered, one might expect many of the changes to cluster in one or two genes, but that's not the case here. All of this argues against the idea of the new virus having come out of a lab.
Update, June 29, 2021: Please see our June 25 story "The Facts - and Gaps - on the Origin of the Coronavirus" for a detailed examination of the debate over the origin of the pandemic. Editor's note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
Sources

Novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) . World Health Organization. Accessed 7 Feb 2020.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) . CDC. Accessed 7 Feb 2020.

Andersen, Kristian. Associate Professor, Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, The Scripps Research Institute. Email sent to FactCheck.org. 3 Feb 2020.

Sheahan, Timothy. Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology, the Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Interview with FactCheck.org. 5 Feb 2020.

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Baseless Conspiracy Theories Claim New Coronavirus Was Bioengineered - FactCheck.org

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Several online stories inaccurately claim that the new coronavirus contains HIV "insertions" and shows signs of being created in a lab. But there is no evidence that the new virus was bioengineered, and every indication it came from an animal.