[fxj]

The guy is not known for junk science:

Professor Hendrik Streeck, director of the Institute of Virology at the University Hospital in Bonn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Streeck

Streeck studied medicine at the Charite University, Berlin and obtained his PhD from the University of Bonn, which he performed part-time at the Partners AIDS Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

After his graduation Streeck started to work as a postdoctoral fellow at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. In 2009 he was promoted to Instructor in Medicine and in 2011 to Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. In September 2012 he was recruited to the United States Military HIV Research Program, Bethesda, where he became the Chief of the Cellular Immunology Section as well as Assistant Professor at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and adjunct faculty of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University.[3] In 2015 he became the Chair for Medical Biology at the University Duisburg-Essen and founded the Institute for HIV Research in the same year,[4][5][6][7] though he still maintains the status of "visiting scientist" with the US Military HIV Research Program.

In 2018 Streeck was appointed to the advisory board of the German AIDS Foundation (Deutsche AIDS Stiftung).[8] In April 2020, he was appointed by Minister-President Armin Laschet of North Rhine-Westphalia to a 12-member expert group to advise on economic and social consequences of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Germany.[9]

Coronavirus research

In early April 2020, Streeck and his team reported that they had "carried out an intensive search of the home of a family infected with the coronavirus but found no trace of it on surfaces."[18]

“We did not find any live virus on any surface. Not on cellphones, not on taps, not on doorknobs.”

[fsh]

There are some red flags about this study though. German press is reporting that a PR firm founded by the notorious yellow-paper journalist Kai Diekmann is involved in publicizing the results. Diekmann was recently involved in a scandal where researchers in Heidelberg wrongly claimed to have developed a blood test for breast cancer. Streeck appears to be a personal friend of one of the other founders of the company. In any case, using a PR agency is pretty much unheard of for a German research institute.

[abduhl]

So it's treason by association then?

[gamblor956]

I'm reminded of that time a Nobel prize winner used the "authority" he generated from winning the Noble prize to convince everyone that Vitamin C was a magical cure-all for all disease.

Being an amazing HIV researcher does not mean Streeck has an appropriate background in coronaviruses to be an authority in that field, especially given that his team has (a) found outlier results at odds with every other study thus far published and (b) is making a broad policy pronouncement based on studying a single family's household without considering confounding factors, like say the family cleaning the house before the researchers visited.

[klingonopera]

> "outlier results at odds with every other study thus far published"

...which would be? AFAIK, there aren't any comparable studies to date, which is why there was such a buzz about it.

[icedchai]

This is comforting, but I'd rather still be cautious. I wear gloves when I go shopping. I wash my hands frequently anyway, and now I wash them even more. Worst case, I've wasted some time.

[endorphone]

"The guy is not known for junk science"

Junk science can come from people not known for junk science. And in the end we rack it up to a technical fault (e.g. a test for coronavirus antibodies that cannot distinguish between many of the several other coronavirus infections that spread during the winter), the way participants were enrolled, etc. That's why there is a peer review process.

And this study bizarrely was released with a press conference and a press conference, yet perilously little actual methodology or useful information for the scientific community to critique. Oh and with a professional PR firm. And it uses this to promote significant changes in public policy! (e.g. relax the restrictions because our two page summary gives some conclusions that are entirely contrary to the entire world of experts)

It's all extraordinarily weird.

And again, it has only made waves online. Among the medical professionals, virologists, etc...crickets.

Just to be clear, HN would normally laugh nonsense like this off the site -- a PR "study" that has zero peer review, that goes against all conventional wisdom, that is not acknowledged or credited by any other expert in the field. Has this site gone absolutely stupid?

[rootusrootus]

> Has this site gone absolutely stupid?

Kinda. A lot of people are panicking, even on HN, and this also draws out a lot of opposition. It's becoming a polarized topic like everything else.

[xenonite]

Adding to that, I don’t understand why your comment is being downvoted.