> It's not like a lab leak is an extremely unlikely possibility at all.

The tweet was talking about the virus being engineered in a lab, not the possibility it escaped from a lab. Their opinion on the possibility of lab leak seems [1] quite reasonable to me - they believe it's possible but unlikely, and link to more info.

> You should rather check who is funding the people who are making certain statements like that.

Sure - do you have more info on his sources of grants etc?

[1] https://twitter.com/macroliter/status/1391777097434152963

What’s the difference between gain of function research and engineering? My understanding is that gain of function research accelerates the natural selection process to intentionally produce i.e. engineer desired mutations, like the capability of infecting human cells. Seems like a distinction without a difference.

Recently there was an article about software engineering where the (apparently non-technical) author defined colloquial phrases such as "to engineer an outcome" as to jerry-rig and generally do the opposite of any scientifically-principled process. I think the onus should be on the researchers to use clearer technical jargon or else it creates this kind of false dichotomy where a very narrow claim is used to imply much more. Frankly I think exploiting vagueness of words like that is sometimes intended, especially in titles/headlines. The careful technical interpretation is for CYA, while the broad colloquial interpretation is for social/political points and agendas.

The analogy isn't really working, but the core is valid nonetheless: when an idea has few valid examiners and thousands of nutjob followers and they all want to talk to you, perhaps the latter even more than the former, then you'll eventually accept the risk of perhaps missing out on one of the few gems rather than suffering through the endless repetitions of all the others.