In any case, if the hypothesis turns out correct, the important question is not "who is to blame", it's "how exactly did this happen" and "following a detailed and public risk/benefit analysis, should we allow this kind of research to continue"
10 LET A = 0
20 PRINT "Scientists: Look there is no evidence of a lab leak"
30 PRINT "Journalists: What about" HYPOTHETICAL$(A)
40 PRINT "Scientists: that very unlikely"
50 PRINT "Journalists: So there is a chance!"
60 A = A + 1
70 GOTO 10 65 REM ?
70 GOTO 20That a narrative becomes attached to by a particular ideology does not make the narrative ideological itself.
uhm, you mean something like "this virus is 120% zoonotic and any suggestion otherwise is racist"
Also in this case the GoF research was partly US funded and involved US researchers, so it can’t be blamed exclusively on China. If the lab leak hypothesis is true there will be lots of egg on lots of faces.
The methods of science and peer review and open debate only work when a majority of the participants are good faith disinterested truth seekers. When bad faith motivated reasoners start to crowd out the former, you end up with something akin to a show-trial. The process is technically followed by the result is a fraud.
There is so much political interest in the lab leak question that I think good faith scientists are strongly outnumbered. There's a truth value to the lab leak question, but I can't possibly expect to know it in this environment. Anyone making a claim to the contrary is a bullshitter.
I know the seafood theory is bullshit nationalistic motivated reasoning. But I don't know how to refute the actual paper per se. I'm not a biologist. If for patriotic reasons I were predisposed to believe the sea food theory, and both scientists and the media were telling me the seafood theory is true, I might never notice how blatantly bullshit it is. Using the format of an academic article makes bullshit highly non-obvious.
So the lab leak theory. We have this thing that is very convenient to people predisposed to believe certain 'patriotic' things. The media seems to be picking it up out of no where for 'reasons that are surely free of agenda'. Some very academic looking articles have been published promoting the theory. If the 'science' going on here is actually just non-obvious bullshit mixed with nationalistic motivated reasoning, will I recognize it? Will you?
1. https://europepmc.org/article/PPR/PPR241540
Some context: https://www.firstpost.com/health/in-preprint-of-new-research...