Geez. Taking the parent post in horrible faith, really unfortunate to see on this platform. All the parent did was point out a few comments from the piece which certainly add a tinge of bias - stating with certainty that Covid was not lab-made for one.

"No voices should have been silenced, no ideas should have been left off the table. Open Data. Open Science. Open honest scientific communication was the way, not censorship. There are a lot of bad ideas that are wrong, bad, or dangerous. But the moment we have the hubris to say we know which ideas they are is the moment we lose our ability to find the truth, to find solutions, the very things that make science beautiful and powerful." - Lex Fridman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rszIyPnBvYc

We live in the ultimate year of censorship. So many have taken part of or defended it. All who have done that have made humanity a little worse, made living in this world for everyone, a little worse. Shame on you.

What's unfortunate to see on this platform is amount of armchair virology experts who reject scientific process.

What’s even more unfortunate is when scientific leaders reject scientific process for political motivations.

Again, it’s a very reasonable theory that the virus was lab-made. Stop taking other people’s reasonable conjecture in the worst faith, it is anti-intellectual.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Again, it's a theory that has so far no basis in science - it's speculations, mostly by people who have no virology background. They maybe even PhD in other biology fields, but having them present their opinions, with no actual data to back it as facts, is as valid as database experts applying their intuition to reason about how to build ML models.

Meanwhile, viruses jumping spices is extremely well document behavior, and COVID like viruses are known to exists in other mammals. Actual data, and Occam's razor point to lab-made virus being invalid theory. Can experts pursue it? Sure, but until they have actual data, presenting it to the general public is click bait fear mongering.

And you also conveniently ignore that OP also had issues with vaccines, which effectiveness have as much backing by science as any theory could possibly have.

Virologist here :

https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-be...

I feel like "unintentionally escaped from a lab that was studying coronaviruses" is a lot different from the conspiracy theory type talk about being maliciously engineered. It's unfortunate that this distinction seems to get lost a lot.

The theory that Covid was naturally occurring is also a theory. A true scientist wouldn’t reject a theory out of hand because the theory calls into question finding and research priorities of the scientists doing the rejecting. A lot of this theory rejection isn’t about science but about CYA.

Evolution is also a theory right?

To reject natural origin of COVID you need a lot of research and hard data. Memos and journalists investigations aren’t that.

Equating man made and natural origin as two equally valid theories is just dishonest.

There are many reasonable theories out there, competing for the explanation of various phenomena.

And then there are those who pick and choose the theories they want to relentlessly push and promote, because they support the deepest, most burning desires coming out of their guts.

calling out stupidity is not censorship. Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private website is not censorship.

discussing 'agenda' is not a neutral comment or a meaningful contribution to discourse on this topic, it is stupidity.

> Removing stupidity from a conversation on a private website is not censorship.

Is this not censorship? It sounds like you're assuming that "censorship" is by definition illegitimate or morally wrong, but I don't think this is inherent to the word (except to the extent that we still live in a generally liberal, pro-speech society). HN removing opinions from its boards seems like it clearly qualifies as censorship, even if you agree with the removal.

Removing “stupidity” on any platform, public or private, is absolutely censorship. And discussing any author bias is absolutely a contribution towards conversation surrounding the authors work.

by this definition of censorship, me asking a random person screaming in my house to please leave is censorship.

Author bias, alternative perspectives, etc. can all be contributions to meaningful discourse when they bring evidence or some meaningful engagement. Simply asserting your truth through circular logic isn't a contribution. It's not because the contribution is about 'bias' its because the contribution is stupid. Same rules apply even if think the person agrees with me. Process and structure trump content.

I'm saying this as the type of person who gets concerned when I see a stupid argument that arrives at the same position I hold, I don't get excited just because it's the same outcome.

> the idea that the universe started from an arbitrarily small size and expanded was once considered stupidity.

So was an idea that it was created by some supernatural being in 7 days. If you present theory without hard data - it's very rightly to call it stupidity.

Scientific process isn't free pass to throw random theories, without data backing them.

If by "agenda" you mean this:

> dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it’s not brought under control soon through vaccination

then I propose a different target for the head-check.

I wasn't one of the flaggers, but the comment was pretty insubstantial and somewhat inflammatory; I am 0 percent surprised it got flagged.

Edit: every article put on the internet has an agenda. From pushing for vaccines to making the author money to spreading valuable technical information. "Having an agenda" is not cause to not take an article seriously.

If a scientist comes out with a research finding, and you then find out X Corp was backing them, you’d change your confidence on the trustworthiness of the research done. Similar to any op-ed, understanding bias is valuable, and calling out bias with good reasons is useful for the unaware.

Sure. That isn't what the parent-most comment was doing, though. There was no analysis - just blanket dismissal.