I've updated my July 14 post on covid origins, Have We Learned Anything?, with additional text, footnotes, and links. Rather than do a separate new post, I prefer to keep everything relevant to the discussion in one post. You can find it here.
I've updated my July 14 post on covid origins, Have We Learned Anything?, with additional text, footnotes, and links. Rather than do a separate new post, I prefer to keep everything relevant to the discussion in one post. You can find it here.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2022/08/08/is-the-lab-leak-conspiracy-theory-dead/
ReplyDeleteWhen the likelihood of one possibility is extremely small, does it really justify massive spending?
How much spending and for what?
DeleteI was referring to yet another "a full and transparent investigation into the origins of the pandemic", in particular the notion of a lab leak. Almost all the science supports the theory of natural transmission. With such a low likelihood of there having been a lab leak, the likely return for such an investigation is minimal.
DeleteTheoretically an investigation would not cost a massive amount. I say theoretically, because a full investigation is simply not going to happen as China, which has a great deal of the relevant information, will not allow it. The best we can hope for is the full release of the unredacted materials in the possession of American agencies, and Congress subpoenaing the records of the EcoHealth Alliance and compelling testimony from Peter Daszak. In addition, I am curious whether the US government has a copy of the WIV genomic database deleted in September 2019. Given American funding and its importance I'd anticipate we had mirrored the database - if not, it would be an example of incredible incompetence. None of this would be definitive, but would at least enable a better assessment of the plausibility of a lab leak.
ReplyDeleteI have been an occasional reader over the years of the blogger you linked but in this case he has badly missed the mark. I'll probably add to these comments at some point with examples of where I think he went wrong.
I recently went back to reread the blog you linked and found it even more feeble the second time around. It'd been a while since I'd last read Respectful Insolence, which I remembered as primarily debunking anti-vaxx reporting. I decided then see if the author has since responded to any of the criticisms regarding the two studies he cites, of which there is quite a bit, primarily based up deficiencies in statistical analysis and on the studies acceptance of China government data regarding where and how the pandemic started, and I find nothing. What I do find is constant attacks on anti-Covid vaxxers. I've only skimmed those posts, but find myself mostly agreeing with the author, but I noticed that because he is so fixated on debunking every issue raised, he glides over the few legit ones. He seems to have become obsessed, just like the conspiracists that he's attacking. Some of those pushing the lab-leak theory have adopted very, very weak rationales and have gone done the conspiracy rabbit hole (for example, I sympathize with Brett Weinstein for having been run out of Evergreen by the New Racists, but he's certainly gone off in some odd, and very mistaken, directions in the last couple of years). But Orac is doing the same, ignoring (as with the DEFUSE proposal or the more recent statistical critiques of the studies) or mischaracterizing, to his advantage, the legitimate concerns about a potential lab leak and in his haste to denounce the conspiracy commits his own errors, with which his analysis is replete.
DeleteTo take a couple, he links to an article debunking Nicholas Wade's lab leak hypothesis which includes this statement;"Why is this conspiracy theory? Because the speculation has been investigated by WHO scientists who found no evidence to support it". The article was written in May 2021, and since then WHO has called for a full investigation, including of a potential lab leak, and the China government has refused to cooperate. By the way, more recently the right-wing conspirators at the Washington Post editorial page have called for a full investigation of the lab leak hypothesis based upon the existing evidence and the evidentiary holes that the China government has created by its lack of cooperation.
A second example is Orac's writing, "Indeed the combination of studies was so powerful that it convinced a couple of the scientists doing the studies that lab leak is no longer a viable hypothesis". One of the scientists he cites for being convinced by the 2022 studies is none other than Kristian Anderson, who's been convinced since the February 1, 2020 conference call with Fauci and who's been behind some of the worst of the early publications denouncing the lab leak and been very vocal about it since then.
It's a very shoddy post. At this point, Orac and Brett Weinstein are in the same category.