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41 Science Professionals Decry Harms and Mistrust Caused By COVID Lab Leak Claim (yahoo.com) 303

In 1999 Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik co-authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Now a business columnist for the Times, this week he covers new pushback on the COVID lab leak claim: Here's an indisputable fact about the theory that COVID originated in a laboratory: Most Americans believe it to be true. That's important for several reasons. One is that evidence to support the theory is nonexistent.

Another is that the claim itself has fomented a surge of attacks on science and scientists that threatens to drive promising researchers out of the crucial field of pandemic epidemiology. That concern was aired in a commentary by 41 biologists, immunologists, virologists and physicians published Aug. 1 in the Journal of Virology. The journal probably isn't in the libraries of ordinary readers, but the article's prose is commendably clear and its conclusions eye-opening. "The lab leak narrative fuels mistrust in science and public health infrastructures," the authors observe. "Scientists and public health professionals stand between us and pandemic pathogens; these individuals are essential for anticipating, discovering, and mitigating future pandemic threats. Yet, scientists and public health professionals have been harmed and their institutions have been damaged by the skewed public and political opinions stirred by continued promotion of the lab leak hypothesis in the absence of evidence...."

[O]ne can't advance the lab leak theory without positing a vast conspiracy encompassing scientists in China and the U.S., and Chinese and U.S. government officials. How else could all the evidence of a laboratory event that resulted in more than 7 million deaths worldwide be kept entirely suppressed for nearly five years... "Validating the lab leak hypothesis requires intelligence evidence that the WIV possessed or carried out work on a SARS-CoV-2 precursor virus prior to the pandemic," the Virology paper asserts. "Neither the scientific community nor multiple western intelligence agencies have found such evidence." Despite that, "the lab leak hypothesis receives persistent attention in the media, often without acknowledgment of the more solid evidence supporting zoonotic emergence," the paper says...

I've written before about the smears, physical harassment and baseless accusations of fraud and other wrongdoing that lab leak propagandists have visited upon scientists whose work has challenged their claims; similar attacks have targeted experts who have worked to debunk other anti-science narratives, including those about global warming and vaccines... What's notable about the Virology paper is that it represents a comprehensive and long-overdue pushback by the scientific community against such behavior. More to the point, it focuses on the consequences for public health and the scientific mission from the rise of anti-science propaganda... "Scientists have withdrawn from social media platforms, rejected opportunities to speak in public, and taken increased safety measures to protect themselves and their families," the authors report. "Some have even diverted their work to less controversial and less timely topics. We now see a long-term risk of having fewer experts engaged in work that may help thwart future pandemics...."

Thanks in part to social media, anti-science has become more virulent and widespread, the Virology authors write.

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41 Science Professionals Decry Harms and Mistrust Caused By COVID Lab Leak Claim

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  • Proverb (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @02:42AM (#64715086) Homepage

    "Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Gavino ( 560149 )
      That's highly probable in communist China. At least their organs and bone mass would not have gone to waste.
    • The virologists did want to create a virus like covid. That is part of their research, and actually engineering viruses is really interesting. We need to make sure it's done safely, though.
  • No (Score:2, Insightful)

    The lab leak narrative fuels mistrust in science and public health infrastructures

    For me it's not about "mistrust", it's about accountability and safety. And oh boy I remember a lot of letters signed by multiple "experts" in the field that have turned out to be either a falsehood or an extreme exaggeration, including the latest one about "LLMs being unsafe because they would inevitably lead to AGI and our imminent demise as a species because of AI overlords" that has been thoroughly debunked [neurosciencenews.com] earlier this we

  • by joeblog ( 2655375 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @03:06AM (#64715120) Homepage
    The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. -- Alberto Brandolini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by hey00 ( 5046921 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @03:23AM (#64715144)

    If the lab leak is real, it doesn't need a massive conspiracy to hide it. China can and does lie and hide truth and control information on a massive scale every day of the week.

    The US has a history of not being that much better. And was funding research there. France is in on it too as they helped a lot in the creation of the lab (and believed China didn't have the skills to build it).

    And that lab was studying cirona viruses from bats.

    And lab leaks have happened multiple times in the past.

    A lab leak that caused that much deaths would have awful consequences on public trust globally, not only against China.

    If it was really a lab leak, it wouldn't be surprising for governments to just close their eyes and let China continue to hide information.

    What's harming trust even more imho is how some institutions and scientists are completely dismissing that hypothesis without much convincing evidence.

    Sometime, "I don't know" is the best answer in science.

    • by Poorcku ( 831174 )
      It also explains the initial hardcore reaction of world governments. If this thing was a weapon, then the population wide outcomes can be horrendous.
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      That's it; double down on baseless conspiracy theories & keep taking the Ivermectin & injecting bleach. The truth is out there!
      • What don't you understand in "sometimes, 'I don't know' is the best answer"?

        • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @08:48AM (#64715638)
          The point is that the scientists are doing their best to keep us well-informed while the media are doing their best to sell advertising, which also means distorting & sensationalising the truth & ultimately just lying to the public, for which they're not held accountable. Likewise, if your president tells you to take Ivermectin & inject bleach, he should also be held accountable for the harm he's caused.
          • by bolek_b ( 246528 )
            Considering how you repeat lies about "injecting bleach" [Snopes: "... the transcript of the briefing clarifies that while Trump's remarks were erroneous and confusing, he did not at any point instruct people to inject disinfectants or any other substances (including bleach) into their bodies."], I am not surprised by the naive view of scientists and their supposedly best intentions. Some scientists, who tried to publish their votum separatum, were dehonested and literally destroyed (Robert W. Malone, J. Bh
    • by gdshaw ( 1015745 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @04:59AM (#64715242) Homepage

      Not only that, there is abundant evidence of a cover-up. The only question is whether it was a cover-up because there was something to hide, or just routine operating procedure for the authorities in that country.

      If they had claimed that a lab leak was unproven, or that another explanation was more likely, then that would have been a respectable opinion. Claiming that evidence is non-existant makes them look just as unhinged as the conspiracy theorists on the other side, and does a huge disservice to honest enquiry by providing an easy target to disprove.

    • Away from the actual problem.

      The overwhelming consensus is that it came out of the wet markets combined with the slash and burn forest policies like the epidemiologists have been warning us about for decades.

      There's two problems politically with that narrative.

      For the Chinese they want to keep doing the slash and burn and keep the wet markets running because that's what drives their rural economies and without those they're going to have major social problems. So they would like very much for you
  • I don't have an opinion one way or the other. Wet market? Lab leak? It's hard for anyone not involved to know.

    However,

    can't advance the lab leak theory without positing a vast conspiracy encompassing scientists"

    is nonsense. There is no dispute that the lab worked with corona viruses. They will have created many different varieties, experimenting to see what they could do with the virus. If someone, somewhere, screwed up and released a sample? (a) They might have done so without even realizing it - just a

    • by evanh ( 627108 )

      A screw-up is not the conspiracy. The conspiracy is all the imagined lies ... and therefore the pandemic was by design.

      • The conspiracy, if it was a leak, is hiding the real source, whether it was an accidental leak or a natural virus or a rogue scientist going twelve monkeys with an engineered super virus.

        One fact that is clear is that China has been hiding information, lying, and trying to blame everyone else since the beginning of the pandemic.

        But considering this is business as usual for the ccp, there's no way we can know if that was an attempt at covering a leak or just censorship to not look bad internationally for hav

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by evanh ( 627108 )

      Just to reiterate. The lab-leak POV is only posited because of a desire for a conspiracy. To make a blame game.

    • by dirk ( 87083 )

      And this is what keeps the conspiracy going. Yes, it is not unbelievable. Yes, it could happen. But there is no evidence it DID happen. It is basically impossible to definitely rule out a could. Aliens COULD have come down and delivered the virus. You can't rule it out and definitively prove it didn't happen unless you can 100% prove what did happen (and even then, some people will still disbelieve). But the evidence we have also also in no way shows that it is even likely that it did happen. Something bein

      • And this is what keeps the conspiracy going. [...] Something being able to happen is entirely different that is actually having happened, and that is the conspiracy.

        The media and others keep claiming the lab leak is the least credible of theories, but there is no smoking pangolin or bat, and yet we are expected to believe that the wet market theory is the most credible. The lab has had leaks before, but we are expected to believe that it is not credible that they have had leaks again. THOSE are the reasons why the lab leak conspiracy keeps going, they are treating the whole world like a bunch of idiots for suggesting that something which happened before because the lab

        • by evanh ( 627108 )

          Making any accusation without evidence is the problem.

          BTW: The viral DNA traces do evidence the market. Obviously not definitively though.

          • Making any accusation without evidence is the problem.

            Yes, I agree that's a problem.

            BTW: The viral DNA traces do evidence the market. Obviously not definitively though.

            Right, the wet market remains a viable theory. But since they were experimenting with coronaviruses at the lab, and the lab has had problems in the past, it also remains a viable theory. Anyone claiming to be able to prove either theory has a steep hill to climb — and that's what it would require to disprove the other.

            If China had been more forthcoming when first asked for the information that would have allowed us to evaluate the chance that the infection spread from a l

    • by piojo ( 995934 )

      I don't have an opinion one way or the other. Wet market? Lab leak? It's hard for anyone not involved to know.

      Yep. I read a summary (by a person smarter than me) of a debate between people smarter than me about the evidence for and against the possibility of COVID being leaked by a lab (contrasted with zoonotic origins). I'm not the type to need to believe I have the one true answer, but a major takeaway is that a bunch of unlikely things would have had to happen for the popular narrative to be responsible for COVID, or for it to be a lab leak. It's not clear. In other words, if you blithely assert that the cause o

  • Seems to me that the problem is the behavior. Not the fact that people are entertaining a lab leak hypothesis. But that they are assholes. I think the proximity of Wuhan Institute of Virology to the outbreak locus, and the type of research they were doing there is just too much coincidence for some people to resist. But if you feel the need to stomp people all the way into the ground when they comment on it, so be it.
  • by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @03:43AM (#64715176)

    It's valid. It's the same reason you should start with when evaluating any conspiracy. If the number of participants that have to remain silent for the theory to remain viable starts to number in the hundreds, forget it. Especially if it's a government conspiracy. The US government couldn't keep one cigar incident in the white house quiet.

    • So by your logic Chernobyl never actually happened, and was never covered up by the USSR.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        Yeah, that nuclear disaster that nobody's ever heard of, right? There aren't detailed accounts of what happened, how it happened, who was responsible, & estimates of how many people have been effected, right?
  • ... when you push too hard, e.g. pretending that the Chinese government was fully open and honest. They absolutely were not [house.gov]. In fact, I believe they're still trying to push the nonsense conspiracy theory that COVID actually originated in the US and arrived in China through frozen seafood. This behavior is [nytimes.com] par for the course for them [politico.com]. Even after a WHO report that was largely pro-zoonosis, China still refused lab audits [apnews.com]. China is still playing fast and loose even with when the first infection cases occurred [theguardian.com]

    • by Rei ( 128717 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @03:54AM (#64715192) Homepage

      Just to elaborate more on China, from the above BMJ article:

      An initial report from a WHO team sent to Wuhan struck many observers as premature in stating that a laboratory leak origin was “extremely unlikely.”2 That conclusion was criticised by WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said on 15 July that there had been a “premature push” to rule out the leak theory.

      “I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” Tedros said. “It’s common.” He told reporters that WHO was “asking China to be transparent, open and to cooperate, especially on the information, [the] raw data that we asked for in the early days of the pandemic.”

      Records of meetings at the Geneva agency in the pandemic’s first days, obtained by the Associated Press last year, suggest that WHO leaders’ early praise of Chinese transparency was an effort to coax more information from the regime, while among themselves they expressed frustration at its secrecy.

      Emergencies director Michael Ryan, who leads WHO’s covid-19 response, privately compared China’s behaviour unfavourably to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s transparency over Ebola virus disease and noted that China had also delayed the release of vital information during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003.3

      China’s government initially hoped that the pandemic would boost China’s reputation as it provided the developing world with cheap vaccines and showcased its own tight infection control. But a recent poll in several countries showed that China’s public image has taken a hit.4 Chinese vaccines, meanwhile, have been troubled by slow deliveries and limited efficacy.

      A Chinese official last week dismissed WHO’s plan for a second phase to its Wuhan investigation. “It is impossible for us to accept such an origin tracing plan,” said Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, suggesting that WHO should instead investigate the United States. China’s government has lent support to a conspiracy theory that blames the pandemic on the US military.5

      “Their position is irresponsible and, frankly, dangerous,” the White House said in response. “This is about saving lives in the future, and it’s not a time to be stonewalling.”

      • A Chinese official last week dismissed WHO’s plan for a second phase to its Wuhan investigation. “It is impossible for us to accept such an origin tracing plan,” said Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, suggesting that WHO should instead investigate the United States.

        That sounds a little irresponsible, but the lab work in Wuhan was a joint project funded by the US, so it's reasonable to ask for investigating the US.

    • by Slayer ( 6656 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @05:00AM (#64715244)

      I fully agree with all of your statements, and would also like to add another source [nytimes.com] (non-paywalled source here [archive.is]) to back up your claims. The fact, that such opinion pieces still make it into NY Times in the year 2024, tells me, that the lab leak theory is not some QAnon type hogwash peddled by Idiotocrats.

      If these "41 scientists" openly deny all serious discussions along those lines, if they also falsely portrait conclusions drawn by the intelligence community, then we're not looking at "41 scientists" but at "41 blatant liers", whos names should be noted for future reference. This piece certainly did a massive disservice to honest and serious science.

    • Yeah well, pretty much right wing narrowmindedness. You find out part of what happened because your anti-China paranoia.
      Ebright very explicitly blames both the US and China, you only look at the China part. It was an NIH project and 'Defuse', the program to manipulate the spike protein was theirs. They just have a practice to do all the dangerous work outside US boundaries.

      Jeffrey Sachs headed the Lancet investigation and disbanded the team when he found everyone had a hidden agenda and was linked to the NI

      • More accurately, Defuse was a 2018 Ecohealth proposal to Darpa, NIH funded it.
        It proposed the Furin cleavage approach to sars.

      • Jeffrey Sachs summarizes here:
        https://www.commondreams.org/o... [commondreams.org]

      • What you say doesn't contradict what the guy above said. In the contrary, the west having ties to the WIV and part of the scientific community having an interest in it not being a lab leak makes it even more plausible that the west keeps his eyes closed and doesn't protest much that China is hiding information.

        • Indeed as I point out in my first sentence I am not contradicting him. I'm saying he is predictably narrowminded in what he is looking at causing him to miss out on a very large factor, US involvement. US role in the cover up is also way larger than Chinese involvement.

  • Now that there's no longer consequences for media companies (Facebook, Xitter, Tiktok, etc.) to lie & spread harmful misinformation & disinformation, they're free to make all the profits they like from doing it. Apparently, it's rather lucrative as it was, for example, back in Joseph Pulitzer's & William Randolph Hearst's day in New York in the 1890s. Freedom! & may the biggest liars win!
  • by Aviation Pete ( 252403 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @06:19AM (#64715322)
    So the author claims to defend honest science.

    Citation: "The lab leak narrative fuels mistrust in science and public health infrastructures," the authors observe. "Scientists and public health professionals stand between us and pandemic pathogens; these individuals are essential for anticipating, discovering, and mitigating future pandemic threats. Yet, scientists and public health professionals have been harmed and their institutions have been damaged by the skewed public and political opinions stirred by continued promotion of the lab leak hypothesis in the absence of evidence...."

    Read: Honest scientists did not cause a lab leak because that would be bad for their reputation. The lab leak must be an irresponsible lie.

    This is along the lines of pseudoscience which claims to support equality of the sexes, diversity and all other woke wishful thinking.

    Wouldn't it be more honest if we just admit that scientists are people and people screw up sometimes? And be honest about scientifically produced results instead of filtering and massaging them until they fit our desired narrative?

    But that would require a solid moral fundation ...

  • In 20 years, they'll say it was a Mandela Effect.
  • Here's an indisputable fact ... Most Americans believe it to be true.

    Polls are eminently disputable. Both of the polls cited in the article are a year old, so may not reflect whatever the vogue thinking is today about the likelihood of the lab theory... and both polls had a strong political split (repubs much more likely to believe it than demos), lending both to the sway of politics in what people think, and -- more generally -- that polls get skewed by the set of people likely to pick up the phone and talk to a pollster.

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @06:52AM (#64715366) Journal

    ... is it "anti-science" to think that "gain of function" research in a class of viruses, super close to ground zero of the brand new virus outbreak, just might be related? (In freakin' China, land of the fast and loose safety protocols, and massive government coverups, no less.)

  • Then why illegally fund an off shore gain of function research lab in Wuhan researching the corona virus? And lie about it.. Let's assume it did not come from that lab.. You blame other people for the mistrust?
  • We're going to completely ignore the insults hurled anyone's way when they didn't "trust the science" that was different than yesterday's science we were also supposed to trust, and shame on you for trying to close the gap? Come on...scientists are distrusted because they were all trying to keep their jobs running a PR campaign instead of being scientists.
    • You have mixed up science and scientists with how science and a scientist's work get reported in popular news media.

      Scientists who receive public money are usually obliged to give interviews. Having studied science rather than public relations, they're sometimes not great interview subjects. And those interviews are generally conducted by news organizations that take detailed, thoughtful answers and reduce them to a 15 second sound bite that can be understood by an adult who would struggle to pass a Grade

  • Why not? (Score:4, Informative)

    by 50000BTU_barbecue ( 588132 ) on Sunday August 18, 2024 @08:35AM (#64715616) Journal

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]

    It. Happens. All. The. Time.

    Maybe thd "concerned" scientists should learn to communicate better and make a difference between words like leak, originate, designed, etc

  • So what are we calling this now...

    "RE-Bunking"?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 19, 2024 @04:17AM (#64717454)
    The lab leak is the most probable origin of COVID-19. This is apparent to anyone that is not completely ideologically captured, and anyone who is not still blindly placing their trust into government organizations that have lied over and over and over again. There is plenty of evidence that the virus came from the lab. And anyone with a shred of common sense not blinded by ideology knows it came from the lab. There's been no meaningful investigation into it because the US funded the coronavirus research through the Eco Health Alliance, and Peter Daszak, the head of the Eco Health Alliance, was one of the stooges tasked to investigate the lab leak theory. There will never be a meaningful investigation into it because both the US and China are trying to cover up the most lethal scandal in world history. Enough with the ideological horse shit trying to run cover for these corrupt evil institutions and grifters.

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