By my reading, the authors say this was done with subterfuge to try and hide who did it. It probably is possible to come to a solid conclusion about whether th

By my reading, the authors say this was done with subterfuge to try and hide who did it. It probably is possible to come to a solid conclusion about whether the virus was engineered or not by looking at the genome (I certainly don't have the technical skills to judge this article). But assuming it was indeed engineered, determining intention (e.g. made to look like it was not engineered, or obfuscating who engineered it) is another level of extraordinary. There would be so many ways to misread the data as evidence of subterfuge, when maybe what you're seeing is just how they routed around technical problems.