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> The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. Because it was a conspiracy theory. Newly s

> The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on. Because it was a conspiracy theory. Newly surfaced evidence may point in the direction of the conspiracy hypothesis, but that would be just a coincidence.

zpeti 5y ago
The issue most people rightly have here, is almost all mainstream news outlets said with certainty that it wasn’t a lab leak. That certainty also needs evidence. Or should. Coming to conclusions either way without evidence, when it suits certain anti government narratives, is partisanship.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  You are right. Coming to a conclusion without evidence, is partisanship. That is why scientists spoke of "no evidence" back then: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientis... It was a conspiracy theory, and it may still be, because the WSJ only mentions that lab workers were "ill" and presented symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19, which could be... really anything. The main strain of the flu in 2019 was H1N1. It could have been that. It may not have been. We don't know yet. I don't think there is anything wrong about "mocking" people for peddling conspiracy theories with zero evidence. Let's be honest, even if some of their ideas end up being true, it would have been just a coincidence. It's like arriving to the correct solution to a math problem, but through a completely wrong process.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. Still doesn’t seem like the right thing to do though, especially if we consider ourselves an advanced scientific civilization.
    - manuelabeledo 5y ago
      > Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. I'm going to need a source for that, because that's definitely not how science works. At all. Again, making random assertions with no evidence does not make them right. And of that, there are uncountable examples out there.
      - zpeti 5y ago
        History is littered with people dismissed for out of the ordinary ideas. Galileo, Semmelweis, Heisenberg. Women’s right, abolishing slavery. But even the current mRNA vaccine developers were dismissed for 15-20 years as unimportant.
        manuelabeledo 5y ago
        Only Galileo would be a candidate here. And he was not mocked, he was put on trial for something most academics knew since ancient times. What you call "dismissive", is just reactionary traditionalism. Also, all of these provide evidence to support their claims. > But even the current mRNA vaccine developers were dismissed for 15-20 years as unimportant. This. This is the problem, right here. You believe that mainstream media works like science, and it does not. So when big headlines hit the public opinion with things like "this woman was mocked and now her work on mRNA is the basis of the new vaccines", you take that the academic world actually dismissed those novel ideas. Science does not work like that. And the media like hyperbole. And that hyperbole is what stucks the most in the public memory.
        Turing_Machine 5y ago
        > you take that the academic world actually dismissed those novel ideas. She was denied tenure.
        manuelabeledo 5y ago
        She wasn't. She was denied funding, and for that you can blame the bureaucrats, not the academia. "In 1990 she was offered a tenure track position at the University of Pennsylvania. Around this time, a different group of researchers developed a technique for injecting mice with RNA in such a way that those mice started to produce the proteins encoded by the RNA. [...] After six years of work at the University of Pennsylvania, due in part to a lack of interest from funding agencies in supporting her work, Karikó was demoted from her tenure track position. This type of demotion generally leads to the end of a scientific career. In the same year, she was treated for cancer and her husband encountered a visa problem, leaving him temporarily stuck in Hungary." https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/pioneers-in-science-katalin-kariko/ https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/pioneers-in-science-kata...
adamrezich 5y ago
remember when the word "conspiracy" had any meaning
bart_spoon 5y ago
Almost all of the information supporting a lab-leak has been available for nearly a year. There isn't "newly surfaced evidence", it's people finally starting to take previously surfaced evidence seriously.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  There is also the chance that these lab workers weren't actually ill with COVID-19, but the H1N1 flu. But there is still no way to tell which one. So the evidence is still not there, and this is a poor exercise of journalism.

zpeti 5y ago

The issue most people rightly have here, is almost all mainstream news outlets said with certainty that it wasn’t a lab leak. That certainty also needs evidence. Or should. Coming to conclusions either way without evidence, when it suits certain anti government narratives, is partisanship.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
You are right. Coming to a conclusion without evidence, is partisanship. That is why scientists spoke of "no evidence" back then: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientis... It was a conspiracy theory, and it may still be, because the WSJ only mentions that lab workers were "ill" and presented symptoms similar to those caused by COVID-19, which could be... really anything. The main strain of the flu in 2019 was H1N1. It could have been that. It may not have been. We don't know yet. I don't think there is anything wrong about "mocking" people for peddling conspiracy theories with zero evidence. Let's be honest, even if some of their ideas end up being true, it would have been just a coincidence. It's like arriving to the correct solution to a math problem, but through a completely wrong process.
- zpeti 5y ago
  Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. Still doesn’t seem like the right thing to do though, especially if we consider ourselves an advanced scientific civilization.
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    > Well, luckily for you most big discoveries for humanity were made by people who were mocked, so it didn’t work. I'm going to need a source for that, because that's definitely not how science works. At all. Again, making random assertions with no evidence does not make them right. And of that, there are uncountable examples out there.
    - zpeti 5y ago
      History is littered with people dismissed for out of the ordinary ideas. Galileo, Semmelweis, Heisenberg. Women’s right, abolishing slavery. But even the current mRNA vaccine developers were dismissed for 15-20 years as unimportant.
      - manuelabeledo 5y ago
        Only Galileo would be a candidate here. And he was not mocked, he was put on trial for something most academics knew since ancient times. What you call "dismissive", is just reactionary traditionalism. Also, all of these provide evidence to support their claims. > But even the current mRNA vaccine developers were dismissed for 15-20 years as unimportant. This. This is the problem, right here. You believe that mainstream media works like science, and it does not. So when big headlines hit the public opinion with things like "this woman was mocked and now her work on mRNA is the basis of the new vaccines", you take that the academic world actually dismissed those novel ideas. Science does not work like that. And the media like hyperbole. And that hyperbole is what stucks the most in the public memory.
        Turing_Machine 5y ago
        > you take that the academic world actually dismissed those novel ideas. She was denied tenure.
        manuelabeledo 5y ago
        She wasn't. She was denied funding, and for that you can blame the bureaucrats, not the academia. "In 1990 she was offered a tenure track position at the University of Pennsylvania. Around this time, a different group of researchers developed a technique for injecting mice with RNA in such a way that those mice started to produce the proteins encoded by the RNA. [...] After six years of work at the University of Pennsylvania, due in part to a lack of interest from funding agencies in supporting her work, Karikó was demoted from her tenure track position. This type of demotion generally leads to the end of a scientific career. In the same year, she was treated for cancer and her husband encountered a visa problem, leaving him temporarily stuck in Hungary." https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/pioneers-in-science-katalin-kariko/ https://www.advancedsciencenews.com/pioneers-in-science-kata...

adamrezich 5y ago

remember when the word "conspiracy" had any meaning

bart_spoon 5y ago

Almost all of the information supporting a lab-leak has been available for nearly a year. There isn't "newly surfaced evidence", it's people finally starting to take previously surfaced evidence seriously.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
There is also the chance that these lab workers weren't actually ill with COVID-19, but the H1N1 flu. But there is still no way to tell which one. So the evidence is still not there, and this is a poor exercise of journalism.