I do think many people who write on this topic have a conscious or unconscious bias in favor of the natural origin hypotehsis. You provided one example of such

I do think many people who write on this topic have a conscious or unconscious bias in favor of the natural origin hypotehsis. You provided one example of such bias. Here's a couple more: - Chinese nationalists (although they rarely author publications outside of China) - people who expressed strong opinion on this matter a year ago (based on the information they had then), and now don't like to admit they were wrong even in the face of new evidence. - people who think the lab origin hypothesis is an example of anti-Chinese racism, and therefore take the opposite the side to fight racism. On the other hand, I would argue that even more people who write on this topic outside of China are biased in favor of the lab origin hypothesis. This is because many groups of people would (consciously or subconsciously) like to use this opportunity to blame the Beijing government for this huge disaster. Examples: - those who dislike the communist ideology (e.g., those whose loved ones died to wars with the communists, or those who just dislike authoritarianism on general principles) - those of China's neighbors who dislike the Beijing government's aggressive policy towards them (India, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam) - those who dislike the Chinese in general, for racist reasons - Americans who don't want to see China surpass the US in global power These biases are present even among journalists and scientists, since many of them cannot (or don't even bother trying to) separate their feelings as regular people from their role as unbiased reporters or researchers. Overall, this means it's very hard to take seriously anything written on this topic. Perhaps I would tend to trust: - An expert who has been consistently friendly to Bejing but argues in favor of the lab origin hypothesis; or - An expert who has been consistently unfriendly to Beijing but argues in favor the natural origin hypothesis. One of the rare examples of such people is Jeffrey Sachs, who chairs the Lancet Covid-19 origins commission. He has been at least somewhat friendly to Beijing (well as friendly as you can be in the West without committing a professional suicide). And yet, he says that there's at least enough evidence that both hypotheses are worth pursuing (that is, that it's not 100% obvious that it was a natural origin). Unfortunately, he's not an expert on this topic (he's an economist). Still, I would follow his comments with interest. https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/finding-the-origins-of-covid19-by-jeffrey-d-sachs-2021-06?barrier=accesspaylog https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/finding-the-origin...