> I find quotes like this uninteresting, because it's also exactly the sort of thing you would say if you were trying to cover up such a mistake. It carries no

> I find quotes like this uninteresting, because it's also exactly the sort of thing you would say if you were trying to cover up such a mistake. It carries no information. It carries a fair bit of information, when you consider that Shi is not really free to say what she wants. She has to say what they want her to say. That is a carefully crafted state-sponsored message, with all that entails. It's the Chinese state making a denial with the smallest surface area they can make, which is kind of unusual. But at any rate, Baker's point in context is not that Shi is engaging in a coverup. Nor is his point that until she said that nobody thought to look, or that it gives permission to do so. His point is not about Chinese science at all, so much as about Western science journalism. He's saying to other journalists, look, you can't just breezily let the world's science contributors dismiss this as fantasy along with the bioweapons nonsense, or let anyone shut it down as taboo. (When this article was written, this was dismissed by really most of the science-journalism complex as wild speculation.) He means, if Shi is saying that, it's a legitimate inquiry and it specifically invites that inquiry.