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I am too, but so what? > powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place This is unfortunately the world as it is, and has been for dec

I am too, but so what? > powerful actors were preventing a real investigation from taking place This is unfortunately the world as it is, and has been for decades. All we can do is live in it the best we can. These powerful actors have multitudes of reasons to act the way they do, and some of them are even in the public interest. Power corrupts, but power is necessary in a distributed, open society. It's a different power and differently accountable than the power on a totalitarian state. I'd rather live under "open maybe evil, maybe sometimes accountable power" over "total power" any day.

cranberried 4y ago
Your statement on preferring "open maybe evil, maybe sometimes accountable power" holds true for me too. However it is not black-or-white; The powerful could vary in their transparancy. Some things must always be convert, e.g. military operations/strageies, others such as the consequences both good and bad of gain-of-function (GoF) research should be open to the public imo. Powerful actors may believe that the public is not capable of having a measured discussion about gain-of-function research. Seeing Germany close their nuclear power plants does point in that direction. However I am not going to trust some scientist who's career depends on GoF to be impartial either. Any discussion about GoF should realisticly include the cost of covid-19, saying otherwise I would consider effectively lying -- as long as they cannot find a convincing alternative source. Even then GoF research might still be worth it. I have no idea how many lives it has saved. The damage to the trust in public institutions from lying about this continues to be a massive cost on society.