[emilgouliev]

“When HIV/AIDS emerged in the 1980s, it was alleged, with a little Soviet help, that the virus had been developed in an American lab. Between Washington’s inaction on the epidemic and its sordid past of shady experiments, proponents said the theory couldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

After many early cases of tick-borne Lyme disease were first identified around Long Island Sound, it was deemed too much of a coincidence that the U.S. military’s Plum Island animal research lab sat on an island in the sound itself.

When SARS emerged in 2003, so did fears of the severe acute respiratory syndrome’s unnatural origin. “It’s a very unusual outbreak,” bioweapons expert Ken Alibek told the New York Times at the time. “It’s hard to say whether it’s deliberate or natural.” One Russian scientist posited that “the propagation of the atypical pneumonia may well be caused by a leak of a combat virus grown in Asian bacteriological weapons labs.”

And in recent years, efforts to eradicate Ebola have been hobbled by attacks on health care workers motivated, at least in part, by a belief that the virus is man-made.”

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/06/15/lab-leak-theory-doesnt-...

This literally happens every goddamn time. Natural explanation is simpler.

[jeegsy]

> This literally happens every goddamn time. Natural explanation is simpler.

NO it doesn't. Just because some theories LATER turned out to be wrong does not mean that we automatically dismissing this or that theory. It really doesn't matter if the "lab leak theory" is later on definitively discredited. To me thats not the point. The point is whether or not there was any justification for not only ignoring but actively removing it from discourse urgently as was done at a time when no one knew anything for certain.

[whydoyoucare]

Agreed - dismissing the lab-leak theory early on without conclusive evidence either way was certainly suspicious.

Any scientist worth his/her salt shouldn't dismiss any theory outright without having hard data to back it up.

[mbauman]

There are two things going on here:

- There's strong evidence that it's not bioengineered; scientists used very strong and convincing language here.

- There was initially hope of finding the zoonotic reservoir; scientists used couched language here to subtly detangle a natural virus vs. a natural virus that had adapted to passage in cell culture in a lab, and had priors assuming a zoonotic source would be found.

Guess which language journalists glommed onto.

[baja_blast]

Virologists have a bias against the lab leak theory because if true it would threaten their careers. If it's natural on the other hand they get a boost in funding.

It makes sense they are so against the idea, no one wants to be associated with/partially responsible for the death of 4 million + people worldwide, nor do they want to have their careers ruined.

[hamilyon2]

It is not that lab leaks in general are unheard of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

[derbOac]

So, in those cases I would say even though they are conspiratorial, I'd hope someone would be looking into those possibilities at least to some extent if they're even marginally possible. The nature of these things is when conspiracies are real, they're often made to look like something else, and to make people who see them look crazy.

The other thing is that this case seems different? It's not some vague accusation based on some xenophobic idea of "The Other" or a geopolitical adversary, or a threatening location -- for instance, a US military rival, or a military base -- but rather a large lab specifically focused on experimental virology research. Even more specifically, it's a lab that has been involved in genetically manipulating closely related viruses to be more virulent. There's been suspicious coverup activity by multiple parties, which in itself is not evidence, but I think raises some "worthy of investigation" rationale, and also has been a serious ethical problem in itself regardless of the actual SARS-CoV-2 origin.

I guess in short, yes, there's always conspiracy theories. But this time is different. I don't really see this situation as comparable to other situations, because the evidence justifying serious consideration is so specific.

Personally, I think the train has left the station on ever figuring out what really was the source. This delay in itself seems suspicious to me but I don't know that I'll ever really feel confident about any particular explanation.

As for "simpler", I think that depends on your subjective opinion. I personally think that the perspective that the "natural explanation" is simpler is naive, and underestimates human behavior, especially in our time.

Take Ebola: is it really irrational for non-white, non-Euroamericans to be suspicious of health care workers given, for instance, what happened at Tuskegee and in the search for Osama Bin Laden? There's a reasonable argument that it is irrational, but also a reasonable argument it's not irrational. Turn it around. What's simpler?

[goldenkey]

You want to use a razor to shave a bear. Simplicity is not enough to favor a belief model. Machine Learning has shown us that large complex models can perform much better at providing the ground truths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_razor

Razor's aren't scientifically rigorous theorems. Feel free to use them but don't argue by them in a public forum, it's disingenuous to truth.

[morpheos137]

Pretty good point. People resort to occams razor as if it is a fundamental constant of nature valid in all cases. Occams razor has heuristic value not probitive value.