[mikeyouse]

Of course there's the possibility - but the probability surely changes if the "market right next to the research lab" actually turns out to be a 20-minute drive away, no?

For people in the Bay Area, this is roughly equivalent distance-wise to a conspiracy theory about an outbreak at Twitter's HQ started by an "adjacent" lab in the Upper Mission that actually turned out to be in Jack London Square in Oakland instead.

[arisAlexis]

Again, bayesian priors. If there are only 4 labs worldwide messing with exactly these viruses, the combinatorics of this happening 20km from one of those 4 is infitesimal.

[mikeyouse]

I'm bored of this debate that happens every time one of these charlatans releases a paper that grabs a bunch of headlines and is disproven two days later (as already has happened with the original in this thread).

But "This happening" needs to be defined for Bayes to be of any use. State clearly what you think happened and it can be judged, because as has been proven over and over again, the virus is of natural origin. So the proximity to a lab studying Coronaviruses isn't nearly as interesting given China's history with these viruses.

This is long but in my opinion, worth reading regarding the Bayesian probabilities that actually matter here: https://protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/natures-neglected-g...

[arisAlexis]

See how your wording is super biased? "Charlatans"

[mikeyouse]

What would you call non-virologists writing virology papers, releasing them as non-reviewed preprints with a huge PR push and then weeks later quietly admitting that their science was bad and none of their conclusions held up?

What if they’d done that multiple times?

“Bias” isn’t relevant when it comes to calling out bad actors.