[logicalmonster]

> On each visit, vendors were asked what species they had sold over the preceding month and in what numbers, along with the prices (US$1:RMB¥6.759) and origin of these goods (wild caught or captive bred/ farmed).

It might be true that no bats were sold in Wuhan wet markets, but this methodology doesn't seem the slightest bit credible.

Imagine if you were selling bats (is that legal in China?) from a likely illegal source (probably illegal in China?). Would you give honest information about the animals you were selling, particularly knowing how criminals can be treated in China?

You might as well ask suspected drug dealers how much crack they're selling in schools: you'll get the same quality of answer.

[p0pcult]

The amount of pure speculation in this post is surprising, coming from a logicalmonster.

Are those activites illegal in China, or just in your mind? If it is not the former, then your point collapses like a two legged stool.

[logicalmonster]

I am not a lawyer from China and I doubt many posters here are either.

When you have imperfect information, trying to understand a complicated world can never be perfect, but we all still do that anyway because we have to. There's no other way to reason about the world because we're always going to have imperfect information about so many topics.

But I can use my limited knowledge of China, and a reasonable understanding of human nature, to understand that the polling methodology seems unlikely to yield trustworthy results.

Until proven otherwise, I think it is a perfectly reasonable to think that people in China who might deal in some quasi-legal trades wouldn't be perfectly honest in a poll due to concerns about what might happen to them if they admit to something that might be seen as illegal.