[zamnos]

Yikes, what's your definition for "shitty theory" then? Something that's "not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion" sounds pretty shitty to me. Literal shit lets you draw more conclusions about the defecator than that!

[PathOfEclipse]

What do you think a theory is? A theory is by definition unproven. With enough evidence, it becomes proven and therefore no longer a theory. Then there's the grey area in between, where a theory seems plausible but there's not enough evidence to be conclusive about it.

A "shitty" theory is one which completely lacks evidence supporting it and/or has far more evidence that contradicts it. The covid lab leak theory is not "shitty" by either metric.

[igouy]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypothesis

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory