[ricksunny]

Well I think we’ve all seen the clickbait-y headlines declaring that X phenomenon has been ‘DEBUNKED’,and those headlines are definitely engineered to spread (and benefit from performance metrics feedback).

To go further, Eric Weinstein vecame knwon for coining the term ‘pre-bunked’ narratives. This was a version of memetic inoculating where the debunking had to get out ahead of the inconvenient narrative requiring debunking. A good and (by now) pretty uncontested example of this was Peter Daszak’s actions throughout the first half of 2020, with The Lancet Letter (aka Calisher et al, The Lancet, 2020) he organized (with Nobel signatories no less) providing a massive pre-bunk at a time when few in the public were seriously countenancing any pandemic origin, much less a research-related one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_letter_(COVID-19)

  (I should offer disclaimer here that I remain an advisor to BiosafetyNow, an advocacy organization).