How do you make your mind up on controversial scientific questions? ❌ The debate around the origins of the Covid virus offers a nice lesson in how *not* to do it, writes StuartJRitchie
that occurred there. None of this is knockdown proof of a natural origin – this kind of evidence is always circumstantial. But importantly, and unlike the intelligence reports, it’s all in the public domain.
It’s been a long time since the authorities dismissed the lab-leak theory out of hand. US President Bidenthat he had tasked his intelligence agencies with investigating whether the Covid virus “emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident”. Here in the UK, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office announced this week that it still has an open mind, and wants to see a “robust, transparent, and science-led review” of Covid’s origin.
Given the complexity and messiness of the biology involved – and the fact that everyone agrees the virus originated in China, run by a notoriously secretive totalitarian government who aren’t exactly transparent with information – it’s no surprise that it’s difficult to pin down the origins of Covid. But we have to take a sober look at the evidence, and not be bowled over by every development in the news.
The anthropologist Chris Kavanagh calls this “discourse surfing”: letting your opinions be buffeted this way and that by what’s being discussed in the media, rather than by data.with the world, and not just their opinions, our minds shouldn’t be changed much at all by these new announcements. Next time anyone claims to have made their mind up on the lab-leak theory either way, the most important thing to do is to ask them for the evidence.
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