This piece by Dan Rather is a good example of the motivated reasoning that has poisoned the discussion over covid origins, and ironically a very unscientific approach. Whether science is under attack or not should have zero bearing on investigating how the pandemic started.https://twitter.com/DanRather/status/1406611921256828930 …
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If the pandemic was iatrogenic, then Stewart is in fact completely correct that certain avenues of scientific research pose a major threat to humanity. And scientists are not neutral arbiters in that discussion, but have an enormous interest in the exculpatory answer being right.
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The answer to the covid origins question will help us decide whether we should be building new coronavirus research labs or tearing them down. Whether this answer helps the opponents of science, or helps Trump, or upsets China, or destroys public confidence is irrelevant.
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The circumstantial evidence Stewart points to is compelling. You have a novel coronavirus arise in the same city as one of three labs in the world that study these viruses, and nowhere near where we find related diseases in the wild. You have a lot of people trying to cover up.
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We know we're about 1/5 for iatrogenic pandemics in the 20th century; we know the base rate of lab accidents is high; we know this all happened in a surveillance society where any tracks leading to an alternate source would be retrospectively visible to the authorities.
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So Stewart is in fact applying scientific principles in his hypothesis—in this case Occam's Razor. Check out the novel virus lab down the street from the novel virus spreading event, he says, and don't let political or social considerations derail your inquiry. That's science.
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If millions of people died because research into preventing a pandemic created the conditions for starting one, that is the most important lesson we could learn from covid. Getting the answer right, one way or the other, is the only way to prevent this all from happening again.
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I'm not asking anyone to believe the evidence we have right now is adequate. But I wish commentators like Rather would stop conditioning their beliefs on the consequences of one answer or the other being right, and stop attacking the question itself as somehow harmful.
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Replying to @Pinboard
It’s reminiscent of Dawkins/Harris/Pinker et al arguing forever that science will save us, positing that values (and thus policy) can be wholly derived from science. It’s a deadly mistake. Science is always directed by and constrained by values, like it or not.
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There's no values component to establishing how covid originated—it's a factual question. What we do with that information once we have it is where the values discussion begins.
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Replying to @Pinboard
Oh, I agree. What Rather seems to say is that we have to value “trusting science,” including trust that science will set its own limits to inquiry through obvious principles that bubble up through the process. That is never the case, though.
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Replying to @obelos
Ah yeah, I misunderstood you. You are absolutely right. A lot of rhetoric like Rather's and Pinker's sounds straight out of the 19th century. You'd think we'd have learned by now
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