zlacker

Yes.

It seems that proponents of the lab leak theory wants to turn the burden of proof upside down: I am claiming conspiracy starting with Anthony Fauci and ending up in a Chinese lab. It is up to you to provide hard evidence on why it is not so.

Sure you can do that as in freedom of thought and speech. But honestly; this is not really a constructive way to go about things.

>>throwa+(OP)
There is nothing to turn upside down. The burden of proof is equal for both theories.

>>kspace+Z5
The null hypothesis is "we don't know".

>>kspace+Z5
The burden of proof is on the one making the claim and the more extraordinary the claim the more extraordinary the evidence needs to be in my opinion.

>>exeget+wc
Exactly.

There is an investegative group from the WHO interviewing the Wuhan lab people and looking at various form of documentation.

The lab leak proponents claim that they are all lying and all the documents are fraudulent.

The lab leak proponents have the burden of proof and IMHO kinda should shut up until they can carry that burden.

>>throwa+3g
Did you read the article. The investigative group is compromised. The doctors who were part of the group have strong connections and even experiments running in the same lab.

>>throwa+3g
Oh - I forgot - the investigation is comprimised ...

Insanity!

>>exeget+wc
What is least likely? A group of scientists in a quasy communist country do a shit job of safety and end up endangering the worlds population or that a virus that coexists with Bats, somehow and for no (direct) evolutionary benefit, becomes able to infect humans?

>>tomjen+nH
Uh, infecting a new type of organism is a pretty big evolutionary benefit though?

Saying there is no benefit is like saying there is no benefit for people people who switch jobs just so they get paid more.

>>Siempr+tK
It is, on the whole, but not immediately. It is kinda like the idea that while having eyes is a huge evolutionary benefit, having just part of the eye confers none. Or like guessing a password by random chance. If you get some immediate feedback by being partially right then it is pretty easy, but if you only know if the password is right or wrong, then the odds of guessing the password rounds to zero.

>>tomjen+nH
Based on what we know about the history and ecology of pathogens, the latter is far more likely. I say this as someone with training in the biological sciences.

>>throwa+kz
I agree that compromised isn't a smart word to use about this, but even if you think all these questions have been settled, I'm surprised you don't agree that it is bad optics to have the investigator to be the funder of the research being investigated, and even worse when he says things like: well, we asked them and they said no, so that's that. The conflict of interest couldn't be more obvious.

It's the media's job to investigate conflicts of interest, so the fact that they didn't looked into that, and that they took Daszak's original so-called debunking at face value, is bad optics on another level. It has left a credibility vacuum, so it's unsurprising that articles like the current one are coming in from the margins.