Sandwalk: Is the media finally realizing that they have been duped into promoting the lab leak conspiracy theory?

Friday, September 10, 2021

Is the media finally realizing that they have been duped into promoting the lab leak conspiracy theory?

I would like to think that the media will eventually wake up and recognize the science behind the origin of SARS-CoV-2. It overhelmingly supports a natural origin and does not support the lab leak conspiracy theory. I was encourgaged by a Los Angeles Times article published a few weeks ago [Column: The lab leak theory for the origin of COVID-19 is fading.]. It was written by Michael Hiltzik who took the time to read some of the scientific papers that have recently been published. He has written an excellent summary of the issues.

Here's the bottom line ....

It would be inaccurate to say that evidence for the lab leak theory is fading. That’s because there never was any evidence for the theory, just conjecture.

Virtually from the outset, the lab leak theory was driven by ideology, not science. It employed the vocabulary of science, but that’s a familiar technique for bamboozling a susceptible public.

"The only evidence for a lab leak, period, is just that the virus emerged in Wuhan, where the Wuhan Institute of Virology is,” Rasmussen told me. “That’s it. Since day one, that has been the only piece of evidence.”

The assertions supporting the lab leak theory are not only conjectures, but in many cases provably wrong conjectures. They’re often based on misinformation, scientific ignorance, or even bad translations from Chinese documents.

Unfortunately, journalists like Michael Hiltzik are rare. Furthemore, there's no evidence that the talking heads on TV are even close to realizing that they have been duped.

3 comments :

Mike Haubrich, FCD said...: I wasn't sure what the point would have been, after all. Was there a plan to name the Wuhan lab as the defendant in a worldwide class actiona lawsuit in The Hague?; Friday, September 10, 2021 12:57:00 PM
Robert Byers said...: I agree its very very unlikely any lab leak took place. eother by secret virus work or incompetence. I don't pay attention to the media but am surprised they allow/support the lab leak idea. usually they don't put in a bad light these nations.
I think probability issues can help.
first there has been several bif virus from these Asioan countries. The Hong Kong flu, forgotten now, hit in the late sixties. A few more in the past century. THEN there is huge populations. So I suggest probability would teach a prediction any new virus to mankind WOULD come from there. not india. But a hugh pop with a history of unique virus.
I don't want to predict more. however its a curious case again how probabilities/possibly sampling are not understood by the educated classes who present these matters to us.
I also think evolution is against probabilty but thats another issue.; Friday, September 10, 2021 11:48:00 PM
dean said...: "usually they don't put in a bad light these nations."

You are as clueless about the media as you are about science.

"I don't want to predict more. however its a curious case again how probabilities/possibly sampling are not understood by the educated classes who present these matters to us."

You've demonstrated you don't understand it either. My freshmen have a better grasp of it after one semester than you do.

"I also think evolution is against probabilty but thats another issue."

Yup -- the issue being your lack of understanding of anything related to science.; Saturday, September 11, 2021 9:50:00 AM

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)

Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Peter Atkins

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is True

I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000

It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma

One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick

There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins

Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod

The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.

Richard Lewontin

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Friday, September 10, 2021

Is the media finally realizing that they have been duped into promoting the lab leak conspiracy theory?

3 comments :