Ten days ago (March 16, 2025) she published an opinion piece in the New York Times where she discussed the lab leak conspiracy theory concerning the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. As most Sandwalk readers know, there is no evidence to support that claim and plenty of evidence that the virus came from animals in the Wuhan market.
Tufekci doesn't discuss any of the scientific evidence for and against the various ideas about the origin of SARS-CoV-2; instead, she concentrates entirely on the conspiracy part of the lal leak conspiracy theory by claiming that We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives. The idea seems to be that the lab leak conspiracy theory must be true because knowledgeable scientists tried to discredit it.
Since scientists began playing around with dangerous pathogens in laboratories, the world has experienced four or five pandemics, depending on how you count. One of them, the 1977 Russian flu, was almost certainly sparked by a research mishap. Some Western scientists quickly suspected the odd virus had resided in a lab freezer for a couple of decades, but they kept mostly quiet for fear of ruffling feathers.
Yet in 2020, when people started speculating that a laboratory accident might have been the spark that started the Covid-19 pandemic, they were treated like kooks and cranks. Many public health officials and prominent scientists dismissed the idea as a conspiracy theory, insisting that the virus had emerged from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China. And when a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance lost a grant because it was planning to conduct risky research into bat viruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — research that, if conducted with lax safety standards, could have resulted in a dangerous pathogen leaking out into the world — no fewer than 77 Nobel laureates and 31 scientific societies lined up to defend the organization.
So the Wuhan research was totally safe, and the pandemic was definitely caused by natural transmission — it certainly seemed like consensus.
We have since learned, however, that to promote the appearance of consensus, some officials and scientists hid or understated crucial facts, misled at least one reporter, orchestrated campaigns of supposedly independent voices and even compared notes about how to hide their communications in order to keep the public from hearing the whole story. And as for that Wuhan laboratory’s research, the details that have since emerged show that safety precautions might have been terrifyingly lax.
As the title of her article suggests, Tufekci's focus is on the public's mistrust of science and she claims that this is the fault of scientists. But her article shows that it's non-scientists like her who are as much as fault. She dismisses the idea that the controversy might be resolved by scientific facts and talks only about the behavior of scientists who are doing inappropriate research. She seems to think that it's sufficient to cast doubt on the levels of containment used at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in order to bolster the case that scientists there were secretly working on SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic. Evidence in support of such a claim doesn't seem to be necessary in her mind. Furthermore, evidence for a natural origin can be easily dismissed by calling into question the motives of the scientists who publish in the scientific literature.
To this day, there is no strong scientific evidence ruling out a lab leak or proving that the virus arose from human-animal contact in that seafood market. The few papers cited for market origin were written by a small, overlapping group of authors, including those who didn’t tell the public how serious their doubts had been.
It looks to me that by publishing such articles The New York Times is going out of its way to discredit science. Why are they doing this?
8 comments :
Almost anyone that reaches the public is never real good at real science. Many issues here. She hits buzz words like consensus conspiracy,eyc. In origin matters creationists insist its not on the evidence but the things that give legitamacy to this woman. like being in the trusted press. I suspect , on behalf of China, they prefer a sophisticated lab leak to the third world aspects of it coming animals. Actually a virus from china then and the future has a good proability because of past ones in a thord world nation it is still. is there a conspirac why this woman is in her job? YES!
I am conflicted over this issue.
My understanding of it is that when COVID started there was speculation about how it had emerged in Wuhan and various scientific administrators - senior scientists more often running budgets than working in labs - made some very strong statements insisting the Wuhan Virology Institute had nothing to do with it.
I personally found these statements too strong. They were Western based administrators, without detailed knowledge of what the Institute was doing and it felt like an over defensive response.
How a Corona virus related to one found in bats from Yunnan, 1000s of km to the south, started to spread in civets or whatever in a wet market in Wuhan is an open question and the existence of an institute studying these very viruses only a couple of km away may be a coincidence, but it may not be.
The Chinese Party State has a vested interest in obscuring the origins of the outbreak if they damage China's international standing.
I cannot say with any certainty how the outbreak started. I've not followed the arguments in detail, mainly because I suspect there is so much at stake that interested parties will deliberately lie and distort to cover up responsibility.
I quite definitely aren't dismissing the likelihood the virus may have spread to the wet market due to human errors at the virology institute.
I quite definitely would be sceptical of absolutist claims that the Wuhan Institute had nothing to do with it.
I don't think I am being unreasonable saying this and find the polarisation of the debate unhelpful.
Of course it is POSSIBLE that it was due to a lab-leak, and one can find plenty of people making poorly reasoned claims about it (just like you can find administrators improperly dismissing the idea out of hand, you can find others insisting it's a proven bioweapon created by the Chinese military, and everything in between.)
But there isn't any good evidence the WIV actually had or was working on the virus.
You can of course explain this fact away by referring to the non-transparency of the Chinese governmentd, but A) You are now explaining the lack of evidence with an ad-hoc hypothesis, and B) when are they otherwise?
Is a lab leak strictly possible? Of course. Is it required to explain what we see? No. Natural zoonosis is an observed fact, and the eventual zoonotic emergence of a virus from a poorly managed wetmarket—like the one the earliest known cases are recorded to be associated with—was an expected eventuality that the people who study such viruses have in fact warned about decades before.
@Neil Taylor I don't understand how you could be "conflicted." The scientists at the WIV have been studying coronaviruses for decades and they have excellent reputations. They've been routinely publishing their work in all the leading Western journals and they have extensive collaborations with other scientists all over the world.
There isn't a shred of evidence that these researchers were working with SARS-CoV-2 before the pandemic. They all deny thar they were even aware of that virus until the first sequence from an infected patient was published in early January 2020.
What makes you think that these reputable scientists were covering up the fact that they were working with a live virus that could infect humans? What makes you discount all the evidence that points to an origin in the Wuhan market?
As far as I can tell, the only reason for being "conflicted" is because you buy into a conspiracy theory that China and Asian scientists must be evil.
I wonder how people will react if the next pandemic begins with infected eggs in a supermarket near the medical labs in Houston, Texas?
Oh goodness.
Firstly I'm not discounting any evidence from the wet market, the question is how the virus got to there.
I don't really know what to make of your statement that the Institute wasn't working on Sars Co 2. Well, no, but they were researching its very close relatives.
If one of those escaped the lab is it so unreasonable to assume it might mutate in what ever hosts it had lived in prior to it's discovery in the wet market swabs?
Your statements about my view of Chinese and Asian scientists is extreme and unnecessary. Can we try to keep the claims about each other less incendiary.
However I am highly aware governments in general and the Chinese government in particular manipulate information for their own ends.
Just take the example of a female Chinese tennis player who disappeared for a period and was subject to huge political coercion just for having a failed relationship with a senior party member, or the treatment of Li Wenliang for raising the alarm at the start of the pandemic. Or Canadian business men taken hostage on bogus claims of espionage due to Canada cooperating in an investigation of what eventually were admitted crimes by the CFO of Huawei.
The pressure to down play and cover up any relevant information about poor bio-security would be intense.
A minor lapse could easily have had huge consequences with the event basically unknown - a moment of sloppiness, an infestation of rodents etc
If there was an unusual virus outbreak near an research lab undertaking research in a related virus I'd hope they would have an open investigation of any biosecurity issues they might have had. Has such an open investigation occurred?
Good scientists working at such an institute would I hope not say a lapse was inconceivable and cooperate in an open manner. Has that happened?
We do not know how the Corona virus ended up infecting people in Wuhan. Insisting a natural pathway from Yunnan to Wuhan is perfectly reasonable and any involvement of the Wuhan Virology Institute is a conspiracy is overblown.
Please don't accuse me of hating Asian and Chinese scientists for saying this. That is unreasonable. Talk about straw manning people querying this contentious issue.
Neil Taylor says, "I don't really know what to make of your statement that the Institute wasn't working on Sars Co 2. Well, no, but they were researching its very close relatives."
No, they were not working with viruses that were "close" to SARS-CoV-2 in any meaningful sense of the word "close."
Neil Taylor also says, "If one of those escaped the lab is it so unreasonable to assume it might mutate in what ever hosts it had lived in prior to it's discovery in the wet market swabs?"
Yes, that is unreasonable.
Thank-you for supplying irrelevant information about the bad behavior of Chinese officials in order to prove to me that your position on the lab leak conspiracy theory has nothing to do with any prejudices against China or Chinese scientists.
Neil Taylor asks, "Good scientists working at such an institute would I hope not say a lapse was inconceivable and cooperate in an open manner. Has that happened?"
Yes. The Chinese government welcomed the WHO scientific investigation team to the WIV in February 2021. The researchers at WIV showed them the facilities and their notebooks and discussed reports of possible illnesses among the researchers.
The leading researcher, Shi Zhengli, has publicly answered questions posed by Science magazine and given several interviews before she started receiving threats. Many foreign scientists who worked at WIV have attested to the integrity of the Chinese scientists working there.
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2021/05/lab-leak-conspiracy-theory-rears-its.html
Here's a summary of the WHO report on the possibility of escape from a lab. They conclude that, "In view of the above, a laboratory origin of the pandemic was considered to be extremely unlikely."
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2021/05/world-health-organization-who-report-on.html
Professor Moran why is it unreasonable to wonder if a virus might have evolved after being transported to the WVI and escaping due to a biosecurity oversight v. a virus doing this without such involvement? Especially when there is uncertainty of the exact viruses at the Institute? How can you be so sure of your position?
I am simply saying I cannot exclude either a chain entirely separate from the WVI or one which touches upon it, in the ancestry of the SarS Cov3 virus. You seem insistent you can do this.
Good for you. I still suspend judgement and doubt we will ever be able to make a definitive judgment.
If that means you label me a conspiracy theorist I doubt I can do much to change your mind, but it isn't a helpful way to have a discussion.
Thank you for your links and especially work educating me on junk DNA.
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