Don’t Fall for These Lab-Leak Traps
After months of getting very little coverage, the lab-leak theory for the origins of COVID-19—which holds that the virus emerged from a research setting—is now a source of endless chatter. Vanity Fair has a new, 12,000-word investigative feature on the subject, while lab-leak op-eds continue their exponential spread across the pages of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.
A careful look at all the ways that the pandemic might have started matters for the future: It should help us figure out the safest regulations, and the most important goals, for research on emerging pathogens. But the sudden rush of coverage hasn’t always made the lab-leak theory or its implications any easier to grasp. Much has done the opposite, in fact, ensnaring readers in semantic quibbles, side points, and distractions.
To focus better on what really matters, watch out for these traps:
The No-Evidence Trap
It would be confusing—merely confusing—if no one could agree on the strength of the evidence for a laboratory accident. But certain pundits have suggested that we’re still completely in the dark. Is there really any evidence at all, they ask, of anything?
[Daniel Engber: If the lab-leak theory is right, what’s next?]
“What’s missing from all this reexamination and soul-searching is a fundamental fact,” wrote Michael Hiltzik in the last week. “—not a smidgen—for the claim that: “It’s just crazy, because for a lab leak; there’s plenty of evidence for the natural origin.” Others claim the exact opposite. There is “ to support the theory that the virus emerged from nature,” Marc Thiessen announced in , and “mounting signs that it did not.”
