Michael Hiltzik: ProPublica and Vanity Fair are pushing the COVID lab-leak theory, but their exposé is a train wreck
Since its founding in 2007, the independently funded investigative organization ProPublica has exposed wrongdoing at all levels of government and shined a light on corporate misbehavior, collecting six Pulitzer Prizes in the process and securing a reputation for painstaking, accurate journalism.
An article that ProPublica published Friday, pushing the claim that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese virus lab before going on to infect the world, doesn't fall into that category.
It is, to be charitable, a train wreck.
The article is based heavily on Chinese-language documents that appear to have been mistranslated and misinterpreted, according to Chinese language experts who have piled on via social media since its publication.
It also takes as gospel a report by a rump group of Republican congressional staff members asserting that the pandemic was "more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident."
That conclusion runs exactly counter to the overwhelming weight of opinion among scientists in the fields of virology and evolutionary biology.
The scientists conclude that COVID reached
