The common “lab leak” theory is not just a right-wing conspiracy – pretending that situations are bad for science | Janeku

mFive years after the COVID-19 pandemic was announced, its origins remain a fierce debate between scientists and the wider public. There are two broad competition theories. Natural Elements Hypothesis Shows that the pandemic begins when relatives of SARS-COV-2 jump from wildlife to humans Trade in Wildlife. By contrast, proponents of laboratory theory believe that the virus emerges when Chinese scientists are infected through research related activities.

A confusing aspect of the controversy is that well-known scientists continue to publish research in leading scientific journals, which they say provide compelling evidence for the natural product hypothesis. However, every new evidence does not seem to solve the problem and seems to widen the gap further.

In many parts of the world, including USA,,,,, France and Germanydespite the lack of clear evidence, public opinion has increasingly shifted to laboratory cave theory. In other words, more and more people believe that research-related activities are likely to lead to a pandemic, too.

A new documentary by Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei, titled “Blame: Bats, Politics and an Out of Balance”, blames the division on the so-called “right-wing hot swamp,” including Steve Bannon and Fox News. According to Frei, it promotes misinformation and conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19 from the political interests, thus confusing and misleading the public.

As a participant in the film and a reporter who has written a book about the origins of emerging diseases over the past five years, I must disagree with respect.

In essence, the controversy is not a problem with the left, but a symptom of deep open distrust of science. By constructing it along the political divide – and by picking extreme examples to fit its narrative, the documentary has done a damaging to the public interest.

This is not to deny that the question of the origins of the pandemic has been politicized from the very beginning. For those of a left-leaning scholar (e.g. Filippa Lentzo, a biosecurity expert at King’s College London, talks publicly about the rationality of the lab’s revealing scenarios because they are considered to be considered to be Align with the right-wing agenda.

But many outspoken left-leaning researchers like Lentzos It has always been the key driver of laboratory theory. While studying my book, I met many credible experts on emerging diseases, who also believe that the problem with the origin of Covid-19 is Stay away from settlement. Their perspective is based on decades of expertise.

Far from the right-wing hot swamp, these scholars have scientific legitimacy for debate. They do not believe that research published in leading scientific journals supporting natural primitive theory is as convincing as the authors claim. Furthermore, due to China’s lack of transparency and limited political will to investigate, it makes it inevitable that it is inevitable.

Few people will know with absolute certainty how the pandemic began. Both parties are collecting evidence to support their case, but neither can completely rule out the possibility raised by the other party. This lack of clarity is seen with most emerging diseases. For example, we still don’t know how the devastating Ebola outbreak in West Africa began in 2014.

The core issue behind the origins of Covid-19 is fundamentally a crisis of trust, not just a matter of information. It reflects long-standing anxiety about virus research. Strong emotions such as fear and distrust play a crucial role in human cognition. Simply proposing more facts does not always lead to a fusion of opinions—and sometimes even widen the gap.

Indeed, the public storm of distrust of virus research has gathered before the pandemic. In 2011, two research teams Provoked public protests By announcing Create more propagable variants H5N1 (Bird Flu). This led to a moratorium on federal research funding in the United States, which made the virus more transmissible or toxic, called functional rewards research and established a new regulatory framework.

However, this sense of uneasiness persists due to the belief that virologists, funding institutions and research institutions have failed to adequately address public concerns and anxiety, coupled with a lack of transparency and inclusion in decision-making. The dispute over origins of Covid-19 rushed straight into the middle of the brewing storm.

Does the virus stem from the kind of functional reward research that critics have long warned about? Even the possibility of the slightest possibility can affect the behavior of virologists, funding agencies and research institutions – prompting them to protect their reputation and retain political support?

Some scientists argue for evidence that support the assumption of natural existence with overconfidence and little tolerance for dissenting views. They seem eager to repeatedly close the debate since early 2020. Laboratory Rift Theory is Dead. Even researchers tend toward natural primitive theories, such as viral ecologist Vincent Munster at the Lockhill Mountains Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, told me that they lamented that some of their colleagues defended their theories like religion.”

No one embodies the science of trust crisis than former president of the Ecological Health Alliance. His series of mistakes helped to exacerbate public distrust. For example, in early 2020, he Organized a statement Dozens of prominent scientists in Lancet strongly condemned “conspiracy theories that show that Covid-19 has no natural origins” without revealing his nearly two decades of cooperation with the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a conflict of interest.

Likewise, he denies his Although Shi Zhengli, a Chinese scientist who leads research on bat-transmitted coronaviruses, has collaborated with Wuhan labs to involve functional reward research, it is publicly acknowledged this The lab’s work has produced at least a transgenic virus that is more toxic than its parent strain. (This work has no direct correlation with the origins of Covid-19.)

Documentary The spread of conspiracy theories claiming attacks on the Ecological Health Alliance and laboratory fission drives science distrust. In fact, this is the opposite: the public distrust of science, driven by the controversy over the unsolvable H5N1 function gained and the lack of transparency and humility from scientists. Daszak has aroused doubts and support for the laboratory rift theory.

Such errors in judgment and misconduct, not unusual, and not limited to the debate on 19, may affect the public’s trust in scientists’ views and claims and how people interpret the evidence.

As Benjamin Hurlbut, a social scientist at Arizona State University, put it: This issue is not an anti-scientific public, but a scientific community that marks a skeptical public struggle against the issue of legitimate trust, such as anti-scientific or conspiracy theorists.

recent Science Editorial “Scientists should better explain the scientific process and the processes that make it so trustworthy.” This reflects the ongoing impact of the traditional scientific communication “deficit model” that assumes that trust can be built by providing information only. But the relationship between the public and science is more than just understanding facts or methods.

Trust cannot be made on demand. It must be cultivated through transparency, accountability, humility and relationship building. Scientists have to do more to make money.

• Jane Qiu is an award-winning independent science writer in Beijing. The report is supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center

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