I don’t care what “most virologists think”.
I think virology is fascinating and I’ve learned a lot in my years of talking with virologists, so I don’t mean to say virologists’ thoughts aren’t valuable. On the contrary, I value virologist’s thoughts when they impartially, rigorously, and quantitatively describe some feature of viruses or viral evolution & back that up with data. While I value virologist’s thoughts, the term “most virologists think X” needs to be removed from our lexicon because it stops us from having the more inclusive, detailed, trans-disciplinary conversations we need to have.
What “most virologists think” isn’t meaningful for the question of SARS-CoV-2 origins. Even if someone did conduct a poll to justify the use of “most”, “most” geographers used to think the Earth was flat and “most” European biologists used to think life on Earth was created by Jesus’ Dad. Even if polled, “most” virologists can be wrong because there are things most virologists don’t know; there’s nothing special about “virologists” that makes their majority votes unquestionable or their opinions more valuable than other relevant disciplines in the investigation of SARS-CoV-2 origins.
For example, “most virologists” are neither mathematicians nor statisticians nor bioinformaticians, and it’s mathematics, statistics, and bioinformatics which enable one to align genetic sequences, infer evolutionary trees, and estimate the odds of evolutionary events like a furin cleavage site insertion or a coronavirus having the restriction map of an infectious clone.
Most virologists are neither ecologists nor biogeographers, and it’s ecology and biogeography which enable one to estimate the low odds of a SARS coronavirus emerging in Wuhan of all the places in SE Asia.
Most virologists do not analyze alternative datasets, like the cell-phone geolocation data suggesting a shutdown of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in October 2019 or the satellite images suggesting a higher-than-expected number of cars parked in Wuhan Hospitals in the fall of 2019.
Most virologists are not intelligence analysts who incorporate evidence from human assets & other sources of sensitive information to evaluate claims of 3 coronavirus researchers falling ill in the fall of 2019. Most virologists are not internet sleuths who uncovered evidence of the missing scientist Huang Yanling, rumored to be “patient 0”.
Most virologists are not lawyers ready to use adverse inference, spoliation, and other legal methods or concepts to contextualize the behavior of the Wuhan Institute of Virology releasing unusual genomes, refusing to disclose MERS-like viruses docked inside BAC clones, or failing to release their database of coronaviruses that would, under a zoonotic origin, provide an alibi.
Most virologists are neither linguists nor cultural anthropologists capable of reading briefs from the Chinese Communist Party and providing critical cultural context for the language to understand the gravity of a biosafety event or significance of a pishi.
The question of SARS-CoV-2 origins requires incorporating evidence across a wide range of fields in an impartial, rigorous, and quantitative manner. It’s easy for anyone to learn about the myriad forms of evidence, including the virological evidence, but it’s hard to be impartial, rigorous, and quantitative. Should the most-likely lab-origin of SARS-CoV-2 come to be widely accepted, most virologists will face more regulation, a prospect that raises the possibility of partiality. Most virologists have made overconfident claims that a lab-origin is “illogical”, “implausible”, or “a racist conspiracy theory” and over-hyped flawed evidence purporting to support a zoonotic origin, claiming that spatially-biased case-ascertainment contact-tracing a wet-market outbreak is “dispositive” evidence SARS-CoV-2 originated in the wet market, or finding animals in an animal market is “the strongest evidence yet” for an animal origin of SARS-CoV-2. These contested, overconfident claims make one question virologists’ rigor. Finally, biology does not have a long marriage with mathematics like physics does - most virologists stopped taking math classes after calculus, received minimal training in statistics, and most could not replicate from scratch the statistical methods (‘black boxes’) they use in most papers, raising questions about their ability to synthesize multiple lines of evidence in quantitative frameworks for comparing competing theories.
I’m not trying to say virologists are dumb or virology is useless. Nobody knows everything, and that’s okay. Obviously, virology is very relevant when examining the origins of a virus, but SARS-CoV-2 origins is larger than virology and centering virology and virologists at the expense of other relevant disciplines and knowledgeable people is a disservice to our deliberations. Virology is useful, but virologists are not unelected Kings of SARS-CoV-2 origins.. It’s an improper argument of authority to claim that “most virologists believe X” implies X must be objective and rigorous and true. Given the massively interdisciplinary nature of this investigation, we need to stop caring what “virologists” think and start recruiting diverse sources who talk about the evidence, the methods, the logic, and the numbers. SARS-CoV-2 origins is a massive, global, interdisciplinary investigation into the cause of 18 million deaths - virology is important, but this task is so much bigger than virology, drawing on many methods & pieces of evidence outside the wheelhouse of virologists. You also shouldn’t trust me because I’m a “quantitative evolutionary biologist”, “mathematical epidemiologist”, or “pathogen spillover forecaster” - science is not to be trusted, it’s to be examined, incorporated, discussed, and tested. I can share my piece, other people can share theirs, but only once we stop relying on arguments of authority.
Arguments of authority are unscientific.
There’s an additional, unique problem with arguments of disciplinary authority when investigating a potential research-related accident. If SARS-CoV-2 did emerge from a lab and this becomes known, then we will see the problem of claiming “most virologists think SARS-CoV-2 was not caused by virologists.” Arguments of disciplinary authority in the media corrupt fields of science to behave & function as industrial lobbies. One may justifiably be as skeptical about “most virologists” claiming a natural origin of a pandemic emerging near a problem-prone virology lab as one is skeptical of “most oil companies” claiming nature caused an oil spill right outside their problem-prone oil rig. Scientists bare their fangs at epistemic trespassers all the time and it’s ridiculous, but this behavior becomes especially pernicious when scientists showing teeth are granted the power of mass-media and exhibit a pattern of presenting flawed science as unquestionable truth. Few things say “manufacturing consent” and sow distrust in science as deeply & irrevocably as hollow arguments of flawed science generating The Guardian headlines saying: “experts say that experts didn’t cause a catastrophe”.
Arguments of authority are unscientific and using these arguments with the power of mass media diminishes science to the banality of an industrial lobby sowing misinformation and manufacturing consent, bypassing accountability and the kinds of discussions of evidence & reason we need to bring the global jury up to speed.
Even where there’s no catastrophe and we’re just doing normal, silly-old science, as a scientist I never care what most scientists say. I love scientists, but I care about what the data say - that’s what makes me a scientist. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”, according to Feynman. Far from trusting the experts, science is an intellectual safari in which we either nurture our own theoretical zebras on home-grown data, or hunt down old theories from flawed experts by proving them wrong. As a theoretical ecologist, the paradigmatic battles & hunts we see in SARS-CoV-2 are just like battles & hunts I’ve seen my whole career studying the safari of scientific theory, the only difference is that now 18 million people are dead. While science may seem barbaric in its paradigmatic conflict, it is beautiful in its equity & inclusivity: all can participate in the hunt and any theory can be hunted. We are all entitled to the same weapons: methods, logic, and numbers. Even if someone chimes in from a low-income country & no credentials, if they say something compelling, if they throw a mathematical javelin that slays someone’s precious belief, then I listen & applaud their victory. I cite them. I tell stories of their hunt. I don’t discredit them for their anonymity or their epistemic trespassing because nobody owns this intellectual safari. I credit their brilliance because the ethical scientist cares about what’s being said, not who’s saying it.
Sorry, virologists. I love you very much, but you’re not that special.
Please stop centering virology at the exclusion of other relevant fields of science & the world of smart people who know things.
Most virologists think it is going to be very hard to get grants if COVID was the product of a virology laboratory. They are probably right.
I don't believe many will mistake any virologist (or public health bureaucrat) for Ed Witten or Noam Chomsky.
But in a different cognitive realm, virologists and others deceiving the people sure seem like sociopaths.
The apparent self-regard and besieged cult psychology of virologists defending 'natural zoonosis' dogma makes me wonder, in so many words, whom these people believe they are.
I know the tendency to pathologize those holding to differing views, but the narcissism and entitlement of Fauci, Collins and company to offer that SARS-CoV-2 looked potentially “engineered” privately, and then organize a paper for public consumption stating "we" do not believe "laboratory-based scenario is plausible," seems unhealthy, anti-social, as well as an affront to democratic societies.
Implausible evolved into conspiracy-minded and racist.
"And so we are left to wonder how a straightforward hypothesis got labeled first as a conspiracy and later as a reflection of racism. Retracing coverage and public comments, I found a cautionary tale: Those who seek to suppress disinformation may be destined, themselves, to sow it," writes Megan K. Stack in the Times, (March 28, 2023). ... "Then, in April 2020, Dr. Fauci pointed White House reporters to the publication, presenting it as compelling evidence of zoonotic crossover — without revealing that he had been involved with its creation and had even, according to the emails, given it his approval."
Butterfly collectors and clerks, that's what many in the bio-scientific community appear.
But worse, these people are deluded as self-appointed apostles guarding the word, who display no remorse about lying to the people most adversely affected by their work. No 'my god, what have we done, we owe people the truth.'