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"Leading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show....Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: 'These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.'" [1] Reputable source, should be reflected in the article. Stonkaments ( talk) 06:49, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
ON TUESDAY, REPUBLICANS on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a letter that paints a damning picture of U.S. government officials wrestling with whether the novel coronavirus may have leaked out of a lab they were funding, acknowledging that it may have, and then keeping the discussion from spilling out into public view.Adoring nanny ( talk) 21:32, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
Even when an individual is notable, not all events they are involved in are. For example, news reporting about celebrities and sports figures can be very frequent and cover a lot of trivia, but using all these sources would lead to overly detailed articles that look like a diary. Not every facet of a celebrity's life, personal details, matches played, or goals scored is significant enough to be included in the biography of a person.To analogize, every tiny incident about the lab leak is not notable here.Many tabloids are running this as "they stifled the truth to avoid hurting science" or "they are covering up the real origin for political reasons." But A) the most reputable sources don't say this, (e.g. runs contrary to WP:BESTSOURCES), B) it would be a WP:BLP violation to put that in wiki-voice, and C) the actual emails don't really bare that out. It's just yellow journalism, which makes sense given that this is basically a year-old story being rehashed to get clicks. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 21:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: “These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons. In light of BLP issues, IMO the best response, based on current sourcing, is not to state why they changed their public positions. We do have sourcing for the "they lied" point of view, but it's not overwhelming. It's not enough to say in the article that they lied. But it is enough that we shouldn't give their reasons in WikiVoice, either. If you want to have a WP:WIKIVOICE "describe the controversy" discussion, you could include both their ostensible reasons and Ridley. Adoring nanny ( talk) 00:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Matt Ridley thinks they lied." The mere existence of a single person who questions these motivations is not enough. Statements of opinion do not trump our BESTSOURCES. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 12:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
“Neither Drs. Fauci or Collins edited our Proximal Origins paper in any way. The major feedback we got from the Feb 1 teleconference was: 1. Don’t try to write a paper at all — it’s unnecessary or 2. If you do write it don’t mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists,” Garry wrote on Wednesday.and
“However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular,” Fouchier wrote.How to handle those quotes is certainly an interesting question worth exploring. Adoring nanny ( talk) 14:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
After publication, Robert Garry clarified his previous comments to The Intercept: “One thing that could be misconstrued is that neither Dr Fauci or Dr Collins suggested in any way that we not write the Proximal Origin paper. Likewise, neither one suggested that we not mention the possibilty of a Lab origin. These were comments from others in emails after the call.” The story’s sub-headline has been updated to reflect Garry’s clarification that the advice did not come from NIH officials but from others following the call." Any mention of Garry's quote would have to include this part as well. And any mention of Fouchier's quote would have to include the other part of his quote, where he says the discussion is worth having:
“Given the evidence presented and the discussions around it, I would conclude that a follow-up discussion on the possible origin of 2019-nCoV would be of much interest,” wrote Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus MC Center for Viroscience in the Netherlands, on February 2..And once we get too long, it becomes UNDUE. So it's a balance. I would err on not including these at all, given that they require so much context to become applicable. That's a great indication that we're approaching COATRACK territory. We only have one article from The Intercept (already a biased source, though considered generally reliable for news). The RSP entry for The Intercept reads:
Almost all editors consider The Intercept a biased source, so uses may need to be attributed. For science, editors prefer peer-reviewed journals over news sources like The Intercept.I'm not sure these scientists' comments are DUE once we already have a few sentences about this episode, and any use of them would need to be attributed to the Intercept as quotes from others. So it becomes really long. We are not building an article that describes in detail the correspondence of scientists about the lab leak theory, and we do not need a laundry list of what each and every scientist has said about it. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 14:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
This bit about Trump in the lead should probably be moved, tweaked or the opinions of the sciensts included? The idea that the virus was released from a laboratory, either accidentally or deliberately, appeared early in the pandemic. The theory gained popularity through its promotion by political figures such as US president Donald Trump and other members of the Republican Party, as well as its dissemination in American conservative media, fomenting tensions between the United States and China. It was subsequently dismissed as a conspiracy theory.[11][12]
It reads as if Trump and conservative media alone made it up to antagonize china, but now we now see scientist were telling government officials that it looked like it may have been engineered. It might be worth explaining that "it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory" by the same scientists that first raised the possiblity to the government?
2603:800C:3101:D064:4C5C:71AC:11CB:6BF6 (
talk) 19:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
The thing of it is, this could all be solved by bringing up the sourced fact that it was not just Trumpers who were walking around with this notion in their head and early on. I am perplexed as to why there is such strong insistence to have any mention of anyone else believing such a thing until well deeper into the lead. Le Marteau ( talk) 21:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
It's not that it should be deeper in the lead, it's that it should be with similar content. What you seem to be proposing is that we should put the scientists' emails in that paragraph to somehow suggest that they invented the theory. or in any way were promoting it. This could not be further from the truth.
They were simply asking "Huh, could this actually be true?" and then soon after: "nah."
The theory already existed by the time these scientists were privately discussing it. As far as anyone can tell, the idea was actually first proposed by a random twitter user on January 5th [17]. It then spread to 4chan and Reddit from there. The Daily Mail published the first real story about it on January 23rd [18]. But it wasn't until March of that year, in 2020, when Ron Watkins (who many suspect is actually "Q" of Qanon) tweeted to his many many followers about it, and it really took off [19]. Russian and Chinese state-backed accounts began proposing that it was created in a lab in the US on January 20th [20]
The issue is, as it's written, it implies the theory originated with Trump and/or Trumpers
. It did. At least in America. Ron Watkins spread it and made it huge. There's a really good documentary about this called
Q Into the Storm by Cullen Hoback. It's mostly about Qanon and the search for who "Q" really is, but in the last several episodes, he talks about the origins of the lab leak theory (especially the bioweapon theory) and how it was promoted and retweeted and made viral by Qanon followers.
The rest of the lead is not chronological. Most leads are not chronological. They are thematic. It would be wrong, misleading, and disingenuous to place the sentence about scientists in that paragraph, as it would suggest that these scientists originated the theory. When in fact, they were simply running off of an idea that already existed.
If anything, we should put a sentence about Ron Watkins and the Hong Kong Twitter user in that paragraph.
If you like, we could move that scientist paragraph up a bit, but I think it's actually where it belongs, as the last part of the lead. That's sort of describing the MAINSTREAM view as a foil to the rest of the lead. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 21:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Most scientists have remained skeptical of the idea, citing a lack of supporting evidence. Perhaps chould add "After first favoring the idea," 2603:800C:3101:D064:B140:44B1:438A:8293 ( talk) 18:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
At first favoring the idea, most scientists have remained skeptical of the ideaand mentioned
scientists initially favoured the idea. To me, both of those sentences imply a scientific majority. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 04:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Some leading scientists initially favored the idea.before going into the skepticism. Adoring nanny ( talk) 13:18, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=COVID-19_lab_leak_theory&diff=1070598183&oldid=1069877133 should this change have been made? 2600:8804:6600:45:49C0:938F:82DE:741E ( talk) 16:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
have a read of this. wonder what to make of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:567C:2F00:157E:F8F:4FC3:F787 ( talk) 02:00, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Recently Csabai et al.1 have found a most likely contaminated metagenomic sample set from Antarctica that contained traces of unique SARS-CoV-2 variants. This is a short followup of that report where we attempt to find genetic footprint of the hosts. With reasonable confidence we could identify genetic material from mitochondria of Homo sapiens, green monkey and Chinese hamster. The latter two most probably originated from cell lines Vero E6 (or COS-7) and CHO respectively, which are frequent laboratory culture media for studying viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and its closest relatives.
[22]
Lancet letter was recently moved from draftspace to mainspace. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 05:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The current version of the article states: Some versions, particularly those alleging alteration of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, are based on speculation, misinformation, or misrepresentations of scientific evidence.
The problem with this statement is that scientists are currently divided on whether alteration to the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or (more precisely) its immediate progenitor's genome, can be determined without access to laboratory records 1 2 3 4 5.
Baric Graham 2020 (PMID: 32392464) cites Andersen et al (PMID: 32284615) in light of social media speculation about possible laboratory manipulation and deliberate and/or accidental release of SARS-CoV-2. But as Ralph Baric later told to PresaDiretta, "You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace" [1]. After dampening his "smoking gun" comment about the FCS, David Baltimore told to Caltech "You can't distinguish between the two origins from just looking at the sequence" [2]. And more significantly, after a (unapproved) grant request by EHA about coronavirus GoF experiments was leaked in Sep 2021; Jack Nunberg told to The Intercept "Whether that particular study did or didn’t [lead to the pandemic], it certainly could have" [3] and Alexander Kekulé told to German television "My unease about the possibility that it could have been a laboratory accident has increased" [4]. Simon Wain Hobson wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about it: "What we do not know - and badly need to know - is whether this proposal was submitted elsewhere, financed and performed." [5].
A neutral statement would reflect the views of these scientists as expressed in these more recent sources, while tempering confidence about facts that scientists can't know without access to key documents at the Wuhan laboratory. The full quote from Baric is "You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace. The answers you are looking for, however, can only be found in the archives of the Wuhan laboratory".
80.107.62.75 ( talk) 07:32, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
It may be good to include a section in this article relating to the social media crackdown on users who brought forward this theory before in was in the mainstream news. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FactChecker200000 ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Facebook enacted a policy to remove discussion of the lab leak theory as misinformation; it lifted the ban a year later, in May 2021.If additional social media companies such as YouTube were involved, and you can find a reliable source that says this, feel free to add a sentence around there. Just make sure to cite your sources using
<ref></ref>
. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 22:36, 1 February 2022 (UTC)The “Talk” page linked to the Wikipedia entry on the origin of the coronavirus provides visibility into the roiling editing wars. Sock-puppet accounts descended, trying to nudge the coverage of the topic to reflect particular points of view. A separate page was created, dedicated specifically to the “COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis,” but site administrators later deleted it—a decision that remains in dispute within the Wikipedia community.[24]. LondonIP ( talk) 01:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
at the expense of Wikipedia's goals and core content policies, then that would fall under WP:ADVOCACY. COI requires an external relationship, and merely expressing a point of view on Talk pages is neither external nor a relationship. Bakkster Man ( talk) 21:19, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
The template with the sources has been updated with a dozen or so new sources (sadly none of them pure scholarship). I think that instead of bickering on talk pages, you can just as well comb through archives and retrieve relevant URLs describing the lab leak theory, if these are not already present. Or expand the article, which is also a good thing. I've also added the Press template, as this article has attracted some scrutiny from the media (though admittedly not as much as elsewhere). PS. There should be a passing mention about the four books advocating for lab leak in the article (how carefully chosen by WSJ!). Not that they in any way supplant the scientific consensus, but the reader should know that they exist and the basic tenets of their arguments if relevant. Certainly belongs to the "Political and media attention" section. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 13:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
I came across the world "several" in this post, and curious, clicked in to find the actual number was 50. As a natural english speaker, several always was used in a vague way, but scarcely ever meant more than 20, numbers that high would be "dozens," "numerous," or "many." I looked at Merriam Webster's definition:
Definition B of several - "b : more than two but fewer than many" [1]
Regardless of whether this is the only meaning of several, it's certainly unnecessarily confusing to use an ambiguous term as evidenced by my surprise. I'm sure many of you can imagine if somebody said they had done a bad thing "several times" and the actual number turned out to be 50 times, you could feel they had been deliberately dishonest.
I would have liked to edit the entry to say "No less than fifty times." Subcategory "Prior lab leak incidents."
I apparently am not allowed to edit this article to correct this myself.
Anfurny ( talk) 15:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC) Anfurny
1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/several
The latest article from The Telegraph, "Wuhan lab leak believed ‘behind closed doors’ to be likeliest origin of Covid, expert says" at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/22/wuhan-lab-leak-believed-behind-closed-doors-likeliest-origin/ (archive at https://archive.is/Wlzrv) says "Lab leaks are fairly common". I don't advocate our article use that phrase though... perhaps, "Lab leaks are not uncommon". Le Marteau ( talk) 03:28, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 5 | ← | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | → | Archive 15 |
"Leading British and US scientists thought it was likely that Covid accidentally leaked from a laboratory but were concerned that further debate would harm science in China, emails show....Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: 'These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.'" [1] Reputable source, should be reflected in the article. Stonkaments ( talk) 06:49, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
ON TUESDAY, REPUBLICANS on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a letter that paints a damning picture of U.S. government officials wrestling with whether the novel coronavirus may have leaked out of a lab they were funding, acknowledging that it may have, and then keeping the discussion from spilling out into public view.Adoring nanny ( talk) 21:32, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
Even when an individual is notable, not all events they are involved in are. For example, news reporting about celebrities and sports figures can be very frequent and cover a lot of trivia, but using all these sources would lead to overly detailed articles that look like a diary. Not every facet of a celebrity's life, personal details, matches played, or goals scored is significant enough to be included in the biography of a person.To analogize, every tiny incident about the lab leak is not notable here.Many tabloids are running this as "they stifled the truth to avoid hurting science" or "they are covering up the real origin for political reasons." But A) the most reputable sources don't say this, (e.g. runs contrary to WP:BESTSOURCES), B) it would be a WP:BLP violation to put that in wiki-voice, and C) the actual emails don't really bare that out. It's just yellow journalism, which makes sense given that this is basically a year-old story being rehashed to get clicks. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 21:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said: “These emails show a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons. In light of BLP issues, IMO the best response, based on current sourcing, is not to state why they changed their public positions. We do have sourcing for the "they lied" point of view, but it's not overwhelming. It's not enough to say in the article that they lied. But it is enough that we shouldn't give their reasons in WikiVoice, either. If you want to have a WP:WIKIVOICE "describe the controversy" discussion, you could include both their ostensible reasons and Ridley. Adoring nanny ( talk) 00:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Matt Ridley thinks they lied." The mere existence of a single person who questions these motivations is not enough. Statements of opinion do not trump our BESTSOURCES. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 12:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
“Neither Drs. Fauci or Collins edited our Proximal Origins paper in any way. The major feedback we got from the Feb 1 teleconference was: 1. Don’t try to write a paper at all — it’s unnecessary or 2. If you do write it don’t mention a lab origin as that will just add fuel to the conspiracists,” Garry wrote on Wednesday.and
“However, further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular,” Fouchier wrote.How to handle those quotes is certainly an interesting question worth exploring. Adoring nanny ( talk) 14:13, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
After publication, Robert Garry clarified his previous comments to The Intercept: “One thing that could be misconstrued is that neither Dr Fauci or Dr Collins suggested in any way that we not write the Proximal Origin paper. Likewise, neither one suggested that we not mention the possibilty of a Lab origin. These were comments from others in emails after the call.” The story’s sub-headline has been updated to reflect Garry’s clarification that the advice did not come from NIH officials but from others following the call." Any mention of Garry's quote would have to include this part as well. And any mention of Fouchier's quote would have to include the other part of his quote, where he says the discussion is worth having:
“Given the evidence presented and the discussions around it, I would conclude that a follow-up discussion on the possible origin of 2019-nCoV would be of much interest,” wrote Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus MC Center for Viroscience in the Netherlands, on February 2..And once we get too long, it becomes UNDUE. So it's a balance. I would err on not including these at all, given that they require so much context to become applicable. That's a great indication that we're approaching COATRACK territory. We only have one article from The Intercept (already a biased source, though considered generally reliable for news). The RSP entry for The Intercept reads:
Almost all editors consider The Intercept a biased source, so uses may need to be attributed. For science, editors prefer peer-reviewed journals over news sources like The Intercept.I'm not sure these scientists' comments are DUE once we already have a few sentences about this episode, and any use of them would need to be attributed to the Intercept as quotes from others. So it becomes really long. We are not building an article that describes in detail the correspondence of scientists about the lab leak theory, and we do not need a laundry list of what each and every scientist has said about it. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 14:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
This bit about Trump in the lead should probably be moved, tweaked or the opinions of the sciensts included? The idea that the virus was released from a laboratory, either accidentally or deliberately, appeared early in the pandemic. The theory gained popularity through its promotion by political figures such as US president Donald Trump and other members of the Republican Party, as well as its dissemination in American conservative media, fomenting tensions between the United States and China. It was subsequently dismissed as a conspiracy theory.[11][12]
It reads as if Trump and conservative media alone made it up to antagonize china, but now we now see scientist were telling government officials that it looked like it may have been engineered. It might be worth explaining that "it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory" by the same scientists that first raised the possiblity to the government?
2603:800C:3101:D064:4C5C:71AC:11CB:6BF6 (
talk) 19:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
The thing of it is, this could all be solved by bringing up the sourced fact that it was not just Trumpers who were walking around with this notion in their head and early on. I am perplexed as to why there is such strong insistence to have any mention of anyone else believing such a thing until well deeper into the lead. Le Marteau ( talk) 21:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
It's not that it should be deeper in the lead, it's that it should be with similar content. What you seem to be proposing is that we should put the scientists' emails in that paragraph to somehow suggest that they invented the theory. or in any way were promoting it. This could not be further from the truth.
They were simply asking "Huh, could this actually be true?" and then soon after: "nah."
The theory already existed by the time these scientists were privately discussing it. As far as anyone can tell, the idea was actually first proposed by a random twitter user on January 5th [17]. It then spread to 4chan and Reddit from there. The Daily Mail published the first real story about it on January 23rd [18]. But it wasn't until March of that year, in 2020, when Ron Watkins (who many suspect is actually "Q" of Qanon) tweeted to his many many followers about it, and it really took off [19]. Russian and Chinese state-backed accounts began proposing that it was created in a lab in the US on January 20th [20]
The issue is, as it's written, it implies the theory originated with Trump and/or Trumpers
. It did. At least in America. Ron Watkins spread it and made it huge. There's a really good documentary about this called
Q Into the Storm by Cullen Hoback. It's mostly about Qanon and the search for who "Q" really is, but in the last several episodes, he talks about the origins of the lab leak theory (especially the bioweapon theory) and how it was promoted and retweeted and made viral by Qanon followers.
The rest of the lead is not chronological. Most leads are not chronological. They are thematic. It would be wrong, misleading, and disingenuous to place the sentence about scientists in that paragraph, as it would suggest that these scientists originated the theory. When in fact, they were simply running off of an idea that already existed.
If anything, we should put a sentence about Ron Watkins and the Hong Kong Twitter user in that paragraph.
If you like, we could move that scientist paragraph up a bit, but I think it's actually where it belongs, as the last part of the lead. That's sort of describing the MAINSTREAM view as a foil to the rest of the lead. — Shibbolethink ( ♔ ♕) 21:43, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Most scientists have remained skeptical of the idea, citing a lack of supporting evidence. Perhaps chould add "After first favoring the idea," 2603:800C:3101:D064:B140:44B1:438A:8293 ( talk) 18:18, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
At first favoring the idea, most scientists have remained skeptical of the ideaand mentioned
scientists initially favoured the idea. To me, both of those sentences imply a scientific majority. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 04:05, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Some leading scientists initially favored the idea.before going into the skepticism. Adoring nanny ( talk) 13:18, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=COVID-19_lab_leak_theory&diff=1070598183&oldid=1069877133 should this change have been made? 2600:8804:6600:45:49C0:938F:82DE:741E ( talk) 16:28, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
have a read of this. wonder what to make of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:C7F:567C:2F00:157E:F8F:4FC3:F787 ( talk) 02:00, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Recently Csabai et al.1 have found a most likely contaminated metagenomic sample set from Antarctica that contained traces of unique SARS-CoV-2 variants. This is a short followup of that report where we attempt to find genetic footprint of the hosts. With reasonable confidence we could identify genetic material from mitochondria of Homo sapiens, green monkey and Chinese hamster. The latter two most probably originated from cell lines Vero E6 (or COS-7) and CHO respectively, which are frequent laboratory culture media for studying viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and its closest relatives.
[22]
Lancet letter was recently moved from draftspace to mainspace. – Novem Linguae ( talk) 05:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
The current version of the article states: Some versions, particularly those alleging alteration of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, are based on speculation, misinformation, or misrepresentations of scientific evidence.
The problem with this statement is that scientists are currently divided on whether alteration to the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or (more precisely) its immediate progenitor's genome, can be determined without access to laboratory records 1 2 3 4 5.
Baric Graham 2020 (PMID: 32392464) cites Andersen et al (PMID: 32284615) in light of social media speculation about possible laboratory manipulation and deliberate and/or accidental release of SARS-CoV-2. But as Ralph Baric later told to PresaDiretta, "You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace" [1]. After dampening his "smoking gun" comment about the FCS, David Baltimore told to Caltech "You can't distinguish between the two origins from just looking at the sequence" [2]. And more significantly, after a (unapproved) grant request by EHA about coronavirus GoF experiments was leaked in Sep 2021; Jack Nunberg told to The Intercept "Whether that particular study did or didn’t [lead to the pandemic], it certainly could have" [3] and Alexander Kekulé told to German television "My unease about the possibility that it could have been a laboratory accident has increased" [4]. Simon Wain Hobson wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about it: "What we do not know - and badly need to know - is whether this proposal was submitted elsewhere, financed and performed." [5].
A neutral statement would reflect the views of these scientists as expressed in these more recent sources, while tempering confidence about facts that scientists can't know without access to key documents at the Wuhan laboratory. The full quote from Baric is "You can engineer a virus without leaving any trace. The answers you are looking for, however, can only be found in the archives of the Wuhan laboratory".
80.107.62.75 ( talk) 07:32, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
It may be good to include a section in this article relating to the social media crackdown on users who brought forward this theory before in was in the mainstream news. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FactChecker200000 ( talk • contribs) 22:03, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Facebook enacted a policy to remove discussion of the lab leak theory as misinformation; it lifted the ban a year later, in May 2021.If additional social media companies such as YouTube were involved, and you can find a reliable source that says this, feel free to add a sentence around there. Just make sure to cite your sources using
<ref></ref>
. –
Novem Linguae (
talk) 22:36, 1 February 2022 (UTC)The “Talk” page linked to the Wikipedia entry on the origin of the coronavirus provides visibility into the roiling editing wars. Sock-puppet accounts descended, trying to nudge the coverage of the topic to reflect particular points of view. A separate page was created, dedicated specifically to the “COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis,” but site administrators later deleted it—a decision that remains in dispute within the Wikipedia community.[24]. LondonIP ( talk) 01:59, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
at the expense of Wikipedia's goals and core content policies, then that would fall under WP:ADVOCACY. COI requires an external relationship, and merely expressing a point of view on Talk pages is neither external nor a relationship. Bakkster Man ( talk) 21:19, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
The template with the sources has been updated with a dozen or so new sources (sadly none of them pure scholarship). I think that instead of bickering on talk pages, you can just as well comb through archives and retrieve relevant URLs describing the lab leak theory, if these are not already present. Or expand the article, which is also a good thing. I've also added the Press template, as this article has attracted some scrutiny from the media (though admittedly not as much as elsewhere). PS. There should be a passing mention about the four books advocating for lab leak in the article (how carefully chosen by WSJ!). Not that they in any way supplant the scientific consensus, but the reader should know that they exist and the basic tenets of their arguments if relevant. Certainly belongs to the "Political and media attention" section. Szmenderowiecki ( talk) 13:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
I came across the world "several" in this post, and curious, clicked in to find the actual number was 50. As a natural english speaker, several always was used in a vague way, but scarcely ever meant more than 20, numbers that high would be "dozens," "numerous," or "many." I looked at Merriam Webster's definition:
Definition B of several - "b : more than two but fewer than many" [1]
Regardless of whether this is the only meaning of several, it's certainly unnecessarily confusing to use an ambiguous term as evidenced by my surprise. I'm sure many of you can imagine if somebody said they had done a bad thing "several times" and the actual number turned out to be 50 times, you could feel they had been deliberately dishonest.
I would have liked to edit the entry to say "No less than fifty times." Subcategory "Prior lab leak incidents."
I apparently am not allowed to edit this article to correct this myself.
Anfurny ( talk) 15:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC) Anfurny
1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/several
The latest article from The Telegraph, "Wuhan lab leak believed ‘behind closed doors’ to be likeliest origin of Covid, expert says" at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/02/22/wuhan-lab-leak-believed-behind-closed-doors-likeliest-origin/ (archive at https://archive.is/Wlzrv) says "Lab leaks are fairly common". I don't advocate our article use that phrase though... perhaps, "Lab leaks are not uncommon". Le Marteau ( talk) 03:28, 23 February 2022 (UTC)