The Smear Tactics of COVID-19 Origins Dogmatists Resembled Those of Human Origins Dogmatists

"What we have seen with the lab-leak controversy is experts responding to this state of affairs not with the kind of humility the situation calls for, but by forcing consensus to create the appearance of certitude in order to preserve their social and political authority. The misrepresentation of the state of our knowledge regarding Covid’s origins was therefore not simply a misstep or institutional failure. It was a perversion of the norms that scientific institutions and experts are supposed to uphold."  -- M. Anthony Mills, article in The New Atlantis

The COVID-19 pandemic began spreading worldwide early in the year 2020, after originating in Wuhan, China, the site of two major virus labs. In February 2020 a letter appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet entitled "Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19." The statement denounced as "misinformation" and "conspiracy theories" suspicions that "COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."  It stated the following:

"The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumours and misinformation around its origins. We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin."

The authors suggested that "conjecture" on this topic should be repressed for the sake of "unity," stating, "We support the call from the Director-General of WHO to promote scientific evidence and unity over misinformation and conjecture." 

What was going on here was what we may call a slander-steamroller. The elements were as follows:

(1) Those supportive of a reasonable hypothesis (the hypothesis of an accidental lab leak) were slandered as supporters of "conspiracy theories." In recent years accusing someone of being a conspiracy theorist is a way of dismissing that person as being some wildly unrealistic fantasist whose thoughts should be ignored.  In this case the accusation was slanderous, because the hypothesis of a lab leak has no dependence on any conspiracy theory. A person can reasonably suspect that COVID-19 arose from some accidental lab leak that was the result of unintentional human error, not some conspiracy to create a new virus and send it out into the world. 

(2) The prestige of the Lancet was used as a kind of springboard to create a steamroller effect, in which discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis became unofficially taboo. 

The Daily Mail quotes a scholar of COVID-19 origins (Jamie Metzl) as speaking very unfavorably about the February 2020 Lancet letter orchestrated by Daszak:

"Jamie Metzl, who sits on the World Health Organization's advisory committee on human genome editing and is a former Bill Clinton administration staffer, said Dr Daszak's letter was a 'form of thuggery'. He said: ‘The Lancet letter was scientific propaganda and a form of thuggery and intimidation. By labelling anyone with different views a conspiracy theorist, the Lancet letter was the worst form of bullying in full contravention of the scientific method.' "

Metzl was using a little hyperbole, as no literal thuggery (no literal physical violence) was involved, and mere words are never "the worst form of bullying," which is physical violence. It is rather hard to judge exactly how much of an effect the February 2020 Lancet letter had. But it did rather seem in early 2020 that the letter had "worked like a charm" to tell scientists that no heresy was allowed from the prevailing view on this topic.  Throughout that year scientists acted as if they were thinking, "We got the memo: it is a taboo to question the purely natural origin of COVID-19." 

But in the year 2021, things started to change. Article after article in the mainstream press began to treat respectfully the lab leak hypothesis as an alternate theory of COVID-19 origins. An example is the article here in the widely-read science review site Inference. In the press around the middle of 2021 we heard quite a few scientists say that in retrospect it was a mistake to brand those in favor of the lab leak hypothesis as "conspiracy theorists." The lab leak hypothesis is  mainly a theory of human error and human overconfidence, not a theory of some sinister conspiracy.  Quite a few scientists said something along the lines that going forward, there should be a calm scientific debate about the alternate ideas of a purely natural origin of COVID-19 and a laboratory-related origin, without people mudslinging those who took either of the positions. 

In 2022 a scientific paper was published, entitled, "A call for an independent inquiry into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus." Referring to a furin-cleavage site (FCS) that is a key part of the SARS-CoV-2  virus that causes COVID-19, the paper said, "We do not know whether the insertion of the FCS was the result of natural evolution —perhaps via a recombination event in an intermediate mammal or a human —or was the result of a deliberate introduction of the FCS into a SARS-like virus as part of a laboratory experiment."

Two developments have shown that there never was any good basis for unanimity about COVID-19 origins.  They are these:

(1) An official US government report (which you can read here)  stated the following, using "IC elements" to mean government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA involved with intelligence analysis:

"Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.  One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

So the result was: no conclusion on COVID-19 origins were made  with high confidence, and the only conclusion made with medium confidence was a conclusion in favor of the lab leak hypothesis.

(2) About two weeks ago the WHO issued a report on COVID-19 origins that was very inconclusive, and stated that more research needed to be done on the lab-leak hypothesis. An Associated Press story summarizes the report with this headline: "WHO: COVID origins unclear but lab leak theory needs study."

We read the following in the AP story:

"Over two years after the coronavirus was first detected in China, and after at least 6.3 million deaths have been counted worldwide from the pandemic, the World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame.

That stance marks a sharp reversal of the U.N. health agency’s initial assessment of the pandemic’s origins, and comes after many critics accused WHO of being too quick to dismiss or underplay a lab-leak theory that put Chinese officials on the defensive.

WHO concluded last year that it was 'extremely unlikely' COVID-19 might have spilled into humans in the city of Wuhan from a lab. Many scientists suspect the coronavirus jumped into people from bats, possibly via another animal.

Yet in a report released Thursday, WHO’s expert group said 'key pieces of data' to explain how the pandemic began were still missing. The scientists said the group would 'remain open to any and all scientific evidence that becomes available in the future to allow for comprehensive testing of all reasonable hypotheses.' ”

The slander-steamroller effect that occurred in the year 2020 regarding a far-from-settled matter of biological origins resembled another slander-steamroller effect that has long occurred regarding a different far-from-settled matter of biological origins: the matter of human origins. The second of these slander-steamroller effects has worked like this:

(1) Critics reasonably disputing the credibility of Darwinist accounts of human origins have long been unfairly slandered as "creationists," a term suggesting scriptural motivations, even when the arguments of such critics make no appeal to scripture, but are based only on the mountainous complexity of human bodies and human mental phenomena, and the inadequacy of Darwinist explanations for such wonders. 

(2) The social conformity engine that is modern academia has acted as a steamroller to suppress contrarian explanations and create groupthink, creating an "everyone must sing from the same choir book" environment in which reasonable critics advancing credible alternative explanations are labeled as heretics and painted as kooks, in an ad hominem sort of way. 

We do not yet understand COVID-19 origins, and we should not pretend that we do.  Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of a lab-leak should not be slander-steamrolled through ad hominem smears such as calling them "conspiracy theorists." Similarly, we do not understand human origins, and we should not pretend that we do. Those who advance the reasonable hypothesis of teleology and design as a chief causal factor in human origins should not be slandered and smeared as thinkers who have scriptural motivations, when the main motivations of such thinkers are the mountainous levels of physical organization and information-rich complexity in human bodies and a host of hard-to-explain wonders of the human mind and spirit, all observed and studied long after any scriptures were written. 

The origin of about 20,000 types of fine-tuned human protein molecules, the origin of about 200 types of enormously complex human cells,  the origin of the mountainous levels of hierarchical organization in human bodies (not explained by DNA that does not specify such organization), and the origin of many human mind capabilities (not credibly explained by anything in brains)  are all unsolved problems thousands or millions of times harder to naturally explain than the "furin-cleavage site (FCS)" origin problem that so vexes scientists trying to explain the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.  So what sense does it make to be advocating intellectual humility and reservation of judgment about COVID-19 origins, while acting in an opposite way about human origins? 

There is an accurate term that can be used to describe those who believe or suspect that design or purpose were key factors in the origin of humans. The word is "teleologist." "Teleology" is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as  "the use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural phenomena." 

There is no truth to claims or insinuations that proper scientists only find purely natural explanations for phenomena. There is no such rule in the world of science. Scientists such as archeologists ponder old things such as bones and stones and huge rocks, and are quite ready to choose either purely natural explanations involving no purpose or intention or explanations involving design and purpose and willful activity. For example, an archeologist may decide that some old chipped stone or some circle of large rocks arose after some purposeful intervention by a willful agent.  Similarly, astronomers analyzing radio waves from outer space are quite ready to announce the discovery of design and purpose as soon as they find some radio waves that sufficiently resemble waves that were transmitted by purposeful agents. And chemists analyzing some soil or meteorologists analyzing the atmosphere sure don't follow some rule of "always believe the causes were mindless and not designed." 

According to the AP article quoted above, "The World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame" for the origin of COVID-19. But when will our mainstream scientists start declaring that a deeper probe is required into whether Darwinist explanations can credibly account for human origins? They will probably long avoid such a declaration, because such a declaration would involve a gigantic scholarly commitment that they would prefer not to make.  That type of deeper probe should include a deep inquiry into what exactly are the capabilities of human minds, and what exactly are the human experiences and abilities that are hardest to explain (or impossible to explain) with conventional explanations or neural and genetic explanations. That type of inquiry would require scientists to start reading hundreds of important volumes that they have failed to read, and should have read before ever claiming to understand human origins. A small fraction of those volumes are listed in my post here.  

The topic of human mental phenomena is a topic of oceanic depth. Rather than plunge into that ocean and deeply explore it, the typical biologist has got away with a merely superficial study of the human mind, like someone who studies the ocean only by riding around atop the sea in a boat or wading at the shore. Will our biologists ever pledge to make a full study of the human mind and all its strange facets and hard-to-explain phenomena, like some student of the ocean pledging to do many hours of scuba diving?  Don't hold your breath waiting for such a pledge.  It's much easier to cling to unfounded explanatory boasts, and to claim that you understand the origin of minds that you have not studied a hundredth as deeply as you should before boasting that you understand how such minds arose. 

Just before publishing this post this morning, I saw a long article in the Guardian entitled "Do we need a new theory of evolution?" The "teaser" text below the title seems to mention another case of smear tactics being used by human origins dogmatists. It says this:

"A new wave of scientists argues that mainstream evolutionary theory needs an urgent overhaul. Their opponents have dismissed them as misguided careerists – and the conflict may determine the future of biology."

What we have in the article is kind of a portrait of an evolution "industry" (to use a term used by the article) in disarray and disagreement.  Below is one quote:

"This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading." 

We are told that when some contrarian scientists organized a New Trends in Evolution conference, they were fiercely attacked by fellow scientists: "the personal attacks and insinuations against the scientists involved were 'shocking' and 'ugly', said one scientist." Why of course -- that's the same kind of smear tactics I mention in this post.  We hear quite a bit in the article about problems with the so-called "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology, but no mention of its central defect: its phony-baloney idea or insinuation that DNA (consisting of genes) is a blueprint for an organism, an idea that is just plain false. As discussed here, DNA has no specification of the structure of an organism, and does not even specify how to make any of the cells of an organism. The Guardian article has a link to a scientific paper saying this about the "modern synthesis" of evolutionary biology: "proposing it as a master theory was premature, and claiming that it was established empirically was an exaggeration bordering on delusion." 

Postscript: A recent biology paper preprint is entitled "Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2."  The paper states this: 

"Both the restriction site fingerprint and the pattern of mutations generating them are extremely unlikely in wild coronaviruses and nearly universal in synthetic viruses. Our findings strongly suggest a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2."