User talk:Novem Linguae/Essays/There was no lab leak/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

What is this page?

Why is a cabal of wikipedia users maintaining this page dedicated to reinforcing their groupthink? Why is there not a page doing research to argue the other side of this? 2600:8804:6600:C4:8C26:74C7:8EAD:C63F (talk) 17:04, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

You should read WP:ESSAY. Feel free to create an opposing essay if you like. No one is obligated to present both sides of an issue equally. clpo13_(talk) 17:07, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

This page has been linked to in covid templates. Presenting an essay as un-challengable fact is a loophole in the wikipedia rules. 2600:8804:6600:C4:8C26:74C7:8EAD:C63F (talk) 17:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

From WP:ESSAY:

Avoid "quoting" essays as though they are policy—including this explanatory supplement page. Essays, information pages and template documentation pages can be written without much—if any—debate, as opposed to Wikipedia policies that have been thoroughly vetted by the community (see WP:Local consensus for details). In Wikipedia discussions, editors may refer to essays, provided that they do not hold them out as consensus or policy

Wikipedia:Don't_cite_essays_or_proposals_as_if_they_were_policy

They should not be used as an end-run around the Wikipedia process of establishing consensus.

2600:8804:6600:C4:8C26:74C7:8EAD:C63F (talk) 17:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

There are plenty of counter essays: User:Adoring nanny/Essays/Lab Leak Likely, User:Normchou/Essays/Does common sense point to a lab leak origin?, User:CutePeach/YESLABLEAK. In my opinion, this essay is linked in COVID templates because the "what the sources say" section at the top of this essay is useful, persuasive, and policy compliant. The "arguments against lab leak" section farther down is more subjective, and I state as such at the beginning of the section. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:28, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

It's a useful reference, a summary of the best sources on technical aspects of the topic. And the only decent user essay I've seen about it so far, that's not overly politics-centered. I suggest to carefully read it and its sources for your own research... And noone will argue that this is policy, on the other hand, representing the view of the best sources in the actual articles is policy. —PaleoNeonate – 21:44, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Adding: since you're hopping within a /64 range and that you may not see warnings, you've been warned before about using Wikipedia as a soapboxing platform and for disruptive editing, like here and you know that there were previous temporary blocks on your range. I predict a longer block if this persists. Your edits on this essay were what we call WP:POINTy WP:VANDALISM. If you think that assessing scientific consensus is a sin of groupthink, WP is not for you, it has always sided with academia (WP:ABIAS)... —PaleoNeonate – 21:57, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

No one has cited this essay as consensus or policy. Some have cited it as a shortcut to citing the numerous sources compiled here, which are themselves valuable. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 11:05, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

References

New commentary in the Journal of Medical Virology

"The unresolved question on COVID-19 virus origin: The three cards game?" was very recently published in the Journal of Medical Virology and it discusses the lab leak idea. The commentary states that it's a consensus view that the virus probably originated from a zoonotic spillover:

In conclusion, even if suspicions by some about the possibility of lab-leak hypothesis still remain, the consensus view is that the pandemic probably started from a natural source.

But also specifically criticizes how the press and policymakers have covered the topic:

Fallacious origin stories about the mysterious SARS-CoV-2 origin appear in the popular press worldwide as misinformed political propaganda used by policymakers as a form of political rhetoric, such as the use of the virus as a biological weapon, with deeply harmful geopolitical implications.

Right now, we still do not know enough whether SARS-CoV-2 is human-made or not, and lab-leak theories remain essentially speculative unless someone admits that the virus was manipulated before escaping the lab accidentally.

Leaving speculative hypotheses lacking evidential support aside from real science, the WHO agreed to sponsor an independent international expert team tasked with understanding the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The WHO-China mission to Wuhan concluded a direct introduction or indirect zoonotic introduction of the virus through an intermediate host was the most plausible, however, a lab leak has not been ruled out, and many included scores of recommendations for further study.

It's just a commentary, so the latter quote may be more useful as a citation to this essay. Particularly in the "Politics" section, though I don't know how you'd incorporate it if at all. There are also a number of other relevant arguments in the commentary you can read (it's open access). --Chillabit (talk) 03:32, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

What counts as evidence of consensus?

I'm aware, due to past conflicts with other editors in other areas, that my standards for claiming existence of a consensus seem to be higher than most. To me, the phenomenon that seems to persuade many of the existence of a consensus, the described unanimity in top medical sources, while suggestive of a consensus, is not conclusive. Instead, I think we need positive, quality evidence of the opinion of the population of experts on the topic, both those who have weighed in on the topic and those who have not.

Gathering this kind of evidence is not normal practice in science. It requires specialist polling skills. It does occur with some regularity in some fields such as climate science and economics. My impression is that it is uncommon in virology, and so we lack the evidence to make the strongest claims in this essay in wikivoice. — Charles Stewart (talk) 12:48, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Check out WP:MEDSCI, it describes our standards here on Wikipedia pretty well. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:34, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, fortunately some of the best sources already report about it, as well as what is most or least likely; this is also an essay meant as a useful reference rather than an article. Also adding a link to the more general WP:RS/AC, —PaleoNeonate – 17:22, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

• WP:MEDSCI seems to me to be rather unfortunately worded. I understand that we need to work with the institutions of academic publishing as they actually exist, but there does not seem to be a whiff of awareness in those three paragraphs about, say, the routine failure of highly reputable medical journals to retract material known to lack credibility. Even if we restrict our attention to the very best in class, does anyone seriously think that for each claim made in an up-to-date Cochrane review article, say, there is a consensus that the claim is true? To me, this obliterates a useful distinction between reliable sources, which are the body of claims that we generally expect to be true, and scientific consensus, which regards the much smaller set of claims that have withstood thorough expert scrutiny. — Charles Stewart (talk) 19:21, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

If there were serious issues, they would likely have been retracted. It's also not for WP editors to decide that they should have been, —PaleoNeonate – 20:49, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

• With respect to your first sentence, are you saying the problem I describe does not occur? Are you familiar with the work of Elisabeth Bik? When it becomes clear that an issue attracts the interest of science journalists, journals generally do the right thing, but many editors seem to regard retraction as a PR defeat rather than a scientific responsibility.

With respect to your second, the problem seems to be growing. Certainly it is not our place to do original research, but perhaps we should be more open to the output of venues like PubPeer. — Charles Stewart (talk) 00:58, 4 January 2022 (UTC)