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`{{COVID-19 misinformation\|topic=aa}}`	politics, ethnic relations, and conflicts involving Armenia, Azerbaijan, or both	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Armenia and Azerbaijan
`{{COVID-19 misinformation\|topic=crypto}}`	blockchain and cryptocurrencies	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Blockchain and cryptocurrencies
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`{{COVID-19 misinformation\|topic=syria}}`	the Syrian Civil War and ISIL	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Syrian Civil War and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
`{{COVID-19 misinformation\|topic=uku}}`	measurement units in the United Kingdom	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Units in the United Kingdom
`{{COVID-19 misinformation\|topic=uyghur}}`	Uyghurs, Uyghur genocide, or topics that are related to Uyghurs or Uyghur genocide	Wikipedia:General sanctions/Uyghur genocide

WikiProject COVID-19 consensus

WikiProject COVID-19 aims to add to and build consensus for pages relating to COVID-19. They have so far discussed items listed below. Please discuss proposed improvements to them at the project talk page.

General

Superseded by TfD October 2020 and later practice - consult regular {{Current}} guidance.

Refrain from using Worldometer (worldometers.info) as a source due to common errors being observed as noted on the Case Count Task Force common errors page. (April 2020, April 2020)

For infoboxes on the main articles of countries, use Wuhan, Hubei, China for the origin parameter. (March 2020)

"Social distancing" is generally preferred over "physical distancing". (April 2020, May 2020)

Page title

COVID-19 (full caps) is preferable in the body of all articles, and in the title of all articles/category pages/etc.(RM April 2020, including the main article itself, RM March 2021).

SARS-CoV-2 (exact capitalisation and punctuation) is the common name of the virus and should be used for the main article's title, as well as in the body of all articles, and in the title of all other articles/category pages/etc. (June 2022, overturning April 2020)

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There is no consensus about which color schemes to use, but they should be consistent within articles as much as possible. There is agreement that there should be six levels of shading, plus gray for areas with no instances or no data. (May 2020)

There is no consensus about whether the legend, the date, and other elements should appear in the map image itself. (May 2020)

For map legends, ranges should use fixed round numbers (as opposed to updating dynamically). There is no consensus on what base population to use for per capita maps. (May 2020)

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Omer Benjakob (9 February 2020). "On Wikipedia, a fight is raging over coronavirus disinformation". Wired. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
Noam Cohen (15 February 2020). "How Wikipedia Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus Misinformation". Wired. Retrieved 15 February 2020.

Text and/or other creative content from this version of Misinformation related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic was copied or moved into 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic with this edit on 12 April 2020. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

Text has been copied to or from this article; see the list below. The source pages now serve to provide attribution for the content in the destination pages and must not be deleted as long as the copies exist. For attribution and to access older versions of the copied text, please see the history links below.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

There have been attempts to recruit editors of specific viewpoints to this article, in a manner that does not comply with Wikipedia's policies. Editors are encouraged to use neutral mechanisms for requesting outside input (e.g. a "request for comment", a third opinion or other noticeboard post, or neutral criteria: "pinging all editors who have edited this page in the last 48 hours"). If someone has asked you to provide your opinion here, examine the arguments, not the editors who have made them. Reminder: disputes are resolved by consensus, not by majority vote.

Add section about debunking/fact checking that itself has become misinformation

Example: APNews "No evidence ivermectin is a miracle drug against COVID-19" fact checking article claiming

No evidence has been shown to prove that ivermectin works against COVID-19

However there is a plethora of scientific articles and studies (including double blind placebo) that indeed show that it is an effective and safe treatment. Discussion about journalistic integrity of the AP could also be interesting.

Collapse long list of unreliable and/or irrelevant sources, copy-pasted from the "fake" journal article at ivmmeta.com

References: 1.Afsar et al., SSRN., Ivermectin Use Associated with Reduced Duration of COVID-19 Febrile Illness in a Community Setting, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3734478.

2.Ahmed et al., International Journal of Infectious Diseases, doi:10.1016/j.ijid.2020.11.191, A five day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971220325066.

3.Alam et al., European Journal ofMedical and Health Sciences, doi:10.24018/ejmed.2020.2.6.599, Ivermectin as Pre-exposure Prophylaxis for COVID-19 among Healthcare Providers in a Selected Tertiary Hospital in Dhaka – An Observational Study, https://ejmed.org/index.php/ejmed/article/view/599.

4.Altman, D., BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.d2304, How to obtain the P value from a confidence interval, https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d2304.

5.Altman (B) et al., BMJ, doi:10.1136/bmj.d2090, How to obtain the confidence interval from a P value, https://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d2090.

6.Anglemyer et al., Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2014, Issue 4, doi:10.1002/14651858.MR000034.pub2, Healthcare outcomes assessed with observational study designs compared with those assessed in randomized trials, https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cd..0.1002/14651858.MR000034.pub2/full.

7.Behera et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.10.29.20222661v1, Role of ivermectin in the prevention of COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.29.20222661v1.

8.Bernigaud et al., Annals of Dermatology and Venereology, doi:10.1016/j.annder.2020.09.231, Ivermectin benefit: from scabies to COVID-19, an example of serendipity, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S015196382030627X.

9.Budhiraja et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.11.16.20232223, Clinical Profile of First 1000 COVID-19 Cases Admitted at Tertiary Care Hospitals and the Correlates of their Mortality: An Indian Experience, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.16.20232223v1.

10.Cadegiani et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.10.31.20223883, Early COVID-19 Therapy with Azithromycin Plus Nitazoxanide, Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine in Outpatient Settings Significantly Reduced Symptoms Compared to Known Outcomes in Untreated Patients, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.31.20223883v1.

11.Camprubí et al., PLoS ONE, 15:11, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242184, Lack of efficacy of standard doses of ivermectin in severe COVID-19 patients, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/..le?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242184.

12.Carvallo et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.09.10.20191619, Safety and Efficacy of the combined use of ivermectin, dexamethasone, enoxaparin and aspirin against COVID-19, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.10.20191619v1.

13.Carvallo (B) et al., Journal of Biomedical Research and Clinical Investigation, doi:10.31546/2633-8653.1007, Study of the Efficacy and Safety of Topical Ivermectin + Iota-Carrageenan in the Prophylaxis against COVID-19 in Health Personnel, https://medicalpressopenaccess.com/upload/1605709669_1007.pdf.

14.Carvallo (C) et al., NCT04425850, Usefulness of Topic Ivermectin and Carrageenan to Prevent Contagion of Covid 19 (IVERCAR), https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04425850.

15.Chaccour et al., Research Square, doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-116547/v1, The effect of early treatment with ivermectin on viral load, symptoms and humoral response in patients with mild COVID-19: a pilot, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-116547/v1.

16.Chachar et al., International Journal of Sciences, 9:31-35, doi:10.18483/ijSci.2378, Effectiveness of Ivermectin in SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 Patients, https://www.ijsciences.com/pub/article/2378.

17.Concato et al., NEJM, 342:1887-1892, doi:10.1056/NEJM200006223422507, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm200006223422507.

18.Deaton et al., Social Science & Medicine, 210, doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005, Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953617307359.

19.Deng, H., PyMeta, Python module for meta-analysis, http://www.pymeta.com/.

20.Elgazzar et al., Research Square, doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-100956/v2, Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v3.

21.Elgazzar (B) et al., Research Square, doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-100956/v2, Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-100956/v3.

22.Espitia-Hernandez et al., Biomedical Research, 31:5, Effects of Ivermectin-azithromycin-cholecalciferol combined therapy on COVID-19 infected patients: A proof of concept study, https://www.biomedres.info/biomedi..-proof-of-concept-study-14435.html.

23.Gorial et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.07.07.20145979, Effectiveness of Ivermectin as add-on Therapy in COVID-19 Management (Pilot Trial), https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.07.20145979v1.

24.Hashim et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.10.26.20219345, Controlled randomized clinical trial on using Ivermectin with Doxycycline for treating COVID-19 patients in Baghdad, Iraq, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.26.20219345v1.

25.Hellwig et al., International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, doi:10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106248, A COVID-19 Prophylaxis? Lower incidence associated with prophylactic administration of Ivermectin, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304684.

26.Khan et al., Archivos de Bronconeumología, doi:10.1016/j.arbres.2020.08.007, Ivermectin treatment may improve the prognosis of patients with COVID-19, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030028962030288X.

27.Lee et al., Arch Intern Med., 2011, 171:1, 18-22, doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2010.482, Analysis of Overall Level of Evidence Behind Infectious Diseases Society of America Practice Guidelines, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/j..nternalmedicine/fullarticle/226373.

28.Mahmud et al., Clinical Trial Results, NCT04523831, Clinical Trial of Ivermectin Plus Doxycycline for the Treatment of Confirmed Covid-19 Infection, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/results/NCT04523831?view=results.

29.McLean et al., Open Forum Infect. Dis. September 2015, 2:3, doi:10.1093/ofid/ofv100, Impact of Late Oseltamivir Treatment on Influenza Symptoms in the Outpatient Setting: Results of a Randomized Trial, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525010/.

30.Niaee et al., Research Square, doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-109670/v1, Ivermectin as an adjunct treatment for hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients: A randomized multi-center clinical trial, https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-109670/v1.

31.Nichol et al., Injury, 2010, doi: 10.1016/j.injury.2010.03.033, Challenging issues in randomised controlled trials, https://www.injuryjournal.com/article/S0020-1383(10)00233-0/fulltext.

32.Podder et al., IMC J. Med. Science, 14:2, July 2020, Outcome of ivermectin treated mild to moderate COVID-19 cases: a single-centre, open-label, randomised controlled study, http://imcjms.com/registration/journal_abstract/353.

33.Rajter et al., Chest, doi:10.1016/j.chest.2020.10.009, Use of Ivermectin is Associated with Lower Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 (ICON study), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012369220348984.

34.Shouman et al., NCT04422561, Use of Ivermectin as a Prophylactic Option in Asymptomatic Family Close Contacts with Patients of COVID-19, https://clinicaltrials.gov/Provide..cs/61/NCT04422561/Prot_SAP_000.pdf.

35.Soto-Becerra et al., medRxiv, doi:10.1101/2020.10.06.20208066, Real-World Effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and ivermectin among hospitalized COVID-19 patients: Results of a target trial emulation using observational data from a nationwide Healthcare System in Peru, https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.06.20208066v1.

36.Spoorthi et al., IAIM, 2020, 7:10, 177-182, Utility of Ivermectin and Doxycycline combination for the treatment of SARSCoV-2, http://iaimjournal.com/wp-content/..oads/2020/10/iaim_2020_0710_23.pdf.

37.Sweeting et al., Statistics in Medicine, doi:10.1002/sim.1761, What to add to nothing? Use and avoidance of continuity corrections in meta‐analysis of sparse data, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sim.1761.

38.Treanor et al., JAMA, 2000, 283:8, 1016-1024, doi:10.1001/jama.283.8.1016, Efficacy and Safety of the Oral Neuraminidase Inhibitor Oseltamivir in Treating Acute Influenza: A Randomized Controlled Trial, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/192425.

39.Vallejos et al., Coronavirus in Argentina: Warnings and evidence on the consumption of ivermectin against Covid-19, https://totalnewsagency.com/2020/1..de-ivermectina-contra-el-covid-19/.

40.Zhang et al., JAMA, 80:19, 1690, doi:10.1001/jama.280.19.1690, What's the relative risk? A method of correcting the odds ratio in cohort studies of common outcomes, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/188182. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adriaandh (talk • contribs) 05:22, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Adriaandh, thanks for the feedback. Are there any articles about fact checking websites fact checking wrong? If so, feel free to post some URL's on this talk page. If not, then this might be against our original research policy. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:15, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Novem_Linguae, Here is an article regarding problematic conflicts of interest of fact checking websites: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/?sh=4d36051e227f

I think a claim that anything is a "miracle drug" is ipso facto misinformation, but the precise situation is set out at Ivermectin#COVID-19. We are not saying anything unusual in the article here: APNews is being cited simply to source a statement about how a video went viral. Alexbrn (talk) 08:02, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, Saying that a drug is a miracle drug does not make it ipso facto misinformation - that is the main problem with most fact checking sites - they latch onto a single point of a statement that they might be able to "debunk" and then discard the whole statement as "fake news", much as was done to the huge list of scientific studies that has just been marked as "fake" right here without giving any references or motivation as to why these studies should be disregarded. If a cheap and safe drug is found that merely reduces the probability of contracting COVID by 20% it can be argued to be a miracle drug, especially to those 20% of people that will not die and their families. While it does appear that with the correct dosing Ivermectin provides a much higher level of protection.

Regarding the existing wikpedia article on Ivermectin, it is also falsely detracting from the effectiveness of Ivermectin. It references a slightly outdated meta-analisys of only 4 studies that actually showed Ivermectin is effective at all stages of disease and uses that reference as motivation for saying "There is only very weak evidence of ivermectin's benefit when used as an add-on therapy for people with non-severe COVID-19; there is no evidence for people with severe disease".

while the actual meta analysis in the study found: "The overall result suggests that there was a statistically significant reduction in all-cause mortality with the additional use of ivermectin compared to usual therapy only (P=0.04).Since the search period mentioned in our protocol registered on PROSPERO was from inception till August 31, 2020, data from the study by Hashim et alhas not included in the primary meta-analysis as this trial was published in the preprint server in October 2020 (21). In this study, out of 140 COVID-19 patients, 70 were randomized to receive ivermectin plus standard treatment and the rest 70 received standard treatment only. In the ivermectin plus standard treatment arm, the mortality was 2 compared to 6 in the standard treatment only arm. As a secondary analysis, when this study was included, the test for heterogeneity for the pooled studies was not significant (Chi2=0.45, df=2, (P=0.80), I2=0%) and pooled OR was 0.50 (95%CI: 0.29 to 0.88). This suggested that addition of ivermectin significantly reduced the mortality (P= 0.02)."

The meta-analysis is actually very positive for the use of Ivermectin especially in early treatment, but it is made out to say that it is not the case.

Finally, if the APNews article is only to source a statement about how a video went viral, where is the reference that is used to "prove" that it is actually fake news that Ivermectin is a very compelling treatment for Covid that could already have saved thousands of lives?

Miracles aren't real. And your commentary on PMID 33227231 fails to account for the very low quality of the evidence. Alexbrn (talk) 17:21, 31 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Seriously? You are going to dismiss a panel of medical experts's opinion on their representative's colloquial use of the word miraculous? You are (and wikipedia in general) really showing a strong bias on this topic. Quoting media outlets unfounded claims that the testimony of experts in their field amounts to "promote fringe theories" but not willing to quote real scientific studies showing the effectiveness of a drug because it is not of sufficient quality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adriaandh (talk • contribs) 10:31, 4 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Have a read of this review: URGENT COVID-19 information, I presume the Director of the Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy is also a quack and once again, the APNews`s fact checker BEATRICE DUPUY's former experience at Teen Vogue makes her opinion ("AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.") carry more weight than these respected doctors and experts in their fields. I really cannot see how it can be ethical for Wikipedia to quote an APNews article to shape peoples opinion regarding a pandemic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adriaandh (talk • contribs) 02:48, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As soon as I read this, I founded the Evidence-based Medicine Super-Consultancy and the Extremely-Evidence-based Great Medicine Super-Duper-Consultancy. I am director of both now and I am telling you you are wrong.

There are less than a thousand Google hits for "Evidence-based Medicine Consultancy". Seems to be not very well-known. Let's wait until we can tell from secondary sources if they are a reliable source, OK? --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:53, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should have the same level of mistrust of the author of the APNews article? If you actually do some investigation you will find that Theresa A Lawrie actually has a PhD and that she has 110 publications going as far back as 1996. You will also note that the Evidence-based Medicine Super-Consultancy has a lot of previously published work, easily found on their website https://www.e-bmc.co.uk/ under "work" section. You will also note that their domain was registered 2013-10-02, so not yesterday.Adriaandh (talk) 15:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a self-published website from a one-director UK limited company, in business as a consultancy. Obviously not suitable for anything on Wikipedia. Alexbrn (talk) 16:53, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

+1. Completely unsuitable for Wikipedia.Britishfinance (talk) 17:11, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so let's keep objectively easily provable completely false "fact checking" articles from a fashion critic up as factual and correct, but let's not take a respected medical research company as a "second source" — Preceding unsigned comment added by User:Adriaandh (talk • contribs) 15:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Respected by you and who else? --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:24, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Advocates are learning to make their stuff look like journal articles (and expect a rise in fake "fact checked" woo). Out there on the internets there is a huge swell of "I want to believe" ivermectin believers. But the reputable science is what it is, and as Wikipedia relays. Fortunately some high-quality studies are underway and the WHO is set to analyse them soon - Wikipedia can then report that. Until then it is imperative Wikipedia is not waylaid by irrational enthusiam. Alexbrn (talk) 10:12, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am glad Alex you moved this out IVM atricle, and i wont repeat what i said there. I still think you are not NPOV with the AP vs FLCCC dispute. In the internet(S?) you will find high quality studies: Let me briefly summurize the Bangladesh study: 180 receive STND treatment, 3 die. 180 receive IVM+STND treatment 0 die, 2 get isofagitis. This study may have costed 0-1-2-3 lives. This is peer reviewed and significant result: Ask the survivors about miracles. So any honest and peer reviewed researh is above any AP article or an Oncologist(!). I am glad you didn't include the South African position too. I am sorry and offended for the slanderous term quacks. I would not consider WHO as a highly trusted source, given their VERY late declaration of pandemic. Regardless the, as of 1/14/2021, neutral stance of NIH wrt IVM, @FDA still advises against it. Actually they state that they "fund N€W interventions in the CTAP (accelerated approval) research". If its old (GCAS)safe and cheap treatment: ignore and let them die policy? Where is the USA/EU funded high quality research? That is a "mirracle"! Artemon ge (talk) 11:02, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You are citing unreliable sources, see WP:MEDRS for Wikipedia's medical sourcing guidelines, by which the WHO is super-reliable. Alexbrn (talk) 12:41, 15 January 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Is the APNews a reliable medical journal?Adriaandh (talk) 15:44, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is a reliable news source, and its being used to source news. Alexbrn (talk) 16:53, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Aremon actually slightly understates the case. If you read carefully,[1] the USFDA position on the use of Ivermectin for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19 is that the ANIMAL FORMULATION of Ivermectin should not be used for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in humans. The word "Ivermectin" is not qualified but the products they are discussing are for "Animal & Veterinary". Ivermectin has the full USFDA approval for use in humans for all indications. The USFDA is a regulatory body. Their function is to approve or disapprove new drugs/devices. They do not provide guidance to physicians or patients on the best treatment options. --Vrtlsclpl (talk) 13:05, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No drug has "full USFDA approval for use in humans for all indications". None – not even aspirin. Marketing approval (what the drug company is legally allowed to advertise the drug for) is always specific to the named indication(s) (an 'indication' is what science says the drug actually works for. Sometimes the FDA approval matches the scientific indications, and sometimes it doesn't). The fact that it's legal to prescribe drugs off-label (that is, the FDA gives approval for marketing the drug for Scaryitis, but your doctor prescribes it to you for headaches) does not mean that the FDA has approved it for headaches, or for anything other than Scaryitis. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Spinning off accidental leak theory

The lab leak hypothesis has gained significant attention from government, academic and media organizations, which I have included in a draft for a new entry on the subject. Just in the past few days, a number of media organizations have published articles on the subject, sparked by an exchange reported between US and UK government officials (see here). There are already a number of academic pre-prints from reputed scientists, which I have cited in my draft, so this theory can no longer be considered as "misinformation" and doesn't belong in this article. Some scientists have said that given the lack of evidence for a zoonitic jump over 12 months on, the theory of an accidental lab leak is just as plausible, if not more credible. It is certainly not misinformation, but the subject of academic debate, and ongoing investigation that is likely being blocked by the Chinese government. New York Magazine published a 12,000-word cover story yesterday, in which the author says "Proposing that something unfortunate happened during a scientific experiment in Wuhan — where COVID-19 was first diagnosed and where there are three high-security virology labs, one of which held in its freezers the most comprehensive inventory of sampled bat viruses in the world — isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s just a theory. It merits attention, I believe, alongside other reasoned attempts to explain the source of our current catastrophe."

ScrupulousScribe (talk) 11:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Sun? The Daily Mail? That's some seriously bad sourcing in that draft. Wikipedia is meant to reflect "accepted knowledge" and the only accepted knowledge as regards a leak, from RS, is that it's a tiny possibility, but there is no good evidence supporting it. A spin-off article would be a WP:POVFORK as we need to contextualize this within the framing of misinformation, to remain neutral. Alexbrn (talk) 12:19, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Sun and the Daily Mail, and The New York Post (and more recently also Fox News) pieces quote an exchange that occurred between US government official (National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger), and UK government officials (such as Iain Duncan Smith), and that story is just one among many cited. If we were to focus just on this story, these publications are more than sufficient to qualify for Wikipedia:Reliable sources. If you say the lab leak is a "tiny possibility" then it seems you haven't read the draft, or any of the supporting material, including carefully researched and written scientific pre-prints, and the fact that there isn't any evidence is very much beside the point, as it is a theory (as the title may suggest) and is now being discussed in government organizations, academic institutions and media publications. It should also be noted that a Zoonitic jump as a theory isn't proven, and there is no evidence to prove it, in the form of an intermediate host or virus. If the lab leak theory is now being considered as a plausible possibility, it shouldn't be considered as misinformation, and I don't see how a new entry should be considered as a WP:POVFORK. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 13:37, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"The Sun and the Daily Mail, and The New York Post (and more recently also Fox News)" ← That clinches it. These are all junk sources. Alexbrn (talk) 14:04, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"If we were to focus just on this story, these publications are more than sufficient to qualify for Wikipedia:Reliable sources." What is that supposed to mean? WP:RSP lists all three sources as unreliable. Robby.is.on (talk) 14:08, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am afraid you are nitpicking. The entry has a significant body of supporting material, citing government, academic and media sources. WP:RSP does not outright ban those sources, and the Mail's article directly quotes British MP Iain Duncan Smith recounting a conversation with US National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, which provides context to the larger debate behind the theory and is not cited as verifiability. As WP:RSP stipulates, Context matters tremendously, and some sources may or may not be suitable for certain uses depending on the situation. The theory of an accidental lab leak, has also been reported on a number of other media publications which can hardly be considered unreliable sources, and they include The Boston Magazine, the BBC, The Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, and The New Yorker Magazine (all from the past few weeks). Whereas, the accidental lab leak section of this page provides little background behind the theory and some of the supporting material, such as the Vox article is dated from back in April, and also conflates the issue with Li-Meng Yan claims (conflates accidental lab leak with deliberate lab leak). The theory of an accidental lab leak deserves an entry of its own and should not be considered as misinformation. - ScrupulousScribe (talk) 14:55, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Now also New York Magazine. Green at WP:RSP. [2] Adoring nanny (talk) 15:54, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note that reliability depends on context. New York Magazine is not a scientific journal, and the author of this piece is a writer with no scientific training, who is better known for his erotic novels. One of the virologists whom NY Magazine contacted to fact-check the piece, Vincent Racaniello, apparently told the magazine that the article was "science fiction" (as Prof. Racaniello explained on his virology podcast). We should not be relying on the popular press for scientific information. Peer-reviewed articles in high-quality journals are what are used to determine the weight of scientific opinion, WP:FRINGE, etc. -Thucydides411 (talk) 12:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When editors indiscriminately throw up potential references, something's very wrong. Sanctions apply here.

I suggest clearly listing potential refs, making sure that they don't outright fail the current consensus for reliable sources. --Hipal (talk) 23:07, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the "mud". These are not potential references, but actual references. Please read the draft, where the references are listed. The issue here isn't references, but the fact that a plausible scientific theory is being labeled as misinformation. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 23:32, 5 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ScrupulousScribe, I took a look at your draft with an open mind, and even started making some edits to it. It didn't look bad. But then I spot checked a few sentences and found copyvios. Copyvios are against policy. Everything must be paraphrased to be used on Wikipedia. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:21, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reviewing the draft. The only edits you made were to group multiple sections and tag the entire article with a copyvio instead of the offending section. I would like to request that you remove the tag on the article and instead tag the specific section so that other readers can review the main body of the draft. And since you are participating in this discussion, I would also appreciate if you can weigh in on my proposal to spin-off this topic to a new entry, as a number of other Wikipedians, some long archived, have made the same proposal, without consensus reached. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 01:53, 7 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Editors need to be far more careful, as sanctions apply with this topic. --Hipal (talk) 01:00, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is not a "scientific theory", and doubtfully plausible. Alexbrn (talk) 08:30, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to David Relman, Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Standford University ^[1], it is a plausible origin scenario and he has argued that it must be "systematically and objectively analyzed using the best available science-based approaches". ^[2] He is not the only expert coming to this conclusion with respect to this scenario being plausible, there are many listed in the recent New York Magazine article.^[3] I'd suggest the threats of sanctions against the editor need to be toned down in favor of applying critical reasoning skills to the content referenced and better constructive criticism of the suggested edit. Dinglelingy (talk) 12:19, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ https://profiles.stanford.edu/david-relman
^ https://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246
^ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000240

huh Dinglelingy, that's an odd response. Are you ScrupulousScribe (now blocked)? Alexbrn (talk) 14:45, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am not and I do not appreciate the completely unfounded and inaccurate accusation. Seems my suggestions were ignored. A reminder of the rules: Assume good faith, Be polite and avoid personal attacks, Be welcoming to newcomers. I suggest you follow them. Dinglelingy (talk) 19:14, 6 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, you have made your positions very clear; you believe that the accidental lab leak theory is neither "scientific" nor "plausible". You believe that despite contrary opinions from reputed scientists interviewed by reliable sources, the theory should remain in an article as another item of misinformation relating to Covid-19, and that a spin-off article would be a WP:POVFORK. You have said that the sources I provided don’t meet WP:RS yet you haven't replied to the point I made that the The Boston Magazine, the BBC, The Times, Le Monde, The Washington Post, and the The New York Magazine have also covered this topic. In reaching a consensus on this issue, your position should be considered, but I would like to ask that you tone down your rhetoric and refrain from personal attacks, such as accusing me of sockpuppetry and gloating over my (unfair) 24-hour ban. I am not the first user to bring up this issue, and nor will I be the last. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 03:33, 7 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is no tangible evidence of this "theory", and per Wuhan Institute of Virology#Conspiracy theories, there are serious virologists who refute it as junk. Trying to paste-in chatter and conjecture from sources to support a such "theory" will not work on Wikipedia. I see an equally long dispute and discussion on this subject on the Talk page of the Talk:Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the same points have been made to you, and are not being listened to. At some point, WP:IDHT begins to apply, and with consequences. It is a giant waste of time to try and use Wikipedia as the platform to make a "theory" (especially ones tinged with "conspiracy"), into a "fact". Britishfinance (talk) 02:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Current scientific consensus is that there is currently no tangible evidence for any origin theory. As such, some scientists have said that the accidental lab leak theory should be considered, such as Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson in this paper (which was quoted in the New York Magazine piece), and many scientists who favor the zoonitic jump theory, still say that that the lab leak theory cannot be ruled out, such as Ralph Baric, who is clearly quoted in the New York Magazine as saying “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.”. I am not seeking to make this theory into a fact, but it is a plausible and credible scientific theory, as described by the numerous reliable sources I provided, which in turn quote from numerous prestigious scientists. If there were as many reliable sources reporting on a possible alien landing in London or a secret ring of pedophiles in New York, then those stories too would have to be reflected here in Wikipedia, as per WP:RS. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 05:03, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that you call content on a howling conspiracy theory website a "paper" is further evidence of the disjoint between this proposal and reality. It's not a "scientific theory" (have you read that article?); it's at best a hypothesis, though it might also be a conspiracy theory. Of course it can't be ruled out; neither can the "hypothesis" that the virus came to earth on a meteorite.[3] Alexbrn (talk) 08:50, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The paper by Jonathan Latham and Allison Wilson on what you call the "howling conspiracy website" was quoted in an article which cleared the editorial process of the New York Magazine, a publication which meets WP:RS by any standard. The scientists and their paper were also quoted in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists's online edition, but that is beside the point, as they, and numerous other scientists, were quoted in a number of other mainstream media sources which meet WP:RS, unlike anyone who proposed that the virus came from meteorites or 5g towers. In addition to be covered in the Boston Magazine and the New York Magazine, an accidental lab leak as a possible origin scenario of SARS-CoV-2 has also been covered extensively in the BBC, The Washington Post, The Times, Bloomberg, Presadiretta and Le Monde. Do you agree that these sources meet WP:RS, or do you perhaps think instead that the text of the changes I am seeking to make to this article are based on taking the sources out of context and violating WP:NOR, or is there some other Wikipedia Guideline violation you have in mind? I know your position is that lab leak is a conspiracy theory and you know that my position is that it is a scientific theory, which puts us in disagreement, but we must reach a consensus-based on Wikipedia policies. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 10:36, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not link to dodgy web sites with Bill Gates conspiracy theories. I think you are getting into a WP:PROFRINGE spiral which will likely end in your being banned. Alexbrn (talk) 11:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You are being quite condescending. Do you agree that the sources I provided including the New York Magazine, Boston Magazine, Bloomberg, The BBC, The Washington Post, The Times, Le Monde and RAI meet the criteria in WP:RS as reliable sources, or do you perhaps think instead that the text of the changes I am seeking to make to this article are based on taking the sources out of context and violating WP:NOR, or is there some other Wikipedia Guideline violation you have in mind? If you are unable to answer this question, we should request dispute resolution. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 11:55, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your link to an obvious conspiracy theory website shows that NinjaRobotPirate's earlier concern at your unblock request that you should be topic banned is well-founded. I am concerned that if NinjaRobotPirate checks Dinglelingy, who has been pushing the same material on Wuhan Institute of Virology, that more substantive action may be appropriate. You now have consumed large amounts of editing time constantly pushing theories regarding COVID lab leaks on Wikipedia (i.e. WP:NOTHERE territory). Britishfinance (talk) 12:15, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Britishfinance - Wow, unbelievable! I have had enough of these type of attacks. Admins, this is the second editor who has blatantly violated the fundamental rules of Assume good faith, Be polite, and avoid personal attacks in reference to my account. As this page is sanctioned I request immediate action to discourage others from using this means of discrediting my account as well as other editors to facilitate their point of view. This is totally unacceptable behavior. NinjaRobotPirate,Boing! said Zebedee The only thing I have been 'pushing' is for adherence to Wikipedia standards of behaviour and consistency in the editorial process. I do not agree with all of ScrupulousScribe's arguments/sources, but I do agree with his concerns about consistency in sourcing requirements and maintaining a NPOV on the topic. Too many of you are piling on to dismiss him out of hand rather than working with him on acceptable updates. I have tried to facilitate consensus on those points in the most appropriate place as anyone with a NPOV will agree with if they read my comments. The whole reason I got involved in this discussion was because of inappropriate behavior on this page, inappropriate behavior that unfortunately has continued with editor's like Britishfinance throwing around threats, and personal attacks. Everyone should be ashamed by this behavior and in allowing it to continue. Dinglelingy (talk) 01:42, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please can you clarify on the "link to an obvious conspiracy theory website"? I have cited a number of very well reputed publications that have dedicated serious editorial resources to airing the accidental lab leak theory as a possible origin of Covid-19. I would also appreciate if you didn't accuse me of sockpuppetry, as I am by no means the first user to object on this issue, and there has never been a consensus reached (and I will probably not be the last). Wikipedia Policy requires you assume good faith, be polite and avoid personal attacks. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 12:34, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We can add WP:SEALIONING to the list; I will leave it to the admins to quickly check the sources you provided above – post your block – to decide. Britishfinance (talk) 13:21, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You accuse me of linking an "obvious conspiracy theory website" and then you accuse me of trolling (Sealioning?) when I asked you which one? You are merely trying to discredit me instead of arguing my point. I have consistently argued that the lab leak theory cannot be considered as misinformation based on articles from reliable sources. Bfore that, you claimed that there "serious virologists who refute it as junk", but you can't prove it with sources confirming to WP:MEDRS, to which you retorted that I am taking up large amounts of time in order to push conspiracy theories (which didn't address my point). You have neither pointed out which "conspiracy theory website" you falsely accused me of linking to, nor provided evidence that "serious virologists" consider the accidental lab leak theory to be "junk". ScrupulousScribe (talk) 15:31, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the "not ruling out" thing was explained by Valjean above: "Ummm.....that's the nature of all scientific statements…". Read it. Robby.is.on (talk) 08:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The "thing" that Valjean explained above is a violation of WP:NPOV. He says things such as leaks can never be ruled out completely, and when scientists feel compelled to mention it, that mention is just filler, and like Alexbrn, he doesn't address what to do when a whole bunch of mainstream media sources that meet WP:RS give credence to the lab leak theory. As Wikipedians, we don't get to pick what we like from what scientists say, and present as fact what we believe to be so. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 10:48, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In fact the ability to understand, digest, sift and summarize material for "translation" into a lay encyclopedia is an important skill. Alexbrn (talk) 11:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You also conveniently ignored my rebuttal to that point: "Since it's the majority position in the scientific community that the lab leak theory can't be ruled out..." Read it. JustStalin (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia prefers to use high-quality sources (academic, secondary, peer-reviewed) rather than indulge in the tittle-tattle and gossip found in lesser publications. That's how we know what mainstream scientific knowledge is. Alexbrn (talk) 19:55, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We had a similar discussion about the lab leak theory a few months ago at the Covid 19 entry. The consensus there was that it should be considered a fringe theory, at least until and if new evidence came up indicating the contrary. I have been looking at the references provided by ScrupulousScribe, and they do seem to bring forth evidence of a change in the scientific position on the lab leak theory over the last few months. I propose that we discuss them here in the talk pages on an individual basis. In that discussion, we should only cite MEDRS (when referring to biomedical statements) and RS (when referring to non-biomedical statements), of course. Forich (talk) 01:43, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's difficult to tell exactly what people want done here. It would be helpful if they laid out a clear and concise argument at the appropriate noticeboard (WP:SPI, WP:ANI, etc). NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 12:27, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ScrupulousScribe, this topic being biomedical it needs to follow the stricter sourcing requirements of WP:MEDRS, which tabloid newspapers assuredly do not. We need to base articles like the one you are proposing on high-quality sources such as peer-reviewed review articles. Fences&Windows 01:11, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fences and windows I do not think this topic can be considered biomedical information. The idea of WP:MEDRS as it pertains to Wikipedia:biomedical information is to address medical claims, such as the alleged benefits of injecting coffee up one's rectum (see Coffee enema), which I am sure you would agree should require well sourced peer reviewed studies to meet WP:V standards. In the case of SARS-COV-2 and its unknown origins, there are a number of possible scenarios, including a possible leak from a laboratory that was known to have collected and performed research on a number of coronaviruses (which has been covered extensively in a number of recent reports), and this has more to do with politics and diplomacy than biology or medicine. ScrupulousScribe (talk) 01:42, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just a general comment, mostly for User:ScrupulousScribe, that rather than swinging for the fences with your current proposal, you might have better luck with something on "Chinese suppression of information related to covid-19" or similar. There is definitely a lot of good WP:RS on that topic.[4][5][6][7], and see also Li Wenliang. In general on Wikipedia, when one is running into a lot of resistance to an attempt to do something, success is more likely if one tries to do something related, rather than persisting with the original idea. There are hazards with my proposal. For example, users might argue that it is a WP:POVFORK of the current article. I am unsure how that would be resolved. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:13, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There has certainly been some resistance (they now even want to ban me), but unfortunately, most of the discussion here has focused on Wikipedia policy, and has drawn in hostile editors who have faced off with conspiracy theorists earlier on in the year before the link between CoV/4991 from the Mojiang mine shaft and RaTG13 in the Wuhan Institute of Virology were confirmed (and subsequently verified). The virus is still raging, and the theory of an accidental leak will only receive more coverage in the news media, and in the dearth of evidence for any other origin scenario, calls will be made on the China government to provide more data, which is highly unlikely to be forthcoming, which will only fuel the controversy around the lab leak theory. While some editors here move to ban me (and others with my view), the discussion here has yet to reach a consensus, and in order to do so, it boils down to two or three key questions:

Does the lab leak theory meet the criteria laid out in Wikipedia:Notability to warrant the creation of a new entry on the topic?
Should the entry be titled "Covid-19 lab leak theory" as scientific theory or should be named as "Covid-19 lab leak conspiracy theory" and presented as a conspiracy theory? There are plenty of entries scientific theories and conspiracy theories of note.
The most important question right now, as this also effects this article, is whether WP:MEDRS sources are required here, given that this topic is not Wikipedia:Biomedical information. If not, then the reliable sources from the popular press should be sufficient to meet WP:V, though the entry would have be balanced as per WP:NPOV and give voice to those scientists who believe the scenario is unlikely.

ScrupulousScribe (talk) 05:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just on one point of detail here. It's a common misconception that notable topics automatically get standalone articles. Per WP:NOPAGE it can often be the case that notable topics are best dealt with in combination with other topics. Alexbrn (talk) 09:38, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

True. That would seem to apply here; the topic is part of a larger whole and is most clearly presented as such. I'm also finding it hard to draw a dividing line and call this "not biomedical information". At the very least, the underlying reasons why we have such a high standard of scrutiny for medical sources also apply here. XOR'easter (talk) 19:13, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

XOR'easter, this discussion has been drawn out so much, that you would be forgiven for not having read it all, but please be aware that there are sources meeting the criteria of WP:MEDRS that have been proposed, such as this peer-reviewed paper on BioEssays, written by a microbiologist specialising in generic modifications and a bioinformatics expert specialising in the analysis of a large volume of information. Furthermore, the (two) WP:MEDRS sources cited on this page and the Wuhan Institute of Virology do not justify calling the lab leak theory "misinformation" or "conspiracy theory". Those are the two sources here and here, and while the authors of this paper consider a zoonotic jump to be the most likely scenario, they specifically say that lacking evidence for the former scenario, other scenarios, such as an "accidental laboratory escape", do in fact "remain reasonable". If indeed this topic is Wikipedia:Biomedical information, then WP:MEDRS should apply both ways, and appropriate sources should be provided to clearly distinguish the lab leak theory as "misinformation" or "conspiracy". Do you agree with this? ScrupulousScribe (talk) 15:26, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

None of those sources are WP:MEDRS. We really want review articles (or better). Alexbrn (talk) 15:32, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn is correct here. For example, one paper in BioEssays that has been cited exactly twice, even by the permissive standards of Google Scholar, isn't worth basing any decisions upon. A conspiracy theory remains a conspiracy theory until extraordinary evidence forces a change of that evaluation. XOR'easter (talk) 15:34, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We need proper secondary sources. Why are we flailing around with sub-par sources when high-quality WP:MEDRS is to hand, for example PMID 32945405 ? Alexbrn (talk) 15:39, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

break 1

There's biomedicine at the root of the claims, but some things - if, say, we wanted "the conspiracy theory took hold and spread through social media sites such as Parler" - wouldn't need MEDRS. Alexbrn (talk) 19:18, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm, yes — but judging the fundamental plausibility of the basic claim requires MEDRS, it seems to me. XOR'easter (talk) 22:02, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn (talk) 22:06, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I like the idea of expanding information about the lab leak theory, but having it in its own independent entry is a bit risky. Readers who see such entry would lack the necessary flags that caution on it being a speculative hypothesis, and it would require huge amounts of work to word it in a manner that avoids politization. A better option to me is to launch an independent entry for "Emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic" which can provide enough space for such alternative theories. I have begun writing such entry, and a draft can be seen here. Forich (talk) 20:56, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The term "Origin" may work better, Forich. Also see Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and RaTG13. Fences&Windows 03:00, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I considered using "Origin" but found it misleading for it is loaded as in "natural origin vs man-made origin", which is out of question (SARS-CoV-2 is definitely natural). Forich (talk) 05:08, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good so far. Do you mind if other users edit the draft, or would you prefer we send you our proposed changes instead? Law15outof48 (talk) 16:13, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Law15outof48. I'd prefer to moderate first the edits to the draft, you can email them to me, or collect a few as a section in my talk page, or any other alternative you suggest is welcome as well. Forich (talk) 04:21, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll just observe that labeling a lab origin as a conspiracy theory seems highly questionable at this point in time (although it was almost certainly appropriate several months ago when the original claims against this were made). You've got peer reviewed papers that point to it as a possibility. You've got Nature explicitly saying that a detailed investigation of that Wuhan laboratories is necessary for us to determine if it is the source. Also, the original claims that lab origin is impossible look exceedingly weak nearly a year later. Some of the most prominent claims boil down to the fact that the virus appears to have its origin in bats. Given that a lab less than a mile from the apparent start of the outbreak was carrying out gain of function research on the closest known natural relatives of COVID-19 (which also came from a bat), this does nothing to refute the possibility that one of the modified viruses escaped the lab. We also now know that there are serious conflicts of interest involving the scientists that rushed to declare a laboratory leak impossible. If anything, I would argue that claims that a laboratory leak can be ruled out are clearly misinformation that was propagated by obviously interested parties before there was sufficient time to study the matter. And yes, the fact that in all the world two laboratories were performing gain of function research on the closest known ancestor of COVID-19 and they are located in the same city where the outbreak occurred seems exceedingly relevant. If this is a coincidence (and it may be) it is a highly improbable coincidence. 72.89.56.239 (talk) 20:03, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, scientific research will not stop and investitators can keep investigating. This article is about minsinformation promoted in relation to COVID-19. Assertions of uncertainty or "cannot be ruled out" are not meaningful (although personally I would have no problem with a single mention of uncertainty), until strong evidence is demonstrated (and for Wikipedia, strong sources widely report it). In the event where a particular lab would have been shown to have accidentally been the source of a spreading event, the impact would also still have to be determined. It would not change the fact that irrelevant conspiracy theories were promoted. There would likely be a mention of the event, as mainstream reliable sources would report widely about it. —Paleo Neonate – 20:33, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The U.S. State Department released intelligence yesterday that supports the claim that the coronavirus originated in a lab: [8] Also, former Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger (not a "Trump loyalist") stated last month that evidence exists supporting that notion: [9] And it's possible that more information will be released: 1,2 It's silly to blanket-dismiss the lab origin theory off-hand as merely a "conspiracy theory". --1990'sguy (talk) 22:43, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While Japan Times, unlike The Washington Times and Washington Examiner, is a RS, its source (the Trump administration) is not a RS and the article mentions that the Trump administration presents no evidence for their claim. I wouldn't trust this until many RS present it as a credible claim, rather than just the typical bluster and misinformation used by the Trump administration to threaten China. -- Valjean (talk) 00:16, 17 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is the US State Department a RS? link here Follow the science (talk) 01:31, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:14, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ivermectin section

The entire section is not written from a WP:NPOV. There is a wealth of information indicating that Ivermectin is effective both as a prophylactic medication and as a treatment in all phases of COVID-19. Today the NIH revised their position on Ivermectin, removing their guidance that doctors should not prescribe ivermectin except as part of a clinical trial, replacing it with a neutral stance, saying "currently there are insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19". This is the same status as convalescent plasma. This section needs to be rewritten from a NPOV, stating that Ivermectin is being used in many regions of the world, and that it is being researched. Tvaughan1 (talk) 03:45, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not approved by FDA; NIH say evidence is too poor to decide anything; latest MEDRS reviews say the same. These are the kind of WP:MEDRS we use. For the "infodemic" aspect, we have a good SBM piece about how it's being touted on the internets as a "miracle cure". Alexbrn (talk) 16:46, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Tvaughan1. The physicians who testified to the US NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel issued a press release. They state that Ivermectin is now a treatment option for COVID-19 in the US as it has been in many nations around the world. If Ivermectin in COVID-19 is misinformation, the USNIH is the primary source of that misinformation. --Vrtlsclpl (talk) 05:52, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of this page is to report on misinformation, not propagate it! Please stop linking to such sites. Alexbrn (talk) 06:03, 18 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Can whoever reverted my reference to the financial times article as counterpoint to the misinformation please explain why that is not a relevant or reliable source, while the blog post of dr Gorski is? The one is from a specialist in this field doing actual research on the subject, while the other is just a doctor with an online following making unsubstantiated claims. Adriaandh (talk) 14:02, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The ft.com is not even about misinformation; the Science-Based Medicine piece is. What is more, the FT piece was cherry picked and used to for biomedical content, for which it is unreliable. For the current state of knowledge on ivermectin and COVID-19, see our ivermectin article. Alexbrn (talk) 14:10, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Train attack on hospital ship

I've removed the blurb about the train attack on the hospital ship, because it's not really "misinformation". The attacker might have been under the influence of some misinformation (or, I don't know, Paranoid delusions?), but the attack itself isn't misinformation, and there hasn't been any misinformation about the attack (that I know of). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 20 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Harm caused by the vaccine

Going ahead and preemptively plopping this talk section here, regarding harm caused by the vaccine.

We definitely can't have content like "No one has died of [from] the vaccine" without MEDRS. I agree with the sentiment expressed that this section may not be needed at all. This seems to me like the kind of article to have content like the Bill Gates microchip conspiracy theory. Jdphenix (talk) 21:13, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry - please bear with me, am new to all this & hope I am contributing in the right bit. I was reading the Covid-19 misinformation section 'Vaccine misinformation' subheading 'infertility' and followed the link to footnote 290: Gorski DH (14 December 2020). "It was inevitable that antivaxxers would claim that COVID-19 vaccines make females infertile' (Science Based Medicine). I wanted to read the original petition that Yeadon & Wodarg wrote with this strange claim. Gorski's article has a link which does not work, to the original 43-page letter/petition. Unfortunately this means that the Wikipedia 'Vaccine misinformation' subheading 'infertility' section cannot be verified until this link is shown to work. I think that, although a detail, it is important to fix this problem, otherwise people who are misinformed may use it as evidence for their case. Thank you. Please redirect me to the correct bit if I have landed in the wrong section! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GalinaGardiner1 (talk • contribs) 09:51, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It can be verified because that is what the source (an article in Science-Based Medicine) says. There is no reason to doubt this reliable source, and a lot of the original misinformation has gone from the web, for a variety of reasons. Alexbrn (talk) 10:01, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fact Sheet: Activity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

https://web.archive.org/web/20210116010946/https://www.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:569:BE21:7200:0:0:0:3 (talk) 08:49, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The Origin of Covid-19 has not been conclusively established, contrary to the conclusory statements in the "Origin Misinformation" section

There are a number of articles from legitimate sources, including articles published this month (January 2021) questioning whether Covid-19 may have been an engineered/manipulated virus based on SARS-CoV-2. The conclusion that it was a natural occurring virus has not been conclusively established and stating so seems to be an attempt to stifle inquiry into the subject. I suggest that the tone of the article, and this section in particular be modified.

IAmBecomeDeath (talk) 08:09, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have sources? doktorb _words^deeds 08:15, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He doesnt need sources to protest a removal. And there were already sources, but an account named User:Alexbrn killed the entire section "Bio-engineered virus" [10] on 10 January with a dubious explanation. Lets put it back in. Alexpl (talk)

Lab leak yet again

Vienna1027 is trying to edit war this[11] edit in. This is meant to be an article about misinformation, not one which spreads it! Alexbrn (talk) 17:37, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

UNESCO guide

I posted this guide at the top of the article. I think it is a reasonable candidate for media worth profiling. It has Creative Commons licensing, UNESCO has top authority as an organization for speaking on this topic, and so far as I know there are not other proposals for leading media.

This is a high-traffic article and I can imagine many readers wanting even more. This pamphlet is about 16 pages and gives a readable orientation to anyone thinking more about the issue. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:32, 29 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 1 February 2021

This discussion was listed at Wikipedia:Move review on 4 February 2021. The result of the move review was retracted.

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Move. Mcguy15 (talk) 22:09, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic → COVID-19 misinformation – The current name is a bit verbose. Per WP:CONCISE, I think it'd be a good idea to shorten it. Thoughts? If this is well received, I may open requested moves for some sub-articles too. Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic by governments, Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic by the United States, Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic by China. These are all quite verbose and could be shortened. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:43, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support. The current title is semi-literate cringe. Alexbrn (talk) 08:48, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I think the original idea was to have misinformation about the disease elsewhere, but now this article has everything anyway. --mfb (talk) 11:47, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support Seems fair.Slatersteven (talk) 12:41, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This makes sense as it doesn't change the fundamental meaning or scope. -- Valjean (talk) 16:08, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Good idea. Britishfinance (talk) 18:22, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Before the COVID-19 pandemic, no mRNA drug or vaccine was licensed for use in humans. "

Hi, I'm coming in from the article on RNA vaccine where this quote comes from. The issue is that this is an argument that convinces a lot of people who are against the use of the covid-19 vaccines. Can anybody help verify this quote and put it in relation to another quote "The use of RNA vaccines goes back to the early 1990s." Our national TV in Flanders has a topic dedicated on debunking false news on covid-19 and an article on this mRNA issue and there it states (translated from flemish)^[1]

"mRNA drugs (therapeutic vaccines) have been tested in more than 8 million people over the past decades. At the moment there is no evidence of the development of autoimmune diseases. Based on this information, we may assume that the use of the mRNA technology is justified. - Answer from Professor of Medicine Drew Weissman - best known for his work with RNA biology that laid the groundwork for the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 - to our question." - Thy and greetings from Belgium, :) SvenAERTS (talk) 10:30, 2 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/01/13/check-in-deze-nederlandse-youtubevideo-wordt-onterecht-twijfel/

Removal of attribution to Trump from the lead section

I am absolutely 0% pro-Trump or pro-Republican (I am Canadian and I support the Liberals), however, I thought that it would violate WP:NPOV to introduce the article by blaming most of the English COVID-19 misinformation on Trump in the lead section, so I removed that sentence from the lead. Let me know if you think there are any issues. Thanks! Félix An (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It has been well documented that he was as a major source of disinformation during the pandemic, so nothing non-neutral about including him. - NiD.29 (talk) 19:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with NiD.29. I saw this change in my watchlist and was going to re-add the removed content, but NiD.29 beat me to it. If somebody is the #1 driver of misinformation, in my opinion, that is a great argument for mentioning them in the lead of an article about misinformation. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:52, 4 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of the misinformation was not spread by Trump himself, but by his supporters, as well as Falun Gong, The Epoch Times, etc. Félix An (talk) 00:09, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think you missed the content of many of his tweets - disinformation in many cases actually originated with Trump, or had negligible spread until repeated by Trump - and was only then repeated by others including Epoch times, as is stated on that page. How many items on the page originated with Epoch Times/Falun Gong? - NiD.29 (talk) 01:43, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

+1, the references and facts regarding Trump and misinformation are very notable and lede-worthy. Britishfinance (talk) 14:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The absurdity of calling the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis a debunked "conspiracy theory"

Respectfully, it's frankly difficult to overstate how absurd it is to call the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis a "debunked conspiracy theory". We simply do not have enough data to determine, with any degree of certainty, the origin of SARS-COV-2. This means one cannot, in good faith, dismiss the hypothesis that SARS-COV-2 was released (not necessarily intentionally, but perhaps accidentally through negligence) from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The virologists at the Wuhan Institute may have been performing "gain of function" research on some form of the coronavirus -- a common practice which the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy publicly warned against as recently as 2014.^[1] Bat-based coronaviruses, and the transmissibility thereof, have previously been the subject of laboratory experiments in China.^[2] Prior to the pandemic, U.S. Embassy officials warned about the risks of such infectious disease research being undertaken specifically in Wuhan, China.^[3] The veracity of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis with respect to SARS-COV-2 is presently being investigated by the World Health Organization.^[4]

Again, the hypothesis could be true or false. That's the entire point -- the hypothesis is being officially investigated, and we don't yet have enough data to either confirm or refute it. This means it's at least plausible. To refer to the hypothesis, as this entry on Wikipedia does, as a thoroughly debunked "conspiracy theory" is highly disingenuous (and it preemptively shuts down reasonable dialogue which society must have if we want to minimize the odds of history repeating itself).

I respectfully assert that the above-referenced portion of the entry should be reworded or removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:fe20:2390:a51d:4c1c:3842:5a79 (talk • contribs)

"We do not know the exact source" doesn't mean we can't rule out some options. I don't know where my pen was made but I can rule out it was made on Jupiter. As for how we can rule out a lab leak, see the sources in the article. --mfb (talk) 07:48, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we need to follow the sources. Alexbrn (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

None of the sources in the article refute the lab leak hypothesis. It has not been refuted (and is presently being officially investigated by the WHO). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:FE20:2390:E55D:8149:E415:EEA2 (talk) 07:57, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the above commenters. The only source purporting to "debunk" the theory is, as far as I can tell, just a list of people who disagree with the theory. I'm putting the Template:Failed verification ; Although my opinion would be to remove the section altogether.Yitscar (talk) 17:11, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Second. The lab leak is a theory and it has not been debunked. The section on the lab leak theory is also woefully inadequate in size and scope.--NortyNort (Holla)

NortyNort, a WHO official made a statement this morning, stating the lab leak hypothesis is an extremely unlikely pathway for COVID-19 and will not require further study as part of their work in studying the origins of the virus. [12]. Keep an eye out for newspaper articles on this later today. –Novem Linguae (talk) 15:20, 9 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Washington Post on the viability of a lab leak and gain of function research and why are peer reviewed papers being censored by Wikipedia?

Awhile ago one of the authors involved with these papers contacted me but I didn't look too hard since everyone at the time was saying the same thing; however, this Washington Post editorial over the weekend

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/coronavirus-origins-mystery-china/?arc404=true

reminded me of the fact there are several peer reviewed papers arguing for the viability of a lab origin that are not mentioned here. When the author first wrote me, he mentioned Wikipedia's clear and inarguable censorship of scientific research, and talked about working with reporters to expose Wikipedia's collusion with the CCCP to suppress the peer reviewed research.

Looking over Wikipedia's guidelines, it is beyond argument that passing peer review is the gold standard for inclusion in a Wikipedia page. Why have all of these articles below been excluded from Wikipedia entirely?

If it is not pressure from the Chinese government, what reason does Wikipedia have for excluding research that has past peer review in sound scientific publications?

These are the papers, in order of publication. They have all been peer reviewed, this is Wikipedia's gold standard, is it not? What is being missed here? I'm going to have the author send the reporters working on stories about Wikipedia doing direct censorship for the Chinese government to this page now, let's see how long it takes for these papers to be added to Wikipedia.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7435492/

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jmv.26478

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000240

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-020-01151-1

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/fvl-2020-0390 Driftwood1300 (talk) 16:45, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:MEDRS. Peer review is not "the gold standard", but one factor. In particular we need secondary sources. Alexbrn (talk) 17:06, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A number of possible sources appear WP:MEDRS compliant (I want to make it clear I’m not explicitly endorsing all the sources the new editor has brought to the table, some of those appear to be open and/or obscure) but I’m not sure of the value of including material that is inherently speculative. What I would support is a limited list of possible origins as laid out in something like Tracing the origins of SARS-COV-2 in coronavirus phylogenies: a review (Sallard et al, fourth from the top in the list above) without putting any undue emphasis on any given possibility. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:13, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the Sallard et al article is a review, despite having ": a Review" tacked on to the title. It's a translation of PMID 32773024, here appearing in a non-MEDLINE-indexed journal in English. I'd avoid that source when we have better. Alexbrn (talk) 17:52, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Something passing peer review doesn't mean we need to add it. It must also be directly relevant, important enough, and it should be discussed in secondary sources (the importance is typically judged by secondary sources reporting about it). Threatening people with stories about an invented censorship in Wikipedia is a curious approach. --mfb (talk) 17:22, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not threatening anything, the journalists coming to this page will be able to judge. He says his attempts to get the peer reviewed work onto Wikipedia were already wiped somewhere once, maybe he's lying, don't particularly care.

Please link where "other factors" than passing peer review are weighed, where is that in writing? That first paper is then cited by several other of the peer reviewed papers. Lots of peer review, but Wikipedia editors are getting too much money to ignore them or what?

Because that's exactly something someone doing censorship for the CCCP would just make up. Like I just got here, and Wikipedia is not vague: " An appropriate secondary source is one that is published by a reputable publisher, is written by one or more experts in the field, and is peer reviewed."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(science)

Where on that page is your reasoning coming from?

All of those papers I linked have been peer reviewed. They are all published in respected science journals. Do you want to debate whether or not the authors are qualified? Okay, then what are your qualifications Mr. Anonymous Editor?

Right now Wikipedia is very obviously actively censoring the peer reviewed literature. Also the opinion of the Washington Post's Editorial Board? You guys have better judgement than them?

So what exactly are the credentials of the editors who are censoring all of these papers about gain of function research from Wikipedia?

Driftwood1300 (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You link to WP:SCIRS (which is just an essay), but as it says: "Cite reviews, don't write them". We really want review articles (or better) for weighty topics, and there are five or six on this very topic. See also WP:MEDFAQ for some guidance about why peer-review isn't enough. Alexbrn (talk) 17:58, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What is the rational of these anonymous Wikipedia editors for excluding all of the above peer reviewed research? This is beyond absurd, all of you are making a mockery of the scientific review process. Below are the editorial boards of the scientific journals which have approved the peer reviewed papers discussing a lab origin, so does Wikipedia just work by anonymous editors making up rules as they go?

This is publicly available information, these are the boards of scientists who approved the publication of these papers, what are the qualifications of the anonymous Wikipedia editors to keep this information off Wikipedia, other than being willing to accept CCP bribes?

I ask again: Who exactly are you to overrule the consensus of these three editorial boards? What is your rational for doing so? Three entire editoral boards agree to publish this information, but you nameless Wikipedia editors can censor whatever you want without reason? Absurdity.

https://www.springer.com/journal/10311/editors

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/10969071/homepage/editorialboard.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15211878/homepage/2487_edbd.html

Driftwood1300 (talk) 19:12, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe read WP:WHYMEDRS to understand why Wikipedia's rules are as they are. Alexbrn (talk) 20:47, 8 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is beyond transparent that Wikipedia's editors are part of a coordinated effort to suppress the actual science, you are completely unable to provide any sort of reasoning as to why you are deciding on which peer reviewed literature to include. Here is another one: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202100017

Tedros has said everything is on the table: https://www.euronews.com/2021/02/12/all-hypotheses-still-on-the-table-over-covid-19-s-origins-who-chief-says . So again, what is the criteria the editors are using to exclude all of this peer reviewed research, if it is not their own personal bias and corruption? Also for reporters, here's a link to just how deep and systematic this corruption is in Wikipedia: https://twitter.com/Soumyadipta/status/1235103428130398208?s=20

Driftwood1300 (talk) 18:33, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Your "reference" for some sort of conspiracy is a guy who got scammed by some unspecified agency, proving that you can lose money to scammers if you try to? I'm not sure what that's supposed to demonstrate about Wikipedia. --mfb (talk) 20:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis" article

Hello friends. COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis was moved out of draftspace today and may need some attention. I've added an NPOV tag, and I've started a talk page discussion. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's been redirected by Alexbrn. It's a definite WP:POVFORK and should not exist. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:38, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, we'll see if this sticks. Per the general sanctions it really should not be reinstated without prior consensus. I notice it was moved from draft to mainspace by Arcturus, and considering the known fringe issues with the topic, this seems potentially problematic. Alexbrn (talk) 07:42, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

<Personal attack removed> Billybostickson (talk) 09:40, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We don't need that here. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:16, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wuhan lab leak hypothesis is a scientific hyphothesis not a "conspiracy theory".

The possibility that Covid-19 originated from a Wuhan lab leak is not a "conspriacy theory", it is a scientific hypothesis. See the Cornell University pre-print paper submitted 7 Feb 2021 by several authors here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.03910 (and the 2 papers co-authored by Dr Alina Chan included in its bibliography), and the diverse list of scientists who agree the hypothesis deserves further consideration, published on 6 Feb 2021 in the Daily Telegraph UK newspaper, archived here: https://archive.vn/efmTs. Of note is that the list includes Dr Richard Ebright, who is wrongly included in this "misinformation" article among scientists who have "dismissed" the lab leak theory. On 9 February 2021 one of the authors of the Cornell paper, Yuri Deigin, co-created a wiki page on "Covid 19 lab leak hypothesis", but by 10 February 2021 someone has already edited that page so that it instantly re-directs to this "mis-information" article, which appears wrong for the reasons above.Leo Brennan (talk) 10:47, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing productive can possibly come from using preprints, misrepresenting sources, not reading cited sources and ignoring science. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:48, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Ignoring Science"??? Is the WHO seriously the ONLY reliable source on this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.16.166.109 (talk) 15:52, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It would be great if whichever group is sending all these "new editors" to push the anti-conspiracy angle would have them read MEDRS first. A pre-print (not MEDRS) of a primary speculative article (not MEDRS) by a bunch of people with laughably irrelevant, very low, or literally zero scientific credentials (extremely unlikely to be MEDRS)* is just so clearly not going to be accepted by Wikipedia, so why waste everyone's time?

*I mean really, who is going to take this seriously?

Rossana Segreto, PhD (2010?): technical assistant at U Innsbruck with 8ish publications in mycoheterotrophy, h-index of ~5, only relevant expertise is in phylogeny reconstruction in fungi and fungal barcoding.
Yuri Deigin: businessman with a CS/math bachelor's and MBA, only publication is a pro-lab-leak paper with Segreto, h-index of 1, zero background in science.
Kevin McCairn, PhD (2008): led a neurophysiology lab at the Korea Brain Research Institute for a few years before starting his own neuroscience consulting company (with a weirdly unfinished website and poor SEO), 17 papers and an h-index of 12, zero relevant expertise.
Alejandro Sousa, MD (1984): urologist with ~50 papers in urology, h-index of maybe 9?, zero relevant expertise.
Dan Sirotkin: prison blog writer with bachelor's in political science, only publication is pro-lab-leak paper with dad (Karl), h-index of 1, zero background in science.
Karl Sirotkin, PhD (1980s?): retired online research tools manager for NIH; 48 papers, all since 1990 related to different releases of NCBI databases/tools or info collected therein; h-index of 34; unclear if he has relevant expertise beyond using genetics software?
Jonathan Couey, PhD (2009): research assistant professor in neuroscience at Pitt, 17 papers in neuroanatomy/physiology, h-index of 15, no indication of relevant expertise.
Adrian Jones: "independent bioinformatics researcher", no information available=zero expertise
Daoyu Zhang: "independent genetics researcher"; only publications I could find are 1) a YouTube comment claiming there is "only...1 in 5346 chance that these 79 nucleotide mutations not changing a single amino acid within the 685-1124 sequence of the Covid-19 Spike protein when compared to RaTG13", as if that likelihood is impossibly small for a virus, and 2) a comment on a biorxiv paper on ACE2 evolution; no further information available=zero expertise.

JoelleJay (talk) 19:11, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since I've not seen this reminder recently but that it's also a useful answer to the above often-asked questions, Wikipedia as an encyclopedia attempts to avoid presenting a false balance (WP:GEVAL is part of the WP:NPOV policy). Unless there was clear evidence of a leak and this was widely reported by reliable sources, speculating about incertitude is meaningless (and Wikipedia not for the WP:PROMOTION of undue divisive discourse or personal opinions). —Paleo Neonate – 11:10, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Also from WP:NPOV: "Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes. A neutral characterization of disputes requires presenting viewpoints with a consistently impartial tone." (emphasis in original). Moreover, the guidelines state: "Neutral point of view should be achieved by balancing the bias in sources based on the weight of the opinion in reliable sources and not by excluding sources that do not conform to the editor's point of view." One could make a good faith argument that the editors stifling debate on the potential veracity of the lab leak hypothesis are in direct breach of these guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.234.38.132 (talk) 14:34, 12 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The lab leak hypothesis

The lab leak hypothesis should be it's own seperate article. This is because it does not belong in an article about misinformation, since it is a theory about the origin of COVID-19, not a "Conspiracy theory". A conspiracy theory would be that COVID was a plandemic that was manufactured so that the globalist elites can take over the world. however, the "Lab leak hypothesis" is NOT a conspiracy theory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 100.16.166.109 (talk) 15:49, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is a conspiracy theory according to multiple reliable sources, and per WP:NOPAGE it makes best sense here, among all the others kinds of misinformation around COVID-19. Alexbrn (talk) 15:57, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Would like to see what all these people are reading/seeing for there information. Like Ivermectin there seems to be a whole segment of the population that gets their information from obscure places.--Moxy 🍁 16:13, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you search for lab leak hypothesis wikipedia on twitter, it's apparent there is a fair amount of agitation about Wikipedia's coverage of this, which may account for the uptick in less-than-productive editing there's been. Alexbrn (talk) 16:23, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Unsurprisingly, on twitter, Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 is hailed by conspiracy theorists as the one example of Wikipedia getting it right. -Darouet (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Which probably means that it's in dreadful shape. XOR'easter (talk) 19:32, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

XOR'easter I believe it may have been created as another POV fork. Unfortunately from what I can tell, its smallest section is devoted to what scientists currently think about likely SARS-CoV-2 origins in nature. -Darouet (talk) 19:46, 10 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It was, although it quickly enjoyed some scrutiny by experienced medicine editors to define its scope, —Paleo Neonate – 03:59, 11 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of a clarification by the Director General of the WHO on February 12th (less than 5200 words)

Original poster now topic-banned. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

As per the kind suggestion of User:ProcrastinatingReader who deleted my original contribution and said "try rewriting this in less than 5200 words", I have now reduced the number of words to less than 5200., in fact only 390 (about 2500 Characters and 1 paragraph). I have agreed to move this discussion here from the respective users talk page. It has come to my attention that User: Novem Linguae deleted my contribution and the contribution of RandomCanadian on spurious grounds: "(→‎Wuhan lab leak story: trim WP:PROFRINGE)" https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_misinformation&diff=next&oldid=1006462421 Kindly clarify how can the statement of the Director General contradicting the previous claim be considered WP:PROFRINGE? Effectively your and the other user's edits gagged the Director General of the WHO as promoting WP:PROFRINGE, which is absurd. Previously, RandomCanadian deleted a correctly referenced and pithy quote quote from the Director General which clarified the earlier claim on the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=COVID-19_misinformation&type=revision&diff=1006512687&oldid=1006437332 However, the information was accurate and correctly sourced ,and not a repetitive quotation (where is the other version of the quote?) User: Novem Linguae responded on his talk pages but I am not convinced by this argument as it seems that it is based on the perception of "strangeness" by User:Novem Linguae and some indecision on his part. It also fails to address the issue of categorising the Director General of the WHO as WP:PROFRINGE. RandomCanadian also responded by deleting my request on his talk pages and attempting to escalate the issue instead of engaging in intelligent and calm discussion of the issue as requested: " →I advise you against fragmenting this discussion and harassing all involved editors -" As it stands, the users [[User:RandomCanadian|RandomCanadian] and User: Novem Linguae have deleted an accurately sourced quote from the Director General of the WHO which updates and clarifies (as was clearly his intention) the standing claim in the section. Not only was the quote deleted, but any reference to his words was expunged with the strange claim that it was WP:PROFRINGE. I feel that this is a clear example of bias and would like to see it reverted or changed to a mutually acceptable insert that accurately reflects the Director General's comments. I am merely trying to contribute to this page by adding useful information, which is relevant, accurate and timely. Any discussion should focus of the content rather than attacking the contributor. Thank You Billybostickson (talk) 15:33, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I meant characters, not words, sorry. This is still way too long. You paste lots of random quotes in the middle and air a bunch of random grievances. All you had to say was "I want to introduce this quote ___. My reason why is ___. Thoughts?". I won't be reading or responding to it in substance until it's rewritten in a manner that shows respect for other editors' time, and I encourage others to do the same. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader OK, I will see what I can do. I included the quotes to give fair balance to the other users' opinion, but I can delete them to make it more readable and succinct. Billybostickson (talk) 15:43, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If other users have opinions they'll add them as comments themselves. All your original comment needs to do is succinctly make the proposal and a coherent reason on why it's a good proposal in line with policy. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

OK, ProcrastinatingReader i followed your advice and cut it by 50 percent and contained it in one paragraph, about 2500 Characters now. Billybostickson (talk) 15:52, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your edits. It's shorter but still hard to follow. From what I gather you support the inclusion of Special:Diff/1006462931. I don't really see a good reason given to add that content in, though. It seems like a standard science-is-a-work-in-progress statement. Of course, science always follows the way of the evidence and things can always change... any scientific theory is not bulletproof unlike a mathematics theorem. I don't really see any reason to include that sentence. It's like adding to General relativity: "However, the theory remains open to other possibilities and could still be wrong". Not helpful to the reader at all. The point is that scientific consensus is that the lab leak theory is not valid. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:56, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader OK, I get your first point although I disagree with the decision to not publish the Director General's clarification of the WHO team's earlier statement on the grounds that it is WP:PROFRINGE. That is clearly absurd. Regarding your second point, the current scientific consensus is that a bioengineered virus is not valid. There is currently no scientific consensus that an LAI (lab acquired infection) involving hACE2 mice or contaminated cell culture with a latent undetected and novel bat betacoronavirus or sewage/waste water Lab leak is invalid. It would be wise to avoid conflating two different theories as it casts a poor light on WP's neutrality. Billybostickson (talk) 16:10, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you have peer-reviewed pieces in a decent journal suggesting that this is a valid theory, I'd like to see them. In the meantime, Wikipedia should summarise the scientific consensus only. And no, the paper from Rossana Segreto and Yuri Deigin does not count. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:16, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader Let me put it another way, you said: "The point is that scientific consensus is that the lab leak theory is not valid" This is not accurate, there may be a consensus that a bio-engineered virus theory is invalid but I have yet to see any scientific consensus that a lab leak is impossible or theories supporting it are invalid. Who said that? As you know, multiple scientists, including Ebright, Lentzos, Sirotkin, Leitenberg, Relman (who worked with WIV to improve biosafety in 207-2018) consider a lab leak possible and quite likely and some have called for an investigation of laboratories in Wuhan. A case in point can be found here:

"The data currently available are not sufficient to firmly assert whether SARS-CoV2 results from a zoonotic emergence or from an accidental escape of a laboratory strain."

From: Tracing the origins of SARS-COV-2 in coronavirus phylogenies: a review

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-020-01151-1

Finally, the Director of the WHO was forced to issue a clarification of the WHO team comments that it was highly unlikely and would not be investigated by them any further, which is what this discussion is about. Billybostickson (talk) 16:46, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader

Regarding the Director General's statement, what exactly is ambiguous about his statement? Here it is:

"Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded."

"I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study."

https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-member-states-briefing-on-covid-19---11-february-2021

It is crystal clear that "All Hypotheses" includes "All Hypotheses", including the Lab Leak Hypothesis which was included on a slide shown by the team coordinator, Peter Emberak, during the recent WHO Press Conference.

https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Virus_Outbreak_China_WHO_Mission_94779.jpg?w=1080

There seems to be intent to misinterpret the very clear statement by Dr. Tedros and accuse him of WP:FRINGE. This will bring WP into disrepute. Billybostickson (talk) 17:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do the 5G mast, Bill Gates, and space aliens hypotheses remain in play? Can't tell. Hence, it is ambiguous (or uncertain) what is meant. Alexbrn (talk) 17:21, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn Please carefully read the context of the quote rather than peddling your own increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and 5G on this talk page.

https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-member-states-briefing-on-covid-19---11-february-2021

Thank you Billybostickson (talk) 17:32, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The point is, I suppose, it's not "crystal clear" what "all hypotheses" means, unless you have access to the inmost thoughts of Tedros. It's like it's a deliberately ambiguous statement that will please all parties (yes, politics at the WHO, who'd have thought it?). 5G etc. are relevant on this talk page, because this article deals with these very topics. Alexbrn (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like original research to me. Unless you have evidence that explicitly stating that they view the lab leak conspiracy theory as plausible and are still looking into it, specifically. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:42, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader Do you mean "Tracing the origins of SARS-COV-2 in coronavirus phylogenies: a review" It is a review article. Here is the citation: Sallard, E., Halloy, J., Casane, D. et al. Tracing the origins of SARS-COV-2 in coronavirus phylogenies: a review. Environ Chem Lett (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-020-01151-1

Alexbrn Nobody except for some Wikipedia editors seem to have any doubt about the meaning of Dr. Tedros's statement:

1. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/13/all-hypotheses-on-covid-19-origins-still-being-investigated-says-who-boss

The background which informs the statement can be understood here: "A spokesperson for the WHO says the mission will be guided by science, and “will be open-minded, iterative, not excluding any hypothesis that could contribute to generating evidence and narrowing the focus of research”." Where did COVID come from? WHO investigation begins but faces challenges https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03165-9 and the WHO Tors (China Side) https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/20200802-tors-chn-and-who-agreed-final-version.pdf and https://www.who.int/nepal/activities/supporting-elimination-of-kala-azar-as-a-public-health-problem/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/20200802-tors-chn-and-who-agreed-final-version Billybostickson (talk) 17:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the Sallard et al article is a review, despite having ": a Review" tacked on to the title. It's a translation of PMID 32773024, here appearing in a non-MEDLINE-indexed journal in English. I'd avoid that source when we have better. Alexbrn (talk) 17:55, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is classic undue material for this article. It's more relevant when discussing specific hypotheses discussed in the same source like at the investigations article. —Paleo Neonate – 22:58, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Clarifying: Alexbrn already said it, this article is about outlandish claims like 5G transmission as well as the baseless promotion of speculation about less implausible scenarios but for which there is no evidence. Adding a general source saying that "all possibilities are valid" when the original context is scientific investigation into specific areas results in WP:GEVAL. We should also avoid suggesting things that the original authors did not intend. —Paleo Neonate – 23:03, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[User:Alexbrn|Alexbrn]] User:PaleoNeonate User:Thucydides411 User:RandomCanadian [[User:BritishFinance] User:Novem_Linguae User:ProcrastinatingReader User: Hemiauchenia User: XOR'easter The kind of concerted and malicious gatekeeping by certain accounts, throttling of contributors, gagging of the Director General of the WHO and evident ongoing bias concerning this topic is laughable. I understand some of the more rational concerns concerning some conspiracy theories, but this page and the way it has been managed to date is putting WP into disrepute. Luckily many Scientists, such as Ebright, Leitenberg, Fumanski, Relman, Sirotkin, Decroly, Lentzos, van Helden, Canard, etc, have come out with support for the lab leak theory: http://www.ianbirrell.com/world-experts-condemn-who-inquiry-as-a-charade/ Multiple news media sources have the courage and determination to pursue the lab leak theory as a plausible, indeed likely hypothesis: https://dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9257413/Secret-bat-cages-Wuhan-lab-researchers-planned-breed-animals-virus-experiments.html As have AP, BBC, Le Monde, Sky News, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, Taiwan News, L'Equipe, etc. Now Professor John Watson from the WHO team has confirmed on BBC News that all hypotheses are still on the table and in response to a specific question from the interviewer that the lab leak hypothesis has not been ruled out. See : Prof John Watson on Wuhan Covid origins (BBC Politics). Andrew Marr with papers, politics and culture: Most Sundays from 9am on BBC One https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1360885644600373255/vid/1280x720/ZZYs8_GsMda1GB_9.mp4 Will you be saying that Professor Watson is WP:FRINGE now? Or the BBC is not a valid source? When people read these articles and watch the news stories, then come here to have a check, they will be gobsmacked at how a handful of biased editors and admins are dedicating themselves to making WP a laughing stock. Keep up the good work, lads! You all deserve medals for obfuscation! I will send to your private IRC Channel if you let me join up. What's it called? "Just SAY YES to Lab Leaks"? Now, kindly restore my contribution in its entirety and you can add Professor Watson’s statement as a way of apologizing for your collective stubbornness. Billybostickson (talk) 16:29, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In Wikipedia parlance, the term fringe theory is used in a very broad sense to describe an idea that departs significantly from the prevailing views or mainstream views in its particular field. So yes, WP:FRINGE applies. The WP:DAILYMAIL is not a usable source. I believe somebody has already put this material in the article anyway? Alexbrn (talk) 16:35, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)What we will be "saying" is that one quote in an interview is not enough to override the vast majority of WP:MEDRS which offer no support for the WP:FRINGE claim that COVID leaked from a lab, and that mentioning this like this would give WP:FALSEBALANCE, the false impression that both theories are equally valid (to quote directly: "Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship."). Now stop accusing us of "concerted and malicious gatekeeping" and "obfuscation" - WP:CIVILITY is not negotiable, otherwise this will end with the block (which was originally invalidated for bureaucratic reasons) being imposed again due to your persistent WP:ICANTHEARYOU attitude... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:42, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As I am not able to contribute accurate, well sourced and timely text to clarify a false claim on the Article Page because of constant reverts and threats, I have asked for some dispute resolution, as threatening to block contributors for voicing their opinions and arguing a point which is in fact correct (as you will see), is not helpful and is considered harassment.

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WHO's update on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis

Robby.is.on, can you point out where the "consensus against inclusion" of this, that you mention here, is please. I can't see it, and I find it hard to imagine why we want to leave misinformation (WHO's former position on this without also adding their later update) in an article condemning misinformation! -- DeFacto (talk). 21:37, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: The long discussions right above [and on other pages] (with a now topic-banned user) about "all hypotheses" being a vague and entirely useless statement, and also the part where one quote about the WHO "investigating" is not enough for us to give an aspect like this such recognition that it would give FALSEBALANCE (since the "lab leak" theory is considered "extremely unlikely" by the consensus of MEDRS, so despite the WHO director saying that hypotheses are still on the table, using that statement to imply that the hypothesis has validity which it does not have in MEDRS would be UNDUE)? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:43, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, so why hasn't their outdated statement also been removed from the section? What we currently have is an inaccurate account of their position - they now say they have not ruled out that hypothesis, yet our article still suggests that they have. And who, or what, is "MEDRS"? -- DeFacto (talk). 21:55, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: WP:MEDRS, the accepted guidelines on sourcing information on medical topics, which I'd suggest you get thoroughly acquainted with before further editing in the COVID-area (I've added links in my comment above). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:59, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, thanks for the link. Do you have a view on the logic for leaving the inaccurate and outdated account of the WHO's position in the article? Note too that Professor John Watson, a UK scientist who was part of the WHO team that visited Wuhan, is reported today by The Independent as also saying that the hypothesis that the virus was spread from a laboratory in Wuhan "remained on the table".[13] -- DeFacto (talk). 22:09, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Although the headline is sensationalising it ("does not rule out"...); when you read further into it, it is clear that despite the hypothesis "remaining on the table", it is still not the preferred hypothesis, in the words of Watson himself:

“We were very clear in our ability to be able to ask questions about all of that,” he said. “That is a hypothesis that remains on the table and could certainly have further work done on it.”
China has faced claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could be the suspected source of the Covid-19 virus.
Last week, a team of experts from China and the WHO concluded that it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus entered the human population as a result of a laboratory-related incident.
Prof Watson said the most likely source remained an “animal reservoir somewhere and that the infection got to humans, probably, through an intermediate host”.

However, there's also a bit of context that's missing: earlier in the article, Watson is even quoted as saying that even the origin of the virus in China could be put into question:

But he added that China was “by no means necessarily the place where the leap from animals to humans took place and I think we need to ensure that we are looking beyond the borders of China, as well as within China.”

Obviously, a scientist being thorough and listing every possible hypothesis is not the same as that hypothesis being worthy of detailed mention (for example, while it is true the cases for outside China are intriguing, that does not change that the current consensus is that the virus emerged in or near Wuhan); especially not based on interviews and press conferences... Given that Watson seems to believe that the most likely hypothesis is still the more mundane one, this doesn't radically change the outlook. Mentioning "further investigations into the origin of COVID" could maybe be done at the proposed Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 while avoiding giving a false sense of validity to a particular variant. I don't know how we should go about reconciliating the contradictory information (WHO investigation team says "does not merit further investigation"; WHO director says "all hypotheses still on the table"). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:02, 14 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, I think the best way to proceed is to succinctly add the latest information, as I did. Without it, we leave the reader with the incorrect impression that the WHO's view is clear-cut, and it is an invitation to those who know otherwise to attack the article. I propose that add the reliably sourced sentence On 12 February 2021, the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated that the hypothesis that Covid had originated in a laboratory in Wuhan had not been ruled out and required further study. This would clear up the matter and make this article more credible. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:02, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

He also didn't rule out "aliens brought it" explicitly when he said "all hypotheses remain open". That doesn't mean we should discuss "aliens brought it" as viable hypothesis in the article, and it doesn't mean he said "aliens brought it" requires further study. I don't mind quoting "all hypotheses remain open" but it should be done exactly like that. --mfb (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mfb, I think you have misunderstand the situation here. He was commenting on a hypothesis that is still on the table as far as the WHO is concerned, and explicitly said it had not yet been ruled out by them and that it needed further study. Was your one about aliens ever on their table? -- DeFacto (talk). 17:59, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"He was commenting on a hypothesis" ← which single hypothesis was he commenting on? What is the wording that singles this one hypothesis out? Alexbrn (talk) 18:03, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, there were apparently four hypotheses that were being considered: that it jumped from bats to another animal and then on to humans; it jumped directly from bats to humans; it travelled on frozen food; it escaped from a laboratory. He is reported to have said: "Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and study." -- DeFacto (talk). 18:28, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

His wording implies they are open to any new evidence set forth. This is how academics speak....not in terms of a black and white stance but acceptance that further research may yield a different perspective. But in no way is this an endorsement of anykind... its simply an academic who is open-minded and not speaking in absolutes. Critical and analytical thinking is a mainstay of Academia.--Moxy 🍁 18:21, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. If he would have thought the lab leak hypothesis would be a realistic option he could have said that explicitly. He did not. We shouldn't edit the article as if he would have. --mfb (talk) 19:30, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mfb, do you think we should we knowingly leave the article in its current misleading state with it saying 'and dismissed the lab leak theory as "extremely unlikely" and not needing further study', when we now know they think it does need further study? -- DeFacto (talk). 22:21, 15 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what about my comments was unclear. --mfb (talk) 01:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mfb, this was a supplementary question as you hadn't covered it, and it is the point of this thread. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When I added this here it was reverted stating that it doesn’t belong here but should be in covid 19 origin investigation page When I added it there it was reverted stating that this content has already been reverted. Don't add it again. I am yet to get a proper reason for the reverts. And its all reverts everytime. Not an edit / update / rewrite / delete etc

But in a press briefing on February 12, WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appeared to walk back Embarek’s comments.^[1]^[2]

J mareeswaran (talk) 01:28, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ "The WHO and investigators offer conflicting accounts of the closely watched probe". "Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded," Tedros said at the start of the press conference. "Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies. Some of that work may lie outside the remit and scope of this mission."
^ "The Hindu Explains — What has the WHO team's field visit to China thrown up regarding the spread of SARS-CoV-2?".

The headlines are not reliable per WP:HEADLINES. Having read the The Independent source, I'm okay with removing "and not needing further study" if editors really wish. But the source is clear that it remains very unlikely, and Prof Watson also says the most likely source is natural. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And yet another source as to why the interpretation of these WHO statements in popular press shouldn't always be taken at face value: from the MfD discussion. And the explicit question and answer: "Q: [...] Now that you've been there, do you have more reason to say it's "extremely unlikely" than before? A: Yes [...]" RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 04:09, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, the statements in the "popular press", or at least the ones I brought here, were spot on, and reinforced by the Science article. Cherry picking, selective quoting, and loaded language to push a particular POV are never a good idea, we need to give due weight and balance all views when we are reporting opinion and interpretation as opposed to hard fact. -- DeFacto (talk). 06:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My statement wasn't in reply to you, sorry if that was mildly confusing. Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, yes, it's still their view that it is unlikely, but that wasn't being disputed here. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:03, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. Well, as a matter of fact, then I'm fine with removing "and not needing further study" as I say. Though, seems another editor already did so. How's the current paragraph look to you? Does it resolve your concerns? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:05, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ProcrastinatingReader, almost. I think it would still be better if it clarified that the WHO have not totally ruled out this hypothesis. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The current language already does that, with the long explanation before, and the fact that it says "extremely unlikely", not "impossible". Anyway, anybody mildly competent in the scientific method will know that it's difficult to "totally rule out" hypothesis such as this one, we do not need to make it explicit (which would probably bring too much UNDUE weight on this aspect). As modified by me and others, the current wording seems fine. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:16, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The lab leak section is unfathomably bad and I am ashamed of Wikipedia for letting itself be weaponized

The section conflates the lab leak hypothesis with the bioengineering hypothesis. The lab leak thesis has been discussed in serious terms in many mainstream scientific and general news publications. The bioengineering hypothesis has been rejected by a number of leading scientists but pretty much no one among them asserts they have "proven" natural origin (Ralph Baric has said as much: to exclude bioengineering hypothesis, a forensic investigation is needed [14]). All the sources have been provided on this discussion page, again and again. Still it gets rejected under false pretenses. To call these theories "misinformation" is misinformation, and likely was influenced by the action of professional operatives. The only vaguely "scientific" source is a letter to Nature by a virologist. Not a single study is cited, only Forbes and NPR articles, and now just a few words on the WHO group declaration. However, although the section almost exclusively cites generalist press, it doesn't cites a single line out of the countless that have been written in favor of the lab leak hypothesis, and to a lesser degree, the bioengineering thesis. That the community would let this happen is absolutely unacceptable and deeply damaging to the reputation of Wikipedia. We need to face up to the fact that we are being gamed, and thoroughly so, and this is pushing people to lose trust and leave this platform as contributors and even readers. Fa suisse (talk) 05:48, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Though in fact the only evidence of "gaming" that has emerged is of off-wiki coordination, email canvassing, &c. of proponents of these "lab leak" conspiracy theories. Alexbrn (talk) 06:01, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Status of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis

After being involved in this article for a couple of days, it has become apparent to me that there is not a clear consensus amongst reliable sources that the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis is either "misinformation" or a "conspiracy theory". And given that the WHO included it as one of the four hypotheses when investigating the potential source of the virus, I am not convinced that it belongs in this article. For those reasons, I propose that we remove it from this article per WP:VER. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:53, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus among editors doesn't decide content, but reliable sources do. All "lab origin" scenarios come under the aegis of conspiracy theory or counter-scientific speculation per the WP:BESTSOURCES, e.g. PMID 32945405 or PMID 33586302. Wikipedia merely reflects that. Alexbrn (talk) 08:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, as I said, there does not appear to be a clear consensus amongst reliable sources that the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis is either "misinformation" or a "conspiracy theory". You raise the notion of "consensus among editors", and that is what is needed to decide what is the consensus amongst reliable sources. Currently a reader cannot reasonably verify, from the information given in the article, that this hypothesis is "misinformation", and therefore that it belongs in an article with this title. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's wrong I think. The highest quality sources are aligned. Of course there may be disagreement among a minority of weakly-published scientists, lay press, blogs and so on. But that's the same for most nonsenses from bigfoot to homeopathy. Your argument is essentially the WP:GEVAL fallacy. Alexbrn (talk) 08:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, what, in your opinion, qualifies a source as being "highest quality" when it comes to holding an opinion on whether this commonly suggested possibility is "misinformation" (which generally means designed to deceive)? And why would we expect the opinions of scientists, weakly published or otherwise, to be given more weight that those of people from other professions when it comes to so judging the motives behind this suggested possibility? Sure there may be some people who find this possibility a convenient tool for some ulterior motive, but to categorically cast it as "misinformation" needs, I think, a consensus amongst a wider array of sources than just those dedicated to publishing the opinions of non-weakly-published scientists. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:44, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

which generally means designed to deceive No, it does not. See Misinformation and Disinformation. This makes the rest of your contribution irrelevant. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:52, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hob Gadling, even if we assume that more lenient definition (and forget for a moment that Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source), it still leaves us asserting that this suggested possibility is in some way false or inaccurate. Remember that even the WHO have refused to rule it out at the moment. It is plausible, even if not the most likely of the four hypotheses that the WHO say they considered. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto:You are changing the subject, and you are doing original research. From "someone from the WHO did not rule it out" does not follow "it is plausible". WP:MEDRS sources are definitely much stronger than your logic, even if your logic was valid, which it is not.

forget for a moment that Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source If you actually used that reasoning instead of forgetting it, it would just be Wikilawyering. I linked the misinformation and disinformation articles because I thought you would be able to go there and look at the sources those articles are based on. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: Never mind my opinion, look to the WP:PAGs, particularly WP:MEDRS. Per WP:MEDRS we are looking for sources which are typically: secondary, scholarly, and reputably-published in a relevant publication. So, a review article in a virology journal (like PMID 33586302 which we cite) is an excellent source. We don't seek on Wikipedia a "consensus of sources" which means we use junkier sources to contaminate the knowledge found in high-quality ones; in fact that is explicitly forbidden by WP:MEDRS. Alexbrn (talk) 09:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, I don't see any discussion there about which sources to use to support opinions related to the moral and other non-scientific aspects of this topic. I don't see any reason why scientists should be given the monopoly in judgement opinions. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:02, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is an article on misinformation, and the question of whether the virus was produced in a lab is a scientific question. Quality scientific sources - yes - do have a monopoly on scientific questions. Or at least, they do on Wikipedia. If you want to write about the moral aspects of the pandemic, this isn't the right article. Alexbrn (talk) 10:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, who said anything about it being produced in a lab? This is about whether it could have leaked from a lab. Perhaps you are conflating this hypothesis with some other conspiracy theory? All the more reason to remove it from the article I think you'll agree. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The cited MEDRS sources also mention accidental or intentional ‘escapes’ from a lab. They make no such distinction between accidental release and bio weapons, treating them as conspiracies all the same. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: The sources we use cover all these scenarios. However, if SARS-CoV-2 was not "produced" in a lab but existing in nature beforehand, its origin is ipso facto natural. I am aware the believers keep twisting and turning in order to try to slalom around each piece of refutation in their way, but we can only deal with the misinformation as it is described in relevant sources. If we try to encompass every weird mutation of the conspiracy theory, we will fail. Alexbrn (talk) 10:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention that peer-reviewed journals and scientists can’t keep playing whack-a-mole with the conspiracy theory variation of the day. Not only is it impracticable (takes 1 minute to cook up a variation of the conspiracy, much longer for scientists to dissect and publish) and is a waste of time for virologists to do when they have, you know, a pandemic to worry about... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 10:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. Brandolini's law is a reason why Wikipedia does well to rely on the highest-quality sources. Alexbrn (talk) 10:30, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With lower-quality sources it can go like this:

Journalist: "Can you rule out the theory that extraterrestrial aliens made the virus and implanted it into bats?"
Scientist: "What sort of crappy 'theory' is that? It is unfalsifiable, of course they is no way to rule it out. Only ignorant loons who do not know the first thing about science would even consider it."
Journalist, writing article: "The scientist said he could not rule out the theory that extraterrestrial aliens made the virus and implanted it into bats."
Wikipedia author: "We cannot call that idea misinformation because the scientist said it was plausible." --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:26, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

User:Hob Gadling Has the US Government ever demanded a UN body to investigate extraterrestrial aliens in the way the current US Gov is demanding the WHO to investigate COVID-19 lab origins? Do you have reliable sources of such a story? It would be WP:DUE for an article of its own. TacticalTweaker (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please consult the articles Reductio ad absurdum and Red herring to find out if it is possible to heal reasoning which was destroyed by reductio ad absurdum (such as the one that was destroyed by me, above) by changing the subject, applying the same reduction to that other subject, and noting that it does not work in that case (as you did).

Regarding that other subject: What the US Government did does not affect any facts about viruses or science. As before, you need WP:MEDRS sources for medical claims. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:44, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hob Gadling, please consult WP:BLUDGEON and answer my question concisely. Has the US Government ever demanded a UN body to investigate extraterrestrial aliens in the way the current US Gov is demanding the WHO to investigate COVID-19 lab origins? TacticalTweaker (talk) 21:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Does anybody here think that demanding an answer to a rhetorical question is a smart thing to do? (I do not demand an answer to that question.)

I will ignore you now, since your discussion style has gone below the kindergarten horizon. --Hob Gadling (talk) 21:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Whatever the US government demands the UN investigate, it is not a MEDRS (especially if it involves a political claim with it's main global economic rival), and concluding things from that insistence is WP:SYNTH. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:23, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That it's a conspiracy theory seems to be verifiable & DUE. I have added more journal and news sources to support. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 08:07, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nonetheless - the "lab origin" scenarios cant be ruled out. That was in the article and sourced, but was removed by you Alexbrn. [15] That doesnt seem very encyclopedic or a good idea. Alexpl (talk) 08:10, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We follow the WP:BESTSOURCES. Let's keep the job simple. As we now say, the disproof (if possible) of the conspiracy theories is very difficult. This gives the conspiracists plenty of time to fill the void with their Truth™. Alexbrn (talk) 08:14, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I imagine the main reason for not doing so is political, since there's an agenda by various parties to push blame onto China (sourced). Plus, it's hard to definitively prove otherwise and science is generally not about closing doors prematurely (any theory can be wrong, to decreasing odds with time, research and evidence). It falls into WP:FALSEBALANCE territory, and the scientific consensus is that this is very unlikely to be valid and journalistic consensus is that it's a politicised conspiracy theory, so the article should portray the same. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 08:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Deadlock?

It seems clear that some in the community here do not believe that we should separate the two ideas that I think are being (wrongly) conflated here: the hypothesis that the virus could have escaped or leaked out of the lab where it may have been languishing; the conspiracy theory that the virus was somehow produced in the lab. Although the latter belongs in this article, I am not convinced that the former does. Perhaps it is time for an RfC amongst the wider Wiki community. Thoughts? -- DeFacto (talk). 11:30, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You can always start an RfC. I still advise you actually read the cited sources first before expending community time on this, but if you want to go ahead then I suggest drafting a well-crafted question that still broadly addresses the conspiracy so we don't have to have this discussion again and can add it to the COVID-19 "Current Consensus". What RfC question are you thinking of asking? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 11:42, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It would be good to see any sources for this. So far as I can see the odd idea that SARS-CoV-2 was somehow spontaneously "languishing" in a lab is a scenario I've not seen in any decent source! In general, the arguments of the leak believers seem to be very light on actual sources. Alexbrn (talk) 12:09, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, I'm not sure about "spontaneously" or that you need to be a believer to acknowledge that such a hypothesis has been proffered. -- DeFacto (talk). 12:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well if the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is not natural, how did it get to be languishing in a lab? What is the source for the sequence of events you seem to be proposing we include? Alexbrn (talk) 12:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, why assume the origin is not natural? -- DeFacto (talk). 13:39, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because if the origin is natural, then there is no controversy about the origin because ... it's natural. Alexbrn (talk) 13:44, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, the question here is about whether a biosecurity failure allowed a spillover into the community, not how it got into the lab in the first place. -- DeFacto (talk). 13:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What!? That's shifted the goalposts even further into an area which seems to make no sense. If you are going to argue the virus "got into the lab", there needs to be some reasoning about that. In a source. Am I right in thinking the source count in support of this increasingly fuzzy scenario is ... zero? Alexbrn (talk) 14:06, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, nothing has shifted. That is why I came here here - to try and understand why the lab leak hypothesis is being conflated with some lab related conspiracy theory. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The point is there is apparently no cogent "lab leak hypothesis" that conforms to what you have been saying. I challenge you to produce a source setting it out. Without sources, this entire discussion is pointless as there is no basis for improving the encyclopedia. So: source? Alexbrn (talk) 14:24, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, a good place to start would be this article in Science, and it is already cited as a reference in the article. It covers some details of the hypothesis, and why the WHO have kept it on the table along with three or four other hypotheses. -- DeFacto (talk). 15:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but that doesn't really answer my question. That sources does say how, in the view of Embarek, it is extremely unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 "originated in a Chinese laboratory"; but we know that. What I'm asking about is the positive hypothesis you are alluding to which has a natural virus languishing in a lab. Also see below where I wonder if this is a phantom theory. I just want somebody to point to a description of what, at a basic level, the "lab leak hypothesis" actually is. Alexbrn (talk) 15:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, the question is whether the two concepts amount to the same thing, and whether they both belong in the same section, or even in the same article. -- DeFacto (talk). 12:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So: "Should Wikipedia portray the lab leak theory as misinformation, and by extension include it in the COVID-19 misinformation article?" ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:30, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'd have suggested "What is the most accurate statement regarding the status of the lab leak theory": A) It is misinformation B) It is a minority scientific hypothesis (there's the even more obviously bollocks "It is WP:THETRUTH/a significant hypothesis/...", but obviously we don't want to be attracting twitter trolls and bots any further); but then whatever the the outcome of that question it would not change that only a short section on it should be included in whichever article, and of course that will not fly well with the POV pushers... The fact that a third of Americans appear to be scientifically illiterate (per that poll mentioned somewhere) doesn't help. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, no. Something more like "Should Wikipedia portray the hypothesis that the virus was legitimately present in the lab and accidentally escaped from there, and the theory that the virus was actively created in the lab, as one and the same conspiracy theory?" -- DeFacto (talk). 14:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's a convoluted question. And reaches a not-helpful answer, because it doesn't directly influence how we write content in this article. You said on this page that it's not misinformation and doesn't belong in this article, so my proposed question tests that. I'm not really sure what your question tests. Obviously they're not the same conspiracy theory and there's likely differences in coverage between them, but they are both covered as conspiracy theories in MEDRS. As for news sources, one is more covered as a conspiracy theory than the other. So again, obviously they're not the same conspiracy. Just the "bioweapon" one was obviously becoming too fringe, and was being discredited openly by US intelligence whilst Trump was busy peddling it (sourced in article), so he had to ditch it and move onto something slightly more plausible. But I'm not sure a running commentary is suited for this article. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think Wikipedia needs to be wary of falling for the motte and bailey fallacy used by the conspiracists, and it seems by some editors here. When challenged the believers retreat into saying they are just entertaining a mild "hypothesis", but the misinformation is not that, but rather the idea that the virus did (or almost certainly) come from the Wuhan lab and that the Chinese have covered it up, etc. Reliable sources don't discuss the "hypothesis" other than to say its extremely unlikely etc. But in discussing misinformation, RS is addressing the rumours that the virus actually "leaked" (not "might, in extremis, possibly have leaked") from the Wuhan lab. Anybody asserting the virus leaked from a lab is spreading misinformation, because there is no scientific evidence in support of such an assertion. This is what RS tells us. Alexbrn (talk) 14:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) thrice "legitimately" is clearly an attempt at making this a leading question. Both of these are still WP:FRINGE (see the quote from the Science interview) - and the "bioweapon/lab-construction" theory is not even the thing under discussion. And, as pointed out, the "accidental lab leak" theory would still need an external source which got into the lab, an hypothesis for which you have not provided any MEDRS to support. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I guess, in part, I might see what DeFacto is saying. For example: Many scientists and authorities debunked the conspiracy theory, including American biologist Richard Ebright, NIAID director Anthony Fauci, prominent scientists, and the US intelligence community. is unclear. afaik they fully refuted the bioweapon one only. Ebright made some contradicting statements, not sure about Fauci, and afaik intelligence community refuted the bioweapon one and called the other one unlikely. So I guess, for strictly speaking accuracy, we this paragraph can probably be cleaned up a bit and may need some rewording. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I'm a bit behind on which figure has said what it seems; Fauci has discredited both. I've moved the prose around a bit, and adjusted the cites, and also got rid of that Forbes contributors ref. I've removed some names in the process since I don't have refs on hand, but those can be added back if people find something to verify them. Is this an improvement to your concerns, DeFacto? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:21, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Phantom theory?

This is what puzzles me, and seems to have been the point that's been reached on several pages during discussion of how Wikipedia should treat this topic (which seems to have been going on for ever). Everybody seems to agree that the bio-weapon and lab-engineered origin scenarios are debunked for SARS-CoV-2. So then there's a fall back to an apparent "lab leak without lab-engineered virus" scenario. But so far as I can see, this scenario does not exist. Not in RS. Not even in the Talk page contributions of its proponents. (The Draft currently up for deletion refers to "the accidental leak of a coronavirus undergoing studies" without a source or explanation). Just for sanity's sake can we confirm we're even discussing an actual concept somebody has articulated somewhere? What exactly is the "lab leak theory" and where is it set out? Alexbrn (talk) 15:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Good questions. (It's kind of looking like a "lab leak of the gaps" argument by now.) XOR'easter (talk) 15:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Some media sources cover them as slightly separate events. The "intentional bioweapon" one came around before the "accidental lab leak" one. The former is totally not considered to be valid. There's apparently a separate angle on the "accidental lab leak" conspiracy. Some individuals are slightly less dismissive of that idea. My understanding is that neither have traction in normal RS and definitely no traction in academic sources, though, and are both generally considered conspiracies. I'm not sure I'd treat them wholly as two distinct things to the point of separate sections, but we do still have to make sure the text is verifiable, so if a certain individual only discredited one of the two theories (and said "still investigating" on the other) we can't really imply that they did both. Example: [16]: But the office said it had determined Covid-19 "was not manmade or genetically modified". + "The [intelligence community] will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan." It was the first clear response from American intelligence debunking conspiracy theories - both from the US and China - that the virus is a bioweapon. Now, how exactly do you have a lab leak of a natural virus whilst it not being engineered, but still being not natural, I'm not quite sure. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:29, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To be clear, I think this only matters to the extent that we quote who said what. I don't think it's really relevant beyond that. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:32, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, in case you missed my reply above, to your request for sources, I'll reiterate... A good place to start would be this Science article. It covers some details of the lab leak hypothesis, and why the WHO have been unable to fully investigate it themselves. It is one of a handful of hypotheses they still have on the table. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Um, Alexbrn already responded to that link above. I really admire their patience and the patience of others engaging with you, DeFacto. Robby.is.on (talk) 16:04, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, to answer my own question. The review article we cite, PMID 33586302, says:

There are also rumours that SARS‐CoV‐2 ‘leaked’ from a famous laboratory in Wuhan working on bat CoVs, the ancestral virus of SARSCoV‐2.

and this in turn references PMID 32102621, which is a primary source so not MEDRS, but may be used in conjunction with our secondary source to flesh things out per. This says:

Currently, there are speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 is of laboratory origin. Some people have alleged that the human SARS-CoV-2 was leaked directly from a laboratory in Wuhan where a bat CoV (RaTG13) was recently reported, which shared ~96% homology with the SARS-CoV-2

So it appears the "hypothesis" is that the Wuhan lab leaked an experimentally modified form of RaTG13, which is SARS-CoV2. Is this right? It would certainly explain why there's been some questionable editing at our RaTG13 article (which I have since tidied up). Our review article goes on to say that

it is impossible that RaTG13 was manipulated via targeted mutagenesis to generate SARS‐CoV‐2. [my emphasis]

Could this be the basis for some content? Alexbrn (talk) 16:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

So it appears the "hypothesis" is that the Wuhan lab leaked an experimentally modified form of RaTG13, which is SARS-CoV2. Is this right?

No. RaTG13 is the closest relative to SARS-COV-2, but it is too far to be its ancestor. From its own records, which have been covered by reliable sources, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was known to have collected at least 9 SARS-like coronaviruses since 2013, which it worked on in undisclosed ways (one of which could be the backbone of SARS-COV-2). The Wuhan Institute of Virology took down its database of viruses, and the US Government has demanded that they provide this data, and any other data on viruses they may have collected and worked on. Here is a Telegraph article describing these accounts: https://archive.is/bK8vO TacticalTweaker (talk) 18:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interview / Failed verification

@DeFacto: I disagree with the tag. Source goes on to clarify: What we saw and discussed gave us much more confidence in our assessment. The consensus was that this is an unlikely scenario. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

re. "Will you self-revert" : No. The full question (and partial answer, emphasis added):

Q: But my question is whether you learned anything new in China. Now that you've been there, do you have more reason to say it's "extremely unlikely" than before?

A: Yes. We had long meetings with the staff of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and three other laboratories in Wuhan. They talked about these claims openly. We discussed: What did you do over the past year to dismiss this claim? What did you yourself develop in terms of argumentations? Did you do audits yourself? Did you look at your records? Did you test your staff? And they explained how they worked and what kind of audit system they had. They had retrospectively tested serum from their staff. They tested samples from early 2019 and from 2020. There were a lot of discussions that we could not have had if we had not traveled to Wuhan. We also did not have evidence provided by outsiders to support any of the claims out there. That could potentially have tipped the balance. What we saw and discussed gave us much more confidence in our assessment. The consensus was that this is an unlikely scenario.

So "the consensus was that this was unlikely" and "what we saw (after meeting with the staff) gave us much more confidence in our assessment"... You can't cherrypick just a part of the question... Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:13, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, why do you insist on putting your comment of 16:13 (UTC) before that of the original poster who added theirs at 15:57 (UTC), and why have you indented it as if a reply to a previous post? See WP:INDENT and WP:THREAD. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Cause with all the edit conflicts things are becoming a wee bit confusing. Hopefully fixed? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian,

-- DeFacto (talk). 17:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, if you disagree, you should have come here first, per WP:BRD, rather than edit-warring your edit back in.

From the source, the interviewer asked the question: But my question is whether you learned anything new in China. Now that you've been there, do you have more reason to say it's "extremely unlikely" than before? The answer given was was quite long, but you seem to be relying on the first sentence which was Yes.

Even if we do assume that that was a direct reply to the second question of the interviewer's two questions, rather than the first one asking whether they had learnt anything new in China, it takes quite a leap of faith to believe that what would have been meant by, effectively: 'yes, we do have more reason to say it's "extremely unlikely" than before' could be taken to mean: with the WHO mission chief saying in a subsequent interview to Science that the investigation had rendered the lab leak theory even more unlikely than before, as you put it in the article! He definitely didn't say it was even more unlikely, just that he had more reason than before to say it was as unlikely. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:46, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Huh? You boldly made the change, which makes you B. => I’m the R. This is the discuss. I just gave you a specific quote from his same paragraph... ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:51, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, oops, I beg your're pardon. It was RandomCanadian's edit, 'twixt a stream of yours, that I reverted. Apologies. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:15, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The answer given was was quite long, but you seem to be relying on the first sentence
No, the whole of the answer, quoted above, goes in the sense that the answer to both sentences is yes: they learned something new, and that has given them more reasons to think the theory is "extremely unlikely"

Even if we do assume
The answer is rather quite clear, especially the last two sentences as quoted by me and PR.

He definitely didn't say it was even more unlikely, just that he had more reason than before to say it was as unlikely.
So this seems like a minor issue of wording, not one of failed verification. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:54, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, I couldn't verify that he said it was even more unlikely, that's all. If a re-wording fixes it, fine. What do you think about adding their given reasons for not being able to investigate this hypothesis further, from the same answer in the same source. That would add clarity. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mfb, I see you removed the 'fv' tag, asserting that it didn't fail verification. Are you seriously claiming that saying I have more reason to say it's "extremely unlikely" than before is equivalent to saying it's even more unlikely than before? More evidence that something is unlikely doesn't imply it is more unlikely, it implies that you have a higher confidence level that it is unlikely. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:34, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We are not looking at distinct categories here. We are looking at a continuous likelihood. Before it was less clear how (un)likely it is. Now the answer is "extremely unlikely" with a higher confidence. Everyone else involved in the discussion understands that. --mfb (talk) 04:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Best Sources

The US Government's position is that virus could have leaked from a lab which collected it (or its precursor virus) from nature (a mine). The WHO's investigation does not aline with this position, as they weren't able to conduct a forensic investigation, but the WHO DG has said all hypothesis remain on the table. No other source should supersede the WHO's position, and the US government's position is also important, as they funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology's work as described in these sources:

Bloomberg "The virus could have emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, spreading in a pattern consistent with a natural epidemic,” the State Department said. “Alternatively, a laboratory accident could resemble a natural outbreak if the initial exposure included only a few individuals and was compounded by asymptomatic infection." You can read the full "Fact Sheet" from the US State Department that Bloomberg references here. The sheet describes how the WIV conducted "gain-of-function" research, and also mentions that the WIV collected a viruse from a cave in Yunan, and demands for the WHO to have access to WIV's work.

France24/AFP "Price said the January 15 fact sheet was "very clear that it was inconclusive -- it didn't give credence to one theory over another." This statement by Edward Price makes clear what the Biden administration's position is on the fact sheet describing the lab leak hypothesis published by the State Department during the Trump administration.

Reuters All hypotheses are still open in the World Health Organization’s search for the origins of COVID-19, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing on Friday. This statement by the WHO DG makes it clear what the WHO's position is on the lab leak hypothesis.

TacticalTweaker (talk) 18:08, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WHO position: How have you managed to skip through all of the above discussion?

US Government: 1) is not a WP:MEDRS, and 2) it's probably also WP:BIASEDSOURCE? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 18:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Were MEDRS sources required for the inauguration of Joe Biden? This is no less a political issue. TacticalTweaker (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Bloomberg, AFP and Reuters are biased? What? TacticalTweaker (talk) 18:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, but medical issues are different form political issues like the inauguration. WP:MEDRS needs to be adhered to. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen this policy discussed to death on this talk page and others. The lab leak hypothesis is not a medical issue. TacticalTweaker (talk) 18:35, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In one sense you're right, in that "the hypothesis" seems mainly to be the domain of politicized blowhards who'd have no idea what science was if it came up and smacked them in the face. But on the other hand, nope: anything that claims or implies knowledge in the realm of biomedicine needs a WP:MEDRS source. Alexbrn (talk) 18:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Alexbrn. At its core, this is about the origin of a new pathogen and that is 100% within the purview of MEDRS. EvergreenFir (talk) 19:56, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I respect your opinion but I disagree. I can't find the link right now but there was an RFC on this a few weeks back and there was no consensus on whether MEDRS sources are required for the lab leak hypothesis. The WHO's preliminary report lists four scenarios and the WHO DG has said they are all on the table, so I don't see what a MEDRS source could possible change about how Wikipedia covers this topic. TacticalTweaker (talk) 22:40, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Have you edited under any past accounts? If so, which ones? ProcrastinatingReader (talk)

It was a medical event, ergo, medical sources are going to have the best understanding of what happened, and due to Trump's documented interference, the US government isn't particularly reliable, especially since this was rolled in with numerous other instances of deliberate misinformation emanating from that source. - NiD.29 (talk) 22:55, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We have two US government statements (the second one is from the Biden admin), and the WHO DG statement, which are in line with each other. Which other source, MEDPOP or MEDRS can supersede these statements? TacticalTweaker (talk) 23:03, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not make us waste time by repeating the same points all over again. About the WHO statement, just scroll the page a wee bit up, to Talk:COVID-19_misinformation#Interview_/_Failed_verification, and you'll see why. As for the US governement, political sources are simply not suitable for this kind of information (in any case, Biden or Trump, the relationship between US and China is not exactly one of close friendship), and AFAICS Trump is already mentioned there and elsewhere. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:11, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is a voluntary project. If you do not have the time to go over these important points, we will not begrudge you. The US government and WHO's position on the lab leak hypothesis is something that is worthy of our time. Do you have any other sources that somehow supersede the above sources laying out the US Gov and WHO positions? TacticalTweaker (talk) 23:17, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Take the time to read the section starting at Talk:COVID-19_misinformation#Interview_/_Failed_verification (really, just above, surprised it was missed), which clearly explains why the WHO position is not 1) contradictory and 2) does not support the lab leak story, from an interview in Science by the WHO mission chief. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:21, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the US State Department spokesman and WHO DG statements in the three sources above. As reported by AFP, the US State Department spokesman said the Fact Sheet did not give credence to one scenario over another. The lab leak hypothesis is one of four on the table. TacticalTweaker (talk) 23:33, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Have you considered that the US might have political reasons to try to blame China (it's arch-rival since the fall of the USSR)? The politics maybe warrants a mention, but we don't and cannot give it undue weight when compared to the academic consensus. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:43, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not engage in debates. Wikipedia covers debates as reported in reliable sources. The WHO's position is now aligned with the US government position, which warrants mention. TacticalTweaker (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is not, per the Science interview. Any claim to the contrary is confirmation bias or motivated reasoning. Even if we ignore that, the US government position can be disregarded for scientific purposes since it is clearly a political claim, while the WHO saying that the hypothesis is "still on the table" doesn't meant squat if there's no credible reports in academic peer-reviewed publications about it. So far, I have not seen even one such MEDRS-compliant source about this which doesn't say anything more than the typical scientific "we can't discard the hypothesis entirely". See also Russell's teapot. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:30, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting sources tangential to origin

Prevalence: "COVID-19–Related Infodemic and Its Impact on Public Health: A Global Social Media Analysis". PMC 7543839. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Figure 3 seems to indicate the cause and origins of the virus were the most common type of misinformation of the collected reports.
Social and political effects of origin conspiracy theories: "Framing the Origins of COVID-19". PMC 7484600. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:36, 16 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

I am still very uncomfortable with the prominence, level of detail, tone and POV positioning of the information presented in this article with respect to the lab leak hypothesis that the WHO have on the table. It's a big deal in the media and, I think, deserves more weight to be given to its coverage in Wikipedia.

Prominence

Currently it's buried in an article about misinformation, even though it is definitely a matter of fact that that this is a proposed hypothesis. It's not explained in the article why mention of its existence as a hypothesis is considered to be misinformation.

Secondly it's even buried within this article, being given a junior position at the bottom of a section covering conspiracy theories, including that the virus is not natural, involving labs. It is not a part of these theories so should, I think, at least, have its own section.

Level of detail

The one sentence that currently covers it is clearly inadequate.

Tone

Even though there is only one sentence about it, that has at least two problems. The premise suggests that this hypothesis does not assume that the virus originated in animals before spreading to humans, which is false. It hypothesises that a natural virus, present in the lab for some reason, accidentally escaped. The conclusion is an editorialised summary of a controversial interpretation of the source (see #Interview / Failed verification above) - "considered to be even more unlikely"? Even if we agreed that he said it was now more unlikely, which we don't, there is no need to peacock it up.

POV positioning

I think the preceding three points say it all.

Proposal

I propose, in the first instance that we:

Create a separate section for it
Describe the hypothesis in neutral terms
Describe the WHO response, including their lack of power/resources to investigate it properly
Describe government/political interest
Describe media interest
Describe the attitude of the scientific community towards it
Describe how it's been a catalyst for conspiracy theories

I'm sure there will be other stuff about it to discuss too. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:15, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No sources, again. Without sources this is pointless. So far as I can see the "lab leak hypothesis" gets accorded only a few sentences in academic publications, and is categorized as a conspiracy theory or rumour (see above). Wikipedia likes to reflect serious sources. Wikipedia will no more give weight to this fringe idea, just because it's "in the media", than it would tales of alien abductions, etc, which also get plenty of "media" coverage. Alexbrn (talk) 08:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, much of this is contained in the sources that are already in the article or mentioned above. Clearly nothing should be added (or accepted) without suitable sourcing. Feel free to find some for yourself too, of course. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:32, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To address the WP:FRINGE topic of the lab leak, we need sources discussing it and/or which give the mainstream context of how the science views the question of the virus's origin, for necessary context. These are the WP:BESTSOURCES. I believe we are now fully aligned with what they say, so WP:NPOV is achieved.

Hakim MS (February 2021). "SARS‐CoV‐2, Covid‐19, and the debunking of conspiracy theories". Rev Med Virol (Review). doi:10.1002/rmv.2222. PMID 33586302.
Salajegheh Tazerji S, Magalhães Duarte P, Rahimi P, Shahabinejad F, Dhakal S, et al. (September 2020). "Transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to animals: an updated review". J Transl Med (Review). 18 (1): 358. doi:10.1186/s12967-020-02534-2. PMC 7503431. PMID 32957995.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
Zoumpourlis V, Goulielmaki M, Rizos E, Baliou S, Spandidos DA (October 2020). "The COVID‑19 pandemic as a scientific and social challenge in the 21st century". Mol Med Rep (Review). 22 (4): 3035–3048. doi:10.3892/mmr.2020.11393. PMC 7453598. PMID 32945405.
Barh D, Silva Andrade B, Tiwari S, Giovanetti M, Góes-Neto A, Alcantara LC, Azevedo V, Ghosh P (September 2020). "Natural selection versus creation: a review on the origin of SARS-COV-2" (pdf). Infez Med (Review). 28 (3): 302–311. PMID 32920565.
Hu, B, Hua, G, Peng, Z, Zheng-Li, S. "Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19". Nature Review Microbiology. doi:10.1038/s41579-020-00459-7.
WHO official position
And CDC official position

In the absence of better sourcing, I suggest we are done here. Alexbrn (talk) 08:47, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, readers who are interested in finding out more about this hypothesis, although with it being so buried it will be very difficult to find, will expect to find all the known facts and noteworthy opinions, not just the partial and misrepresented titbit we currently offer. Do they deserve to find it all, or should we shield them from it, as now? We are not done, and we do not need to restrict our sources solely to those emanating from the establishment medical and scientific communities. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia offers the accepted knowledge on the topic. It's a conspiracy theory being pressed hard by inexpert believers on the Internet. There's really nothing much more to say if we're going to stay serious. If you want to relay the conspiracy theory for those who like that kind of thing, Wikipedia is not the correct venue. Alexbrn (talk) 08:57, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, accepted knowledge? Yet we only have one sentence on this subject? My proposal is to start adding some of that accepted knowledge. If this article is the wrong place for it, then we need to create an article that is the correct place for it. Our role is not to shield readers from what we, personally, disapprove of, or even from what one section of society disapproves of. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:10, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Sometimes accepted knowledge is brief, as in this case. I'm not going to respond to you further unless specific proposals are made with a source since this repeated refusal to understand Wikipedia's purpose is becoming too much of a time-sink. Alexbrn (talk) 09:17, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Strong oppose and suggest reading sources and presenting them for changes, otherwise this is a waste of editor time. Very surprised to see you advancing worn out arguments, DeFacto, in regards to fringe content and NPOV. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:00, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ProcrastinatingReader, there is nothing worn out about expecting neutral and due coverage of ideas so important that they have had acres and hours of media coverage dedicated to them. And given that the WHO consider this important enough to include it in their list of four hypotheses that need more investigation I'd say they are (for whatever reason) still taking it seriously. We need to reflect that prominence in Wikipedia. If not in this article (where it obviously does not belong) then in another. -- DeFacto (talk). 09:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
WP:FALSEBALANCE: Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. Accepted academic scholarship which is cited in the article. Q.E.D. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 09:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
ProcrastinatingReader, all very clever, but being rooted on a false premise it adds no value to the discussion. That this hypothesis exists and is on the WHO table is neither a conspiracy theory, pseudoscience, speculative history, or a theory - it is a hard and incontrovertible fact. WP:DUE seems to be an appropriate place to start for guidance on this. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:50, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, great. Now we have a Wikilawyering trick for circumventing WP:FALSEBALANCE: We can legitimize "conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories" by pointing out that the existence of those "conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories" is not a "conspiracy theory, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theory" but a hard and incontrovertible fact. Well done. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hob Gadling - please refrain from pejoratives while ProcrastinatingReader and DeFacto engage in good faith debate on the premise of WP:FALSEBALANCE in this discussion. I will (again) ask you to consult WP:BLUDGEON. Thank you. TacticalTweaker (talk) 21:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn Please provide in a systematic fashion quotes from the seven sources that you have provided that indicate a lab origin is misinformation. A quick look at your sources show they are dated and do not support your claim. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:35, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Read them yourself. The science has been consistent right up to the latest source (from this week) - we duly cite it in the text in this article. If further quality sources appear, they may be considered but until then we are good. Alexbrn (talk) 13:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have read four (1, 5, 6, 7) of the seven sources you have provided above and I think you are misrepresenting their findings. Like many scientists have been saying since the start of this debate, only a forensic investigation can falsy the lab leak hypothesis, and as the Hakim paper says quite explicitly: However, an independent forensic investigation is probably the only course of action to prove or disprove this speculation. Please get a good night's sleep and read the paper properly.

To provide some context for Hakim's point, this Washington Post article from May 1, 2020, quotes Richard Ebright: Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist and biosafety expert at Rutgers University, said: “The question whether the outbreak virus entered humans through an accidental infection of a lab worker is a question of historical fact, not a question of scientific fact. The question can be answered only through a forensic investigation, not through a scientific investigation.”. Please do not misrepresent these sources to foment heated discussion on what is clearly a legitimate origin hypothesis now being investigated by the US Government and the WHO.

As reported in NBC just today, the Biden administration has criticized the Chinese government for lack of transparency around the origins of the virus. According to this report, the Biden admin also criticized WHO investigators for releasing a premature report, which was walked back by the WHO DG. This NBC report follows another report they made yesterday describing how China is withholding forensic evidence ("key data, including blood samples"), and we can add both of them (as well as the NY Times report it cites) to the growing stack of reliable sources reporting on this controversy (all of which must be read properly by Wikipedia editors and presented accurately for Wikipedia readers).

TacticalTweaker (talk) 21:57, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And how is "China witholding evidence" (an accusation from their main geopolitical rival) evidence of anything besides this being a political controversy? Scientists saying that "further investigation is probably the only course of action" isn't evidence of anything either (except these scientists trying to assure job security, :), or, less cynically, simply them following the standards of the scientific method). Simply because something can't be disproved doesn't make it true, i.e. Russell's teapot. Unless we get evidence to support this hypothesis, we shouldn't be misinforming our readers by treating it as a prevalent one. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 22:02, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:ONUS is on you to present convincing contradictory information properly sourced. Which, unsurprisingly, we haven't seen a trace of... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:54, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Lab accident hypothesis not misinformation: sources with the quotes

There appear to be multiple simultaneous conversations about this topic going on at a bunch of different pages. This is a comment I provided on a different talk page in regards to the solid sourcing for why this material is not misinformation:

An example of a reliable source discussing the opinion of some scientists in regards to this topic see this quote:

In a significant change from a year ago, a growing number of top experts – including (ordered alphabetically by last name) Drs Francois Balloux¹, Ralph S Baric², Trevor Bedford³, Jesse Bloom⁴, Bruno Canard⁵, Etienne Decroly⁵, Richard H. Ebright⁶, Michael B. Eisen⁷, Gareth Jones, Filippa Lentzos⁸, Michael Z. Lin⁹, Marc Lipsitch¹⁰, Stuart A Newman¹¹, Rasmus Nielsen¹², Megan J. Palmer¹³, Nikolai Petrovsky¹⁴, Angela Rasmussen¹⁵ and David A. Relman¹⁶ – have stated publicly (several in early 2020) that a lab leak remains a plausible scientific hypothesis to be investigated, regardless of how likely or unlikely.

We informed and obtained consent from each expert for their inclusion in this list.[17]

1 UCL Genetics Institute, University College London

2 Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina

3 Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

4 Public Health Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

5 Architecture et Fonction des Macromolécules Biologiques, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS

6 Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University

7 Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley

8 Global Health & Social Medicine King's College London

9 Neurobiology and Bioengineering, Stanford University

10 Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health

11 Cell Biology and Anatomy, New York Medical College

12 Integrative Biology and Statistics, University of California Berkeley

13 Director of Bio Policy & Leadership Initiatives at Stanford University

14 College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University

15 Infection and Immunity, Columbia University

16 Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine

Also in regards to a recent science review article on this topic see:

To conclude, on the basis of currently available data it is not possible to determine whether the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 is the result of a zoonosis from a wild viral strain or an accidental escape of experimental strains. Answering this question is of crucial importance to establish future policies of prevention and biosafety. Indeed, a recent zoonosis would justify enforcing the sampling in natural ecosystems and/or farms and breeding facilities in order to prevent new spillover. Conversely, the perspective of a laboratory escape would call for an in-depth revision of the risk/benefit balance of some laboratory practices, as well as an enforcement of biosafety regulations. As the international team of 10 experts mandated by the WHO enters in China to investigate on SARS-CoV-2 origins (Mallapaty 2020), all the rational hypotheses should be envisaged in an open minded way.

-- Sallard, E., Halloy, J., Casane, D. et al. Tracing the origins of SARS-COV-2 in coronavirus phylogenies: a review. Environ Chem Lett (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-020-01151-1

Authors: Erwan Sallard1 Jose Halloy2 Didier Casane3,4 Jacques van Helden5,6 and Étienne Decroly7

1 École Normale Supérieure de Paris, 45 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France

2 University of Paris, CNRS, LIED UMR 8236, 85 bd Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris, France

3 Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, IRD, UMR Evolution , Génomes, Behavior and Ecology, 91198, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

4 University of Paris, UFR Sciences du Vivant, F-75013 Paris, France

5 CNRS, French Institute of Bioinformatics, IFB-core, UMS 3601, Évry, France

6 Aix-Marseille Univ, Inserm, Theory and approaches of genome complexity (TAGC) laboratory, Marseille, France

7 AFMB, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Univ, UMR 7257, Case 925, 163 avenue de Luminy, 13288 Marseille Cedex 09, France

Also in regards to a recent biosafety review article

There are two major hypotheses to explain the origin of COVID-19. One is the "natural origin" hypothesis, the other is that it might have escaped from a laboratory, with its origin subsequently hidden. Although most scientists support the natural origin idea the other cannot yet be dismissed. Evidence for each hypothesis is presented. If the first theory is correct then it is a powerful warning, from nature, that our species is running a great risk. If the second theory is proven then it should be considered an equally powerful, indeed frightening, signal that we are in danger, from hubris as much as from ignorance.

-- Colin Butler. "Plagues, Pandemics, Health Security, and the War on Nature." Journal of Human Security, 16.1 (2020): 53-57. https://doi.org/10.12924/johs2020.16010053

Here is another science review on the topic:

"to fully understand the origins of SARS-CoV-2 we must adjust our operating assumptions. First and foremost, the scope of hosts must include those where serial passage has taken place or is likely to occur, even if they are not naturally occurring as is the case of knockout mice with human ACE2 receptors."

--Thomas Friend & Justin Stebbing,1 "What is the intermediate host species of SARS-CoV-2?", Future Virol. (2021).

"An editorial review of the proximal origins of SARS-CoV-2, what may have been missed and why it matters."

1 Department of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College, London, UK

Clearly, the lab origin hypothesis is being reviewed and is on the table in science. If this obstruction continues on this page, I suggest a request for comment. The sources above are solid. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:01, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for supplying sources, but unfortunately none of them are viable:

The first source in The Daily Telegraph, which is not RS for SCI/MED.
The second source is a translation of PMID 32773024, a comparative study. Environ Chem Lett. is not a MEDLINE-indexed journal, which is a warning flag and also we don't use chemistry journals for virology topics. No need to use this low-quality source when better ones are to hand (see list of seven in section above).
The third source is from Journal of Human Security which doesn't even appear to be included in PUBMED and has an impact factor of 0.4. Not useful.
The fourth source is from Future Virol, another non-MEDLINE-indexed journal. It doesn't appear to be in PUBMED and is an editorial. Total MEDRS fail.

Conclusion, this is textbook WP:POVSOURCING, by which some weak sources have been scraped together to support a POV. Much better is to start with a quest for quality sources, and see what they say (as has been done). Alexbrn (talk) 12:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn We have read your sources. Your behaviour is problematic. Quote the location in the sources which support your claim or do not pretend to understand virology articles. Many of us have created numerous virology related articles. Explain to me source #1. I want the quotes. Some of us know virology and you do not indicate that you are one of them. Prove your knowledge with quotes. I have provided quotes. --Guest2625 (talk) 13:16, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Are you talking about the Daily Telegraph source [18]? Or the first source in the article, [19]? Or what? You are not making a lot of sense in either case. --Hob Gadling (talk) 13:34, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The sources 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 listed in the section above --Guest2625 (talk) 13:40, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Starting with: Hakim MS. --Guest2625 (talk) 13:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a reading service for you. As I say, those seven high-quality sources give mainstream context of how the science views the question of the virus's origin. Some of them discuss the lab leak conspiracy theory in so doing. Suggestions for content based on such high-quality sourcing could be helpful, but we need to avoid trying to undercut high-quality sources with lesser ones. Alexbrn (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone read the actual article #1 that our colleague Alexbrn provided for us. Then judge for yourselves what is true and what is false. I do not have time for such behaviour. A request for comment will likely be the only way forward. --Guest2625 (talk) 13:55, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, Wikipedia is a voluntary project so you are not obliged to read all the sources other editors may present, but then don't expect other editors to believe you when you say you have selected the highest quality sources of all the sources that exist. TacticalTweaker (talk) 21:37, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There is a consensus on what constitutes high-quality sources for SCI/MED topics, grounded in the WP:PAGs. There is a galaxy of poor-quality sources one could waste months reading. They are of no interest or relevance to improving this article. But if you want to spend your days reading the WP:DAILYMAIL, be my guest. Alexbrn (talk) 12:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RFC to fix this once and for all

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Two questions:

Primo Should the "lab leak" theory be treated and described as a:

Minority, but scientific viewpoint; or
A (political) conspiracy theory?

Secundo Should the "lab leak" theory have a section/sub-section separate from the other theories related to the WIV? 14:45, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Survey

If you came here because someone asked you to, or you read a message on another website, please note that this is not a majority vote, but instead a discussion among Wikipedia contributors. Wikipedia has policies and guidelines regarding the encyclopedia's content, and consensus (agreement) is gauged based on the merits of the arguments, not by counting votes.

However, you are invited to participate and your opinion is welcome. Remember to assume good faith on the part of others and to sign your posts on this page by adding ~~~~ at the end.

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Conspiracy theory and No The vast majority of actually MEDRS sources do not support this as anything more than an extremely unlikely hypothesis, and per WP:FALSEBALANCE we shouldn't give undue weight to a small minority by presenting "both sides" as being equal. As to a separate subsection, that is not necessary as everything that can be said without going into excessive WP:NOTNEWS-style details is already so described. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:54, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Conspiracy theory and no, per the !vote above. Short sections make for choppy reading, and there isn't enough to say to fill up a long one (without going into blow-by-blow notes of news reports and lengthy quotes of unremarkable public statements in a way that's unbecoming of an encyclopedia article). XOR'easter (talk) 14:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
For WP:NPOV, of the two, conspiracy theory is preferable as it better aligns with high-quality sources. PMID 33586302, says:

There are also rumours that SARS‐CoV‐2 ‘leaked’ from a famous laboratory in Wuhan working on bat CoVs, the ancestral virus of SARSCoV‐2.

and references PMID 32102621, which says:

Currently, there are speculations, rumours and conspiracy theories that SARS-CoV-2 is of laboratory origin. Some people have alleged that the human SARS-CoV-2 was leaked directly from a laboratory in Wuhan ...

Of course this is not wholly incompatible with it also being a minority scientific view, but (as with - say - cold fusion) Wikipedia needs to align with the scientific mainstream, which is particularly important in this fringe area per WP:PSCI which tells us to ensure the mainstream scientific view has to be prominently given. A subsection is not necessary. Alexbrn (talk) 15:07, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Conspiracy theory and No Not enough uncrappy sources that say the opposite. --Hob Gadling (talk) 15:29, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Conspiracy theory and no Its pretty clear that the main proponents of the "lab leak" supposition have no actual expertise in virology, and engage in motivated reasoning, attempting to find "evidence" that proves their opinion correct and ignore that that doesn't. It's also clear that it has a conspiratorial and sinophobic aspect. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Minority, but scientific viewpoint and Yes. MEDRS are being clearly cherry-picked to bury the lab leak hypothesis. These are the reasons:

First we agreed on 6 MEDRS with the resulting analysis that: i) Most of them are very outdated (down to using April 30 2020 as a cutpoint for the review in one case); ii) The two that are not as outdated are: WHO (2020) and Hu et al (2020). Several RS sources point that WHO has contradicted itself when referring to the lab leak hypothesis, for example, when they rule it out one day, to be corrected the next day by Tedros, or two days later by the Embarek interview to Sciencemag. The one thing clear from WHO's treatment of the lab leak is that they are not willing to touch it even with a 10-feet pole, perhaps because of Chinese intimidation. Regarding Hu et al (2020), it has Shi Zheng-Li as a coauthor, which is a clear COI to refer or omit references to the lab leak hypothesis.

Second, there is no consensus on which aspects of the origin hypothesis require MEDRS and which doesn't. In my opinion, by default we can go with MEDRS for most aspects, and still report on the lab leak hypothesis citing top RS like Reuters, BBC, or NY Times.

Finally, there is no consensus on whether the distinction between man-made virus vs natural-origin virus that accidentally escaped the lab requires to be sourced by a MEDRS in order to exist. The distinction is very easy to understand by common sense, and MEDRS usually start mentioning in tandem whether viruses that originate in nature are naturally evolved vs evolved in serial passage or cell culture. You simply are not going to find a MEDRS that says "Well, this virus went through serial passage, so dang, I guess we can not call it a natural-origin virus anymore", because it is taken for granted that they are tandem notions. If you don't believe we can ask in Wikiproject virology. Forich (talk) 16:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Forich: PMID 33586302 is very recent. Published on 14 February 2021, it is less than a week old. Alexbrn (talk) 16:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I missed the Hakim reference in the previous discussion. It wasn't in the original list of 6 MEDRS. I apologize, and will look into it before commenting again, thanks for tipping me on the new source. Forich (talk) 18:27, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Virus origin", broadly construed, probably requires MEDRS. If we're not sure, always better to require MEDRS as these are the WP:BESTSOURCES. Reporting on the lab leak is possible, as already done, without having an UNDUE section about it, or giving FALSEBALANCE to it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:28, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Conspiracy theory and no per the established high quality peer-reviewed sources in medical journals in this article. It's an o brainer, since nobody can point of sources giving even an inkling of evidence in support of the conspiracy. See WP:FALSEBALANCE: Conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, speculative history, or plausible but currently unaccepted theories should not be legitimized through comparison to accepted academic scholarship. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:47, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Minority, but scientific viewpoint and Yes. I am a historian rather than a virologist, but it took me a matter of minutes to find the lab leak theory advanced by leading virologists in a reputable medical journal published by the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (https://doi.org/10.1051/medsci/2020123). As I have mentioned elsewhere, the lead author of this article is a virologist from the École Normale Supérieure de Paris who is working specifically on gene therapy for COVID-19. The other authors are a professor of molecular evolution at the Université de Paris, a professor of biophysics at the Université de Paris, an expert on genome analysis and bioinformatics at the Institut Français de Bioinformatique, and a virologist at CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research). The latter author - Étienne Decroly - recently gave an excellent interview on this very subject to the CNRS news site (https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-is-being-seriously-questioned). As for reputable journalistic sources, there is this opinion piece from the Washington Post editorial board (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/05/coronavirus-origins-mystery-china/). Laboratory escape is a legitimate scientific hypothesis, not a conspiracy theory, yet the two are currently conflated at this poorly written section on COVID-19 misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_misinformation#Wuhan_lab_leak_story. For reasons that entirely escape me, there seems to be a great deal of cherry-picking going on here, as well as a concerted effort to marginalise legitimate contributions rather than attempting to address their substance. Rosenkreutzer (talk) 21:25, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm reading through the original French language article, but I haven't found anything about the lab leak. If anything, this paper is debunking the lab manipulation theory, with statements such as "Dans le cas qui nous intéresse, le score supérieur à 1 indique que l’alignement obtenu est fortuit, et ne peut pas être considéré comme un indice d’homologie entre les séquences de VIH et de CoV." (the alignement between HIV and CoV is merely coincidental) or "Une seconde hypothèse, régulièrement formulée, est que ce virus pourrait résulter d’une recombinaison produite en laboratoire entre un virus de chauves-souris du type RaTG13 et un domaine RBD de haute affinité pour l’homme, cloné à partir du SARS-CoV. Cette hypothèse s’avère également incohérente avec les analyses phylogénétiques [...]" (the RaTG13/Sars-Cov lab manipulation theory is also incoherent). In short, this paper isn't even about the lab leak theory... What a disappointment. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:47, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. 'Opinion pieces > academic sources' - this effectively makes the case for the "conspiracy theory" option. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Conspiracy theory and no as per WP:PSCI. --Moxy 22:44, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Conspiracy theory since reliable sources have not reported about investigations having discovered clear evidence of a lab leak in relation to COVID-19 yet it's been suggested and pushed (an RFC is unnecessary for this). I don't personally care about point 2 (depending on sources, some mention politics others not). —Paleo Neonate – 04:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Conspiracy theory and no. I have given this a lot of thought (here's an essay I wrote), and I agree with our experienced medical editors that the lab leak idea is WP:FRINGE among mainstream virologists and epidemiologists, who barely even mention the idea, and when they do they usually speak very negatively of it. Going off into opinion-land for a second, I suspect that USA wants an explanation that gives China maximum blame (lab leak), and China wants an explanation that gives China minimum blame (imported frozen food). But all trusted MEDRS sources point toward a less sensational and more boring explanation: a natural spillover from Chinese horseshoe bats, possibly via an intermediary animal. (That's according to these best sources.) I look forward to the WHO's official report regarding their visit to China to hopefully clarify things further. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:44, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A lab leak is a plausible scientific hypothesis according to the scientific community which is demonstrated by the quotes and sources provided in the section above. Also note that a priori the lab leak cannot be a conspiracy theory. The definition logically does not allow it. Definition of conspiracy theory is "a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event." An accidental leak by definition says nothing about intentional covert action by a dark sinister organization. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:25, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Except that "plausible" is not the word used by the scientific community as evidenced by the best sources, rather wording like "extremely unlikely", "massive online speculation", "pseudoscientific" and "conspiracy theory" is used. Wikipedia is bound to follow these for NPOV. As to a "leak" itself not being a conspiracy theory, that's a truism and a banal strawman argument. The conspiracy theory is about a certain sequence of events which "they" don't want out there. Alexbrn (talk) 11:55, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The lab leak hypothesis is about a plausible mundane lab leak such as a maintenance worker not disposing of the lab waste correctly and then getting infected without him knowing. Or its about a lab researcher going to a bat cave in Yunnan province and collecting virus samples from bat feces and not realizing that they became infected. It is not about a nefarious organisation which is plotting and planning. --Guest2625 (talk) 13:16, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We do not do original research and try to match to dictionary definitions ourselves. We look at the WP:BESTSOURCES. And the best sources say conspiracy theory. See MOS:LABEL ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is clear that the best and most authoritative sources we have say that a lab leak is a plausible scientific hypothesis. See the section above which provides the best sources and the relevant quotes which reflect the position of scientists on this topic from the top universities in the world. --Guest2625 (talk) 14:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In my experience when people say something is "clear", it's a sure sign it's not. Your cherried selection of lay sources are not the best. But Wikipedia does have established criteria which can be used to find the best sources (independent, scholarly, secondary, peer-reviewed, relevantly-published, well-reputed, etc.) By those criteria we have several truly excellent sources which give us the full picture. The recurrent problem with this topic is WP:PROFRINGE editors wanting to throw Wikipedia's established WP:PAGs out the window, so that weak sources can be used to undercut strong ones. It isn't going to happen. Alexbrn (talk) 14:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

ProcrastinatingReader, just a thought - is it conceivable that the very few sources that you deem to consider allowable here could possibly be wrong? It could be that other more worldly and less narrowly specialised and less homogenised sources might be more reliable when it comes to analysing and evaluating these sort of general and not specifically medical or scientific hypotheses? Perhaps the overly specialised sources have too few shades of grey in their vocabulary between black and white to reasonably evaluate these sort of concepts. -- DeFacto (talk). 14:37, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

^{( Buttinsky)} Many things are "possible", but the purpose of this encyclopedia is to reflect accepted knowledge as published in the highest-quality sources, not to WP:RGW. Alexbrn (talk) 14:41, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, you'll have explain your "joke", but your link seems to shoot your arguments defending the cherry-picking of primary sources in the foot, if not the heart:

we can only report that which is verifiable from reliable and secondary sources, giving appropriate weight to the balance of informed opinion
you'll have to wait until it's been reported in mainstream media or published in books from reputable publishing houses
Let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements. What we do is find neutral ways of presenting them.

-- DeFacto (talk). 15:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Now just take into account that in the field of biomedicine Wikipedia wants WP:MEDRS and you'll be there. Alexbrn (talk) 15:44, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Minority, but scientific viewpoint and Yes The following are two MEDRS secondary sources (not primary!) from a reputable scientific journal [20]. Both are peer reviewed. If anyone wants to challenge the journals they need to advocate for that somewhere else like WP:RS, not just dismiss them because they don't match their POV.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000240

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202000091

I'll also note that this RFC was canvassed at both an ANI and on the Fringe Notice Board in violation of WP:CANVASS.

Alexbrn canvassed with a link at an ~~ANI~~ Fringe Notice Board [21]

ProcrastinatingReader canvassed with a link on the ~~Fringe Notice Board~~ ANI.[22]

Shameful. Dinglelingy (talk) 14:22, 18 February 2021 (UTC) — Dinglelingy (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. [reply]

Those sources are weak. We need review articles (or better) per WP:MEDRS. You're also telling fibs about AIN, which is naughty. Alexbrn (talk) 14:25, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed. Just as shameful. We need MEDRS which they are, you're telling fibs now.Dinglelingy (talk) 15:25, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You should read Wikipedia:Canvassing#Appropriate_notification before making such accusations. As an aside, when one is worried about notification to the administrators' noticeboard, and/or to the fringe NB, you can be sure the editor is probably up to no good. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:27, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Try Wikipedia:Canvassing#InAppropriate_notification, Vote-stacking, campaigning, biased. Nice try though. You are not an admin here, quit pretending you are. Dinglelingy (talk) 15:25, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you sincerely think this is canvassing, this RfC is not the place for this. You can try your luck at WP:Dramaboard. Though, friendly reminder, you should also be aware of WP:BOOMERANG. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:35, 18 February 2021

I'm well aware of the rules. A little advice, you may want to refresh your understanding of WP:ForumShop,WP:Stonewalling,and WP:TENDENTIOUS editing. [23]. Dinglelingy (talk) 16:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Opening an RfC so the endless I-dont-hear-it-is can come to an end. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:45, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this will settle it, as there are different "lab leak" theories, including odd variants being pushed on Wikipedia which don't seem to appear in sources. Also some sources seem to use multiple terms to describe the lab leak including (yes) "conspiracy theory" but also "rumours" and "misinformation". Alexbrn (talk) 14:54, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Well, at least this will give an enforceable consensus about it, and it will be that much harder for the POV-pushers to keep repeating the same rebutted arguments all over again under different usernames... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:59, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We already had a conclusive discussion on this in early last year (which I am unable to find at the moment), so I cant imagine this concensus holding for more than 8 months. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:50, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That previous RfC is here. Alexbrn (talk) 16:33, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That was in the main topic article (where the lab leak is entirely off topic, unlike here). Time goes on and things don't change: "The only WP:MEDRS which discusses this speculative theory find "that the available data argue overwhelmingly against any scientific misconduct or negligence".[1]"; "Politically-motivated narratives about the virus origin are completely divorced from hypotheses developed by scientists reporting in WP:MEDRS"; "Discussion of the origins of the pandemic should be based on WP:MEDRS sources."... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:46, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This RfC does not address the issue we have. The issue is the conflation of the legitimate hypothesis that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab, the hypothesis that currently sits, along with just three other hypotheses on the WHO table, with some arbitrary and non-specific lab leak conspiracy theories, that we should be getting comments on. Should we be doing that, as we currently are, or should we separate them and treat the conspiracy theoris as such, and the hypothesis with the weight and voracity that its widespread coverage in the media and in the literature deserves. This RfC does not address that issue at all, it offers two closed questions, neither of which is relevant, and whichever get's the most support is irrelevant to the issue at hand. I suggest scrapping this RfC and getting agreement on the wording for a new one, before then opening it. -- DeFacto (talk). 16:45, 17 February 2021 (UTC)‎[reply]

You have been repeatedly asked to provide a source setting out your "natural virus languishing in a lab" leak idea, but have not done so. I have concluded the story is your own original one. The "conflation" in is the sources and Wikipedia just reflects that properly rather then embarking on original research, which would be prohibited by policy. Alexbrn (talk) 16:48, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Alexbrn, we saw the sources and you dismissed them as not being MEDRS compliant, as if that has any weight wrt the specifics here. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:07, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"The issue is the conflation of the legitimate hypothesis that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab" No, it might maybe be "legitimate", but it's very WP:FRINGE. The real issue is editors attempting to push that theory as something equally valid (based on poor sources) to the scientific consensus, which is actually, very clearly, per recent WHO clarifications and the vast majority of MEDRS, that COVID does not come from the WIV. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:49, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, and this RfC does not cover it either way, so needs starting again. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It does not cover it explicitly, because it is not a legitimate concern, it is one which you keep pushing without evidence, as mentioned by both me and Alexbrn. In any case, even if it does not cover it explicitly, it is implicitly included in the first question. If you think you have a case, do so by giving us direct and non-cherrypicked quotes from WP:MEDRS and proper research, not WP:SYNTH from the popular press. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At this stage I'd be interested even to see a non-WP:MEDRS sourced that sets out the supposed sequence of events. But every time the question is asked there is just arm waving at various sources which do not do so. The idea sounds to me inherently absurd, that the virus can have somehow both a natural origin and lab origin, without human intervention in its nature. Alexbrn (talk) 17:18, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, imagine for a moment that a member of a lab's staff or a delivery to it or animals in transit came in with a virus, or viruses being studied in there evolved, and then their biosecurity system failed in some way. Is that, for example, beyond the realms of possibility? That'd be the sort of thing the WHO would want to look at, if they had the power and the resources to do it. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:30, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to include that in the article, and assuming somehow it's not just your wild speculation, then ^{[citation needed]} applies... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:31, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, and the rest is history! Can you remind us what happens then, and how quickly it is whisked away? What's the record, sub-30 seconds I wouldn't wonder. (clue: MEDRS) -- DeFacto (talk). 17:42, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RandomCanadian, if the RfC does not cover it it will not solve the issue, will it? And whether you or MEDRS think it is a legitimate concern, or not, is totally irrelevant. The RfC should decide if there is a case to cover in due detail the widely publicised and commented upon hypothesis that the WHO have kept on the table. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:36, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And which hypothesis is that, that is not already included in the RfC? Virus bio-engineered? Already in article. Virus leaked from lab? The point of this RfC. Sources on the topic that are not just the popular press reporting on politics? Nowhere to be seen. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:39, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with DeFacto that this RFC does not address the real issue, so I would suggest rewording it and posting it again.

There is a similar discussion on the talk page of Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 where editors Park3r, Guest2625, Horse Eye's Back and My very best wishes support the inclusion of the Biden administration's statements dichotomising the lab leak hypothesis from conspiracy theories.

There is are also a long discussion on the talk page of the Wuhan Institute of Virology where Feynstein makes many good points delineating several points of divergence between the lab leak hypothesis and bioweapons conspiracy theories.

Alexbrn also points out in this discussion that there are different lab leak theories, including some variants he finds "odd" and which he says do not appear in sources. The Hakim MS source he mentions in the above discussion includes one variant involving gain of function research, so I assume he not referring to that one as "odd" or unsourced, as that is the main variant that many editors here and on other pages are concerned about.

TacticalTweaker (talk) 22:12, 17 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That's how conspiracy theories work: taking convenient bits here and there and connecting them in a way to speculate and suggest conclusions despite the lack of evidence. Investigations can indeed explore all needed aspects but unless those demonstrate clear evidence that a lab leak occurred the narratives pushed about it remain misinformation and meet WP:FRINGE. You claim to have read the history of previous discussions, it should then already be clear that Wikipedia is not about presenting a WP:FALSEBALANCE of opinions and speculation, but should instead present the current consensus. Many reliable sources discuss these claims as misinformation and document the spread of rumors by conspiracy theorists, thus it should be presented as such... —Paleo Neonate – 03:58, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

To be strictly accurate, the misinformation about the WIV is a melange of conspiracy theory and unfounded speculation (per the best sources). So this is what we say:

Currently, there are some fictitious and pseudoscientific claims as well as conspiracy theories associated with the Covid‐19 pandemic ...

(Hakim 2021)

Some of the lab leak scenarios fall more into the pseudoscientific, fictional category than the outright "conspiracy theory" category, as some of the claims on this very Talk page illustrate.

(Add) though I notice DeFacto has just tagged this very directly-sourced text in our article with a {{cn}}, which seems disruptive. Alexbrn (talk) 08:09, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Alexbrn: there is nothing disruptive about asking for a source when the sentence containing that phrase is totally unsourced. There are four sources on the following sentence, is it one of them? If it is sourced, then why not make it easier for the reader to find it. -- DeFacto (talk). 08:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[24] The tone of the two sentences in the diff could use some work. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@DeFacto: The source is the next following. A source is not required for every sentence. Alexbrn (talk) 08:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Novem Linguae: I think for conspiracy theorists, "believer" is the correct/neutral term as it is an article of faith for them. From the conclusion of the Hakim source:

The believers of conspiracy will continuously search for ‘scientific evidence’ to defend their claims that SARS‐CoV‐2 is a human‐made virus, such as the case with an HIV‐1 bioRxiv paper that has been retracted. On the other side, however, the believers of conspiracy theories criticise sciences when scientific evidence argues against their beliefs.

Alexbrn (talk) 08:35, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, thanks for the feedback. Here's my concerns. The first sentence has an essay tone, like it's building up to some subjective conclusion. The second sentence in the diff (farther down) uses strong words like "believer" and "dedicated". Even if the source says that, it seems like an opinion to me, and I'd argue that tone is too strong for Wikivoice. No response necessary unless you want to, I don't want to spend too much time on this minor issue. But I did want to articulate my concerns. –Novem Linguae (talk) 08:52, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Problem is it can be both.Slatersteven (talk) 14:15, 18 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

[1] ttps://profiles.stanford.edu/david-relman

[2] ttps://www.pnas.org/content/117/47/29246

[3] ttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000240

[4] ttps://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2021/01/13/check-in-deze-nederlandse-youtubevideo-wordt-onterecht-twijfel/

[5] Reardon, Sara (October 22, 2014). "US suspends risky disease research". Nature.

[6] Butler, Declan (November 22, 2015). "Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research". Nature.

[7] Dunleavy, Jerry (April 14, 2020). "US officials sounded alarm about Wuhan lab years before coronavirus outbreak". The Washington Examiner.

[8] Pollard, Martin; Peter, Thomas (February 2, 2021). "WHO team probing COVID-19 visits Wuhan lab, meets 'Bat Woman'". Reuters.

[9] "The WHO and investigators offer conflicting accounts of the closely watched probe". "Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded," Tedros said at the start of the press conference. "Having spoken with some members of the team, I wish to confirm that all hypotheses remain open and require further analysis and studies. Some of that work may lie outside the remit and scope of this mission."

[10] "The Hindu Explains — What has the WHO team's field visit to China thrown up regarding the spread of SARS-CoV-2?".

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 ::::If you sincerely think this is canvassing, this RfC is not the place for this. You can try your luck at [[WP:Dramaboard]]. Though, friendly reminder, you should also be aware of [[WP:BOOMERANG]]. [[User:RandomCanadian|RandomCanadian]] ([[User talk:RandomCanadian|talk]] / [[Special:Contributions/RandomCanadian|contribs]])  15:35, 18 February 2021
+:::::I'm well aware of the rules.  A little advice, you may want to refresh your understanding of [[WP:ForumShop]],[[WP:Stonewalling]],and [[WP:TENDENTIOUS]] editing. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Draft:COVID-19_lab_leak_hypothesis]. [[User:Dinglelingy|Dinglelingy]] ([[User talk:Dinglelingy|talk]]) 16:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
 ===Discussion===