Self-interest versus commitment to truth

A great piece:  from "The Guy Isn't Totally Wrong": The Curious Case of Covid-19 Scientists and Senator Tom Cotton by Matt Taibbi.  The subheading is In a supreme irony, the scientists hired to stamp out the "lab leak" theory may vindicate the politician most tarred as a conspiracy theorist for keeping the theory alive.  

As the lab leak origin of Covid-19 has become more and better documented, the frantic and vituperative reaction of the mainstream media against anyone not agreeing immediately and unreservedly back in early 2020 to the approved narrative looks increasingly suspect.  And Taibbi has it covered.

For Classical Liberals (a la Smith, Locke, Hume, etc.), Moderates, Empirical Rationalists, traditional conservatives, etc. the premature nomination of natural origins as the only explanation was suspect at the time.  All science experience in the past warranted actual data and analysis but that was not what was being offered.

Everyone not adhering to the establishment was denigrated as ignorant, anti-science, anti-Sinotic, or conspiracy minded.  Or all four.

But those supposing that the Wuhan Institute of Virology who knew of the gain of function research going there (a pretty early discovery), and WIH's poor safety record (also known early) were actually justified in their so called "conspiracy theories."  They were right almost completely up and down the line around Covid-19 and the establishment, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the funding NGOs and the Mainstream Media were wrong, completely, thoroughly, and persistently.

Even as we were going through 2020, for those in the reality-based community, there was a reasonable amount of discussion about what was motivating all these institutions to commit to messaging and policies which were reasonably demonstrably wrong then or could be proven wrong.  It is one thing to be wrong with caveats, it is quite another to be stridently and unforgivingly wrong.  Which was the path chosen by the establishment, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the funding NGOs and the Mainstream Media.

Taibbi's reporting reveals the reality.  It would have been easy to advance a strong conspiracy theory reflecting the needs and interests of the institutions.  

But that wasn't quite it, as Taibbi shows.  In the background conversations at the time, only now coming to light, the scientists and experts do indeed sound more like the Classical Liberals and Empirical Rationalists.  They knew there was a real case to be made for a lab leak.  They knew the evidence supporting it.  And amongst themselves they continued the debate over days, weeks, months.  

Unfortunately for them, the positions of the pharmaceutical interests, the positions of the establishment, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, the funding NGOs and the Mainstream Media were already known before the facts.  The scientists could buck the funding institutions to acknowledge that there was yet insufficient information and simultaneously acknowledging it was plausible that Covid-19 was a lab leak.  

Or they could get with the program and support the governmental and institutional interests and declare emphatically that all the critics were ignorant conspiracy theorists and that this was an entirely nature phenomenon.  

Human nature being human nature, they followed their interests and livelihoods and shaved the die against the truth.

Unfortunately, the truth came out and it was not the version they were flogging.  And now it is coming out that they knew at the time that there was not the data to support any firm conclusion.  We now know in their own words.

Which is what Taibbi is reporting.