Politicisation of knowledge is a serious issue in the debate over the origins of the pandemic

Professor of microbiology and infection control Jörn Klein charges in a debate posts in Aftenposten “certain prominent science lobbyists” — I guess he's referring to me — for being politically motivated when we defend the theory that a lab leak started the corona pandemic. I'll send the criticism straight in return.

Science is unfit to find answers

There is no direct evidence of either a lab leak or that the virus spread from animals to humans. The main challenge — as even the World Health Organization (WHO) stating -- is that the data that exists is very sparse, skewed, and filtered by China. Then science is unfit to find answers. Other information, such as from intelligence, is at least as important.

In recent weeks, new information has emerged. German intelligence (Bundesnachrichtendienst/BND) already estimated in 2020 that it is 80-95 percent likely that a lab leak started the corona pandemic, but the German government allegedly let lid on assessment.

In the same year, Britain's former Prime Minister Boris Johnson received an intelligence report that the pandemic could be due to a lab leak, but his scientific advisers contradict it, and the assessment never became public. Both the FBI and CIA also believe lab leaks are most likely.

It is a paradox that Klein draws BND's data -- which is largely graded -- into doubt, but trusts the data from China, which demonstrably has destroyed sample material, deleted virus data from databases and reported cases of infection selectively to WHO.

Politics has overridden facts

I'm not claiming that intelligence provides a definitive answer as to where the contagion started. The bottom line is that politics has overridden facts: While several intelligence agencies considered that a lab leak was highly likely, some scientists (several of them with clear conflicts of interest) declared early in the pandemic that the only plausible explanation was that infection started naturallyand that those who thought otherwise, were conspiratorial.

These researchers, whom Klein and several Norwegian professionals stubbornly defend, wrote themselves in their private communications that they were leaning towards a lab leak, but that it was “above their salary level to determine the final conclusion”.

Furthermore, it was stated that “there would be a shitshow if someone accused China of a lab leak, and that they should therefore only conclude natural origin — even if it was scientifically impossible to distinguish between the two scenarios”. They also said that they “hated when politics was mixed with science, but that it was impossible not to do so under the circumstances”.

Agree on the big picture

The article they published a few weeks afterward dismissed the lab-leak theory as “not plausible,” though they still expressed strong doubts privately. Their later studies whether wet market are also problematically slant-proof, although there is scarcely any data and not at all an infected host animal.

Other Western scientists who collaborated with the Institute of Virology in Wuhan have demonstrably misled about research such as may have caused a lab leak. These now have Banned from public funding in the United States.

This is a serious matter and there is a lot at stake. I hope Klein and others in Norwegian academic communities take this seriously.

Fortunately, we agree on the big picture: that global biosecurity needs to be strengthened through international cooperation, and that we need solid, open research to minimize future pandemic risks.

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