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USA Today article and citation used in "unfounded speculation" sentence

The article still takes an editorial line that the lab leak hypothesis is "unfounded speculation", and treats the WHO investigation was the final word. This article in USA Today clearly shows that there remain serious concerns about that investigation, both in the scientific community, and from the Biden administration (and, apparently even WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus); and that these sorts of accidents are too common to dismiss out-of-hand. Moreover the "conspiracy theory and unfounded speculation" WP:MEDRS citation on this page also specifically states that a lab release cannot be ruled out without an independent forensic investigation:

However, an independent forensic investigation is probably the only course of action to prove or disprove this speculation. Finally, we can always learn from the previous SARS‐CoV accidents that the best biosafety practices must be implemented to prevent any accidents in the future

Park3r (talk) 09:11, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Journalism again. Please can we stick to the many quality sources that exist. Alexbrn (talk) 09:21, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I specifically quoted the WP:MEDRS that is used as a citation, which doesn't support the "conspiracy theories and unfounded speculation" sentence in this article.Park3r (talk) 09:31, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The source is explicit that despite the massive online speculation, scientific evidence does not support the laboratory leak idea. It's true, yes, that the speculation will only be quelled by a conclusive investigation: it's like that for all conspiracy theories. We make that point in the Misinformation article, but it's a little tangential for an article which is meant to be focused on a laboratory! Alexbrn (talk) 10:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Just to quote the section of the review article that Alexbrn is referencing, here it is:

Despite these massive online speculations, scientific evidence does not support this accusation of laboratory release theory. Yet, it is difficult and time‐consuming to rule out the laboratories as the original source completely. It is highly unlikely that SARS‐CoV‐2 was accidentally released from a laboratory since no direct ancestral virus is identified in the current database.

-Thucydides411 (talk) 15:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Read the whole document. You are quoting from the ambiguous introduction of the paper. The paper concludes that only a forensic investigation can ascertain whether the virus leaked from a lab. Spyreguy (talk) 17:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Politico article (excerpt from book) about potential leak from lab

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.

This article ] details how the lab was involved with gain-of-function research and gives circumstantial evidence that a lab leak is a real possibility. Being as Politico is considered generally reliable, I would think a sentence summarizing this reference would be justified. ---Avatar317 00:28, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

This is NOT about Bio-medical info, this is news, similar to the NYT, Bloomberg, Guardian news sources already in this article. ---Avatar317 01:03, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Where is this consensus about WP:MEDRS sources being the only acceptable ones for this article, because I don't see it here.

I have read the page, and I don't see the claimed consensus. ---Avatar317 01:05, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

This discussion seemed fairly conclusive, if you read between the lines. Newimpartial (talk) 01:13, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict)You used a Politico article to support that "gives circumstantial evidence that a lab leak is a real possibility". That is a medical/scientific claim about the origin of a virus. Ipso facto, requires WP:MEDRS. As for gain of function; you can search for it through the archives (using the box at the top; both variants - with or without hyphens). Already discussed. It's already stated in the article that the lab conducts research on coronaviruses. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Avatar317, you are correct that this is not a MEDRS domain, per and . For what that's worth. Geogene (talk) 01:35, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

My first comment was about the biomedical claim; which seemed to be the main topic of the comment. As for gain of function; including it here might place UNDUE weight on this particular form of research amongst all the others (we already had to trim all the bit about conspiracy theories - putting this in will just invite more of the same nonsense already discussed on the article talk pages of so many COVID pages). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 01:47, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

UNDUE is a valid objection. A huge swath of the scientific community is and has been researching COVID-19, if there were positive evidence (not just a hypothetical possibility) that it came about from a lab escape, it seems pretty likely that much better sources than POLITICO would be available. Geogene (talk) 01:56, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you all for discussing this. When I put this here, I did understand the difference between MEDRS sources for virology discussions/claims and news/political claims. I would have crafted any addition with attribution to the author as to his allegations. I understand and agree with the UNDUE concern regarding more conspiracy theory stuff, and have seen the trouble dealing with that type of content pushing in other areas. I agree that if this story has any accurate claims, than others should fairly shortly start reporting on those as well, so we can leave it out for now. Again, thanks for the discussion. ---Avatar317 04:14, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

It depends whether there is any biomedical aspect to the content. A statement like "Politician X said country Y had a history of covering-up embarrassing information" has no biomedical component; a statement like "There is a real possibility that the origin of the Sars CoV 2 virus that has swept the world was a coronavirus that had been collected from bats", is. Alexbrn (talk) 06:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

No scientific paper can ascertain whether the virus leaked from a lab, just like no scientific study can ascertain what happened in the cockpit of a plane before it crashes. Only a forensic investigation can ascertain what happened, and scientists are calling for a forensic investigation. . Spyreguy (talk) 17:09, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Forensic science gets published in quality peer-reviewed sources too. If/when it appears, that would be a useful source indeed. Tittle-tattle journalism, not so much. Alexbrn (talk) 17:38, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Unless there is a forensic investigation, there won’t ever be such a paper published in any peer reviewed source. In the meantime, USA Today and Politico are sufficient as reliable sources and their articles do not make any exceptional claims. Spyreguy (talk) 19:34, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

We have several scholarly peer-reviewed publications, so no need for weak journalistic sources. From them we know the lab origin idea is unfounded and/or conspiracism, pushed hard on the internet for ideological reasons. In any case, this article is meant to be about an institute so sources on that would be useful. There is a separate article for the "investigations". Alexbrn (talk) 20:29, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Also, WP:NORUSH applies. We can just wait until there is such a forensic investigation and report on it at that moment, instead of basing ourselves on speculations from the popular press. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:47, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

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