> 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
> During the COVID-19 pandemic, Montagnier was a promoter of the conspiracy theory that SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus, was deliberately created in, and thereafter escaped from a laboratory.
Now we know that there were GoF research proposals by the same scientists squashing these ‘conspiracies’. Wups conflict of interest.
It's not because it us "against the norm", it is because the theory itself clearly involves a conspiracy.
No, it's the theory that it is a conspiracy, or more likely, a cover-up. (As I doubt there was a conspiracy to release the virus).
"Conspiracy theory" has a specific negative connotation, and has "specific characteristics ... such as an opposition [to those] who are qualified to evaluate its accuracy." [1]
> A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy
> A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation,[3][4] when other explanations are more probable.[5][6]
And the distinction is clearly drawn.
> A conspiracy theory is not the same as a conspiracy
> In January 2009, Luc Montagnier, the Nobel Laureate virologist who led the team that discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), claimed (in a paper published in a journal that he set up, which seems to have avoided conventional peer review as it was accepted three days after submission) that the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses massively diluted in water emit radio waves that he can detect.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory#Other_scientists
Looks like he'd gone that route well before any of the COVID-19 stuff.
Here they show pictures supposedly in support of water structure.
Quite a bit of work in the area.
Not the most ringing endorsement.