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Comment by LatteLazy | Hacker News Reader

>The lab leak theory is pretty mainstream these days.

So is denying climate change or the moon landings...

Side note, but is the moon landing hoax popular still? I got nostalgia when you mentioned it, boy howdy do I miss the x files days of conspiracy theories

6% of Americans (10% of millennial Americans) supposedly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori...

Despite actual pictures taken recently...

You are claiming 6% is mainstream?

I will say that the evidence is the same for either.

What percentage you think makes an idea mainstream I will leave up to you...

let's leave it up to the word definitions instead :

mainstream : the ideas, attitudes, or activities that are regarded as normal or conventional; the dominant trend in opinion, fashion, or the arts.

So, no, 6% is not mainstream. Moon landing conspiracies are by no means a dominant trend anywhere aside from joke books and parody.

Interesting! I honestly would not have guessed it was that high

> So is denying climate change or the moon landings...

Ah yes, so I would assume that the WHO would conclusively say that the lab leak theory is incorrect then?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/09/who-sago-cov...

Oh... they say they are still investigating it and that the theory should be left on the table... but I guess the British Medical Journal would say it's total nonsense right?!

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1656

Hmm... Maybe not, they say it's plausible too. Presumably Nature just flat-out tells us that it's a total conspiracy theory though right?!

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3

Ah, they stay on the fence and say that it's plausible.

So it's not exactly like denying the moon landings, as I haven't heard NASA saying "the moon landings might have been faked, but we can't prove either way" anytime recently.

And this is the amazing leap so many people seem to make: If it is technically possible, then it must be true.

That's what baffles me here: "We cannot conclusively say it's wrong" so it must be right. When did that become a popular mode of reasoning? I can only assume people are so desperate to believe they will swallow this rather than accept reality.

That's not what I'm saying - Where did I say it must be true? I'm saying "We cannot conclusively say it's wrong, thus it's not in the same category as the moon landing".

In reality nobody knows the origin for certain, but IMO you seem to fall for the fallacy you are describing but with the opposite premise - i.e. "We cannot conclusively say that the lab leak theory is right or wrong, thus it cannot possibly be a lab leak".

Thank you for saying this. We know xenophobic racist right wingers are saying that COVID came from China. But WHO-China investigation definitely proved that COVID came outside of China. Even western virologists have been supporting Chinese scientists. [1]

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

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