> The bad one consists of sitting in forums and threads being, “the voice of reason”.
You put it perfectly. I'm mostly skeptical and very guardedly optimistic because something seems to be happening. But I've very carefully marked each and every one of my comments with 'assuming this is true' or 'if this is true' to avoid the impression that I'm already convinced. I'm not. But I'm on the side of everybody getting their hands and their lab gear dirty: they are the ones doing the work and they are the ones who put their time (and sometimes their reputations) on the line. That starts off with the original Korean team but also goes for everybody else that has rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. Those people have an audience now, thanks to all these connected media and it's great to see the scientific process acting out in the open for a change where everybody gets to see how the sausage is made.
Meanwhile the Debbie Downers have probably never seen the insides of a lab and have never made anything, they're just taking the default position because it doesn't require any work at all and has the highest likelihood of being true. But I very quietly hope that they're wrong and I also hope that if they are wrong that they will own it. Unqualified negativity is just as dumb as unqualified positivity, it just looks smarter, but it isn't a sign of intelligence.