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Comment by telmo | Hacker News Reader

How could lab-leak ever become a theory? A theory is an explanation of some repeatable pattern of phenomena that is observed in nature and that can be empirically verified. "Lab-leak" is a single possible event, that may or not have happened. The most that can happen is for strong evidence to emerge for or against the hypothesis that this specific event occurred.

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> "Lab-leak" is a single possible event

I don't agree because there are plethora of possible details depending on level of conspiracy. Was the virus synthesized at least partly? Was the virus selected from a number of not so harmful viruses? Was the virus went from naively non-infected bat when the fact is that it was infected? Was the lab-leak done intentionally, kind of something able to pause WW3? And so on and on.

There’s plenty of debated scientific theories around single events such as what killed off the dinosaurs or how old the universe is etc. Testability happens when you accurately predict what evidence will be found, ie there’s excess iridium globally at the K-T boundary.

Similarly there’s theories around collections of events such as the timing of the ice ages which are collectively significant.

There is, but all possibly viable theories will have to incorporate the available evidence.

Mostly, some of the available evidence in any domain will come from experimental error etc. Even the hard sciences gets messy at the edges.

That is a very good point, you have convinced me.

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