Science

Any legitimate scientist should preface the answer to any question with the phrase, to the best of our knowledge this is what we believe today. The same could be said for a reporter. Not too many years ago this was the way. Today all that has changed because politics has poisoned both science and the press. When the Covid first appeared some scientist postulated that it could have come from a lab leak but they were immediately branded as conspiracy theorist and ridiculed by many in the scientific community. Without investigating the possibility of a lab leak, the whole idea was poo pooed. Now in looking back more and more evidence is pointing toward a lab leak. Polls show that 72% of the American people believe in the lab leak. There is nothing scientific about the poll results but it does show common sense. A virus which had never been around was suddenly discovered in a town in China where there just happened to be a viral lab working to develop such a virus. Now people do not have to be experts in virology to come to the conclusion that there may be a connection. Once people have jumped to an early conclusion there is pressure to maintain their original position even when new data seems to contradict their initial ideas. We have the same thing happening in the news media. An event occurs and immediately reports come out not just about what happened but what the reporter thinks that means. They feel their job is not just to report the news but to then come to some conclusion. Often times their conclusion is influenced by their political views. If they took the initial reports on the virus and took that to a conclusion it became very difficult to change their mind when new evidence was uncovered. A good example occurred this week when an errant rocket hit a hospital in Gaza. People have lost faith in reporters and in science.