Orac: Still a tribalist on COVID — Coronavirus week 117

Orac, David Gorski. He's not a pseudoskeptic in the way that Michael Shermer is, confusing libertarianism with skepticism.

He IS a pseudoskeptic in confusing tribalism with skepticism, though. And he just can't get over it on COVID.

After waiting for months, even a year, for him to talk seriously about the lab-leak hypothesis at Wuhan Institute of Virology, I simply stopped waiting.

And, then, yesterday, lo and behold, he writes about it!

Only to go into tribalist bullshit.

To put it bluntly, his heater, "Is the lab leak conspiracy theory dead?" is a lie. There's no other word for it, because Orac operates willfully on the scientifically unproven idea that all discussion of the lab leak is conspiracy theorizing.

And, yes, he needs to be called a liar.

As I told him on Twitter, he entirely ignores Jamie Metzl's discussion of the issue. He notes he caught the attention of Beijing (land of 2 million deaths) enough that he's been attacked by name. Scott Gottlieb also thinks it's plausible. Contra the well-written book she did with Matt Ridley, he insinuates (though won't say directly) that Alina Chen is a crank. Instead, he cherry-picks a couple of new studies that he says vindicate him and people like him. He also doesn't even mention Ridley as coauthor.

I'll give him credit for linking to a Chen blog piece on Medium, even though he probably expects tribalist leaders to buy his thinking. She tore to shreds a previous, pre-print essay in Science in February by the same authors of a July piece who pretty much claim they've nailed it. Here's details Orac probably doesn't want you to read:

• She notes they backed off of things like "incontrovertible" in the July peer-reviewed print, and elsewhere notes this does not "establish" origin.
  
• They added a "Study Limitations" section.
• She says, contra Orac, that the piece still isn't free of ascertainment bias, and rejects the lead author's claims that they're free of it.
• And questions their explainer behind the "two strains" theory.

Read the whole thing, or at least give it a decent grok.

Besides tribalism being in his personal cultural DNA, I think Orac is a tribalist on this issue because, per the 2 million deaths link, he still takes the Chinese government, Chinese CDC, etc., at way too close to face value. That, in turn, shows how much he's a pseudoskeptic.

As I noted on "still a tribalist" and also tweeted to him? John Horgan had his number six years ago. Aong with the Novella brothers and others. COVID just gave Gorski new room to let his tribalism run rampant.