I'd like to ask everyone commenting on this article: who wrote it?
Seriously -- what do you know about the author of these words? (There's no "author's bio" anywhere on the page, or even if you click on his name.) So what do any of us know about him?
If you look him up on Wikipedia, it lists his occupation as novelist and fiction writer, as well as an "essayist." ("His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization....")
"Out of a total of ten fiction books, he also wrote three erotic novels."
I mean that's what investigative journalism is. Do you only read political pieces written by political scientists? Or articles on accidents & disasters from experts in those fields? The author cited experts & scientists, asked them questions and well... investigated?
I just don't see how that's problematic, and while I don't usually think that appeals to authority are fallacious, suggesting that only scientists should be listened to regardless of the arguments presented by the author is a perfect example of a fallacious appeal to authoritity imo. Especially when the author presents quite a few scientific sources to support his claims.
You can obviously argue that those sources are not valid, which is obviously possible and even likely, but we should focus on attacking the argument not the person presenting it, seemingly in good faith.
I read Baker's 'House of Holes' in 2014 and enjoyed it a lot. At least among a certain set, he's a well-known & respected author (here's a NYT review of House of Holes [0]). It's perfectly intelligible for a book about sex to be whimsical, raunchy, and intellectually serious all at once. He's also written a pacifist take on the Allies' involvement in WW II [1].
I agree that neglecting to include a bio was a strange choice. But, as Jim Geraghty at National Review points out today [2], The venue (New York Magazine) is what puts this hypothesis into the mainstream. Conservatives have been suggesting this was a possibility for a long time, but a NYM piece (potentially) legitimizes the idea to a very different audience:
> Baker is pretty blunt about the fact that many scientists have had these suspicions, or at least concerns, since the beginning of the pandemic, but didn’t want to speak publicly about the possibility of a lab accident while the Trump administration was touting the same idea... New York magazine reaches a different audience from National Review, and it is good that a more left-of-center audience will be exposed to all of the evidence and arguments about this possibility. The possibility of a lab accident should not be seen as another crackpot conspiracy theory in a year full of them.
> "Out of a total of ten fiction books, he also wrote three erotic novels."
I recently listened to the 99% Invisible mini stories episode, and one was on novel adaptations of films. One of the points about the authors who write them is they often take the work to pay the bills.
If the proximity to China's only BSL-4 lab wasn't a tip-off, and the Chinese gov't coverup wasn't a tip-off, then maybe at the very least this kind of desperate ad hominem you're peddling will tip people off?
If the zoonotic hypothesis were true, I'd expect to see (1) a transparent international investigation of the Wuhan lab, and (2) a fundamental recognition that journalists are allowed to ask questions, no matter their credentials prior to undertaking an inquiry. Given that we've apparently had neither, the zoonotic explanation is severely weakened.
You point out the author lacks credentials. That’s a fair point. What isn’t relevant is whether he’s written novels...erotic or otherwise. No need to being that up.
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm not going to read the article.
This long-form stuff is particularly sticky. If the story is told well, you're likely going to remember it as true (or at least credible) even the story wasn't credible in the first place.
The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator. To assert otherwise is the definition of ad hominem.
Claims asserted may nonetheless be untrue or may not be as strong as claimed. But that requires careful, critical examination.
I'm perplexed by this reaction, as if reading something with a critical eye is impossible. Or, worse, that reading something by someone without a particular status or pedigree might become as infectious as SARS-2 itself and turn us into zombies or something.
> The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator.
It actually does. I'm going to respect the opinions of serious scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, etc on topics of their expertise.
> But that requires careful, critical examination.
That was my whole point. By stating claims as an elaborate story that requires time investment as a reader, with a lot of flourish from a professional writer, you're undermining careful and critical examination.
You're also risking the story being memorable and sticking with you, in the same way that people watch historical movies and then internalize that as what actually happened. Even though you know most movies are fictional, if it's the reference you feel an emotional attachment to, you'll justify it as true to yourself.
Humans aren't good at purging information once they've been exposed to it, especially if it resonates with them.
> I'm perplexed by this reaction, as if reading something with a critical eye is impossible.
It's not impossible, it's just impractical. If I read something by a well-respected person with expertise, then the point of reading is to retain as much shared knowledge as possible. If I read pieces like this, then I get to live in their narrative for a little while, but I have to be careful not to absorb too much of it or take plausible sounding things as true, at least pending fact-checking.
> Or, worse, that reading something by someone without a particular status or pedigree might become as infectious as SARS-2 itself and turn us into zombies or something.
Indeed, that is what's happening. We used to value expertise. Now everyone's opinion is equally valid.
> > The truth of a story does not depend on the credibility of its narrator.
>
> It actually does. I'm going to respect the opinions of serious scientists, doctors, journalists, lawyers, etc on topics of their expertise.
No, this is just wrong. If a homeless person tells you that nothing can go faster than the speed of light, this is just as true as if a Stanford physics professor says it, despite the latter having much more credibility than the former. The truth of a statement is independent of the speaker.
In fact, your causality is exactly backwards. Credibility depends (in part) on someone stating the truth repeatedly.
One who does not trust in public reason or accepts authority as a be-all end all as opposed to simply a fallible but time saving heuristic cannot claim to be a practitioner of science which is all about zero trust and verifiability, the two positions are fundamentally incompatible.
In science every individual has a personal and moral duty to derive, reproduce or otherwise inquire of the world so as too bootstrap themselves including sometimes theories to which they find too obvious or implausible, and from sources too and notm for without regularly doing so because that is the single thing fundamentally sperating us from antivaxers and flat eathers besides some luck in initial authority.
However, how could you even begin to fairly judge the author’s argument if you yourself aren’t knowledgeable about the topic at hand?
If you aren’t an expert looking at the author’s credentials and making an inference from there is totally fair since you will never be able to even begin to appreciate that argument.
Which to me means in this case: I want to hear from virologists or epidemiologists or similar people about this topic and no one else. Maybe an article that heavily relies on quotes and interviews with such people would be fine, too.
I recently read the Atlantic piece about semi-rich kids getting world-class coaches of prep school sports (crew, lacrosse, etc.) so they might be able to get on the team at elite colleges. Oops. At least it sounded like the general gist of the story was accurate.
So we're just going to ignore circumstantial evidence? If someone died in on my property and then I under threat of violence prevented police from collecting evidence and simultaneously is that not grounds for further suspicion or scruitney?
China has from the beginning barred neutral third parties from visiting the site and collecting samples - even of the disease itself and continues to do so while peddling conspiracies on state media that make Trump sound positively sane.
Seriously -- what do you know about the author of these words? (There's no "author's bio" anywhere on the page, or even if you click on his name.) So what do any of us know about him?
If you look him up on Wikipedia, it lists his occupation as novelist and fiction writer, as well as an "essayist." ("His fiction generally de-emphasizes narrative in favor of careful description and characterization....")
"Out of a total of ten fiction books, he also wrote three erotic novels."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker
His nonfiction works include a book about his more-famous fiction-writer friend John Updike, and a book about public libraries.