In a nice coda to yesterday’s post on origin of COVID-19, Erik Hoel has an excellent Substack essay on the lab leak hypothesis that isn’t a just rehash of the known evidence but instead considers the larger question of how we got here. In yesterday’s post I made the point that regardless of whether COVID-19 was the result of a lab leak or not, an accident of that type was bound occur. Hoel agrees but fleshes the argument out by explaining why such an accident was inevitable.
Hoel’s article, Publish and Perish, looks at the broken incentive structure behind almost all scientific research. It results, he says, in scientists playing the “science game” rather than doing science. The science game is the constant competition for funding and the publishing of studies of often dubious value.
He considers the matter generally but as applied to virology it boils down to this: There are a finite number of natural viruses to study but if you can make new ones, you can generate an infinite number of research projects. Except, of course, you’re playing with dynamite. When you engineer viruses to be more infectious to humans, you run the risk that the virus will escape. Despite being a trope in end-of-the-world novels, such accidents are actually quite common and have resulted in deaths.
The conclusion is immediate and obvious: we have no business doing gain of function experiments. The risks are existential and the putative benefits have proved to be illusory. The only thing they’ve accomplished is to generate funding and advance the careers of those doing it. The canonical man on the street might not think that’s such a good bargain.