As a philosopher, I annoy people in many ways. One is that I almost always qualify the claims I make. This is not to weasel (weakening a claim to protect it from criticism) but because I am aware of my epistemic limitations: as Socrates said, I know that I know nothing. People often prefer claims made with certainty and see expressions of doubt as signs of weakness. Another way I annoy people is by presenting alternatives to my views and providing reasons as to why they might be right. This has a downside of complicating things and can be confusing. Because of these, people often ask me “what do you really believe!?!” I then annoy the person more by noting what I think is probably true but also insisting I can always be wrong. This is for the obvious reason that I can always be wrong. I also annoy people by adjusting my views based on credible changes in available evidence. This really annoys people: one is supposed to stick to one view and adjust the evidence to suit the belief. The origin story of COVID-19 provides an excellent example for discussing this sort of thing.
When COVID first appeared in China, speculation about its origin began and people often combined distinct claims without considering they need not be combined. One set of claims is the origin of COVID. Some claims are that it is either naturally occurring or was engineered in the lab. At this point, the best explanation is that the virus is naturally occurring. But since humans do engineer viruses, it is possible the virus was engineered. The obvious challenge is to provide proof and merely asserting it is not enough. So, at this point my annoying position is that the best evidence is that the virus is naturally occurring, but new evidence could change my position.
Other claims are about the origin of the infection. Some claim it entered the human population through a wet market. Some claim it arrived via some other human-bat interactions. There is also the claim that it originated from a lab. All of these are plausible. We know diseases can originate in markets and spread. We know that labs are run by people and people make mistakes and can be sloppy at work. We know humans interact with animals and disease can spread this way.
Back at the start of the last pandemic, I favored the wet market hypothesis because it seemed best supported by the available evidence. Diseases do jump from livestock to humans, so this claim was plausible. However, the possibility that the virus leaked from the lab has gained credibility. While there is not yet decisive evidence, this hypothesis is credible enough to warrant serious investigation. I do not have a vested interest in backing any particular hypothesis.
There are also claims about whether it was intentional. Some it was an accident. Some claim the virus was intentionally introduced, and nefarious reasons vary between the hypotheses. Accidents are regular occurrences and things are always going wrong. But people intentionally do evil and have various reasons for doing so, ranging from making money, to getting more power, to seeking revenge, to all the other reasons people do bad things. As it now stands, there is little or no evidence that a malign actor intentionally introduced the virus into the population. But evidence could certainly arise. People have done worse things. The malign actor hypothesis is also an umbrella: one must select specific evildoers as the culprit, though there could be many. As always, evidence is needed to support any claims.
It is important to distinguish between the different claims and to keep in mind that evidence that supports one claim might not support another claim often associated with it.
A common mistake is confusing how conjunctions work with how disjunctions work. In logic, a disjunction is an “or” claim which is true when one or both disjuncts is/are true. For example, if I say that I will bring beer or tequila to the party, then my claim is true unless I show up with neither. Showing up with one or the other or both makes that disjunction true.
In the case of a conjunction, both conjuncts must be true for the statement to be true. So, If I say I will bring hot dogs and buns to the party, then I must show up with both for my claim to be true. While it might seem like an odd and obvious mistake, people can treat a conjunction like a disjunction when they want to claim the conjunction is true. In some cases, people will do this intentionally in bad faith. This has been done in the case of COVID.
As noted above, the lab leak hypothesis for COVID has gained credibility. Because of this, some might conclude the virus was also manufactured. The person could think that because there is reason to believe the virus leaked from a lab, then it is also true that it was manufactured. If it is true that the virus was leaked, then one part of the claim “the virus was manufactured and leaked” would be true, namely that it was manufactured. So, someone might be tempted to take the entire claim as true (or make the claim in bad faith). After all, if it were true that the virus was leaked, then it would be true that it was leaked or it was manufactured. But this would be a matter of logic; it would thus also be true that the virus was leaked, or unicorns exist. As always, it is important to determine which part of a conjunction is supported by the evidence. If both claims are not supported, then you do not have good reason to accept the conjunction as true. The last annoying thing I will look at is the fact that being right does not mean a person was justified.
Suppose tomorrow brings irrefutable proof the virus was leaked from a lab. Those devoted to this claim would probably take this as proof they were right all along. On the one hand, they would be correct: they were right all along, and other people were wrong. But since at least Plato philosophers have distinguished between having a true belief and having justification for this belief. After all, one can be right for bad reasons, such as guessing or from prejudice. For example, a person who likes horror-sci fi might believe the lab leak because they like that narrative. As another example, a racist might accept the lab leak hypothesis because of their prejudices. A nationalist might go with the lab leak because they think China is an inferior country. And so on. But believing on these grounds would not justify the belief; they would have just gotten lucky. As such, their being right would be just a matter of luck—they guessed right based on bad reasons.
One thing people often find confusing about critical thinking and science is that a person can initially be justified in a belief that ultimately turns out false. This is because initial evidence can sometimes warrant belief in claims that are later disproved. In such cases, a person would be wrong but would have all the right reasons to believe. Some of this is because of the problem of induction (with inductive reasoning, the conclusion can always turn out to be false) and some of it is because humans have limited and flawed epistemic abilities.
People who do not understand this will tend to think these good methods are defective because they do not always get the truth immediately and they do not grasp that a person can be reasoning well but still end up being wrong. Such people often embrace methods of belief formation that are incredibly unreliable, such as following authoritarian leaders or unqualified celebrities. If the evidence does turn out to eventually support these initially unjustified beliefs, they do not seem to get that this is how the process works: false claims, one hopes, eventually get shown to be false and better supported claims replace them. As such, those who rejected the lab hypothesis earlier because of the lack of evidence but are now considering it based on the new evidence are doing things right. They are adjusting based on the evidence. I suspect that some approach belief in claims like they might see belief in religion: you pick one and stick with it and if you luck out, then you win. But that is not how rational belief formation works.
What, then, about someone who believed in the lab hypothesis early on and was rational about it? Well, to the degree they had good evidence for their claim, then they deserve credit. However, if they believed without adequate justification, then their being correct was a matter of chance and not the result of some special clarity of reason. To close, people should keep advancing plausible alternatives as this is an important function in seeking the truth. So those who kept the lab hypothesis going because they rationally considered it a possible explanation do deserve their due credit.