Exhuming a body long buried
After months of seemingly universal satisfaction that the SARS-Cov-2 virus originated in the Wuhan wet markets, having crossed over from bats to humans through some intermediary species, there is now renewed interest in ascertaining its true origins.
The "Natural Origins" hypothesis has the virtue of being the simplest explanation that fits the facts, what is popularly known as Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor doesn't refute other hypotheses, but merely favours the Natural Origins hypothesis as the simplest explanation.
A new hypothesis gaining ground in some circles is that the virus was a genetically-engineered species that may have accidentally escaped from a research lab, more specifically the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Given that the virus was first detected in the city of Wuhan, this hypothesis has immediate appeal. The paper that discusses this idea in detail, and which most of its proponents point to, is one by British author, journalist and science writer Nicholas Wade. [Mind you, Wade is not a scientist but a popular science writer. His paper was not published in a peer-reviewed science journal but on Medium.com. Still, he has a certain amount of credibility thanks to his past writings, and the paper makes a compelling case.]
The "Lab Leak" hypothesis posits that the escape of the virus from a controlled environment into the wild was the result of slipshod systems and insufficient governance.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this hypothesis is that it does not ascribe malicious intent to any party.
There is another hypothesis that does.
This one is known as the "Bioweapon" hypothesis, and postulates that the Chinese government deliberately created and released the virus to bring the rest of the world to its knees while China's economy alone would remain untouched. Most commentators refer to this as a conspiracy theory and do not give it much credence.
A fourth hypothesis owes its origin to Chinese researchers and authors, who postulate that the virus did not originate in China at all. They point to studies by Italian scientists to argue that the virus was detected in Italy long before the first detected outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan. For obvious reasons, this hypothesis is not taken very seriously by non-Chinese, since the nationality of its proponents seems to provide an explanation of why they would seek to disclaim a link between the virus and China.
So that's the landscape of competing hypotheses on the origin of SARS-Cov-2:
A. "Natural Origins"
B. "Lab Leak"
C. "Bioweapon"
D. "Not from China"
Which hypothesis do you favour?
All hypotheses are not created equal (or for the same purpose!)
I have an interesting meta-hypothesis of my own about these hypotheses.
There is a well-known tactic in Marketing known as the Decoy Effect. Given competing products A and B from two companies, how can either of the companies nudge consumers towards its own offering, apart from obvious techniques like advertising and sales promotion?
A popular tactic is to introduce a third option that functions purely as a "decoy". In other words, the company introducing this third product does not expect customers to buy it. Its purpose is solely to reposition its existing product and the competitor's in order to make the former appear much more attractive.
The Wikipedia examples above illustrate the general principle that a decoy must appear comprehensively inferior to the company's favoured product, but only partially inferior to the competitor's product (the principle of asymmetric dominance). Then a prospective customer will tend to favour the company's main product (because it is comprehensively superior to the decoy) over the competitor's offering (because it is not as comprehensively superior to the decoy).
The Decoy Effect as it applies to SARS-Cov-2 origin hypotheses
Given this quick introduction to the concept of the Decoy Effect, we can see a certain pattern to the four hypotheses on the origin of the virus.
"Natural Origins" was the original product. We could consider it to be the "Chinese" product, because China seems to be comfortable with this hypothesis.
"Lab Leak" is a competing product introduced by the West. It is meant to put China on the defensive while taking pains not to appear as a political attack. After all, the hypothesis involves elements such as Western funding and involvement by Western researchers, so accountability is diluted. Further, malicious intent is explicitly ruled out.
These two hypotheses are "products" looking to persuade prospective "customers". Which of these two would an unbiased customer buy?
To nudge the customer along, each of the competitors has introduced a "decoy".
The "Bioweapon" product is a decoy introduced by the West. It's introduced with disclaimers of its being a ridiculous conspiracy theory, so it was never intended to win supporters anyway. It's only intended to make the "Lab Leak" hypothesis appear more credible than "Natural Origins".
The "Bioweapon" and "Lab Leak" hypotheses support each other by claiming that the virus was deliberately engineered, and so they together exert a psychological influence that seems to outweigh the "Natural Origins" hypothesis, relying as it does merely on Occam's Razor.
Between these two hypotheses, though, Occam's Razor applies once again. Malicious intent requires a higher burden of proof than an accident or a mistake. And so the Lab Leak hypothesis is comprehensively "better" in terms of plausibility than the Bioweapon hypothesis. After all, apart from hardcore conspiracy theorists who want to believe the worst about China, most people would prefer the explanation of an innocent mistake rather than malicious intent.
And that's the Western gambit. Introduce a decoy in the form of a conspiracy theory, and people will gravitate towards the more reasonable-sounding (but still China-blaming) Lab Leak hypothesis.
The Chinese decoy, on the other hand, is the hypothesis that the virus originated outside of China, much before it was detected in Wuhan. This hypothesis turns the seemingly damning indictment of first detection into a virtue. The virus had been circulating in other countries for months, according to this hypothesis, but it was China, with its superior scientific abilities, that was first able to detect it!
Analogously to the other decoy that we saw, the "Not from China" and "Natural Origins" hypotheses support each other in ascribing a natural origin to the virus. They thus exert a psychological influence away from the idea of a human-engineered virus. Between the two, the "Not from China" idea seems less credible because non-Chinese observers would ascribe a nationalistic motive to the argument of its proponents, and so the only credible hypothesis left standing is the "Natural Origins" one.
The Chinese gambit is therefore to introduce a decoy in the form of an overly defensive claim, so that people prefer the more reasonable-sounding Natural Origins hypothesis, which absolves China of any responsibility for the pandemic.
Is there an objective truth at all?
In sum, I believe that the search for the origins of the SARS-Cov-2 virus is not a search for truth, no matter what pious protestations we may hear, because such a search is compromised from the start. Two sophisticated marketers are engaged in a battle for the mind of a prospective customer, and that customer is all of us.
Knowing what you now know about the Decoy Effect, which hypothesis would you believe now?
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