How the Pandemic Is Changing the Norms of Science – Tablet Magazine
The hottest public scientific debate of the moment whether the COVID-19 virus was the product of natural evolution or a laboratory accident could have been settled easily with a minimal demonstration of communalism ( communism, actually, in the original Merton vocabulary) from China: Opening the lab books of the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have alleviated concerns immediately. Without such openness about which experiments were done, lab leak theories remain tantalizingly credible.
Personally, I don t want to consider the lab leak theory a major blow to scientific investigation as the dominant explanation yet. However, if full public data-sharing cannot happen even for a question relevant to the deaths of millions and the suffering of billions, what hope is there for scientific transparency and a sharing culture? Whatever the origins of the virus, the refusal to abide by formerly accepted norms has done its own enormous damage.
The fact that the CCP will not open the books of the various virus institutes in Wuhan is itself pretty telling evidence — not scientifically but forensically.