Part of the problem might be that commentators are going to want to willfully conflate intelligence "confidence" with a more pseudo science-y sounding "confidence score" that sounds like a bastard hybrid of research critique and statistics.
One wouldn't predict that to be the case with all of the scientists here. But given that it is, perhaps we can't fault the American people if they don't understand the nuance.
The truth is that "low confidence" is only meaningful in the context of COVID's origin if it is possible that a conclusion can be made with "high confidence". That doesn't seem to be possible.
Certainly not in the other direction if some agencies are concluding at this stage, even with "low confidence", that COVID was lab leaked. Further, certainly "low confidence" doesn't imply that the inverse conclusion is likely true.
The NYT's choice to over-emphasize the relatively meaningless "confidence score" is understandable given its prior investment in other views.
Rigid historical narratives have been built on less than low confidence intelligence conclusions. A conclusion is the conclusion when one has to be made regardless.
In the case of COVID, a conclusion as to its origin has to be made and yet the scientific evidence isn't likely to get better for either possibility. Short of confessions.
> Further, certainly "low confidence" doesn't imply that the inverse conclusion is likely true.
Not by the strictest definition of "likely", no, but it certainly does imply there's a high enough likelihood of spreading from the wild that a lab leak isn't conclusive. It's not meaningless nor even "relatively meaningless": it's just very difficult to tell where a given virus came from unless there's a smoking gun, and any conclusion in any direction is going to be shaky.
One wouldn't predict that to be the case with all of the scientists here. But given that it is, perhaps we can't fault the American people if they don't understand the nuance.
The truth is that "low confidence" is only meaningful in the context of COVID's origin if it is possible that a conclusion can be made with "high confidence". That doesn't seem to be possible.
Certainly not in the other direction if some agencies are concluding at this stage, even with "low confidence", that COVID was lab leaked. Further, certainly "low confidence" doesn't imply that the inverse conclusion is likely true.
The NYT's choice to over-emphasize the relatively meaningless "confidence score" is understandable given its prior investment in other views.
Rigid historical narratives have been built on less than low confidence intelligence conclusions. A conclusion is the conclusion when one has to be made regardless.
In the case of COVID, a conclusion as to its origin has to be made and yet the scientific evidence isn't likely to get better for either possibility. Short of confessions.