Some researchers confuse not finding a particular type of design with ruling out design of the virus:
The paper errs in a number of basic ways. First, the authors made the common mistake of assuming that ruling out one specific mechanism of design necessarily means that they have ruled out all possibilities of design. In this paper, the only design process considered was a computer analysis of likely binding targets and genetic engineering of the needed proteins, using software common in the United States. The authors did succeed in showing that that particular design hypothesis was false. Where they failed is when they generalized this result to all possible design hypotheses. Put another way, a human agent is not obligated to use the method they described and falsified.
This problem is not unique to them; it is a bad habit of the scientific community which stretches back into the 1800s. When constructing science experiments, you define a “null hypothesis” such that proving your null hypothesis false provides evidence for your actual hypothesis. However, this method relies on the null hypothesis being close to a complement of (similar in structure to to) the hypothesis being tested. Thus, the truth of the hypothesis you are testing should be at least largely entailed by the falsification of the null hypothesis.
Jonathan Bartlett, “Was the COVID-19 Virus Designed? The Computer Doesn’t Know” at Mind Matters News
Also by Jonathan Bartlett:
We will never go back to thepre-COVID-19 workplace The virus forced us to realize: Staying together apart has never been so easy
and
COVID-19: Do quarantine rules apply to mega-geniuses? How did Elon Musk, who has a cozy relationship with China, get his upscale car factory classified as an essential business during the pandemic? If we are going to hold some people up as business icons, why should it be those who—in the present COVID-19 troubles — have relations with China that necessarily raise questions.