Because it is becoming dangerous now to just “Trust the Science” without knowing what goes into it:
Facebook was especially aggressive in this regard. Last spring, the company flagged as false and then banned a New York Post column by Steven Mosher making the case for the plausibility of the lab-leak theory. Mosher argued that the virus’s emergence in a city where gain-of-function research was being conducted on coronaviruses found in bats, the Chinese government’s reaction to it, and the historical record all suggested that its proliferation in people might very well be due to human error in a laboratory setting…
In September, Facebook also fact-checked an article from WION — an English-language Indian television channel and website — featuring quotes from Li-Meng Yan, a Chinese doctor who has alleged that the virus did escape from a lab in Wuhan. While some of Yan’s scientific work and explanations for her specific version of the theory have been widely criticized, that is not what ultimately earned the fact check. Instead, it was Yan’s claim that the Chinese government was silencing medical doctors about the virus that Facebook found objectionable.
It’s unclear why. It has been common knowledge since the very beginning that China has suppressed scientists who have tried to get information about the disease out to the rest of the world.
Isaac Schorr, “How Big Tech Silenced the Earliest Lab-Leak Theory Proponents” at National Review
It’s one thing to trust Darwinblither, just to take an example, when nothing immediate is at stake. But if we agree that COVID-19 is a problem, let’s evaluate more carefully what we have been told on the Authority of Science.
And let’s take in the fact that Big Tech backed up the Authority of Science when it was obviously way off base.
See also: The COVID-19 saga is getting people talking about bogus scientific consensus For some months there has been a bogus consensus that the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan was a crackpot conspiracy theory. Then the dam broke. People may understand the concept better now.