The WHO investigation

into the origins of the Covid19 virus has come up with the conclusions most of us expected. 

It was always going to be the case that there would be no definitive answer as to where the virus originated.  At the same time we could be certain that China would not be held responsible.

China did not want an investigation. They delayed it as long as possible. In that time evidence, if there was any, could be "lost" and other evidence would be degraded. There might be enough around to raise some doubts but there would be nothing definitive. After that you "invite" selected people in and control their movements. That was always the way it was intended to be. 

I know almost nothing about viruses and how they develop, mutate, or get transmitted. I do know something about research in the social sciences and, from talking to scientists, I understand something about the way they conduct research. It seems unlikely that the "investigation" conducted by the World Health Organisation was carried out in accordance with the best research practices. Doubt about that has been widely expressed in scientific circles.  

"It's a nice little whitewash job Cat,"a colleague told me last night. He had phoned me to check a reference in a paper he is writing. He tends to be thorough about such things.

When I was doing the research for my doctorate I kept hitting what seemed like a brick wall. Try as I could I could not get the "right" results - the results my supervisors told me I "should" be getting, the results everyone was expecting. I kept being told there was something wrong with what I was doing. I remember my senior supervisor saying something like, "Look Cat there is a vast body of research out there which tells us that .....  Now, your job is to find out how... "

The problem ended up being quite different. The previous research was not telling us that at all. My "job" was actually something quite different. It was to find out why the children I was working with were responding in the way they were responding. What I discovered was not what was suggested I would discover but something entirely different. I had to provide the evidence for that, not for the previous "research out there which tells us that...."  For a short while Galileo was more popular with the astronomers of his day than I was with the small team of psychologists with whom I was supposed to be working.

And that is what we need with investigations into origins of the virus. I didn't set out to become unpopular. I was just going where the evidence was leading me. If I had been more experienced at doing research I might not have actually done what I did at all. It is entirely likely that I would have continued to build on a body of research which, while it still applies to some situations, does not apply to another. 

I am trying to be open minded about the results of the WHO research but it would be good to have more evidence.