If it turns out that the Covid pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it will rank among the greatest scientific scandals in history: dangerous research, possibly involving ethically dubious techniques that make viruses more dangerous, carried out in a poorly safeguarded facility, thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, catastrophic for the entire world.

如果新冠疫情最终被证实是由中国武汉一家实验室的泄漏引起的，这将成为历史上最大的科学丑闻之一：危险的研究，可能涉及道德上存疑的技术使病毒更加危险，在保障不足的设施中进行，被一个更关心宣传而不是人命的政权残暴地掩盖，给整个世界造成了灾难。

But this possible scandal, which is as yet unproved, obscures an actual scandal, which remains to be digested.

但是这个尚未证实的可能丑闻掩盖了一个依然有待消化的真正丑闻。

I mean the long refusal by too many media gatekeepers (social as well as mainstream) to take the lab-leak theory seriously. The reasons for this — rank partisanship and credulous reporting — and the methods by which it was enforced — censorship and vilification — are reminders that sometimes the most destructive enemies of science can be those who claim to speak in its name.

我指的是太多媒体守门人（既有社交网络也有主流媒体）长期拒绝认真对待实验室泄漏理论。其原因——严重的党派之争和轻信的报道——以及它所施用的方法——审查和中伤——提醒我们，有时科学最具破坏性的敌人可能是那些声称以科学的名义说话的人。

Rewind the tape to February of last year, when people such as Senator Tom Cotton began pointing to a disturbing fact set: the odd coincidence of a pandemic originating in the same city where a Chinese lab was conducting high-end experiments on bat viruses; the troubling report that some of the original Covid patients had no contact with the food markets where the pandemic supposedly originated; the fact that the Chinese government lied and stonewalled its way through the crisis. Think what you will about the Arkansas Republican, but these were reasonable observations warranting impartial investigation.

让我们回到去年2月，参议员汤姆·科顿(Tom Cotton)等人开始指出一组令人不安的事实：一场大流行起源于一个中国城市，就在这个城市里，一个实验室正在对蝙蝠病毒进行尖端实验，这是一个奇怪的巧合；一些最初的新冠病毒感染者并没有接触据信是疫情发源地的食品市场，这样的报告令人不安；中国政府撒谎，妨碍了自己的危机应对 ，这是事实。不管你怎么看这位阿肯色州共和党人，这些都是合理的观察结果，值得进行公正的调查。

The common reaction in elite liberal circles? A Washington Post reporter called it a “fringe theory” that “has been repeatedly disputed by experts.” The Atlantic Council accused Cotton of abetting an “infodemic” by “pushing debunked claim that the novel coronavirus may have been created in a Wuhan lab.” A writer for Vox said it was a “dangerous conspiracy theory” being advanced by conservatives “known to regularly spew nonsense (and bash China).”

There are many more such examples. But the overall shape of the media narrative was clear. On one side were experts at places like the World Health Organization: knowledgeable, incorruptible, authoritative, noble. On the other were a bunch of right-wing yahoos pushing a risible fantasy with xenophobic overtones in order to deflect attention from the Trump administration’s mishandling of the crisis.

这样的例子还有很多。但媒体叙事的总体形态是清晰的。一方是世界卫生组织(World Health Organization)等机构的专家：博学、廉洁、权威、高贵。另一方则是一群右翼粗人，他们在推动一个带有排外色彩的可笑幻想，目的是转移人们对特朗普政府处理危机不当的注意力。

Yet it was also a narrative with holes larger than Donald Trump’s mouth.

然而，这种叙事当中的漏洞比唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)的嘴巴还大。

Was it outrageous to think that the virus might have escaped the Wuhan Institute? Not if you listened to evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein’s patient, lucid, scientifically rich explanation of the lab-leak hypothesis — which he delivered almost a year ago on the decidedly non-mainstream Joe Rogan podcast.

Was it smart for science reporters to accept the authority of a February 2020 letter, signed by 27 scientists and published in The Lancet, feverishly insisting on the “natural origin” of Covid? Not if those reporters had probed the ties between the letter’s lead author and the Wuhan lab (a fact, as the science writer Nicholas Wade points out in a landmark essay in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that has been public knowledge for months).

Was it wise to suppose that the World Health Organization, which has served as a mouthpiece for Chinese regime propaganda, should be an authority on what counted as Covid “misinformation” by Facebook, which in February banned the lab-leak theory from its platform? Not if the aim of companies like Facebook is to bring the world closer together, as opposed to laundering Chinese government disinformation while modeling its illiberal methods.

Facebook今年2月在其平台上禁止了实验室泄漏理论，而一直充当中国政权宣传喉舌的世界卫生组织是否应该成为Facebook上关于新冠病毒“虚假信息”的权威？如果像Facebook这样的公司的目标是让世界更紧密地联系在一起，而不是在模仿中国政府的非自由主义方法的同时为其虚假信息洗白，那就不应该是这样。

To its credit, Facebook reversed itself last week. News organizations are quietly correcting (or stealth editing) last year’s dismissive reports, sometimes using the fig leaf of new information about Wuhan lab workers being infected in the fall of 2019 with a Covid-like illness. And the public-health community is taking a fresh look at its Covid origin story.

But even now one gets a distinct sense of the herd of independent minds hard at work. If the lab-leak theory is finally getting the respectful attention it always deserved, it’s mainly because Joe Biden authorized an inquiry and Anthony Fauci admitted to doubts about the natural-origin claim. In other words, the right president and the right public-health expert have blessed a certain line of inquiry.

但即使是现在，人们也能清楚地感觉到，有一群独立的头脑在努力工作。如果“实验室泄漏”理论最终得到了应有的尊重关注，那主要是因为乔·拜登授权进行调查，而安东尼·福奇(Anthony Fauci)承认对自然起源的说法存在怀疑。换句话说，正确的总统和正确的公共卫生专家为一定的调查路线提供了支持。

Yet the lab-leak theory, whether or not it turns out to be right, was always credible. Even if Tom Cotton believed it. Even if the scientific “consensus” disputed it. Even if bigots — who rarely need a pretext — drew bigoted conclusions from it.

然而，实验室泄漏理论无论是否被证明为正确，却从来是可信的。即使汤姆·科顿相信它。即使科学“共识”怀疑它。即使那些很少需要借口的偏执狂们也会从中得出偏执的结论。

Good journalism, like good science, should follow evidence, not narratives. It should pay as much heed to intelligent gadflies as it does to eminent authorities. And it should never treat honest disagreement as moral heresy.

好的新闻报道就像好的科学一样，应该遵循证据，而不是故事。它应该像重视卓越的权威一样重视聪明的牛虻。它绝不应该把诚实的分歧视为道德异端。

Anyone wondering why so many people have become so hostile to the pronouncements of public-health officials and science journalists should draw the appropriate conclusion from this story. When lecturing the public about the dangers of misinformation, it’s best not to peddle it yourself.

如果有人想知道，为什么那么多人对公共卫生官员和科学记者的声明如此敌视，应该从这个故事中得出适当的结论。在向公众宣讲错误信息的危害时，最好不要自己去兜售它。