Theory statements counted as misinformation in this study included the notion that quote the virus originated in a laboratory in China as if anticipating strenuous objection to this the author’s weakly insists that the Lab Leak Theory “contradicted scientific evidence at the time” hmm well this gets to the very root of the whole misinformation problem. There was no Smoking Gun indicating either a natural origin or a lab leak and yet a group of scientific experts released a paper Proximal Origins at the behest of federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins that explicitly ruled out a lab leak despite their own private concerns that this was a perfectly compelling explanation.