{"id":5711,"date":"2026-07-23T19:13:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T02:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/?p=5711"},"modified":"2026-07-23T19:13:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T02:13:59","slug":"experts-re-convincing-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2026\/07\/23\/experts-re-convincing-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts Re-Convincing Themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The certainty with which &#8220;expert&#8221; opinions are expressed to the public on matters of public policy import is almost always greater than that with which the &#8220;experts&#8221;, if speaking honestly, would admit to one another. And on the other hand, those &#8220;experts&#8221; (and others) who distrust the &#8220;consensus&#8221; frequently exaggerate the extent and sources of doubt. But in this case I agree with Pielke that even if one has just a 10% credence in the lab leak origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (as apparently was the case for at least some of the authors of the &#8220;Proximal Origin&#8221; paper), then that should by no means be considered as &#8220;case closed&#8221; and should motivate a much more serious investigation into whether or not a breach actually occurred, and into the effectiveness (and faithful application) of containment protocols in the research community as a whole. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/rogerpielkejr.substack.com\/p\/we-just-need-to-re-convince-ourselves?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=119454&amp;post_id=207984676&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=bz1iw&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email\">&#8220;We Just Need to Re-Convince Ourselves It&#8217;s Coincidence&#8221;<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The certainty with which &#8220;expert&#8221; opinions are expressed to the public on matters of public policy import is almost always greater than that with which the &#8220;experts&#8221;, if speaking honestly, would admit to one another. And on the other hand, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/2026\/07\/23\/experts-re-convincing-themselves\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5713,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5711\/revisions\/5713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qpr.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}