News Analysis The way the discussion on the origin of COVID-19 was derailed by conspiracy labelling reminds environmental economist Ross McKitrick of the debate around climate change. “There are ideas that were never disproven and actually have a lot of evidence to support them, but for political reasons and cultural reasons within the university they just aren’t looked at,” McKitrick, a professor at the University of Guelph, said in an interview. As bias on a certain issue becomes structural, McKitrick says, it makes its way into government communications and even into “big tech” platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which make editorial decisions—decisions they “have absolutely no business making” —to censor one side of the debate. In the case of the virus, as more scientists and even U.S. President Joe Biden joined the chorus that the lab leak theory can’t be dismissed since a natural origin hasn’t been proven, many …