Public belief in science is being tested like never before. Last week, President Joe Biden ordered intelligence agencies to report on the so-called lab leak theory—the idea that the virus that causes Covid-19 originated in a lab in China. In the past few days, critics have pored over publicly released emails written by Anthony Fauci, looking for inconsistencies in what the government’s top infectious disease expert told the public about masks and the dangers of the pandemic.
To make sense of the tumult, I called Kira Peikoff, the editor-in-chief of Leaps.org, a magazine covering scientific innovation. Peikoff is a science journalist with a background in bioethics. She has run Leaps since it was founded in 2017 with funding from the venture-capital arm of the pharmaceutical company Bayer; it is now a part of the publisher Good and Upworthy and is editorially independent.
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