Is the paper true? I am not qualified to pass judgement, but I'm not naive enough to see Steve Bannon is behind it and suspect this might be motivated by politics more than science.
- This is a paper published by members of an anti-China advocacy organization.
- It advocates actions against China in its abstract ("Our work emphasizes the need for an independent investigation into the relevant research laboratories")
- It includes a number of conspiratorial-sounding speculations ("However, this template virus ideally should not be one from Dr. Zengli Shi’s collections, considering that she is widely known to have been engaged in gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses. Therefore, . . . novel bat coronaviruses discovered and owned by military laboratories, would be suitable . . .")
- Some of its citations appear suspect. For example, it cites a previous study for the idea that certain variants were "discovered and owned by military laboratories," but the cited study says nothing like that.
- It criticizes "peer-reviewed" journals for rejecting its theories
- It is in a highly-technical subject area that is difficult for lay people to understand
In short, to me this looks like a piece of advocacy, not science.
That's not to say that it might not also be right. But personally I would trust mainstream scientists publishing in established journals. Those scientists--as the paper itself notes--have so far not adopted this idea.
Consider what a humanist scientist would want to believe to be true:
- Nature bestowed yet another pathogen upon humanity
or
- Science caused an accident that killed a million people
Even if it was a lab accident, it would be difficult to blame the whole of China for it. More likely, scientific work itself would be blamed, which could eradicate entire lines of research, threatening the livelihood and reputation of many scientists and lab workers.
Though I am skeptical, I myself would like to believe the first scenario to be true. I might even be inclined to believe that misleading the public on it is the right thing to do, all potential consequences considered.