This article is poorly argued.<p>For example, in their point 1 they feel that since an aspect of the virus is well-adapted for humans it was not the result of evolution. However, viruses jumping between species happens naturally... <i>because</i> an aspect of the virus happens to be well-adapted for the new host species.<p>In fact, in this argument they seem to misunderstand the fundamental mechanism of evolution: a random aspect of a replicating organism provides an advantage in an environment, allowing the organism to thrive. For any random aspect that provides an advantage there might be thousands, millions, or more that do not. The existence of a particular unlikely successful aspect is not an argument against natural evolution. We expect many successful aspects to be highly unlikely.<p>Another example is in the conclusion:<p>> Henceforth, those who would maintain that the Covid-19 pandemic arose from zoonotic transfer need to explain precisely why this more parsimonious account is wrong<p>I think they rather significantly overstate how “parsimonious” their explanation is, but setting that aside, they scarcely address the alternative. In this article they address ways in which the virus might have been created by scientists, but do not address the ways in which the virus could have evolved naturally. You can’t conclude X is more likely than Y if you only consider the likelihood of X but not Y. So, e.g., they would need to survey the science around how viruses evolve and jump species naturally and show how it does not explain this virus.<p>There are plenty of more flaws in this article. But I’ll stop here. It’s probably pointless to argue with reason anyway, since the people putting forward this kind of nonsense already don’t care about reason.<p>Anyway, if this is the best case that the virus was artificially created, we can probably all rest assured it was not.