I am unfair, because they really are trying to maintain a "we need to know, its FOI stuff" posture, but they don't appear to me to publish anything which accepts the limits of their own skepticism. So https://usrtk.org/category/covid-19-origins/ for instance is really driving pretty hard one way.
Their footprint is over a lot of corporate science. They don't like science for commercial gain, especially in GM and related fields. So https://usrtk.org/category/gmo/ has "GMOs are controversial in many countries due to the lack of epidemiological data, safety testing and transparency. " but says nothing of the use of anti-GM for trade management across bilateral/multilateral treaties which is the other side of the coin. There are pro-GM scientists and they are not all paid flacks for Monsanto, basically.
This is where the precautionary principle drives a lot of the time: People with a lot of passion persuing a story but then they get down in the weeds. I think a lot of their story rings true, there is a science-FOI-industry question out there, but I don't think they are a neutral voice, they are in the advocacy space.
ALL of the risky research headlines are Covid on the first page. I think there's a lot more risky research going on out there. It makes me suspicious that they're so solidly in this one story, which of course at scale is the story of the day. But that means they're playing to the populist tune more than actually asking what are the wider questions in science risk to explore:
They've decided it's covid. That makes me suspicious.
My own bias' should be clear. I do not believe in lab leak, or a grand conspiracy rooted in the FDA, or that the FDA is owned by Monsanto and Coca-cola, or that GM is ab-initio to be feared, or is a giant trick. That doesn't mean I think its all peaches-and-cream, I think gene IPR is anathema (for instance) and suing farmers over cross pollination is bad. As is sugar. But does it mean the FDA are stonecutters? no.
Hmm, I was hoping for something more. I've gone back and forth on lab leak, mostly opposed until I found out the details that USRTK has uncovered through these FOIA requests. The behavior of the ringleaders definitely implies they were trying to hide something, and the wet market theory in hindsight was far more unlikely, if not preposterous. I'm not concerned as much with bias-- you just have to let it all hang out (unlike corporate media, which helps perpetuate the myth of objectivity).
