Scientists may have been protecting Chinese colleagues that many had worked with and even funded. Perhaps, Western scientists feared that the possibility of Chinese culpability would reflect badly on them and their own viral-gain-of-function research. Journalists, on the other hand, seemed intent on countering an anti-China, anti-WHO narrative advanced by President Trump and other conservatives. New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, for instance, recently tweeted (and later deleted) her hope that people would “stop talking” about the lab-leak hypothesis, on account of its “racist roots.” The scientists’ opinions in the early days of the pandemic gave such journalists cover to indulge in their usual Trump-bashing and assert that they were only “following the science,” in contrast to Trump’s allegedly baser motivations. We’ve seen this pattern play out time and again over the past year. From the value of lockdowns and masks to the likelihood of speedy and safe vaccine development, scientists and experts based their opinions more on intuition than on facts—until the facts finally forced a reversal. And journalists seemed remarkably incurious about those expert opinions, especially when they presented them with an opportunity to criticize conservatives. Both groups, who have frequently decried official “misinformation,” ought to look first to their own failings.