Does that make them any less accurate or valid? (Sincere question not rhetorical)

They tend to glue together a scientific fact and some vague conspiracy-esque implied conclusions that are anywhere from debatable to entirely nonsense.

In this case, it’s accurate to say that the same sequence found in SARS-CoV-2 is indeed found in a patent. That’s valid and accurate.

The claim that the occurrence is an impossibly unlikely random chance is the flawed part, though. Generic fragments aren’t actually random because they correspond to actual functions of the virus, and it shouldn’t be surprising that viruses with similar functions have similar genetic code fragments.

It’s like if someone examined the binaries of two executables from different companies, identified a small sequence of bits that was common to both, then tried to imply that they were secretly written by the same author because it’s statistically unlikely for that random sequence of bits to appear twice. As a programmer you’d immediately dismiss the claim because that small sequence of bits could be common code like a standard library part or a common algorithm. But the claim may appear to be proof of a conspiracy to the uneducated.

That’s basically what’s going on with this article, but swap bits for genetic code.

Excellent explanation. Thank you.

You should have a look at the linked thread to see what people had to say about a previous, similar story.

No, he shouldn't. There's no point in giving any value to anything argued here in hackernews.hn (a computer programming, technology entrepreneur forum) related to a genomics/biology subject. People here only argue to argue, and the level of discourse in these subjects are terrible, in both "sides" (the fact that people take sides is even a demonstration of how terrible the discourse is).

What has to be done with this scientific paper, from a scientific journal is to read it, maybe go to scholar.google.com to look for its references or other sibling papers. And maybe go to science.reddit.com askscientists.reddit.com or any other internet forum were people educated in the subject interact, to get some good quality dialogue.

Over here at HN? we are just speculating.

On the other hand, even in this very thread are biologists with many years of experience.

Yes and they are frustrating to see as someone with some understanding of molecular biology. The science is so far very clear cut that there is no evidence for a lab engineered virus and only circumstantial evidence for a lab leak (but plausible).

But people keep falling back on political arguments which have nothing more compelling than an argument from some authority. Programmers can see that the media and govt lies when there is a “hack” which was just a result of poor management, and extend that to literally anything reported on by the news.