Media “Fact Checking” is functioning as a poor replacement for the scientific process.
In 2020-2021, news and social media sites deployed “Fact Checking” against various hypotheses. One such example was the hypothesis that SARS-Cov-2 may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sars-cov-2-lab-leak-hypothesis.
What they seem to mean by “fact checking” is merely determining whether the idea in question is currently being perpetuated by the dominate #narrative or not. Early on in the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was being seriously discussed and carefully considered by honest brokers, but was not yet judged acceptable narrative and therefore was labeled as a conspiracy theory by “fact checkers”. They would cite other “reputable” sources and authorities who themselves hadn’t yet taken a fair account of the existing evidence.
While it’s possible that the true work of the scientific process could be going on somewhere while the “fact checkers” repeat unsubstantiated authority to the contrary, the general reading public won’t know about that process and will instead see a settled issue at the conclusion of the fact-check.
That’s not how science works. All reasonable hypotheses need to be considered, and few questions are ever truly settled.