Earlier quoted context omitted.
The line of thinking is seductive, believe me, but that's the thing about circumstantial evidence - it is very likely that there is a coronavirus infectivity research station next to a massive source of bat coronaviruses, that was in fact why the lab was there!
But do you see the qualitative difference between "pandemic virus appears in general region where these kinds of viruses are common" and "pandemic virus appears down the street from a viral research lab"? You're also just making a straight up false claim anyway, since most of the virus samples discussed in their research come from distant regions (500+ miles away).
If you read the actual paper, what they say is:
"These meet the criteria of means, timing, agent and place in this reconstructed historical aetiology to produce sufficient confidence in the account to reverse the burden of proof. 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 before asserting that their evidence is persuasive"
ie. Basically, there are enough red-flags here that the burden-of-proof is to show that it isn't artificial rather than that it is.
...and you could hear that argument.
On the other hand, it's not really rigorous.
You can't go and say, hey, look, I invented an EM drive; rather than proving that it generates thrust without any emissions by isolating it and measuring it, the burden of proof is on everyone else to "prove why this more parsimonious account is wrong before asserting that their evidence is persuasive".
Ie. Before you go and measure anything, first you have to come tell us why we're wrong.
Now, rather than putting the EM drive in an isolated box and measuring the thrust it produces, you have 50 different people who have to go out and prove that EM drives are impossible before anyone actually goes and measures anything.
See any problems here?
I mean, you could argue it either way, but it doesn't convince me.
While I agree that the paper lays out some interesting points, they're wide open to attack on the conclusion they draw from them.
This, in particular:
"We refute pre-emptively objection that this methodology does not result in absolute proof by observing that to make such a statement is to misunderstand scientific logic. The longer the chain of causation of individual findings that is shown, especially converging from different disciplines, the greater the confidence in the whole."
Sure.
"We posit that the evidence below attains a high level of confidence."
Yup, that's what they've done here. They posit which means, in this case, arbitrarily assert without proof that it is the case that there is a high level of confidence here.
They just haven't shown that in a compelling way imo.