Longtime YouTube and Google executive Adam Smith will join Walt Disney Co. as chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, indicating the media and entertainment giant’s intent to improve its customer technology experience.

Smith will be responsible for setting the strategy, development and innovation of technology across Disney’s streaming platforms and networks, its advertising tech and “consumer digital touchpoints,” among other aspects, Disney said in a statement Thursday.

“We could not be more thrilled to have Adam join the Disney team in this pivotal role,” Disney Entertainment co-Chairs Alan Bergman and Dana Walden and ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro said in a joint statement. “Adam brings a bold, consumer-focused vision for the future and a proven ability to effectively lead global teams in implementing ambitious, scalable and flexible products and technology that will continue to elevate storytelling as the center of the Disney experience.”

Smith starts in his new role Sept. 3 and will report to Bergman, Walden and Pitaro, the company said. He replaces Disney veteran Aaron LaBerge, who left the company after 20 years to join casino and sports-betting company Penn Entertainment.

Smith worked at both YouTube and Google for more than 20 years. He last served as YouTube’s vice president of product management since 2016 and was in charge of the company’s subscriptions, music, commerce and premium efforts. While at Google, he led development and strategy for projects such as Google Fiber and also oversaw a portfolio including Google News, Google Books and Google Scholar.

His hire comes as Disney has made more strides in its streaming business. The company’s overall streaming business — which consists of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ — finally turned a profit in the third fiscal quarter after years of losses totaling billions of dollars.

Here’s an indisputable fact about the theory that COVID originated in a laboratory: Most Americans believe it to be true.

That’s important for several reasons. One is that evidence to support the theory is nonexistent. Another is that the claim itself has fomented a surge of attacks on science and scientists that threatens to drive promising researchers out of the crucial field of pandemic epidemiology.

That concern was aired in a commentary by 41 biologists, immunologists, virologists and physicians published Aug. 1 in the Journal of Virology. The journal probably isn’t in the libraries of ordinary readers, but the article’s prose is commendably clear and its conclusions eye-opening.

“The lab leak narrative fuels mistrust in science and public health infrastructures,” the authors observe. “Scientists and public health professionals stand between us and pandemic pathogens; these individuals are essential for anticipating, discovering, and mitigating future pandemic threats. Yet, scientists and public health professionals have been harmed and their institutions have been damaged by the skewed public and political opinions stirred by continued promotion of the lab leak hypothesis in the absence of evidence.”

Before exploring further how the lab leak theory has been exploited to undermine public confidence in science and scientists, let’s examine what’s known and unknown about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

The so-called zoonosis hypothesis, which is favored by the vast majority of the virological and epidemiological communities, is that the virus reached humans via a spillover from the animal kingdom, probably through the unregulated wildlife trade in Southeast Asia.

“Validating the zoonotic origin is a scientific question that relies on history, epidemiology, and genomic analysis, that when taken together, support a natural spillover as the probable origin,” the Virology paper states.

The lab leak theory holds that SARS-2 was created or manipulated into existence in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and escaped from the lab, whether deliberately or by accident.

Lab leak adherents bristle at the accusation that they’re conspiracy-mongers. Anthony Fauci, the retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the target of some of the most febrile attacks from the anti-science crowd, acknowledged at a June 3 House hearing that the lab leak theory was not inherently a conspiracy theory, conceptually—but that it had been exploited to support some truly crazy conspiracy narratives.

Fauci testified that he remained open to a lab leak narrative in principle, and that if any evidence for it emerged he would consider it seriously. That’s typical of most scientists, especially biologists, who are led by the infinite variability of the natural world to be innately averse to declaring anything conclusively possible or impossible.

The fact is, however, that one can’t advance the lab leak theory without positing a vast conspiracy encompassing scientists in China and the U.S., and Chinese and U.S. government officials. How else could all the evidence of a laboratory event that resulted in more than 7 million deaths worldwide be kept entirely suppressed for nearly five years? Some external hint of the event inevitably would have surfaced somewhere, somehow, by now. None has.

“Validating the lab leak hypothesis requires intelligence evidence that the WIV possessed or carried out work on a SARS-CoV-2 precursor virus prior to the pandemic,” the Virology paper asserts. “Neither the scientific community nor multiple western intelligence agencies have found such evidence.”

Despite that, “the lab leak hypothesis receives persistent attention in the media, often without acknowledgment of the more solid evidence supporting zoonotic emergence,” the paper says. The paper doesn’t name all the media culprits, but they include the independent investigative news site ProPublica and Vanity Fair.

It does take direct aim, however, at the New York Times, which on June 3 published a column by researcher Alina Chan asserting that the “pandemic probably started in a lab.” In a 2021 book, Chan had aired almost identical arguments that were largely refuted by experts in the field. Her more recent article “misrepresents and underplays the existing scientific data supporting a zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV-2,” the Virology paper reported.

I’ve written before about the smears, physical harassment and baseless accusations of fraud and other wrongdoing that lab leak propagandists have visited upon scientists whose work has challenged their claims; similar attacks have targeted experts who have worked to debunk other anti-science narratives, including those about global warming and vaccines.

Some of these attacks have come from elected officials seeking partisan cred, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). They’ve been augmented by figures such as Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

What’s notable about the Virology paper is that it represents a comprehensive and long-overdue pushback by the scientific community against such behavior. More to the point, it focuses on the consequences for public health and the scientific mission from the rise of anti-science propaganda.

Its authors are drawn from the faculties of the state universities of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Florida and Ohio, as well as from Johns Hopkins, Duke and the Cleveland Clinic.

“Scientists have withdrawn from social media platforms, rejected opportunities to speak in public, and taken increased safety measures to protect themselves and their families,” the authors report.

“Some have even diverted their work to less controversial and less timely topics. We now see a long-term risk of having fewer experts engaged in work that may help thwart future pandemics, and of fewer scientists willing to communicate the findings of sophisticated, fast-moving research topics that are important for global health….Most worrisome for future preparedness, the next generation of scientists has well-founded fears about entering fields related to emerging viruses and pandemic science.”

The paper revisits the scene at the public interrogation by House Republicans on June 3. “The hearing,” it observes, “was often disrupted and marked by contentious, disrespectful, and unfounded calls for Dr. Fauci to be ‘prosecuted’ and imprisoned for ‘crimes against humanity.’”

By presupposing that evidence of a lab leak has been deliberately suppressed by leading scientists and scientific administrators, its promoters have cast “unsupported blame on scientists, many of whom had warned of the potential threat of, and need for effective countermeasures to prevent, zoonotic transfer of viruses into humans,” the authors write.

At a certain level, the popular embrace of scientific conspiracy theories is understandable. As the Swiss molecular biologist and science writer Philipp Markolin has observed, disinformation relies on myths that provide simple explanations for traumatic world events, like the pandemic, by positing that it was caused by shadowy, powerful actors. There’s never a shortage of grifters and manipulators using this public confusion to their advantage.

Thanks in part to social media, anti-science has become more virulent and widespread, the Virology authors write. Large numbers of researchers into SARS-2 have reported “harassment ranging from personal insults to threats of violence, ‘doxing,’ and personal contact,” according to the paper— of 1,281 scientists in several fields who responded to a survey by Science, 51% said they had experienced at least one form of harassment, sometimes over a period of years.

The Virology authors warn that the vilification of scientists whose research supports the zoonosis hypothesis will leave society defenseless when the next pandemic threat emerges.

“If these narratives are left unchecked, we become a society that dismisses and vilifies those with expertise and experience relevant to the challenges we face,” the authors write. “We then base decisions affecting large populations worldwide on speculation or chosen beliefs that have no grounding in evidence-based science.”

That’s what the future holds if we allow misinformation and disinformation, weaponized by sociopaths seeking financial or partisan gain, to guide our actions. We have been warned.

Walt Disney Co. is asking a Florida state court to toss a wrongful death lawsuit because the plaintiff agreed to terms and conditions mandating arbitration when he signed up for Disney+ and when he purchased park tickets.

The response comes after plaintiff Jeffrey Piccolo sued Disney in February, alleging that his wife died from a severe allergic reaction after dining at a restaurant at Walt Disney World in Orlando.

During a trip to the Disney Springs shopping complex in October 2023, Piccolo and his wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, allegedly asked staff multiple times at the Raglan Road restaurant if the food Tangsuan ordered had dairy or nuts, which she was allergic to, according to the lawsuit. The couple was assured it did not, the lawsuit said.

But less than an hour after their meal, Tangsuan started having difficulty breathing and collapsed; she was taken to a hospital, where she later died, the lawsuit said.

However, Disney said Piccolo agreed to binding arbitration in “all disputes including those involving The Walt Disney Co. or its affiliates” when he signed up for a Disney+ account in November 2019, according to the company’s response filed in May.

The company said he agreed to those terms and conditions again when he purchased Disney World tickets on behalf of himself and his wife. Disney said the binding arbitration clause for the tickets applies to anyone he bought tickets for, according to the response.

In a response to Disney’s filing, Piccolo’s attorneys rebutted the company’s arguments, saying Disney had essentially waived its alleged right to arbitration when it participated in the lawsuit by requesting copies of documents.

Piccolo’s lawyers also said his wife’s estate, which did not exist at the time because she was still alive, was not a signatory to any alleged arbitration agreement, according to the filing, which entered into court record earlier this month.

“A valid agreement to arbitrate does not exist because the arbitration clauses upon which [Walt Disney Parks and Resorts] rely are unconscionable,” the filing said.

Representatives for Disney and Piccolo did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Piccolo is seeking at least $50,000 in damages, not including costs and post-judgment interest.