Elite public opinion until recently deplored and even denounced the idea that the coronavirus might have come out of a Chinese laboratory, calling it a racist theory. It has since been revealed as the most likely origin of the pandemic.

Those who dismissed the lab leak theory have so damaged their credibility that they shouldn’t be surprised by the public skepticism they helped inspire — even the damaging skepticism slowing vaccination progress.

It is, however, time to go further and acknowledge that experts have been not just grievously mistaken but deliberately and falsely deceptive. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins and the sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci have been lying about a lot of other things other than the Wuhan lab.

They dishonestly concealed NIH funding for dangerous gain-of-function experiments into bat coronaviruses in China. NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak confirmed this in a letter correcting Collins’ congressional testimony. Although Tabak denies that Nih-funded research could have caused the virus, his intervention is another admission of something the experts had vigorously and angrily denied until recently.

As Rutgers chemical biology professor Richard Ebright told the Washington Examiner this week, “The NIH’S acknowledgment of the facts is new, but the facts themselves are not new. The NIH was informed about the gain-of-function research in Wuhan in 2018 and again in 2020. Collins and Fauci lied to Congress, lied to the press and lied to the public.”

NIH’S National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, directed by Fauci, put $600,000 into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Even when what we refer to as “science” is real knowledge, those who hide behind it can still be liars whose judgment is not to be trusted.

Americans are a practical people. Although this is mostly a good thing, it means they can too readily trust “the science” as if it were some kind of infallible magic. Scientific exploration and experimentation are good in principle and often in practice, but not always. Lawmakers are so loath to limit what scientists do that they could not even find common ground 15 years ago on the question of banning human cloning.

The probable origin of the pandemic illustrates that blind deference to scientists is deeply unwise. It is not a popular thing to say, but it has to be said: Just because it’s science doesn’t mean it’s good. Not all scientific experiments should be conducted. Some things are dangerous and unethical, and scientists are not especially good at ethics.

In fact, the ones in charge of the federal response to COVID don’t even understand that it’s wrong to lie to Congress under oath.

Seven years ago last week, the Obama administration imposed a moratorium on federal funding of gain-of-function research on such viruses for a good reason. Fauci lobbied the Trump administration to lift that moratorium, despite legitimate fears of exactly what has happened now.

He has a lot of nerve telling everyone how to behave.