“if researchers were clandestinely trying to create a pandemic virus, they would not publish papers that anyone can access in the scientific literature.”
No, I don’t think that’s quite right.
They would publish papers, but what they would publish would be for the purpose of covering up or diverting attention from the criminal aspects of the research.
It really is not that easy to fool scientists. No one gets accepted into graduate school or has a career in research unless they are extremely intelligent.
Believe me, when someone is conducting the type of research that we call "dual purpose"--research that could have malevolent or benign purpose--we (the scientific community) watch VERY closely.