A research paper claiming to prove that the coronavirus was cooked up in a laboratory has been widely dismissed by mainstream scientists.
The paper, which was and hasn鈥檛 been peer reviewed, says that 鈥渦nusual features鈥� of the virus鈥檚 genome suggest 鈥渟ophisticated laboratory modification rather than natural evolution鈥�. The authors allege that the modification of one or more bat viruses was carried out in a Chinese government laboratory in Wuhan.
Experts poured scorn on the claim. The paper 鈥渄oes not provide any robust evidence of artificial manipulation and is highly speculative鈥�, said Gkikas Magiorkinis at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, in a statement.
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鈥淭his preprint report cannot be given any credibility in its current form,鈥� said Andrew Preston at the University of Bath, UK, in a statement. The claims in the paper are 鈥渦nsubstantiated鈥�, he added.
The paper was co-authored by Li-Meng Yan, a self-styled whistle-blower from Hong Kong whose current affiliation is the non-profit Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, both in New York. The foundation鈥檚 website says its mission is 鈥渢o expose corruption, obstruction, illegality, brutality, false imprisonment, excessive sentencing, harassment, and inhumanity pervasive in the political, legal, business and financial systems of China鈥�. It was co-founded by US President Donald Trump鈥檚 former chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
Yan did a series of media interviews in advance of the preprint being posted. She that last year she was a medical doctor and PhD student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) Medical Centre School of Public Health.
In December, she was assigned to a secret investigation of the new disease that we now know as covid-19, she said. She said that in the course of her investigation, she discovered that it was caused by an unnatural coronavirus created in a Chinese government laboratory in Wuhan. She said she fled Hong Kong for the US in April after the Chinese government tried to make her 鈥渄isappear鈥�.
HKU has confirmed that Yan was a post doctoral fellow and has since left the university. In a , it said that Yan did not conduct research into the coronavirus at HKU, and distanced itself from her comments.
