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41 Science Professionals Decry Harms and Mistrust Caused By COVID Lab Leak Claim

In 1999 Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik co-authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Now a business columnist for the Times, this week he covers new pushback on the COVID lab leak claim: Here's an indisputable fact about the theory that COVID originated in a laboratory: Most Americans be...

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. [O]ne 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. 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... What's notable about the Virology paper is that it represents a comprehensive and long-overdue pushback by the scientific community against such behavior.

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