Joe Pinkstone, Sarah Newey - Yesterday - The Telegraph
A study claiming Covid was made in a lab has ignited a furious row, as the researchers behind it have been accused of "fixing" their results by other scientists.
A pre-print study shared widely online purported to have found evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, was the result of human intervention.
While the findings were lauded by some scientists as "the strongest piece of evidence to date" that Covid came from a lab, others have condemned the paper as "confected nonsense".
The authors of the paper claim to have found evidence that SARS-CoV-2 originated from a lab experiment which cloned a coronavirus, moved around chunks of DNA and rearranged them in a specific order, thus producing the Covid virus.
Alex Washburne, one of the authors, said: "We examined whether SARS-CoV-2 was synthesised in a lab. We studied a common method for synthesising [coronaviruses] in the lab.
"This method was thought to not leave a fingerprint. We found the fingerprint. That fingerprint is in the SARS-CoV-2 genome."
Viscount Matt Ridley, who co-authored a book on the origin of the coronavirus, called the new work a "hugely important study".
"Evidence that strongly suggests SARS-CoV-2 was engineered may have been hiding in plain sight all along," he said.
Prof Francois Balloux, the director of the UCL Genetics Institute, said it was "the strongest piece of evidence to date against a simple scenario of strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2".
'Highly misleading'
But prominent academics have rubbished the findings, claiming it was a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and the findings are "highly misleading".
Critics say the signals the authors claim to be evidence of a lab origin are not a smoking gun because these genetic fingerprints are naturally found in many viruses, including the common cold.
Prof Stuart Neil, a professor of virology at King’s College London (KCL), accused the team of "stacking the deck" by cherry-picking their analysis and turning their paper into a "self-fulfilling prophecy".
Related video: International scientific experts warn the world still hasn't dealt with the main cause of the COVID pandemic, animal to human transmission
"It is confected nonsense put out to create a splash of controversy and become a talking point in the US and UK media," he told The Telegraph.
Prof David Robertson, head of viral genomics at the Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow, said paper was "nonsense" and "highly misleading".
'Poppycock dressed up as science'
Prof Kristian Andersen, evolutionary biologist and professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the Scripps Research Institute, called the work "nothing more than poppycock dressed up as science".
"In plain language - this is uninformed nonsense and it’s simply not worth engaging with this b*******," Prof Anderson said.
The academic also said the paper is "so deeply flawed that it wouldn’t pass kindergarten molecular biology".
The pre-print claims to have found telltale signs that the coronavirus was sliced up in a lab and stitched back together again, leaving behind "a very subtle but identifiable fingerprint".
The team believe they have spotted "sticky ends" on the end of DNA fragments that have been moved around using enzymes.
'It makes a caricature of the whole situation'
But Dr David LV Bauer, a group leader at The Francis Crick Institute and expert in RNA virus replication, said this is impossible.
"Imagine that you've seen a train pulling into a station. They are identifying that they see the little couplers linking the carriages together. That’s what they claim to see," he told the Telegraph.
"What they've misunderstood is that the Golden Gate system is like the fancy new trains on the Elizabeth Line which don't have any visible couplers."
The analysis of the paper is also guilty of selective data interpretation, according to Dr Bauer, who says the authors "fixed" various aspects deliberately to only get the results they wanted and the findings will be unlikely to pass through peer-review.
"The result of the analysis has been constrained in such a way that they only ever see an outcome that they want and also there are all the red flags about how they don't understand how this actually works," he told The Telegraph.
"The problem with this kind of stuff is that it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether [Covid] came from a lab, whether it was tracked in or out on somebody's shoe or whether it was engineered. These are perfectly legitimate questions to ask.
"But at the end of the day when you then put out this kind of stuff it just makes a caricature of the whole situation. It makes it really difficult to have any kind of reasonable discourse."
'Tinfoil hat bonkers'
Dr Benjamin Neuman, professor of biology at Texas A&M University, said the study "is the molecular equivalent of phrenology or numerology" and "tinfoil hat bonkers".
"It's about as illuminating an approach as converting the genome to digits, adding up the digits, and comparing that to the 'number of the Beast'," he said.
"The neatest thing is - look at the affiliations. We have someone who works at a gynaecology clinic, a business management efficiency analyst, and an Alzheimer's researcher. As far as I can tell, none of these has ever worked with a virus before now, or studied virology, or been on a virology paper of any kind."
Scientists Trace Earliest Cases of COVID-19 to Market in Wuhan, China
Jul 26, 2022
An international team of 18 researchers, including Stephen Goldstein, PhD, University of Utah Health, have determined that the earliest cases of COVID-19 in humans arose at a wholesale fish market in Wuhan China in December, 2019. Goldstein explains and answers questions about the study.
How the pandemic has impacted the economy and society
| COVID-19 Special
Jul 9, 2022
DW News
COVID is a threat to many people's livelihoods. We meet a German fire artist who relocated to Spain to find work. Plus: What can we learn from Portugal's experience with the omicron subvariant BA.5? And South Africa’s homeless numbers have soared.
Complexity of Pandemics N°1 – Securing Human, Animal and Planetary Health
Streamed live on Jul 5, 2022
World Health Organization (WHO)
Complexity of Pandemics is the speaker series of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. It takes place quarterly and seeks to highlight the complex multidisciplinary landscape of preventing, predicting, preparing for, and responding to epidemics and pandemics.
This first session of the speaker series – Complexity of Pandemics N°1 – Securing Human, Animal and Planetary Health – was broadcast live from Berlin, Germany on 5 July 2022.
Visit the WHO Pandemic Hub online:
WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence:
“Complexity of Pandemics” speaker series:
Information on this event
No comments:
Post a Comment