Key Scientists Demand Retraction of COVID Paper Fauci Praised – Watch
A group of scientists is demanding the full retraction of a paper that was published in the journal Nature Medicine. It downplayed the lab leak theory and was praised by Dr. Anthony Fauci as evidence that COVID-19 originated naturally.
The paper, which was published in January 2020, claimed to have found evidence that the virus originated in bats and then jumped to humans through an intermediary animal. However, the scientists who are calling for the retraction of the paper say that the evidence is not convincing and that the paper is riddled with errors.
“The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published in March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine, declared that COVID did not come from a lab despite private doubts from the authors that a lab leak was possible, and even “likely.”
“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” wrote the five prominent scientists who authored the paper. “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
A total of 47 scientists and other STEM professionals signed an open letter to Nature Medicine journal calling for the paper to be retracted.
“We, as STEM and STEM-policy professionals, call upon Nature Medicine to publish an expression of editorial concern for the paper and to begin a process of withdrawal or retraction of the paper,” the signers wrote.
The paper is “scientific fraud,” declared one of the signers, Richard H. Ebright, the Board of Governors professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University.
The paper “falsely claimed science showed COVID-19 did not have a lab origin,” Ebright wrote in a tweet. “Newly released messages from the authors show they did not believe the conclusions of the paper and show the paper is the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct.”
The scientists also say that the paper’s authors made a number of other errors, including failing to properly sequence the bat coronavirus and failing to consider other possible sources of COVID-19, such as a laboratory leak.
“This paper is a mess,” said one of the scientists who is calling for the retraction of the paper. “It is full of errors and it does not provide any convincing evidence that COVID-19 originated naturally.”
The 2020 "Proximal Origin" paper falsely claimed science showed COVID-19 did not have a lab origin. Newly released messages from the authors show they did not believe the conclusions of the paper and show the paper is the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct.… pic.twitter.com/61daITfmA9
— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) July 22, 2023
