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Coronavirus pandemic
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Scientists said claims about China creating the coronavirus were misleading. They went viral anyway.

The spread of the unverified assertions by Chinese scholar Li-Meng Yan, widely dismissed as “flawed,” show how vulnerable scientific sites are to misuse and misunderstanding.

By
February 12, 2021 at 6:48 p.m. EST
Virologist Li-Meng Yan's assertion that China created the coronavirus in a lab in Wuhan was quickly challenged by major scientific journals. (Jackie Molloy for The Washington Post)

Scientists from Johns Hopkins, Columbia and other leading American universities moved with rare speed when a Chinese virologist, Li-Meng Yan, published an explosive paper in September claiming that China had created the deadly coronavirus in a research lab.

The paper, the American scientists concluded, was deeply flawed. And a new online journal from MIT Press — created specifically to vet claims related to SARS-CoV-2 — reported Yan’s claims were “at times baseless and are not supported by the data” 10 days after she posted them.