The paper that helped top U.S. officials promote the theory that COVID-19 has a natural origin should be retracted in light of new messages showing that at least one author held views contradicting the paper’s conclusion, a group of scientists says.
Nature Medicine published “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” on March 17, 2020. Kristian Andersen and the other authors claimed that their analyses “clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” adding later, “We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”
But in private, Mr. Andersen said he was not sure, as newly disclosed messages show.
“I’m not fully convinced that no culture was involved,” Mr. Andersen wrote on Slack to the other authors on April 16, 2020. “I’m worried that we can’t fully disprove culture,” he also said, adding that “we also can’t fully rule out engineering.”
Culturing experiments and engineering are done in a lab.
That message was part of a tranche that shows the authors “did not believe the core conclusions of the paper at the time it was written, at the time it was submitted for publication, and at the time it was published,” Richard Ebright, a chemistry and chemical biology professor at Rutgers University, and other scientists wrote in an open letter to Nature Medicine.
“The authors’ statements show that the paper was, and is, a product of scientific misconduct. It is imperative that this misleading and damaging product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature,” the group added, calling for a retraction.
Nature Medicine did not respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Joao Monteiro, its chief editor, told The Telegraph that the paper would not be retracted.
“When it comes to expressing opinions, it is our position that it is the authors’ prerogative to balance their views in a way that reflects the body of robust scientific knowledge available at the time of publication, as well as the impact of their findings,” he said. “Neither previous out-of-context remarks by the authors nor disagreements with the authors’ stated views, are, on their own, grounds for retraction. We have therefore concluded that retraction is not warranted at this time.”
A query to Mr. Andersen returned an away message, as did an email to Andrew Rambaut, another author. An email to Dr. Ian Lipkin, a third author, returned a message saying he has limited access to email. Edward Holmes, a professor at the University of Sydney who helped author the paper, did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Andersen and Robert Garry, the fifth author listed, defended the paper in a recent congressional hearing.
Widespread Promotion of Paper
Dr. Monteiro was among the scientists and officials who promoted the paper as a definitive product.
“Let’s put conspiracy theories about the origin of #SARSCoV2 to rest and help to stop [the] spread of misinformation – great work from Kristian Andersen,” he wrote on Twitter on March 17, 2020, providing a link to the paper.
Mr. Andersen wrote in one of the messages that the group could not publish the paper on one website because that site only accepted original research. The paper “can’t go on there,” Mr. Andersen said prior to Nature Medicine accepting and publishing the paper.
Nature, another journal, rejected the paper after reviewers found it was “based on very limited, if any scientific evidence” and “unnecessarily speculative.” Clare Thomas, a Nature editor, told Mr. Andersen in an email that there were also concerns that the paper could “feed … the conspiracy theories.”
After that rejection, Mr. Andersen and his co-authors reshaped the paper to “make clearer that this does have a natural origin,” Mr. Andersen told Dr. Monteiro in one message.
Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health at the time; Dr. Anthony Fauci, another top U.S. official; and Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust at the time, were among the officials to promote the paper.
Dr. Fauci hyped the paper from the White House after a reporter asked about concerns the virus came from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, where the first COVID-19 cases were detected.
“There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human,” Dr. Fauci said, adding that he could not remember who authored the paper.
Emails made public since then show Mr. Andersen described the paper as being “prompted” by Drs. Fauci and Collins, among others. Other messages show him and co-authors describing pressure from “higher ups” to get the paper released.
Mr. Farrar, now the World Health Organization’s chief scientist, made multiple edits to the paper, the messages show, including changing it from saying it was “unlikely” that the virus came from a lab to “improbable,” but he was not listed as a co-author.
“Authors: Kristian, me, Bob, Andrew. You? Or do you want to be neutral?” Mr. Holmes wrote to Mr. Farrar. “I will be neutral,” Mr. Farrar replied.
Robert Garry, another author, later said he thought Mr. Farrar should be listed as an author. Mr. Holmes agreed but noted that Mr. Farrar had declined.
“That’s a good choice for him,” Mr. Garry wrote.