Scientists outraged over ‘laboratory-made Covid’ claims

Viscount Matt Ridley, who co-authored a book on the origins of coronaviruses, called the new work “a very important study.”

“Evidence strongly suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 was engineered may have been lurking in plain sight all this time.

Professor François Ballou, director of the UCL Institute of Genetics, said this was “the strongest evidence to date against the simplistic scenario of a strict zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2.”

“Very misleading”

However, a prominent scholar has dismissed the findings, claiming that it was a “self-fulfilling prophecy” and that the results were “extremely misleading.”

Critics say these genetic fingerprints are naturally found on many viruses, including the common cold, so the signal the authors claim is evidence of a laboratory origin isn’t the definitive gun.

Professor Stuart Neal, professor of virology at King’s College London (KCL), accused the team of being picky about their analysis and “building up the deck” by turning papers into “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“It’s nonsense put out to spark controversy and be controversial in the US and UK media,” he told The Telegraph.

Professor David Robertson, head of viral genomics at the University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research, said the paper was “nonsense” and “extremely misleading”.

“Poppycock Disguised as Science”

Professor Christian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist and professor in the Scripps Institute’s Department of Immunology and Microbiology, called the study “no more than a poppy disguised as science.”

“In plain language, this is ignorant nonsense and you don’t deserve to get involved with this shit,” Professor Anderson said.

The scholar also said that the paper was “severely flawed to the extent that it could not pass kindergarten molecular biology”.

The preprint claims to have found telltale signs that the coronavirus was sliced ​​and re-stitched in the lab, leaving “a very subtle but identifiable fingerprint.”

The team believes they have found ‘sticky ends’ at the ends of DNA fragments that have been enzymatically moved.

“It caricatures the whole situation.”

But Dr. David LV Bauer, group leader at the Francis Crick Institute and an expert on RNA virus replication, says this is not possible.

“Imagine seeing a train stop at a station. I’m making a claim,” he told The Telegraph.

“What they misunderstand is that the Golden Gate system is like a luxury new Elizabeth Line train without visible couplers.”

According to Dr. Bauer, the paper’s analysis was also guilty of selective data interpretation, in which the authors intentionally “corrected” various aspects to obtain only the desired results, and the findings were not peer-reviewed. said to be unlikely to pass.

“There are all red flags about the analysis being limited to seeing only the results they want and not understanding how this actually works,” he told The Telegraph. told to

“The problem with this kind of thing is [Covid] It came from a lab, whether it was designed or not, whether tracked in someone’s shoes or not. These are perfectly valid questions to ask.

“But at the end of the day, putting out this sort of thing just paints a caricature of the whole situation. It’s very difficult to make a rational discourse.”

“Tinfoil Hat Bonkers”

Dr. Benjamin Neumann, a professor of biology at Texas A&M University, said the study was “molecularly equivalent to phrenology or numerology” and was a “tinfoil hat bonkers.”

“This is as revealing an approach as converting the genome to numbers, summing the numbers, and comparing it to the ‘number of the beast,'” he said.

“The most amazing thing is look at the affiliations. There are people who work in gynecology clinics, business management efficiency analysts, Alzheimer’s disease researchers. As far as I know, anyone who has ever dealt with the virus. No, or studied virology or appeared in any kind of virology paper.”