Li-Meng Yan

Since at least February 2020, conspiracy theories as to the origin of the virus had been circulated on cable news and social media, including the idea that it had been manufactured in a laboratory.[17] This was repeated by various US commentators.[18] This hypothesis had been declared unlikely by several scientists,[19][20] and a March 2020 article in Nature Medicine entitled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2" by five prominent microbiologists definitively stated that the virus had not been created in a lab.[21] Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said that the lab had never had such a virus, and the Nature Medicine article gives several reasons why the virus was likely to have arisen naturally. One reason given was that the RNA of an existing coronavirus is necessary to use as a "backbone" before genetic modifications, and there are no recorded viruses that could have been used as the backbone in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).[22] A co-author of the Nature Medicine article, University of Sydney biologist and virologist Edward Holmes published a statement in April 2020 that there was no evidence that the virus was manufactured in a lab, and that all evidence points towards its origin in an animal species. The RaTG13 virus held in the Wuhan lab came from a different province (Yunnan) from that where COVID-19 had first appeared, and "the level of genome sequence divergence between SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 is equivalent to an average of 50 years (and at least 20 years) of evolutionary change".[23]

Yan's co-authored September 14, 2020, 26-page preprint research paper, said that—based on genetic evidence—SARS-CoV-2 had not emerged naturally in a "spillover from animals", but had been produced in a laboratory.[8][10] The preprint—which did not undergo any peer review process—was posted to the Zenodo platform, an open-access repository where anyone can post their research.[24] According to the paper's abstract, "SARS-CoV-2 shows biological characteristics that are inconsistent with a naturally occurring, zoonotic virus" and it could have been created in a lab in approximately six months.[8] Yan said that "evidence of genetic engineering" has been 'censored' in "scientific journals".[10][25]

Yan's preprint was affiliated with the Rule of Law Society, a political organisation[11] founded by Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui.[lower-alpha 2][1][24][25] According to The Daily Beast, the Rule of Law Society had not previously published scientific or medical research.[24] Yan had previously appeared on Bannon's "War Room" podcast.[27][24][6]

Three other researchers were listed as co-authors of the September 14 preprint, but the South China Morning Post (SCMP) was unable to find any prior work from them.[27] According to CNN, a source said the three other researchers were Chinese and they used pseudonyms instead of their real names due to a fear of repercussions for their families in China.[6] The use of pseudonyms was not disclosed in the paper.[6] According to experts, it is highly unusual and generally discouraged for researchers to use pseudonyms due to a lack of transparency and accountability.[6]

A week after its release, the September 14 preprint had "been downloaded [from Zenodo] more than half of a million times and received more than 700,000 views".[11] In addition to citing many other unpublished pre-print papers, Yan's September 2020 pre-print cited online blogs and obscure web sites named "Nerd Has Power" and "GM Watch", an anti-genetically modified food website.[6][28]

In an October 8 Zenodo preprint, Yan and three PhD co-authors claimed SARS-CoV-2 was an "unrestricted bioweapon" made by military research laboratories "under the control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government." The paper alleged "large-scale, organized scientific fraud" and criticized what they described as "the degree of corruption in the fields of academic research and public health", calling for individuals and organizations "who knowingly and collaboratively facilitated the CCP's misinformation campaign and misled the world" to be "held accountable". The paper supported an investigation of the WHO, scientific journals, funding agencies, and other bodies accused of contributing to the cover-up.[9]

Yan, along with three colleagues, co-authored the November 2020 preprint "CNN Used Lies and Misinformation to Muddle the Water on the Origin of SARS-CoV-2", accusing CNN of lying in their coverage of her initial papers.[29] In January 2021, Yan co-authored "Call for the WHO Team to Investigate the Pangolin Coronaviruses and the RmYN02 Bat Coronavirus", referring to the WHO's investigation into the origins of COVID-19.[30]

Prior to the posting of the September 14 preprint, Yan had participated in a number of interviews, including with Fox News on July 10, in which she said that she had access to information about human-to-human transmission early on because of her work on a WHO project at Hong Kong University (HKU) in December 2019.[12] A July 11, 2020 official online statement issued by HKU, confirmed that Yan had been a post-doctoral fellow at HKU, however, her "report does not accord with the key facts as we understand them. Specifically, Dr. Yan never conducted any research on human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus at HKU during December 2019 and January 2020, her central assertion of the said interview. We further observe that what she might have emphasised in the reported interview has no scientific basis but resembles hearsay."[31] HKU's July 11 statement did not mention when and why Yan left the university.[32] According to the SCMP, the director of HKU's School of Public Health, Keiji Fukuda, said in an internal memo to staff that none of the researchers named by Yan were involved in any cover-up or "secret research".[32]

Immediately after the Zenodo preprint was posted, prominent virologists began to post rebuttals on Twitter, in what National Geographic described as a "firestorm".[10] Immunologist Kristian G. Andersen, a specialist in communicable diseases and genomics for Scripps Research and co-author of the March 2020 article in Nature Medicine (see above),[21] and Yujia Alina Chan, a postdoctoral researcher, both said the paper left out recent data related to coronavirus in pangolins and bats.[28]

On September 15, Andersen said in a tweet that the "Yan Report" was "non-scientific", "false", and had ignored "data disproving their hypotheses." He said that it was "poppycock dressed up as 'science'", that used "technical language" impossible for non-experts to decode.[28] The University of Glasgow's David Robertson said that it "just cherry-picked a couple of examples, excluded evidence, and came up with a ridiculous scenario."[10] The virologists raised concerns that Yan's report ignored the large body of published scientific literature on coronaviruses in general and the origins of SARS-CoV-2 in particular. The report also "whipped up wild conspiracy theories" and wrongly accused scientists of "plotting with conspirators."[10]

In their September 21, 2020 published response to Yan's preprint, four authors from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said that her paper had not been submitted to a scientific peer-reviewed publication.[4] They said that, "Yan et al refer to an extensive scientific literature providing "genomic, structural, and literature evidence" to counter the prevailing theory in the scientific community that the origin of SARS-CoV-2 is a natural zoonosis, emerging from animals, but they do not cite any references to support their claim—a crucial basic practice for any researcher."[4]

As of early October, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) project called Rapid reviews: Covid-19 (RR:C19), which seeks out preprint papers and reviews them in an attempt to "prevent the dissemination of false or misleading scientific news"[33] although it is "not traditional peer review"[34] has issued four evaluations of Yan's preprint. All four reviewers rated the preprint as "Misleading" on the project's "Strength of Evidence Scale," the lowest-strength rating which is accompanied by the statement "serious flaws and errors in the methods and data render the study conclusions misinformative. The results and conclusions of the ideal study are at least as likely to conclude the opposite of its results and conclusions than agree. Decision-makers should not consider this evidence in any decision."'[35][36][37][38]

Reviewers for the MIT Rapid Reviews: Covid-19 project who analyzed Yan's study issued the following statement jointly:

Given the far-reaching implications of the "Yan Report," RR:C19 sought out peer reviews from world-renowned experts in virology, molecular biology, structural biology, computational biology, vaccine development, and medicine. Collectively, reviewers have debunked the authors' claims that: ⑴ bat coronaviruses ZC45 or ZXC21 were used as a background strain to engineer SARS-CoV-2, ⑵ the presence of restriction sites flanking the RBD suggest prior screening for a virus targeting the human ACE2 receptor, and ⑶ the furin-like cleavage site is unnatural and provides evidence of engineering. In all three cases, the reviewers provide counter-arguments based on peer-reviewed literature and long-established foundational knowledge that directly refute the claims put forth by Yan et al. There was a general consensus that the study's claims were better explained by potential political motivations rather than scientific integrity. The peer reviewers arrived at these common opinions independently, further strengthening the credibility of the peer reviews.[5]

According to Newsweek, several experts in evolutionary biology and infectious disease, including Jonathan Eisen and Carl Bergstrom, said the paper did not include new information, contained multiple unsubstantiated claims and had a weak scientific case.[25] Columbia University virologist Angela Rasmussen said the paper was "basically all circumstantial and some of it is entirely fictional".[24] For example the paper asserts that SARS-CoV-2 has a "unique" furin cleavage site in its protein structure "completely absent in this particular class of coronaviruses found in nature"; however Rasmussen says that many coronaviruses, including the 2012 MERS coronavirus, have these sites and that hence "This proves exactly nothing."[1][8] Andrew Preston, a biologist at the University of Bath, said the “preprint report cannot be given any credibility in its current form”.[11]

Yan's paper also stated that two strains of bat coronaviruses discovered in China, ZC45 and ZXC21, were "suspiciously" similar to SARS-CoV-2 and these strains could have been used as a template for a deadlier virus. The two strains differed by approximately 3,500 nucleotide base pairs. Several virologists, including Rasmussen, said it would be either inefficient or impossible to engineer a virus where 10% of its genome would have to be replaced.[10] Craig Wilen, at the Yale School of Medicine, said that this kind of genome selection is nearly impossible.[11]

For an article published on October 21, 2020, CNN had interviewed six experts from different institutions, including Rasmussen, University of Michigan's Anna K. Mapp, and Georgetown University's Daniel R. Lucey. All of them said that the methodology Yan had used was "flawed". They described the pre-print as "junk science", "leaps of logic" and "window dressing". Rasmussen said the report is deceptive and was written to spread "political propaganda", and that while her theories could not be completely ruled out, The "extraordinary claim...[shouldn't be made without]...extraordinary evidence", and that she had not supplied credible evidence.[6]