Hugely influential paper that leaked Covid lab theory months after pandemic should be retracted as ‘misleading’, coalition of experts demand

Dozens of scientists have today demanded the retraction of an influential paper credited with dismissing the idea that Covid originated in a lab.

Authors of ‘Proximal Origin’, published days before Britain’s first lockdown, wrote: ‘We do not believe any lab-based scenario is plausible.’

But a coalition of experts has now demanded it be removed, calling it “misleading” and “damaging.”

The plea comes after secret messages between the authors – which cast doubt on their own beliefs – were unearthed.

One of the researchers behind the Nature Medicine article, Dr. Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist, believed an escape from the lab was “highly likely.”

Yet they publicly supported the natural origin theory for “political” reasons, leaked reports revealed.

The authors of the piece also feared that the debt to the Chinese laboratory would lead to a “s***show” and threaten future funding for virus manipulation research.

Proximal Origins was touted by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci in the early months of the global pandemic, amid fierce debate over its origins.

At the time, many virologists believed the virus arose naturally from an animal-to-human spillover at a wet market in central Wuhan.

While many leading experts still believe it was the cause, the consensus on how the pandemic began three years ago is slowly shifting.

Evidence that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is inconclusive, leading experts to fear the truth behind Covid’s origins may never be discovered.

In a letter sent to Nature Medicine yesterday, 34 scientists called for the article to be retracted.

Signatories include Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a longtime critic of dangerous lab research on pathogens.

The coalition stated: “The paper played an influential role – even the central role – in conveying the false narrative that science has established that SARS-CoV-2 entered humans through natural spillover, not research-related spillover.”

The signatories then cited recent U.S. Congressional hearings that showed that the paper’s authors themselves did not believe the paper’s core conclusion.

“The authors’ statements indicate that the article was and is a product of scientific misconduct,” the letter read.

They added, “It is imperative that this misleading and harmful product of scientific misconduct be removed from the scientific literature.”

Slack messages obtained by MailOnline show that Dr. Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist, told colleagues that the idea of ​​a lab leak was “not a fringe theory” and was, in fact, “highly likely” the origin of the pandemic.

Separate, publicly available communications between the virologist and his co-authors show how the group supported the natural origin theory for “political” reasons and feared it would cause a “s***show” and threaten the future if the blame would be placed on the Chinese laboratory. funding research into virus manipulation.

Critics have claimed the posts as evidence that the authors worked to censor debate over the origins of the pandemic.

But the scientists involved have said they changed their minds between sending the messages and writing the paper.

Dr. Andersen and the other scientists involved in the March 17, 2020 publication of the article “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” were asked to testify before the US House Oversight Select Subcommittee earlier this month.

But only Dr. Andersen and co-author Dr. Robert Garry, a respected microbiologist who works at Tulane University in New Orleans, did so.

House Republicans grilled the two doctors, citing the newly revealed communication between researchers in early 2020 as evidence of a cover-up — something the scientists strongly refuted.

Some posts are published as part of a government report released early for the hearing.

In other reports, Dr Andersen admitted he found it “strange” that Covid had emerged in Wuhan, a city hundreds of miles from rural China where related coronaviruses circulate.

Other posts shown in the cropped screenshots in the report show that another author, Dr Andrew Rambaut, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh, feared blaming China for the ‘even accidental release’ of the virus .

Another author of Proximal Origins also distanced himself from the hard conclusions earlier this year.

Dr. Garry admitted to the BBC last month that investigators went ‘too far’ in the paper.

He said the paper’s closing statement was never intended to dismiss all kinds of possible lab leaks, but only an intentional one.

In recent months, a number of other revelations have emerged about a possible laboratory leak in China that is at the root of the Covid pandemic.

It was revealed in June that China’s own “bat woman” Dr Shi Zhengli, a leading virologist at WIV, at one point feared that Covid might have leaked from her secret lab.

Other insiders central to Beijing’s response to the pandemic have also admitted that the country has been quietly exploring the possibility of the virus emerging from one of its labs.

Such investigations took place despite President Xi Jinping’s communist government repeatedly denying the hypothesis, labeling it a smear campaign by “anti-Chinese” forces and insisting that the virus emerged naturally instead.

Nature Medicine was contacted for comment.