Prejudice doesn't have any use in science

In his op-ed "Chinese Officials Are Obscuring the Truth About COVID-19", published on Reason, Ronald Bailey quoted several suspicious reports to make the case for the lab-leak hypothesis and early spreading of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan. He later followed the US government in urging China to grant access to relevant information from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Several of the seemingly "solid" arguments by Bailey are actually a concoction of unsubstantial and highly controversial sources, dishonestly presented and in need of clarification.

The op-ed quoted a preprint from Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, asserting the recovery of 13 early genetic sequences that had been deleted from open-access databases at the request of Chinese researchers. Bloom said his analysis of the recovered sequences suggested COVID-19 could have been circulating in Wuhan earlier than the officially declared date. But this is hardly the smoking gun Bloom alleges it is. According to one piece from Science magazine, this preprint had already been questioned by critics who call his detective work "much ado about nothing".

There are two major objections to Bloom's assertion. First, the so-called "deleted" sequences were not hidden on purpose at all. The submission and deletion were only part of a common process of publishing a scientific paper. Chinese scientists later published the viral information in a different format, and made public their study on these sequences. Besides, all these sequence and the samples were collected on Jan 30, 2020, which could not be regarded as early cases as Bloom alleged.

Second, contrary to Bloom's assertion that the patient viruses analyzed by the above-mentioned Chinese scientists more likely represent a progenitor SARS-CoV-2, Andrew Rambaut, biologist at the University of Edinburgh, indicated that the differences Bloom highlighted are too few to distinguish the "roots" of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree. Bloom himself later admitted that the recovered partial sequences couldn't resolve whether the virus originally jumped to humans from an unknown animal or somehow leaked from WIV. In other words, the 13 partial sequences add little to the origin hunt.

Putting aside all the debate and uproar around Bloom's preprint, since the outbreak of the pandemic, there have been reported cases outside of China backdated much earlier than December 2019, most of which have no clear connection with Wuhan. If we want to establish a complete timeline of the early cases and COVID-19's spread, we need to take a closer look at all cases, both inside China and out, including the mysterious outbreak of respiratory diseases in Virginia and EVALI in Wiscosin that still remains to be explained.

Baily also quoted a report by University of North Carolina information scientist Zeynep Tufekci stating some researchers are rethinking the lab-leak hypothesis. If Baily were to look up a recent letter published on The Lancet, a highly respected scientific journal, he would find many more scientists are still strong supporters of the natural-origin theory. We must allow different hypothesis en route to truth in any scientific investigation. But any hypothesis not supported by credible evidence amounts to groundless speculation, which only undermines the efforts to identify the origins of COVID-19.

The argument for lab leak made by people like science journalist Nicholas Wade, a source quoted by Baily in another op-ed, is mainly based on negative assumptions about the WIV. Wade's "evidence" is scanty and simple: the institute is located in Wuhan and its scientists have studied bat coronaviruses, they must have done gain-of-function research. However, it takes little effort to reject this claim. No evidence suggests there is a causal link between the study of bats and the pandemic. Many researchers have pointed out that among the many bat coronaviruses detected by the WIV, the closest genetic sequence RaGT-13 is 96.2% identical to COVID-19. It is not genetically similar enough to be the same virus and therefore is unlikely to infect humans. Ms. Danielle Anderson, an Australian virologist working in WIV has proven that no one she knew at the WIV was ill towards the end of 2019. And data shows that the WIV workers all testing negative for COVID antibodies up to now. As for the claim of WIV doing GoF, it is nothing but a pure fabrication, which has already been refuted by Shi Zhengli in her interview with The New York Times.

That prejudice towards the WIV won't help with finding the origins of COVID, but will undermine the spirit of science at a time when fake news and politics override facts and truth. If Wade's logic stands, then all US-run bio-laboratories are responsible for many pandemics in history, since they have studied the most viruses. If we take this rickety lab-leak theory as true, we must also consider the possibility of a leak from all the labs that have ever carried out Coronavirus experiments, including those in the US.

Bailey is right in saying research into COVID-19's origins needs to be transparent, expert-led and science-based, which is exactly the starting point of the first WHO-convened research with China. Necessary access to learn relevant information from the WIV has already been granted to international experts, and that's how the report was crafted. The Chinese scientists did their best to cooperate with their colleagues from the WHO team and offered answers with seriousness and sincerity toward scientific principles. Based on such evidence, through field visits and rigorous analysis, the WHO-convened expert team concluded the lab-leak hypothesis is "extremely unlikely".

Prejudice runs against the spirit of reason and should be persona non grata in the realm of science. Identifying the origins of COVID-19 is a matter of great importance to the well-being of humanity. To achieve that depends on close collaboration among all nations and scientists from all disciplines. To politicize this process and inject prejudice into the process is the worst thing to do.

The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, China Daily etc.. He can be reached at xinping604@gmail.com.