A significant inquiry that has persisted regarding SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen responsible for COVID-19, pertains to its origins. The genesis of most human-infecting viruses is often characterized by lengthy and compelling narratives, involving transmissions across various animal species before ultimately impacting human populations and causing morbidity.
Conversely, the prevailing hypothesis suggests that COVID-19 originated in a laboratory setting, whether through an intentional breach or a catastrophic error. Proponents of this theory contend that the circumstantial evidence is too substantial to disregard, yet this line of reasoning lacks fundamental coherence. There is no compelling justification to postulate that COVID-19 must be of artificial laboratory creation.
Certainly, political considerations might foster distrust toward the Chinese government, but this provides a tenuous foundation for scientific speculation. As humans, when presented with binary possibilities, we tend to perceive them as possessing roughly equal probabilities. Consequently, hearing phrases like “lab leak or natural origin” can lead to the unfounded assumption of their equivalence, despite the logical incongruity.
Extensive scientific evidence accumulated over decades unequivocally demonstrates that novel diseases frequently transfer from animal reservoirs to human hosts. Indeed, in the last few decades alone, there are numerous documented instances where entirely new infectious agents have successfully transitioned from non-human primates or other animals to humans.
This phenomenon has been observed on two occasions in recent history with coronaviruses bearing similarities to SARS-CoV-2, underscoring the unsurprising nature of identifying a novel pathogen of probable zoonotic origin.
This confluence of factors is precisely why the scientific community largely adheres to the “default assumption” that the virus emerged through natural processes – a common occurrence in the history of infectious diseases.
Despite this established scientific consensus, current headlines are vociferously proclaiming that scientists have definitively “proven” COVID-19 to be bioengineered in a laboratory. This assertion is made despite no demonstrable increase in its likelihood compared to even July 2020. It begs the question: what is driving this narrative?
The Scientific Scrutiny
The publication forming the basis of these sensational headlines appears to be a perspective piece authored by three individuals, slated for forthcoming publication in the journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery. This journal, established in August 2020, is relatively new, making its academic standing and review processes somewhat difficult to ascertain, notwithstanding its affiliation with a reputable publishing house.
The paper itself advances highly contentious claims. The authors are reportedly quoted as asserting the discovery of “unique fingerprints” within the virus that could only have arisen from a laboratory environment.
Furthermore, the research posits that China has been complicit in the deliberate destruction of data that might corroborate this hypothesis – a remarkably bold assertion for inclusion in a peer-reviewed academic manuscript.
However, its status as a formally “published” work is nuanced. Typically, reports concerning coronavirus research are accompanied by accessible scientific papers that can be independently examined.
In the contemporary academic landscape, while peer review is not always a prerequisite—with preprint servers now serving as a primary channel for rapid dissemination of urgent findings—at the very least, the underlying scientific methodology can be scrutinized.
In this particular instance, however, the research remains inaccessible for analysis, as it has neither undergone formal peer review nor been uploaded to a preprint repository. Reports from the Daily Mail, which initially broke the story, indicate that the findings will not be publicly available for several more days. As of this writing, it is not featured on the journal’s official website.
Nevertheless, the Daily Mail article includes a noteworthy quotation from the authors, who claim to have possessed this data “for a year” but were allegedly disregarded by both academic colleagues and prominent scientific journals. They further state that their new paper represents an elaboration and expansion upon their initial findings. Crucially, through the investigative efforts of Dr. David Gorski, the original manuscript has become accessible for review.
The initial publication. (Minerva)
What insights does this preliminary paper offer?
Logical Fallacies and Evidentiary Weaknesses
The initial observation regarding this paper is its profoundly unconventional nature. The authors contend that their argument furnishes adequate evidence to “reverse the burden of proof,” a tenet fundamentally at odds with established principles of logical argumentation.
In reality, the paper does not purport to definitively establish that COVID-19 was synthesized in a laboratory. Instead, it merely presents this hypothesis and then asserts that others are obligated to refute it, characterizing the theory as exceptionally “parsimonious.”
This approach is demonstrably unscientific.
It bears resemblance to asserting, “My explanation for the existence of magic is so compelling that YOU are responsible for proving it incorrect.” This is particularly striking when such a claim garners global attention, in contrast to less popular personal blogs discussing fictional worlds.
Moreover, the paper’s arguments appear to falter upon even superficial examination. While this is not my specific area of expertise, numerous scientists on social media platforms have systematically deconstructed the claims presented within the document, revealing what appear to be fundamental methodological errors.
Indeed, some of the very quotes attributed to the authors in the Daily Mail appear demonstrably inaccurate.
The authors articulate that, “The laws of physics preclude the existence of four consecutive positively charged amino acids. This configuration can only be achieved through artificial synthesis.” However, as numerous scientists on Twitter have demonstrated, approximately one-third of all human proteins exhibit sequences of four or more consecutive positively charged amino acids.
I wrote an 18-line python script that determined there are 3996 human proteins (out of ~20000) with one or more instances of 4-positively-charged-residues-in-a-row (total of 5654 instances). Human sequences from
Here is an example. https://t.co/oEDne55J8w pic.twitter.com/RH8o1CukYC
— Roland Dunbrack 🏳️🌈 @rolanddunbrack.bsky.social (@RolandDunbrack) May 30, 2021
Upon a thorough examination of the research paper’s arguments, the situation becomes even more perplexing. After detailing five perceived anomalies in the virus’s presentation, the authors suggest that China is withholding evidence pertaining to a potential laboratory origin, yet they provide no empirical substantiation for this assertion.
Subsequently, the authors propose a detailed hypothesis regarding the potential creation of SARS-CoV-2 by Chinese scientists. This involves recounting the narrative of a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, characterizing their approach as a “forensic” examination.
However, on closer scrutiny, this appears to be a collection of scientific experiments focused on studying coronaviruses. The authors have constructed a narrative suggesting these activities culminated in the pandemic. It’s important to note that extensive research into coronaviruses has been ongoing, particularly following the outbreaks of SARS and MERS. Therefore, the involvement of scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in such research is hardly surprising.
While it is conceivable that the authors possess substantial new findings in their unpublished work, their stated reliance on the prior publication makes this scenario improbable. This “study” merely reflects the authors’ inclination towards a laboratory origin theory, but the contention of three individuals does not constitute compelling evidence.
What is the current understanding of this matter?
Uncertainty
As is characteristic of many aspects of the global pandemic, a definitive conclusion remains elusive. It is a well-established fact that novel diseases frequently emerge from animal sources, and this zoonotic origin is considered highly probable in the case of COVID-19.
Nevertheless, as a significant number of scientific experts have pointed out, the possibility of SARS-CoV-2 originating from a laboratory leak cannot be entirely dismissed. Although the initial report from the World Health Organization characterized this scenario as “extremely unlikely,” that investigation was not designed to refute the lab leak hypothesis. Furthermore, a recent communication from a group of distinguished scientists indicates that the initial report is not conclusive on its own.
Conversely, the evidence presented in the WHO report is not without value. For instance, there is an absence of evidence indicating that individuals at the Wuhan Institute of Virology possessed antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 prior to the outbreak, which would be expected if the pathogen had escaped containment within the laboratory.
Despite these points, the WHO investigation does not provide sufficient evidence to definitively rule out the possibility of a laboratory origin for COVID-19, leaving us in an ambiguous situation.
On one side of the spectrum, naturally occurring novel pathogens emerge with regularity, and it is not unexpected that laboratories dedicated to their study would be proximate to their eventual outbreak sites. Global health authorities have been forecasting such a scenario for decades, anticipating that precisely this would occur. On the other side, the certainty that the virus did not escape from a laboratory remains unestablished, thus rendering both hypotheses plausible at this time.
The critical consideration, however, is that these possibilities are not equally probable. Zoonotic spillover events are commonplace, whereas a pandemic caused by a novel pathogen engineered in a laboratory would represent an unprecedented global event.
Furthermore, a significant portion of the evidence presented to support the lab leak theory is notably weak. The most recent publication exemplifies a pattern of recent claims; one such instance involved the Wall Street Journal reporting that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology sought medical attention for flu-like symptoms in November 2019.
This might seem like definitive evidence of a COVID-19 lab leak!
However, in China, the majority of primary healthcare services are delivered through hospitals, which also provide documentation for absences due to common illnesses. Consequently, three individuals seeking medical care at a hospital could simply represent a typical flu season and carry no sinister implications.
This detail was acknowledged in the Wall Street Journal article, but its inclusion towards the end of the report meant that the limited evidentiary value of these hospital visits was overshadowed by the overall narrative.
This highlights a prevalent issue in discussions concerning the potential laboratory origin of COVID-19: the discourse is so heavily politicized that the factual evidence often takes a backseat. A popular notion among proponents of the lab leak theory is that the virus’s furin cleavage site exhibits an unnatural characteristic, suggesting a laboratory genesis. Curiously, this hypothesis has been disproven since the pandemic’s inception; furin cleavage sites are not unique to ‘wild’ coronaviruses and do not necessarily increase viral pathogenicity.
The fact that this characteristic does not establish whether scientists engineered SARS-CoV-2 has not prevented its widespread dissemination as proof of the pandemic’s artificial origin.
It is also pertinent to note that the concept of a virus “leaking” from a laboratory does not inherently imply that it was man-made. It is entirely plausible that researchers studying naturally occurring coronaviruses could have inadvertently released the pathogen.
Even if this were the case, it represents a fundamentally different scenario from the theories that have gained the most traction, which posit that COVID-19 must be man-made due to its structural and design features.
In summary, there are two primary possibilities**. One is an event that occurs regularly and serves as the genesis for most new human diseases. The other is an occurrence that has never happened previously and relies on a substantial cover-up orchestrated by the Chinese government and WHO officials.
While the possibility of COVID-19 being a laboratory construct cannot be entirely discounted, it presents a considerably less probable explanation when considering the available evidence.
*Note: This observation is rather amusing, given that Science and Nature are preeminent global scientific journals that reject over 90 percent of submitted manuscripts. Therefore, it is a considerable overstatement to imply that a paper’s rejection from these publications holds significant meaning. Similar to many scientists, I have also experienced manuscript rejections from both Nature and Science; it is a common aspect of the scientific process.
**Note: From a strictly technical standpoint, this presents a false dichotomy. While these are the two most frequently proposed explanations for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, alternative scenarios may exist. For instance, extraterrestrial intervention or clandestine operations by the CIA could be considered.
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Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist specializing in chronic disease based in Sydney, Australia. He maintains a regular health blog that explores scientific communication, public health initiatives, and the practical implications of newly published studies.
