Just a month ago, the idea that Coronavirus came from an accidental lab leak in Wuhan was derided by much of the press as a fringe conspiracy theory and banned on Facebook as a form of misinformation. Now, a host of distinguished scientists including Anthony Fauci, the US White House’s chief medical adviser, credit the idea as plausible, if far from proven, and are calling for more openness from the lab at the centre of the theory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Journalists who have rehabilitated the lab leak theory in recent months point the finger at The Lancet for allowing Peter Daszak, president of research funder EcoHealth Alliance, to squash notions of a lab leak early on — without disclosing that he had a significant potential conflict of interest.
 
In February 2020, just as the Western world was waking up to the pandemic’s spread, Dr. Daszak, a British zoologist who has become a controversial central figure in the origins debate, organised and signed a letter — along with the who’s who of pandemic experts — in The Lancet to “strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. The letter has been mentioned in news stories more than 350 times so far.

But nowhere did The Lancet disclose a critical fact — Daszak had funded and worked with WIV researchers for years to collect bat coronaviruses from the wild — in order to get ahead of them before they spread to humans — and led National Institutes of Health-funded work on, among other things, “virus infection experiments across a range of cell cultures from different species and humanised mice” to assess how they might spread.

“If the SARS2 virus had indeed escaped from research he funded, Daszak would be potentially culpable. This acute conflict of interest was not declared to The Lancet’s readers,” says an investigation into the theory published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in early May.

A spokeswoman for The Lancet says that Dr. Daszak “is one of the world’s leading experts on zoonotic diseases, including Coronaviruses, with experience of working in China” and that his task force would assess “all leading hypotheses” including “laboratory release”. Daszak did not respond to a request for comment.

Rossana Segreto, a former researcher at the University of Innsbruck, says that in January The Lancet rejected a letter by her and colleagues calling for an “open scientific debate” about the origins of the virus. A spokeswoman for the journal says it does not comment on unpublished papers.

Dr. Segreto also points a critical finger at Nature Medicine, which in March 2020 added an ‘editors’ note’ to a 2015 paper documenting the creation of a “chimeric virus” from a bat coronavirus in work done in collaboration with WIV. The note emphasises that there is “no evidence” Coronavirus was engineered. But this 2015 paper, critics argue, is exactly the kind of research that could lead to a risky new virus, and the paper itself has been tweeted tens of thousands of times.

Several prestige journals have also rehabilitated the lab leak theory, not just thrown cold water over it. A turning point in the theory’s credibility came on May 14, when Science published a letter signed by 18 eminent Coronavirus experts arguing that the leak was a “viable” theory.

This was not the result of a change of policy by the journal to start taking the leak theory seriously, says Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals. “This letter was signed by important figures in the Covid story, and we decided to publish it. We didn’t get anything prior to this that made it through our process,” he says.

Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, says the Science letter is a “very legitimate call” for further investigation, and that no discussions about the origin of the virus had been “taboo” at Nature. She is “puzzled as to why we’re having (the debate) again in the absence of new evidence”.

Soft power failure

International students are increasingly fearful that their hopes of securing a degree from a Chinese university will be dashed by the country’s 16-month entry ban. The challenges faced by the thousands of registered students trapped outside China during the Coronavirus pandemic have been compounded by a lack of flexibility on degree time limits, publishing requirements and accreditation transfer. Many of the students involved are from Asia and Africa, and a large proportion are medical students or postgraduate researchers in science and engineering subjects.

One poll conducted in early June by the China International Student Union (CISU) found that 75 percent of overseas students now have a more negative view of China. A key problem cited by 65 percent of respondents is that China’s degree time limits are inflexible and “unmeetable,” given that students could not return to clinics and laboratories.

Several Indian medical students told Times Higher Education (THE) that their Chinese institutions, under pressure to issue degrees within a particular time frame, resorted to sending Power-Point slides or online videos in lieu of clinical practice for essential skills such as surgery. Even if degrees are granted, they would be practically useless without actual training in treating patients.

One student, who is enrolled at a Beijing medical school but stuck in India, says “decisions are all over the place. Some (Indian) states allow (Chinese-enrolled) medical students to do internships, while others consider Chinese degrees null and void.” Another, who had gone into debt to study in China, says that “without clinical experience, I cannot be board-certified in India. And if I cannot practise, I cannot become a doctor and pay back my loan.”

The problem has also affected researchers in other subjects. A North African Ph D candidate told THE that she had prepared simulations for an engineering experiment in China, but cannot make the prototype because of a lack of laboratory access. Her main problem is a four-year term limit in her admission letter. “I only have two years left, and I have to publish two journal articles, which is impossible without lab experiments,” she says. “The problem in China is that the rules are rules, and there are no exceptions.” She doesn’t fault her professors, saying that one even took time on his weekends to coach her.

The CISU poll shows that 64 percent of students supported better credit — or accreditation — transfer arrangements between China and their home countries, which would allow them to finish clinical and laboratory work in nearby facilities.

Curtis Chin, a former US ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, told THE that “the inconsistent treatment of international students has been a soft power failure for China… What is important is that international students are treated with consistency and compassion. Clear communications and transparency are also critical. And here, China, in the eyes of many students, has come up short.”

The number of foreign students in China had tripled in a decade, from 162,000 in 2006 to 492,000 in 2019.

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