A former New York Times journalist has attacked a group of leading scientists for “clearly” misleading him over the Covid lab-leak theory in the early days of the pandemic.
Donald McNeil Jr said he became sceptical of the hypothesis the virus was engineered in a Wuhan lab after several top epidemiological virologists insisted it wasn’t possible.
Mr McNeil Jr said their efforts to throw him “off track” influenced the newspaper’s coverage of the theory and likely contributed to the topic being “dropped” for a year.
However, the experts initially thought the lab leak theory was plausible but didn’t want to disclose so for political reasons, according to a raft of messages between them accidentally released by a US congressional committee last year.
In his book The Wisdom of Plagues, which looks back at 25 years covering pandemics, Mr McNeil Jr said the scientists “clearly misled me early on” and he was a “victim of deception”.
He said he was “disappointed, both in them and in myself, that I was so easily taken in”.
“Don… pretty much nailed it,” Prof Andersen added. “Let’s not tell him.” They told him the rumours were “demonstrably false” and 10 days later published Proximal Origins.
Discussing his response to another email from Mr McNeil Jr nine days later, Prof Andersen told his colleagues he had used “humour to deflect the fact I’m dismissing him” and added a “very deliberate” smiley face.
More.
On Feb 6, 2020, NY Times reporter Don McNeil asked both Kristian Andersen & Richard Ebright about the possibility COVID-19 had a lab origin. In response, Andersen lied (see Slack chat) & Ebright told the truth (see below).
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Correct. Andersen and I received the same question on the same day from the same journalist. Andersen responded with pre-meditated disinformation. I responded with truthful, balanced, and detailed information.