Mon Nov 18
Impacts Caused by Bannon and Li-Meng Yan's Pseudo-science about the Conspiracy Theories of the Origin of COVID-19
2021-04-01
American health experts generally hold the view that the theory of laboratory leaks is illogical. In the New York Times report, the Anderson team stated that the laboratory leak theory is illogical. Vincent Recaniero, professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, stated that a large amount of scientific data can prove that the novel coronavirus emerged from nature, just like the previous SARS virus and MERS-CoV. Every virus we know that can infect humans can be traced back to an animal source. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, criticized this research on Twitter for disguising as scientific evidence on the day this paper was published. Yan’s paper lists herself and her co-authors as members of the Rule of Law Society, a non-profit organization whose founders include former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was once accused in a fraud case. This fact alone could make people stop and think about the political purpose behind the conspiracy theory concocted by Li-Meng Yan.
According to the description of the website Zenodo, where Li-meng Yan published the paper, this is a public resource library for academic research. Everyone can upload their research results to this website(QDN). In addition, genetics scholar Kevin Bird at Michigan State University and biology professor Carl Bergstrom at Washington University have noticed that the research institutions that this paper attach are the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, two sister non-profit organizations created by Bannon. According to documents published last year on the Rules of Law Association website, Bannon had served as the chairman of the organization. These two institutions have not conducted any academic research before and there is no information on these two institutions in Google Scholar.