On Irresponsible Science Journalism: No, those studies do not show that a market in Wuhan was the source of the Coronavirus

International scientists on Saturday released two major studies which one participant said made it ���extraordinarily clear��� a market in Wuhan, China was the source of the coronavirus which fueled the Covid-19 pandemic ��� and not a Chinese government laboratory, a theory championed in the US by rightwing campaigners, columnists and politicians.

The question of where Covid-19 came from and how it spread has proved divisive...

In August last year, a US intelligence review of the issue proved inconclusive.

The New York Times first reported the new studies, which it said had not been published in any journal.--"Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say"--The Guardian, 26 February, 2022. 

For those who may read my blog for the first time, I am not a rightwing campaigner.  I have been a critic of former President Trump since 2015. I am also not a virologist or epidemiologist, however, I am a philosopher of science and my original interest in the field is evidential arguments. I will suggest below that the claims in The Guardian and in The New York Times are examples of irresponsible and sloppy science journalism. Before I get to explaining why I think that, here is a flavor of The New York Times reporting:

The studies, which together span 150 pages, are a significant salvo in the debate over the beginnings of a pandemic that has killed nearly six million people across the world. The question of whether the outbreak began with a spillover from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology lab or some other event has given rise to pitched debates over how best to stop the next pandemic.

���When you look at all of the evidence together, it���s an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market,��� said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both new studies.

Several independent scientists said that the studies, which have not yet been published in a scientific journal, presented a compelling and rigorous new analysis of available data. "New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin" The New York Time, updated 27 February, 2022

One of the papers with the suggestive title "The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence," is the main source of the claims reported by the The Guardian and The New York Times that I will argue are examples of irresponsible and sloppy science journalism. The paper, which I downloaded on February 27, and that I will be discussing can be found here. I heard about the paper through a tweet by Marion Koopmans shared by my colleague John Grin (since unshared after learning of my concerns below). Dr. Koopmans is a leading virologist and public health scientist in the Netherlands. Professor John Grin and I both work in a political science department; he is a former physicist, who works in public policy on issues related to transition economy. I consider both high quality sources of science related material. And so when I decided to read the paper, I assumed I would be convinced by the findings.

Michael Worobey (the lead author of the paper) and his colleagues have dome some impressive modeling and statistical analysis to argue that the source of the spread of the pandemic is probably to be found in the Wuhan market. The paper has, however, a peculiar step, which deserves some scrutiny, and which weakens the claims by the media that this article rules out a lab leak.

As is clear from the suggestive title of the paper and the media reporting I have quoted above, the political significance of this paper is it that it is presented as ruling out that the virus leaked out of the lab of the Wuhan CDC. Since outside access to it has been denied (here is the Guardian's reporting; here's the New York Times), this has generated concerns over a cover up.

What the media reporting fails to remark is that this possibility is addressed in only one sentence shown in a picture below.* 

So, naturally, I was curious to see what source (9) is. It's the Chinese CDC! (See the other picture.)

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Now, clearly the authors of the report treat the Chinese CDC as a reliable source, and they may well have good reasons to do so. Both papers rely heavily on data from it, it seems.

But, if the point is to rule out a lab leak (and, hence, a cover up), this line of reasoning will not do at all. For, rather than testing whether the data they do rely on can distinguish empirically between the evidence for the Wuhan market and against a lab leak, the paper rules out a lab leak by fiat on the authority of those whose impartiality is questioned by critics of China. So this paper does not settle the matter at all.

Notice that I am not claiming this is poor science. The paper uses what it calls "spatial analyses" to "show that the earliest known COVID-19 cases diagnosed in December 2019 were geographically distributed near to, and centered on, this market." And this it undeniably does compellingly and with interesting techniques. And so the paper may well be published after proper peer review.

But in the media Michael Worobey's paper is presented as settling the politically salient issue (lab leak vs market). And his own comments seem to contribute to this perception in the context in which they are presented. I assume he consented to this because in my experience science journalists tend to be careful with their scientific sources in checking how they are presented. Yet, for the purposes of the controversy (lab leak vs market), the underlying logic of the paper  is something like this, "given that we assume on authority of an interested party that the lab cannot be the origin, we will study how data on the initial spread relates to the Wuhan market." 

I really hope I have missed something and that I am wrong about this because I do not want to contribute to the undermining of trust in science reporting of quality media. But even leaving aside the part of the story that has made it a central issue in our contemporary culture wars, there are many public health reasons to get clear on what the source of the original problem is. And it is a mistake to consider and irresponsible to claim that it is settled based on these studies. 

 

 

*The sentence occurs on p. 19 of my downloaded copy of the paper. Somewhat unusually the document does not have page-numbers. Reference 9 can be found on p. 65 in the "Supplementary references."