Famous US Journalist Criticizes WSJ for disseminating "Lab Leak" Theory

Michael Hiltzik, a well-known American columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner, published an article online on the Los Angeles Times on Oct.8, exposing that the Wall Street Journal is still maliciously disseminating the pseudo-scientific theory of "Coronavirus Lab Leak" to slander China.

Hiltzik pointed out that the Wall Street Journal has recently been the focus of "Lab Leak" theory. And an article it published on October 5 tried one more time to mislead readers into believing there is evidence for such speculation.

Hiltzik revealed that neither of the two authors of the article published on October 5 received professional training in virology, one in physics and the other a pharmaceutical manufacturer specializing in breast disease. They claimed to have found "strong evidence" that the Coronavirus was artificially designed and produced from four research papers, one of which was published in the prestigious journal Cell as key evidence. However, after Hiltzik talking with the paper's main author, the author made it clear that the two had wrongly presented the findings and that the research "didn’t provide any meaningful clues to the origin of the virus".

The other three papers mentioned in the WSJ article that supposedly support the "lab leak" theory are even more untenable. Hiltzik pointed out that firstly, it was not a paper at all, but a public report on a WHO field survey to China in the early stages of the pandemic. Secondly, in terms of the data on influenza in Wuhan in the second half of 2019, the former has been widely reported, and the latter does not offer anything about the origin of the Coronavirus. The most ridiculous thing is the third paper they cited (published in March, 2020).It stated clearly that, "We are not convinced that any type of hypothesis based on laboratory is reasonable."

It is not the first time that Hiltzik has roasted the US media for the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus. On September 28, he criticized CNN, the Atlantic Monthly and other mainstream US media in the column of Los Angeles Times for deliberately misleading people into believing the "lab leak" theory under the circumstance that the natural origin of the novel coronavirus has been proven by numerous scientific findings.

News source: Xinhua

Translated by Wu You