楼主 (北美华人网)
The "Yan Report" is a misleading "pseudo-scientific" article, falsely claiming that the new coronavirus was manufactured in a laboratory in China. This is an example of "pseudoscience" that was released when the situation was unclear. As scientists race to find the origin of the new coronavirus, sharing uncensored preprint data in an open scientific repository has become an important mode of international cooperation. However, the increasing openness of the scientific community can easily be manipulated by the media, especially in times of crisis. On April 28, 2020, Dr. Limeng Yan, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong, fled to the United States with the support of Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui. They claimed that Yan Limeng was a "whistleblower" and used this as an opportunity to provoke the controversial issue of the unknown origin of the new coronavirus. This media-manipulated campaign includes the implantation of misleading evidence in scientific literature, muddling the turbid waters of the new coronavirus, and putting on scientific legitimacy for the political claim that the coronavirus is China’s biological weapons. Subsequently, Yan Limeng's report was enlarged by right-wing online media, resulting in nearly 1 million clicks on the report on Zenodo (an open research database). After several university scientists debunked Yan Limeng’s report, social media platforms reviewed it, but the two follow-up reports of Yan Limeng’s report were uploaded to the “open scientific database”, and these two reports directly promoted it. The claim of biological weapons also refutes the academic community’s response to the first report. Using the Yan Limeng report as a pseudo-science to sow the seeds of the scientific community allows those connected with them on social media to claim its legitimacy, while also providing an empirical basis for advancing the political goals of the funders of the report. By using open science to advance their political goals in a health crisis, Bannon and Guo Wengui used Yan Limeng’s identity as a scientific researcher who fled Hong Kong to keep the public concerned about the “COVID-19 as a biological weapon” statement. Like other online platforms, data repositories and preprinted servers provide critical infrastructure for international cooperation in response to COVID-19, but due to their joint legitimacy, they may also be used in disinformation campaigns. When the public and some reporters see these websites, they may inadvertently think that these contents have been officially censored or evaluated, and therefore are reliable science. Pseudoscience is especially deceptive when surrounded by research by top scientists, universities, and research institutes.