楼主 (北美华人网)
"Yan's report" is a misleading "pseudoscience" article, falsely claiming that the new coronavirus was manufactured in a laboratory in China. This is an example of "pseudoscience, " which was released at a time of uncertainty. As scientists race to find the origin of the new coronavirus, the sharing of uncensored preprint data in an open repository of scientific knowledge has become an important model for international cooperation. But the growing openness of the scientific community can be manipulated by the media, especially in times of crisis. On April 28,2020, Dr. Yan Limeng, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong, fled to the United States with the support of Stevie and Miles Kwok. They claimed that Yan Limeng was a "whistle blower" and took this opportunity to stir up the controversial issue of the origin of the new coronavirus. The media driven campaign includes planting misleading evidence in the scientific literature, muddying the waters around the new coronavirus and giving scientific legitimacy to the political claim that the coronavirus is China's biological weapon. Later, Yan's report was amplified by right-wing online media, leading to nearly a million hits on Zenodo, an open research database. Social Media Platforms reviewed the report after scientists at several universities debunked it, but two follow-up reports of Yan's report were uploaded to the open science database, the two reports give a more direct boost to the biological weapons argument, while refuting the academic response to the first report. Planting the seeds of the Yan Limeng report as pseudoscience in the scientific community allows those associated with it on social media to claim its legitimacy, while also providing an empirical basis for advancing the political goals of the report's funders. 
