• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Legendary Biologist Endorses Lab Leak Theory

by Noah Carl
20 July 2022 2:53 PM

Not many experts have openly endorsed the lab leak theory of Covid origins.

There are the ‘internet sleuths’ who make up DRASTIC (several of whom remain anonymous). There’s the science writer Nicholas Wade. And there’s Matt Ridley and Alina Chan – co-authors of Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19. (In a recent interview, Ridley told me that both he and Chan now think a lab leak is “more likely”.)

Few others have been willing to come out and say that, yes, the balance of evidence favours a lab leak. This may be because they’re genuinely undecided, or because they hold the opposite view (that the evidence favours a natural spillover).

However, I suspect that many experts are scared of endorsing an idea their colleagues have gone to great lengths to suppress – an idea the Chinese government has called “a lie concocted by anti-China forces”.

Which makes a recent blog post by the biologist Nick Patterson something of a bombshell. Patterson is highly respected for his contributions to mathematical and computational biology. He’s also a polymath.   

After obtaining his PhD in mathematics from Cambridge, he worked as code-breaker for GCHQ. He then moved to the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, where he developed mathematics models for market prediction. And for the last 20 years, he’s been analysing human genetic data at MIT.

In his recent article, Patterson states that “by far the most likely cause of the pandemic was an accidental leak of an engineered virus”. So he not only believes that Covid leaked from a lab, but also that it was engineered beforehand.

According to Patterson, the “smoking gun” is a grant application by EcoHealth Alliance to DARPA (the research agency of the U.S. Department of Defence). “As far as I can make out,” he writes, “the plan here was for WIV to collect live virus, ship it to the USA, have US scientists genetically modify the virus, and then ship modified virus … back to China”.

Although the grant application was rejected, Patterson notes, “a dirty not-so-secret is that often a good slice of work proposed in a grant application has in fact already been done and for sure when a grant is rejected the scientists involved consider how they can proceed anyway”.

Patterson clarifies that he’s not claiming “the proposed research was directed towards biowarfare”, only that it had the effect of enhancing viral pathogenicity.

Will other experts now speak up? We’ll have to see. In the meantime, Patterson’s article is worth reading in full.

Tags: Covid originsLab leakNick Patterson

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Climate Alarmists Turn Up the Heat as Temperature Records Broken at British Airports

Next Post

Study Confirms Omicron Infection Provides Strong Natural Immunity and Imperial’s Professor Altmann is Wrong to Scare People By Claiming Otherwise

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

16 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

Episode 36 of the Sceptic: Karl Williams on Starmer’s Phoney Immigration Crackdown, Dan Hitchens on the Assisted Suicide Bill and Tom Jones on Reform’s Local Council Challenge

by Richard Eldred
16 May 2025
0

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

15 May 2025
by Will Jones

News Round-Up

16 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

16 May 2025
by Will Jones

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

29

Civil Servants Threaten to Strike Over Trans Ban in Women’s Lavatories

26

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

19

News Round-Up

18

Chinese ‘Kill Switches’ Found in US Solar Farms

27

Trump’s Lesson in Remedial Education

16 May 2025
by Dr James Allan

Spy Agency Report on the Alleged “Extremism” of AfD Turns Out to Be So Stupid That it Destroys all Momentum for Banning the Party

16 May 2025
by Eugyppius

The Folly of Solar – a Dot on the Horizon Versus a Blight on the Land

16 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Renaud Camus on the Destruction of Western Education

15 May 2025
by Dr Nicholas Tate

‘Why Can’t We Talk About This?’

15 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

POSTS BY DATE

July 2022
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Jun   Aug »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences