Revisiting the coronavirus 'lab leak' theory We still don't know the origin of the coronavirus that has left more than 3.5 million people dead around the world, and it's possible researchers will never find an answer. But in recent months the hypothesis that it emerged from a "lab leak" at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has gained renewed interest among U.S. political leaders of both parties and reputable scientists who are attempting to trace the origins of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The Fact Checker assembled a detailed timeline of key articles and news reports that gradually led researchers and politicians to this reassessment. We obviously take no position in this debate, and many researchers say the more likely hypothesis explaining the origin of the virus is still a "zoonotic spillover," or animal-to-human contact. For now, there is no evidence to support either the "zoonotic spillover" or the "lab leak" hypotheses. However, after being dismissed initially as a conspiracy theory peddled by President Donald Trump and some conservative politicians and commentators, the "lab-leak" hypothesis is now seen as a viable theory by more scientists. The renewed interest culminated this week, when President Biden directed U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate more thoroughly whether the coronavirus spread from animal-human contact or from a lab incident and report back to him in 90 days. How and why did this happen? For one, efforts to discover a natural source of the virus have failed. Second, early efforts to spotlight a lab leak often got mixed up with speculation that the virus was deliberately created as a bioweapon. That made it easier for many scientists to dismiss the lab scenario as tin-hat nonsense. Now, months later, without an answer in hand, a lack of transparency by China and renewed attention to the activities of the Wuhan lab have led some scientists to say they were too quick to discount the "lab leak" hypothesis. Our fact-check reconstructs the early speculation, the responses by scientists, the U.S. intelligence community's statements, and the emergence of new evidence over the past year. (The entire timeline is also available in Spanish.) For example, on March 22, the Australian newspaper reported: "Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers working on coronaviruses were hospitalized with symptoms consistent with covid-19 in early November 2019 in what U.S. officials suspect could have been the first cluster." On May 14, a group of 18 prominent scientists published a letter in the journal Science, saying a new investigation was needed because "theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable." One signer was Ralph Baric, a virologist who worked closely with a key Wuhan Institute of Virology researcher, Shi Zhengli. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. The map is not the territory An essay by a Palestinian human-rights lawyer in the New York Times featured an illustration that showed a shrinking map of Palestine, from the borders of the British mandate for Palestine in 1947 to areas that would be under Palestinian control after adoption of a recent peace plan. The illustration drew criticism from some quarters for being ahistorical. Patrick Healy, deputy opinion editor of the Times, issued a statement saying "it was not meant to be a literal, factual map ... this was an illustration conveying a sense of shrinking space for Palestinians. It is art." A version of this map has been circulating for almost 20 years, supposedly showing how "Historic Palestine" had been taken over by Israel. As a technical matter, the map is a confusing mélange of images: it includes something that did not exist (Palestinian control over all the territory), something that did not happen (the proposed United Nations partition) and something odd (pre-1967 occupations by Jordan and Egypt are depicted as Palestinian-controlled). The Israeli-Palestinian dispute is difficult to fact-check, as there are two competing narratives and history can be open to interpretation. But, as best we could, we attempted to summarize the two versions of whether there was a historic Palestine for readers who want both sides of the story. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @rizzoTK, @AdriUsero) or Facebook. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. Scroll down for this week's Pinocchio roundup. | 
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