Lab-Origin Denialists Are… Denying Lab Origin… Over, and Over, and Over, and Over…

by James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, Popular Rationalism, ©2025

(Jul. 31, 2025) — They’re still at it.

Despite five years of escalating evidence, FOIA disclosures, high-profile reversals, and basic failures to meet the burden of proof, the architects of the natural-origin narrative have once again mounted the stage to insist—with renewed fervor—that SARS-CoV-2 could not possibly have emerged from a lab.

The latest entry in this long-running performance comes courtesy of The Conversation, where Edward Holmes, Andrew Rambaut, Kristian Andersen, and Robert Garry—key authors of the discredited 2020 Proximal Origin paper—repeat their thesis under the headline: “How conspiracy theories about COVID’s origins are hampering our ability to prevent the next pandemic.”

In truth, what is hampering preparedness is not skepticism, but institutionalized denialism, bolstered by conflicts of interest, selective data interpretation, and now, increasingly, the fallacy of argumentum ad repetere: the notion that repeating the same disinformation endlessly will somehow make it true.

Argumentum ad Repetere: Repetition Is Not Refutation

The core rhetorical engine of this latest article is repetition, not evidence. The authors assert, once again, that:

• The virus “most likely” emerged via zoonotic spillover.
• The Huanan Seafood Market was the epicenter.
• The genome shows no signs of engineering.
• Lab-origin theories are conspiratorial and dangerous.

This litany of claims has been recited verbatim since early 2020. What’s missing is new data, falsification of the lab-origin hypothesis, or acknowledgement of profound contradictions in their own timeline and communications.

This is textbook argumentum ad repetere: repeating a contested assertion so often, with such coordinated confidence, that the repetition itself is offered as proof. In logic, it’s a fallacy. In propaganda, it’s a method.

A Flimsy House of Assertions, Not Evidence

The authors claim their conclusions are built on “a substantial body of new evidence” found in the WHO’s latest “final” “independent” assessment from June 2025. But that evidence, when examined with crystal clarity, reveals its hollowness:

• Environmental Swabs at the Market: Viral RNA and animal DNA were not found in the same sample. There is no direct evidence of an infected animal host. The data are circumstantial, temporally disconnected, and post-outbreak.
• Geographic Clustering: The earliest known cases were geographically near the Huanan Market—but also near the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a BSL-4 lab conducting high-risk research on SARS-like coronaviruses. This observation is not diagnostic of origin, only of amplification. The wipes testing positive in the market were nearest the restrooms, not any particular stall.
• No Intermediate Host Identified: Despite five years and aggressive sampling, not one animal has been found with a virus closely matching SARS-CoV-2.

The authors ignore these failures. Instead, they invoke consistency of narrative as a stand-in for scientific rigor.

Read the rest here.