PropertyValue
?:author
?:datePublished
  • 2020-04-27 (xsd:date)
?:headline
  • Did Nobel Laureate Tasuku Honjo Say COVID-19 Was 'Man-Made'? (en)
?:inLanguage
?:itemReviewed
?:mentions
?:reviewBody
  • Throughout the early months of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, we repeatedly came across variations of the claim that COVID-19 was manufactured at a laboratory in Wuhan, China. While dozens of medical experts have already debunked this idea (the evidence indicates that the virus evolved naturally), this bit of misinformation continued to spread on social media. In April 2020, for instance, a lengthy text message started to circulate on Facebook and WhatsApp that supposedly included a quote from Nobel laureate Dr. Tasuku Honjo in which he ostensibly said that COVID-19 was invented at a lab in Wuhan, China: The text of the post reads: Honjo never worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the quotes in this post are fictitious, and China did not invent this virus. But in this message's defense, it does accurately state that Honjo won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018. Honjo is currently the Deputy Director-General and Distinguished Professor at the Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study. A biography on the KUIAS website lists the various institutes and academies Honjo has been associated with since the 1960s. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not included. We searched for the quotes included in this viral text but could not find them reported by any credible sources. In fact, it appears that this quotation exists solely in social media posts. We did find a Twitter account using the handle @TasukuHonjo that expressed similar sentiments as the above-displayed quotes, but it doesn't appear that this account actually belongs to the Nobel Prize winner. For starters, this account is not verified. It is also only a few days old (its first tweet was posted on April 23) and it has been used almost exclusively to push conspiratorial content regarding COVID-19. The Indian fact-checking website News Meter managed to contact one of Honjo's students who issued a statement on the Nobel Prize winner's behalf. The statement confirmed that this Twitter account was fake, that Honjo never worked at the Wuhan lab, and that these were not real quotes: Furthermore, Honjo's genuine public statements about the pandemic fly in the face of the quotes presented in this viral piece of text. For instance, in an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review, Honjo was asked why medical advancements have not been able to eradicate infectious diseases. While the fake quote included in the above-displayed text falsely claimed Honjo said that natural viruses couldn't spread around the globe due to factors such as climate, Honjo's genuine response to this question shows that he actually has the opposite view, saying that one novel virus can turn the world on its head and that infectious disease can spread quickly to a large number of patients. Honjo said: On April 27, 2020, Honjo published a statement saying that he was greatly saddened that his name, and the name of Kyoto University, have been used to spread misinformation. Honjo wrote: Honjo did not work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he did not say that COVID-19 was invented or man-made, and the Twitter account posting similar claims does not belong to the Nobel Prize winner. In addition, this rumor is all based on the unfounded notion that COVID-19 was created as a bioweapon. You can read our examination of that false conspiracy theory here. (en)
?:reviewRating
rdf:type
?:url