The social media profile of Dr. Li-Meng Yan went dark this week as the academic claimed to have evidence the Chinese government was involved in making the infectious novel coronavirus.
Twitter has suspended the account of a Chinese academic who suggested COVID-19 was made in a lab and intentionally released.
"The scientific world also keeps silent... works together with the Chinese Communist Party, they don't want people to know his truth. That's why I get suspended, I get suppressed, I am the target that Chinese Communist Party wants disappeared."In May, the platform introduced new labels and warnings messages designed to show"context and information" on tweets containing disputed COVID-19 claims.
Reports suggest the scientist's profile had four visible posts, with one being a link to the preprint paper shared this week containing some of her supposed evidence. The report was not peer-reviewed, which is the standard academic evaluation process. The claims in the paper were rejected by the wider scientific community."[The] report cannot be given any credibility in its current form," Andrew Preston, who is an expert in microbial pathogenesis at the U.K.'s University of Bath, toldIn a statement to ITV last week, a spokesperson for the University of Hong Kong, where Dr. Yan said she worked, stated: Dr. Yan's statement does not accord with the key facts as we understand them.
A notice was placed on the footage that said:"The primary claims in the information are factually inaccurate." Facebook shared links to three stories used for fact-checking.
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