IIT Research Reportedly Used To Fuel 'Rumours' Of Coronavirus Being A Bioweapon!
As coronavirus spreads, misinformation seems to be spreading even faster and most of them are mind-boggling conspiracies that are making people all the more scared of the outbreak.
One of the most recent claims made by a popular US news blog called Zero Hedge said that China scientists have been 'creating the coronavirus as a bioweapon'.
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What's shocking is that they citied a research paper on the coronavirus by a group of Indian scientists from the school of biological sciences at IIT Delhi and Acharya Narendra Dev College of the University of Delhi.
The week quoted Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist who has been associated with Harvard and Johns Hopkins, said that the research on Coronavirus by the Indian scientists was not verified or refuted and is still being quoted as the source.
According to reports, Zero Hedge claimed without evidence that a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the strain of the virus that has led the World Health Organization to declare a global health emergency.
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The Week report states that in the paper which was released on Jan 31st as open-source made a disturbing claim that 'virus may have been engineered deliberately,' however there's conclusive evidence to back it up.
Zero Hedge had uploaded contact details of a Chinese scientist, who it effectively held as being responsible for being behind the coronavirus outbreak and their Twitter account was suspended Friday, following the publication of the scientist's name.
Among the thousands of conspiracy theories floating around one is of the anti-vax community saying that the outbreak is a population control stunt by the Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. Other conspiracy theories have suggested the virus was smuggled out of Canada into China.
According to the Guardian, the Internet is especially full of misunderstandings, hoaxes and malicious lies about the virus and people have to weigh the pros and cons before relying on any purported theory about the outbreak.
In the wake of misinformation, Facebook is cracking down on coronavirus rumours and conspiracy theories. The company said that its fact-checkers will debunk false claims about the coronavirus and that it will remove some posts pushing conspiracy theories about it.
