On November 9, 2020, U.S. Right to Know released emails with senior authors of Liu et al. and Xiao et al., and staff and editors at PLoS Pathogens and Nature journals. These studies have provided scientific credence to the zoonotic hypothesis that coronaviruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 circulate in the wild, and that SARS-CoV-2 has a wild animal source. On November 11, 2020, Nature added the following note to Xiao et al.’s paper: “Editor’s Note: Readers are alerted that concerns have been raised about the identity of the pangolin samples reported in this paper and their relationship to previously published pangolin samples. Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.”
The note can be seen here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x
