A Facebook fact-checker that labeled a documentary about the origins of the coronavirus, including the theory that it escaped the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, as “false” has worked at the lab in question.

The fact-checker’s ties to the lab in Wuhan were first flagged by investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson.

You cannot make it up.

The "fact checker" Facebook is using to censor a documentary discussing possibility that corinavirus came from Wuhan lab… is scientist who worked at Wuhan lab with Chinese communists.

Honestly, folks. pic.twitter.com/Tqk155S3DD — Sharyl Attkisson🕵️‍♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) April 15, 2020

The fact-check was done by Health Feedback, which describes itself as a “worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in health and medical media coverage.” One of the experts they consulted when reviewing the video was Danielle E. Anderson, an Assistant Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School.

In the disclaimer below the fact-check, Anderson writes that she has “worked in this exact laboratory at various times for the past 2 years” and praises its “strict control and containment measures.”

The documentary that, according to the fact-checkers, contained false and misleading information was produced by Epoch Times. It looks at how the Chinese Communist Party handled the coronavirus outbreak and likely engaged in a coverup that resulted in a global pandemic, citing scientific data and interviews with high-ranking scientists and national security figures.

Epoch Times makes it clear they’re not claiming that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, but brings attention to that as a possibility. It’s worth noting that its article refers to the virus as the Chinese Communist Party virus. The Epoch Times was founded by a group of Chinese-Americans who are associated with the Falun Gong movement, and the paper is blocked in mainland China.

Facebook hasn’t disclosed that one of the fact-checkers that censored the documentary has ties to the Wuhan lab.

The fact-check, published on Feb. 20, claimed that there’s no evidence of a lack of security and management weaknesses at the lab or that researchers there studied “SARS-CoV-2 before the outbreak.” It contends that the virus is of natural origin, quoting both China’s authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO).

But now, there is more circumstantial evidence suggesting that the coronavirus might have escaped a lab and that China mishandled the outbreak in the early stages. This week, it was reported that the Chinese government remained silent for 6 days after concluding that the virus could cause a pandemic. In 2018, the U.S. in Beijing embassy warned of safety issues at the lab in Wuhan via diplomatic cables and asked the U.S. for more support. There are Chinese reports that show researchers there have studied coronaviruses in bats and collected samples from caves. That same lab was the first to report that the virus came from bats.

This and other information raise questions about China’s claims that the virus jumped from animals to humans at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which, according to some reports, didn’t even sell bats.

Why it matters: Facebook, like other social media platforms, has introduced strict coronavirus-related rules for users to stop the spread of misinformation about the virus. Its efforts, however, are now being challenged, as Facebook is learning that policing a platform is not easy. It is unclear how the company plans on fighting misinformation, given the fast-changing nature of the pandemic and whether it will go back to fact-check and label claims now that the “conspiracy theory” about the virus coming from a lab has become a possibility worth considering.

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