[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





                  



 
                         ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE:


                   EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN


                  SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS, THE GOVERNMENT


                            AND PEER REVIEW

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

            SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

                                 OF THE

               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 17, 2024

                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-101

                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                        Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina            Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Ro Khanna, California
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Shontel Brown, Ohio
Byron Donalds, Florida               Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Robert Garcia, California
William Timmons, South Carolina      Maxwell Frost, Florida
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Greg Casar, Texas
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Dan Goldman, New York
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Nick Langworthy, New York            Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mike Waltz, Florida

                                 ------                                
                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
             Mitchell Benzine, Subcommittee Staff Director
                        Marie Policastro, Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                Miles Lichtman, Minority Staff Director
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051
                                 ------                                

            Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Pandemic

                     Brad Wenstrup, Ohio, Chairman
Nicole Malliotakis, New York         Raul Ruiz, California, Ranking 
Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa           Minority Member
Debbie Lesko, Arizona                Debbie Dingell, Michigan
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
John Joyce, Pennsylvania             Deborah Ross, North Carolina
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Robert Garcia, California
Ronny Jackson, Texas                 Ami Bera, California
Rich Mccormick, Georgia              Jill Tokuda, Hawaii
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              

                                                                   Page

Hearing held on April 17, 2024...................................     1

                               Witnesses

                              ----------                              


Holden Thorp, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Science Journals, American 
  Association for the Advancement of Science
Oral Statement...................................................     4

Written opening statements and the written statements of the 
  witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives 
  Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              


Statement for the Record, by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr.; submitted by 
  Rep. Wenstrup.

Republican Staff Report, July 12, 2023; submitted by Rep. 
  Wenstrup.

Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.


                         ACADEMIC MALPRACTICE:



                   EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN



                  SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS, THE GOVERNMENT



                            AND PEER REVIEW

                              ----------                              


                        Tuesday, April 16, 2024

                        House of Representatives

               Committee on Oversight and Accountability

            Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic

                                           Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Brad Wenstrup 
(chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Wenstrup, Miller-Meeks, McCormick, 
Ruiz, Dingell, Ross, Garcia, and Tokuda.
    Also present: Representative Moskowitz.
    Dr. Wenstrup. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus 
Pandemic will come to order. I want to welcome everyone.
    And without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at 
any time.
    I now recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    I ask for unanimous consent for Mr. Moskowitz from Florida 
and a member of the full committee to participate in today's 
hearing.
    Today, the Select Subcommittee is holding a hearing to 
examine the relationship between scientific journals and the 
government. This is not a hearing to see how the government can 
be more involved in the journal editorial process but to make 
sure that the government does not involve itself or influence 
this process.
    Academic, scientific, and medical journals are an 
incredibly important tool to spread research to the masses. 
There is no denying the awesome power of these periodicals, as 
well as their editors, that they hold over the medical and 
scientific communities. After the COVID-19 pandemic, we see 
that, and it affects the world for that matter. I utilize 
journals in my practice on almost a daily basis. They are an 
important component to the practice of science and medicine, 
and because of that, there can be no place for politics or 
inappropriate government influence.
    Journals and, subsequently, their editors are telling the 
world about research that has been conducted, yet it is 
important to note they are not necessarily always the arbiters 
of truth. They provide a forum where scientific claims are 
made, defended, and debated by peer review, as it should be. 
However, we saw a breakdown of that during the pandemic. Rather 
than journals being a wealth of information and opinions about 
this novel virus, of which we knew so little, they helped 
establish a party line that literally put a chilling effect on 
scientific research regarding the origins of COVID-19 and 
scientific communications.
    As I have stated time and time again, this Subcommittee was 
established so we can collectively take a look back on the 
pandemic and see what we can do better for the next time. We 
invited the editors-in-chief of the Lancet, Nature, and 
Science. Only the editor of Science has had the courage to come 
and help us be better, and we are very thankful to Dr. Thorp 
for being here today, and I appreciate the frank and 
professional conversation we had before today.
    The purpose of this hearing is to demystify the publication 
process. Editors hold an extraordinary amount of power within 
the journals in publication process, a process that is a black 
box to most of the public. They act as an umpire to judge the 
scientific research that is being published. Like an umpire, it 
is vital that they know about the sport and rules of play, but 
they themselves should never be in the competition. That is 
what appeared to have happened during COVID-19, and it is 
important to separate opinion versus scientifically proven fact 
and to highlight the varying hypotheses that may exist.
    The publications of papers like, ``Proximal Origin,'' which 
this Subcommittee has exposed as lacking in scientific 
integrity as well as being prompted by Dr. Fauci and Dr. 
Collins, and the Lancet letter, where the Lancet did not even 
bother to check for conflicts of interest, it set a precedent 
from two of the most prestigious journals in the world that the 
natural origin of COVID-19 was the only theory plausible, 
period, the end. That is not the case, and anyone else who had 
even the inkling of another plausible scientific thought was 
immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist. How is that 
acceptable in the scientific community when the entire crux of 
the field is open for debate?
    There is value in giving science a fair hearing. It should 
be the most pure and honest form of debate. We are holding this 
hearing to help shed light on the journal process so everyone 
can have a greater understanding of how business is conducted 
or maybe should be conducted. And, again, I want to express my 
disappointment that Dr. Skipper from Nature and Dr. Horton from 
Lancet declined to participate today, but I, again want to 
reiterate our appreciation to Dr. Thorp, standing up, showing 
integrity to testify before this Select Subcommittee today, and 
I look forward to a strong on-topic discussion.
    I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Ruiz for the 
purpose of making an opening statement.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the 
witnesses for your participation today in our hearing. There 
are things I agree with the Chairman and there are things that 
I disagree with, but we are still friends.
    Scientific journals play an important role in informing the 
public about the world around us, critical issues facing our 
Nation, and advances in science and medicine. In fact, I have 
been published a couple of times myself in these peer-reviewed 
journals in medicine. Since their inception, these journals 
have placed objectivity at the forefront of their efforts to 
study, review, and publish articles that advance our research 
enterprise, and when a once-in-a-generation pandemic struck our 
Nation in 2020, this was no different. But despite the 
Majority's claims in the press release announcing this hearing, 
the Select Subcommittee has not uncovered any evidence that 
directly implicates Drs. Fauci and Collins in a cover-up of the 
pandemic's origin or collusion with scientific journals to 
suppress the lab leak hypothesis.
    Under the guise of investigating COVID-19's origins, the 
Majority has continuously advanced a conspiratorial narrative 
against our Nation's public health officials, relying purely on 
speculation. Their probe into federally funded research has 
spanned more than a half a million pages of documents, more 
than a dozen transcribed interviews, and multiple hearings, and 
yet it has failed to substantiate any of their claims about 
Drs. Fauci and Collins or even bring us closer to understanding 
how COVID came to be. Instead, it has only further politicized 
an issue of great importance to our public health and national 
security, which is not without consequence.
    In fact, we are already seeing growing divides when it 
comes to trust in our Nation's institutions and how that 
influences people's behavior when it comes to protecting their 
health. Rebuilding the American people's trust in public health 
is critical to our ability to prevent, prepare for, and respond 
to future pandemics. And the way we go about that is not by 
continuing to manufacture distrust in our Nation's institutions 
by amplifying harmful and often outright false information 
about public health, or by jumping to conclusions about how 
this virus emerged when its origins are still inconclusive. 
Instead, it is by having honest conversations that are rooted 
in fact about what we can do better in the future.
    So, as we begin today's hearing, I want to take a moment to 
address some of the allegations that have been levied by the 
Majority over the course of this probe and what the facts of 
the case have actually told us.
    First, my Republican colleagues have alleged that Drs. 
Fauci and Collins orchestrated the proximal origins paper to 
suppress the lab leak theory, despite all evidence to the 
contrary. Documents and testimony made available to this 
committee have repeatedly shown that British scientist, Dr. 
Jeremy Farrar, played the lead role in organizing and 
shepherding the paper through publication. And second, my 
Republican colleagues have alleged that Drs. Fauci and Collins 
orchestrated a ``takedown of the Great Barrington 
Declaration.'' Dr. Collins testified before this committee that 
he had privately called for ``a quick and devastating published 
takedown of its premises out of concern for the public's 
health.'' Documents and testimony provided to this committee 
have never shown that Dr. Collins pressured an NIH employee or 
a scientific journal to ``take down the Great Barrington 
Declaration.'' This committee seems to be forgetting that there 
is a difference between government speech, which the Supreme 
Court has previously ruled government entities have a right to 
do, and government coercion, which my Republican colleagues are 
accusing public health officials of without a shred of 
evidence.
    That aside, I have to say I am worried that today's hearing 
is setting a dangerous precedent that if Congress doesn't like 
what you publish, you will be hauled in before a congressional 
committee to answer for it, until they prove their 
conspiratorial narrative. The fact is Congress should not be 
meddling in the peer review process, and it should not be 
holding hearings to throw around baseless accusations, 
especially when there is so much work we can and should be 
doing to prevent and prepare for future pandemics. Every minute 
wasted on spurious conjecture, every sentence spoken amplifying 
false information, and every hearing spent on unsubstantiated 
allegations comes at a cost, and at the end of the day, it will 
be the American people who will pay the biggest price. I yield 
back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Today's witness is Dr. Holden 
Thorp. Dr. Thorp is the editor-in-chief of the Science Family 
of Journals of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science. He became the editor in October 2019. He currently 
holds faculty appointments in chemistry and medicine at George 
Washington University.
    Pursuant to the Committee on Oversight and Accountability 
Rule 9(g), the witness will please stand and raise his right 
hand.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony that you 
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth, so help you God?
    Dr. Thorp. I do.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Let the record show that the 
witness answered in the affirmative.
    The Select Subcommittee certainly appreciates you for being 
here today, and we look forward to your testimony. Let me 
remind the witness we have read your written statement, and it 
will appear in full in the hearing record, and thank you for 
that. Please limit your oral statement to 5 minutes.
    As a reminder, please press the button on the microphone in 
front of you so that it is on, and the members can hear you. 
When you begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn 
green. After 4 minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the 
red light comes on, your 5 minutes has expired, and we would 
ask that you please wrap up.
    Now I will recognize Dr. Thorp to give an opening 
statement.

                    STATEMENT OF HOLDEN THORP, PH.D.

                   EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, SCIENCE JOURNALS

          AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE

    Dr. Thorp. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Wenstrup, 
Ranking Member Ruiz, and members of the Select Subcommittee, 
thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Holden 
Thorp, editor-in-chief of Science and the Science Family of 
Journals. The Science Family of Journals is published by the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the 
largest multidisciplinary nonprofit scientific societies in the 
world whose mission, in short, is to advance science and serve 
society.
    Let me begin by saying how extraordinarily proud I am of 
the Science Journal's work, including in the first year of the 
pandemic where we worked around the clock. Further, I am proud 
of the role that the scientific enterprise plays in society.
    The journal, Science, is unlike most other scientific 
publications in that it has three components, each of which 
operates independently. Each issue of Science covers scientific 
news, offers commentary about science, and publishes peer-
reviewed research in many disciplines. As editor-in-chief, my 
role is different for each section. For the research journal, I 
oversee a staff of expert editors in different specialties. For 
news, I oversee award-winning coverage that is led by an editor 
and journalists who enjoy the same freedoms as any other media 
outlet in our country. And as part of our commentary section 
called Insights, I am an opinion writer who appears on the 
magazine's editorial page roughly every other week.
    The peer review process is central to the scientific 
enterprise. For each paper we handle at the journal, we abide 
by a rigorous, multi-step peer review process that begins with 
staff editors who assess papers. These staff editors consult 
with expert colleagues and a board of external scientists. If a 
paper is determined to be potentially suitable for the journal, 
it is further evaluated by multiple reviewers who are 
researchers in related fields. This ensures that all aspects of 
a given study receive appropriate scrutiny. We also have a 
careful process to ensure that the reviewers do not have a 
conflict of interest. Most studies that make it beyond these 
evaluations are revised and re-reviewed to ensure that all 
reviewer concerns have been adequately addressed. Then a paper 
is reviewed again by our staff editors who clarify language and 
images to make sure they are consistent with the evidence that 
has been presented.
    If a paper makes it all the way through all of this, then 
it is summarized, shared with more than 8,000 reporters under 
embargo, and posted on our website. And then, upon publication, 
it is maintained by us in perpetuity for any corrections and 
adjustments that happen after publication, according to our 
well-established process. This process was applied consistently 
to the nearly 9,000 research papers submitted to the Science 
Family of Journals related to SARS-CoV-2. It is applied to 
every research paper on every topic.
    Regarding the paper at the center of this discussion, ``The 
Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,'' it was never submitted to 
Science. In fact, I had no knowledge of this piece published in 
Nature Medicine, nor the related letter in The Lancet, until 
they were published. However, I want to call attention to three 
publications in our journal, Science, that are relevant to 
today's discussion.
    The first is a letter published in our commentary section 
in May 2021 from prominent researchers in the area of COVID-19 
origins, led by virologist, Jesse Bloom. This letter called for 
a thorough investigation of a lab origin of COVID-19. When we 
published it, I wrote that, ``Good science requires that the 
laboratory escape be rigorously investigated before being ruled 
out. China should allow for a dispassionate examination of the 
data and allow scientists to do what they are trained to do.'' 
The publication of this letter turned the tide in the 
discussion of COVID origins toward considering the possibility 
of a lab origin, and I stand firmly by this sentiment today.
    I also want to highlight two papers from virologists 
Michael Worobey and Jonathan Pekar, published in our research 
section in 2022. These papers present geospatial and genetic 
information that support, but do not conclusively prove, the 
theory of natural origin. They were initially posted on the 
internet as pre-prints in a process many scientists use before 
submitting to a journal. They were widely read and reported 
prior to their submission to Science. Once they were submitted 
to Science, they were reviewed in accordance with the same 
process I just described. At the end of that process, they were 
edited under my supervision to ensure that their language was 
consistent with the extent to which the evidence supported 
their conclusion of natural origin. To be clear, and to state 
up front, no government officials from the White House or the 
NIH prompted or participated in the review or editing of the 
Worobey papers by us.
    In closing, I want to recognize the scientific community 
and my colleagues at the Science Family of Journals for their 
roles during the COVID-19 pandemic. We did not get everything 
right during COVID--no one did--but in 18 months, the 
scientific community identified the virus, determined how it 
spread, developed therapies that have had major life-saving 
impacts. Scientists, the scientific method, and peer review are 
national treasures, and I am thankful every day for all three, 
and, of course, scientists are not and never will be perfect. 
We are human. But the scientific method enables us to reach 
beyond our individual limitations by requiring evidence and 
constant self-correction. It helped us end the pandemic, and it 
contributes to a strong and prosperous America.
    Thank you for having me today, and I look forward to taking 
your questions.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Dr. Thorp. I now recognize myself 
for questions, and I want to start with the empty chairs in the 
room. We also invited Dr. Skipper from Nature and Dr. Horton 
from Lancet, both of which publish a significant amount of 
federally funded research. Dr. Thorp, you are here. You showed 
up. Do you think your colleagues should have as well?
    Dr. Thorp. I do. I am disappointed that they are not here.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Before we get into some more 
substance questions regarding some of the public statements, 
and, again, we are trying to look at process here and how we 
can do things better in the future. But the first is, after our 
first hearing on the origins back in March 2023, you tweeted, 
``One side has scientific evidence. The other has a mediocre 
episode of 'Homeland.' '' We have heard from scientists, 
foreign affairs experts, intelligence experts, that a lab leak 
is possible. Even recently with Dr. Fauci, he said it is not a 
conspiracy theory. The tweet appears to contradict your 
testimony today. Would you still put the same thing out today 
or have you learned something or why was that put out at the 
time?
    Dr. Thorp. No. As I said in my written testimony, I was not 
as careful expressing my personal opinions on my personal 
Twitter page as I should have. That does happen on social media 
from time to time. I have gotten off Twitter, and I highly 
recommend that because in addition to making my life better, I 
don't have to take my blood pressure medicine anymore, so my 
doctor is very happy I got off of Twitter also. I apologize for 
that. That was flippant, and I shouldn't have done that.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Well, I appreciate that. So let me ask 
another question. In an editorial published November 12, 2021, 
you were discussing the recently revealed DEFUSE proposal, the 
one where EcoHealth, UNC, and the WIV proposed inserting furin 
cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses. You wrote, 
unequivocally, these experiments were not conducted. How did 
you know that they weren't?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, opinions that I express on the 
opinion page are very clearly marked as opinion, as you alluded 
to in your opening statement. We publish opinions in Science 
because we like to provoke discussion about them, and every 2 
weeks I have to come up with 720 words of my opinions to put on 
there, and that was a topic that people were certainly 
interested in. I was not aware, especially, of the information 
that your committee has since obtained about that grant, and I 
understand why you would be so interested in all of that. At 
that time, I was going from what was reported in news stories 
that were around. That is what opinion journalists do. We read 
news stories, and we write commentary based on those opinions.
    So, at that time, I concluded that it was a proposal that 
wasn't funded and there are many proposals that are not funded 
in Science. And so, something that was not funded, I didn't see 
as significant as some people did. I understand how you could 
see it was circumstantial evidence to support some of the 
things that you are looking for, and I was critical of both the 
way that Dr. Collins and Dr. Daszak handled the revealing of 
that proposal. And I certainly wasn't aware or something that I 
agree with you, it is very important that you have only 
recently uncovered, and that is that Dr. Daszak may have had 
other plans other than what was in the proposal.
    Now, I think it is also true that the viruses that they 
were talking about were not close enough to COVID that those 
experiments themselves could have led to the pandemic, but it 
is certainly true that they were discussing all of those things 
in that proposal. And no one that I mentioned in that editorial 
was happy with me after I wrote that because I criticized both 
parties.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Yes. I mean, when you say one thing in your 
proposal, but in your private comments, you are talking about 
doing something different, it raises an eyebrow.
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. I was not aware of that at that time.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Neither were we.
    Dr. Thorp. Yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. Dr. Thorp, in your opening 
statement, you walked through the editorial process, and I 
greatly appreciate that. I thought it was a great statement you 
put forward, and I appreciate your candor. You mentioned two 
COVID origins papers that were pre-printed and eventually peer 
reviewed and published in Science. What is the standard 
practice for pre-prints? Are they submitted to Science and then 
published online or vice versa? Take me through that.
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. This is very important for your committee, 
and it is a very important part of my life, so I appreciate you 
giving me the opportunity to walk through it. We used to live 
in a simpler world where pre-prints didn't exist, but they have 
made all of this in some ways better and in some ways much more 
difficult. So, it is common for scientists now to take the 
version of the paper that they are likely to submit to a 
journal and put it on what we call a pre-print server, and on 
that pre-print server, anybody who wants to can look at it.
    The primary purpose of it is to get the information in the 
paper out to the scientific community so that other scientists 
can benefit from what they have discovered. And that part of 
it, you know, I really like because our process can take a long 
time sometimes, and it is a reasonable criticism of scientific 
publishing that we tie things up too long while we are doing 
all of those procedures that I described to you. So, the pre-
print is a mechanism for solving that problem. However, it 
creates a lot of complications because the media can cover 
those pre-prints. The pre-prints can get into the public 
discourse very easily. And this was certainly true with Worobey 
and Pekar, as those papers are improved during the scientific 
process and even afterwards because sometimes we have to adjust 
papers after the fact. None of that is in the record that is on 
the pre-print.
    And this is one of the main reasons why journals are 
important because not only do we evaluate and improve the 
version itself, but then afterwards, we are responsible for any 
comments and criticisms and adjustments in the paper that have 
to be made after the fact. So, the benefits of the pre-print 
are that the journals aren't holding up the world from getting 
scientific information. The drawback is it makes the whole 
thing noisier. And so, there are a lot of people in my line of 
work who long for the day when we didn't have pre-prints 
because it made our jobs easier in that respect.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I appreciate that. Before I go to the Ranking 
Member, I just want to point, these two papers were the subject 
of a front-page spread in The New York Times. And one author 
quoted saying, ``When you look at all of the evidence together, 
it is an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic 
started at the Huanan market.'' But that is not what the paper 
ended up showing, and you pointed that out in your opening 
statement. I appreciate that, and it seems that these studies, 
much like ``Proximal Origin'' and Lancet letter, were used to 
stifle debate.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Dr. Ruiz. For 14 months, under the guise of investigating 
the origins of the novel coronavirus, the Select Subcommittee 
has relentlessly probed our Nation's scientific community and 
researchers. Last year, we spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing 
the drafting and publications of the ``Proximal Origin'' paper, 
demanding thousands of pages of internal documents from 
researchers involved in the paper, conducting transcribed 
interviews with these researchers, subpoenaing their private 
communications, and calling two of them to testify at a public 
hearing. And through the fall and winter, the Select 
Subcommittee conducted a dozen transcribed interviews of 
current and former NIH and NIAID scientists.
    We have undertaken all of this work, but to what end? Has 
targeting these researchers and probing the publications of the 
proximal origin paper meaningfully advanced our efforts to 
prevent and prepare for future pandemics, or has it been about 
fishing for evidence with the goal of advancing a predetermined 
partisan narrative targeting Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins and our 
Nation's scientists and public health officials?
    Dr. Thorp, what work is the scientific community associated 
with your journals doing to better understand the origins?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. So, I think there are still people out 
there doing research on trying to understand the origin of 
COVID. But I think one thing that I would love to explain to 
folks is that during this phase of the pandemic, at the 
beginning, most of us were focused on, or I was much more 
focused on things that could get us out of the pandemic than 
understanding where it came from.
    Now, that doesn't mean I don't agree that it is important 
to know where COVID came from. But a lot of this that was going 
on was going on at a time when scientists were working around 
the clock, rearranging their lives, dealing with the 
disruptions that they had from COVID, and our journal, we were 
all at home on our computers going through thousands and 
thousands of COVID papers, looking for papers that would help 
us get the vaccine or new drugs.
    Dr. Ruiz. I agree. I understand that. But now looking in 
hindsight, would you agree with the statement that both the 
scientific and the intelligence communities, maybe you might 
not know about the intelligence communities as much, but there 
have been some published reports from different agencies, that 
the thing we can say with certain is that there is no 
certainty.
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. I agree with that.
    Dr. Ruiz. You agree with that. So, there is no certainty 
without thinking whether this is a lab leak, and there is no 
certainty if this is a zoonotic transmission.
    Dr. Thorp. That is correct.
    Dr. Ruiz. That both are still plausible, and we need to 
research to determine which one it is. But given the barriers 
of China noncompliance with our investigations, shouldn't we be 
preparing on both fronts to determine how can we prevent a 
zoonotic or how can we prevent a lab leak?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you. Thank you. I just needed a yes. So, 
when I joined the Select Subcommittee as Ranking Member, you 
know, I hoped that we could work on the challenging, but 
critically important mission of identifying forward-looking 
solutions to prevent and prepare for future pandemics. This 
included taking a serious look at whether SARS-CoV-2 emerged 
from a natural zoonotic transfer or from a research-related 
incident so that we could propose substantive policies to 
prevent the emergence of the next deadly novel airborne virus.
    But instead of examining this question seriously and 
consistently and objectively, this Select Subcommittee has so 
far only leveraged it to target our Nation's scientists, Dr. 
Fauci, Dr. Collins, and to vilify our Nation's public health 
officials. And in order to prove their theory that Dr. Fauci 
and Dr. Collins suppressed the truth, which is dependent on the 
lab leak theory, they must push and prove that, in fact, it was 
leaked from a lab, and there is no alternative, or else the 
entire narrative is false. And in doing so, you know, the 
Select Subcommittee has undermined the critical mission of 
preventing and preparing for future pandemics.
    Dr. Thorp, what actions should Congress be taking to close 
off both natural-and research-related incident pathways for 
novel viruses to emerge?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, I think that laboratory safety is 
incredibly important. In fact, I co-chaired and wrote the last 
National Academies of Sciences' study on chemical laboratory 
safety, which has many principles in it that would also apply 
to biological laboratory safety. And it is a riveting reading, 
and I would be delighted to send it to you if you want to read 
it. So that is half of it. And on the other half, if it is true 
that it came from the wildlife trade, we have published many 
papers talking about how understanding the extent and 
regulation of the wildlife trade in China is very, very 
important, and I could refer you to a number of papers about 
that.
    Dr. Ruiz. So, you know, what is more, as a result of 
unproven conspiratorial accusations, like those suggesting Dr. 
Fauci and Dr. Collins covered up the origins of COVID-19 
pandemic, trust in science and our Nation's public health 
institutions have suffered. The Pew Research Center found that 
fewer than 3 in 10 Americans have a great deal of confidence in 
scientists to act in the public's interest. So, while 
manufacturing of distrust is largely happening along party 
lines, it will hurt us all and our public health in the long 
run, whether you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent. And 
we are already seeing the consequences. For example, threats 
against scientists and public health officials have surged in 
the wake of these accusations, which could have long-term 
impacts on our ability to cultivate a strong and growing work 
force to protect our public health.
    Dr. Thorp, have you observed an increase in threats against 
scientists and researchers since the COVID-19 pandemic, and 
does this trend undermine our efforts to prevent and prepare 
for future pandemics?
    Dr. Thorp. I have only heard about it secondhand, but I 
have many people that I work with in the scientific community 
that I know who have endured that, and I find it very 
unfortunate.
    Dr. Ruiz. It is very unfortunate. And as a physician and 
public health expert, I am deeply troubled that the 
Subcommittee has prioritized its time and resources on 
advancing this extreme partisan narrative over fulfilling our 
obligations to the American people to mitigate future public 
health threats. So, I once again urge my colleagues on the 
other side of the aisle to stop the conspiratorial accusation. 
There has been no evidence directly linking Dr. Fauci or Dr. 
Collins. Instead, let's work on forward-looking solutions that 
can prevent and prepare for the next pandemic. Thank you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Miller-Meeks from Iowa 
for 5 minutes of questions.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, 
Dr. Thorp, for testifying before this Select Subcommittee 
today.
    This hearing could not come at a better time, especially 
with the coronavirus pandemic in the rearview mirror. And 
during the pandemic, we saw clear collusion, non-
conspiratorial, between certain stakeholders and government 
entities, such as, one example, how the American Federation of 
Teachers and Randi Weingarten were heavily involved in the 
drafting of the CDC school closure guidance with how we 
discussed and talked about infection-acquired immunity, which 
is a real thing, but even public health people were denying 
that it existed. We have evidence of that from this Select 
Subcommittee.
    Collaboration and collusion between non-medical entities 
like the AFT and the government have real-world consequences. 
It is no secret that keeping children out of the classroom had 
devastating impacts on their mental health and education 
markers, including reading and math scores. It has also forced 
parents to stay home with their children to participate in 
remote learning, rather than being able to go to work and 
support their families. In this scenario, there was no peer-
reviewed or medical backing, but rather, sheer political 
interest that occurred at the expense of children, parents, 
teachers, and the country writ large.
    Part of doing medical research and going through the peer 
review process means changing, correcting, or eliminating 
portions of your work. It is also important to recognize the 
reality that authors and those in the medical community should 
be comfortable defending their work and be able to explain 
rationale behind those findings. And Dr. Thorp, I think you may 
have already explained this, but can you please detail the 
review process for publications?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. If a paper is submitted to a peer-reviewed 
journal, first we decide if we are going to have it reviewed, 
and we do that in collaboration with some advisors that we 
have, and then we send it out and it goes through successive 
rounds of review and revision by experts. And only after it 
survives all of that do we then prepare it for publication 
where we check over it, and then if there are concerns raised 
about the paper after that, we mediate the discussions about 
those and decide if there are other things that need to be 
done.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Having gone through that process for 
publication, I can----
    Dr. Thorp. Congratulations.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks [continuing]. echo that it is arduous. 
Have you ever notified the government of certain articles or 
topics that your journal was reviewing, and have you ever felt 
pressured by a government to publish or any government to 
publish or not publish certain articles?
    Dr. Thorp. I have never done that for a research article, 
but my opinion pieces go to 8,000 reporters 4 days before they 
are published. And a lot of times, if we think that somebody 
might get a question about something that is in one of my 
opinion pieces, we let them know ahead of time so that they 
will have a complete answer if they get asked. And since I 
wrote about a lot of government officials during this period, 
and I still do in all administrations and in all countries 
around the world, I do from time to time let them know ahead of 
time that there is an opinion piece coming that they might get 
asked about.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Well, thank you. And since you mentioned 
opinion pieces, I think that there was research that was 
suppressed due to groupthink, and how does your journal combat 
groupthink as it is currently magnified by peer review?
    Dr. Thorp. Well, thankfully, we rely on a peer-review 
process that awaits evidence, and scientists are opinionated 
people, just like everybody else, but we also know, and we 
could have done a lot better job at explaining this, that 
science is a work in progress. And so, when we see new data, we 
change the way we are thinking. And I obviously did that many 
times during the pandemic and so did everybody else, and in the 
future, we need to do a much better job telling people that. 
And I think it is something that we take for granted because 
that is what makes science fun. That is why we do it because it 
changes, and we need to do a much better job of helping the 
public understand that. And I have written many opinion pieces 
for the scientific community on that topic.
    Dr. Miller-Meeks. Yes. As you correctly pointed out, 
science is not consensus of opinion. And I just want to say, 
since the time I came into Congress in 2021, I have talked 
about why the origins of COVID-19 were important, not partisan, 
not conspiratorial, but one, laboratory safety. The world has a 
right to know that the correct type of research is being done 
in the correct lab safety environment; No. 2, immediate 
disclosure of viruses or bacteria that may lead to a pandemic; 
and No. 4, the ethics of the type of research that is being 
done in those laboratories. To say that there was no certainty 
and no outcome from these hearings, I am proud of the work this 
Select Subcommittee has done. We are talking about this topic 
today because people dared to question the narrative that was 
being proposed, and trust suffers because of censorship, 
because of a lack of debate within the scientific community. 
And so due to the work of this Select Subcommittee, I think 
that we have advanced people that have disparate voices, people 
that dare to challenge the current narrative, which we have 
seen in science time and time again.
    And I will bring up peptic ulcer disease is not caused by 
type A personality, but a bacteria, and thank goodness people 
were willing to challenge the medical narrative. But if 
disparate voices know that they will be heard, they will not be 
censored, and that absolutely, 100 percent will lead to better 
preparation for the next pandemic. With that, I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mrs. Dingell in Michigan for 
5 minutes of questions.
    Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Over the course of 
this hearing, we have had several baseless claims about 
wrongdoing by Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins. Of course, these 
claims are nothing new. They were predetermined since the 
outset of this Congress and debunked through Republicans' own 
probe, but that doesn't stop people from recycling them, even 
in the absence of evidence. To date, nearly half a million 
pages of documents and more than a dozen transcribed interviews 
of current and former Federal officials and researchers, all at 
taxpayers' expense, have failed to reveal a cover-up of COVID-
19's origin or any other wrongdoing by Dr. Fauci or Dr. 
Collins.
    As Select Subcommittee Democrats have repeatedly said, and 
as the paper's authors, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins, all 
testified, neither Dr. Fauci nor Dr. Collins suppressed the lab 
leak theory or orchestrated the Proximal Origin paper, nor did 
they organize the February 1, 2020 conference call. Rather, Dr. 
Jeremy Farrar organized that call and played a leading role in 
shepherding ``Proximal Origin'' through publication. Those are 
crystal clear facts acknowledged in Republicans' own materials. 
In fact, Republican questioning during Dr. Fauci's transcribed 
interview explicitly recognized that they were nitpicking words 
and believed that Dr. Fauci was testifying truthfully when he 
said he made no edits to revisions to Proximal Origin. And for 
the record, the Select Subcommittee Democrats would appreciate 
it if the Republicans would release that transcript.
    As for the Great Barrington Declaration, we know how 
disastrous immediately lifting community mitigation measures 
would have been at a time when the COVID-19 death toll had just 
surpassed more than 1 million nationwide. That is what Dr. 
Collins recognized when he privately called for a takedown of 
the declaration's premises. Dr. Collins never pressured an NIH 
employee, or a scientific journal for that matter, to censor 
the declaration, and Republican claims to the contrary are just 
not true. For the record, we would also appreciate the release 
of Dr. Collins' interview transcript. And as for the 
Republicans claims about Dr. Fauci's and Dr. Collins' 
censorship of views suggesting COVID-19 does not have a natural 
origin, let's critically examine Republicans' star document.
    Dr. Thorp, on May 12, 2021, you emailed Dr. Fauci and Dr. 
Collins, and informed them that the Science would be publishing 
a letter calling for an investigation of COVID-19 origins that 
is ``transparent, objective, data driven, inclusive a broad 
expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly 
managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest.'' In 
response, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins thanked you for your email, 
reiterated their complete support for a thorough investigation 
into COVID-19's origins, and acknowledged that it was 
unfortunate that legitimate scientific questions were being 
politicized against NIH. First question. Dr. Thorp, is it an 
accurate summary of your email exchange with Dr. Fauci and Dr. 
Collins?
    Dr. Thorp. It is.
    Mrs. Dingell. Two, did Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins tell 
Science not to publish that letter, even when understanding 
that it might be twisted against them by proponents of 
misinformation?
    Dr. Thorp. No, they told me the opposite of that.
    Mrs. Dingell. Was it your understanding that Dr. Fauci and 
Dr. Collins both supported an independent and thorough 
investigation into COVID-19 source?
    Dr. Thorp. They both said that in those emails.
    Mrs. Dingell. Thank you, Dr. Thorp, and I do agree this 
committee should be doing very good work. I don't take any 
doctor at his word, unfortunately. Some doctors here probably 
would like to give me lectures sometimes, but we got to tell 
the truth and get to the bottom of it, and we got to protect 
the public. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Ross of North Carolina 
for 5 minutes of question.
    Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and it is a delight to 
see you, Dr. Thorp, and thank you so much for your service to 
the state of North Carolina. And then, of course, through your 
current work, you and your family have done so many wonderful 
things for our state, so I am thrilled to see you today.
    Dr. Thorp. It was an honor to do it all. Thank you very 
much. Good to see you again.
    Ms. Ross. Good to see you. So, I am going to take a little 
different tack. I want to note that the approach that my 
Republican colleagues have taken today is a little bit 
surprising. The Select Subcommittee heard transcribed interview 
testimony from both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins nearly 4 months 
ago. And I want to remind everybody here and then just inform 
you because you may not know this, that none of their takeaways 
for the press at that time point to specific testimony that 
demonstrated academic malpractice by either Dr. Fauci or Dr. 
Collins.
    The Chairman sent invitations to the witnesses noting a 
plain fact. Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins communicated with 
scientific journals during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is to 
be expected. It is completely unsurprising. And after all, Dr. 
Fauci and Dr. Collins were scientists before, during, and after 
the pandemic, and it would be unreasonable to suggest that they 
should have paused their scholarly inquiries during a time of 
great scientific uncertainty. Government actors querying 
academia on issues that are academic in nature isn't 
malpractice or unlawful. It is just doing their jobs. In fact, 
government speech is a feature of our constitutional democracy, 
even in this context. As the Supreme Court has explained, ``A 
government entity has the right to speak for itself. Indeed, it 
is not easy to imagine how the government could function if it 
lacked this freedom.''
    The question we really need to be asking ourselves today is 
simple. The evidence available to the Select Subcommittee 
provides a straightforward answer. Did Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins 
coerce scientific journals to censor or suppress certain views 
on questions related to COVID-19? Now, the question of coercion 
was one recently heard by the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Biden, 
and a clear majority of the Court was skeptical of the claims 
in that case. In fact, Justice Kavanaugh agreed that if the 
government were to ``regularly call up the media, that alone is 
not dispositive of government coercion.''
    Even then, Republicans present today have only demonstrated 
a handful of communication by the government to scientific 
journals. Dr. Thorp, are you aware of any threats made by Dr. 
Fauci or Dr. Collins to compel your journal or any other 
journal to publish or to withhold publication of a particular 
work related to COVID-19?
    Dr. Thorp. No, I am not.
    Ms. Ross. Well, here is the thing. Nothing, none of this 
really matters unless journals dispute what has been said today 
and say that there was censorship. Dr. Thorp, I would like to 
give you a moment to respond to allegations of censorship. Why 
is it important that journals publish competing views on 
scientific questions that remain reasonably open to debate?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, as I said and what I posted when I 
posted the letter from Jesse Bloom calling for the 
investigation of the lab origin in Science, there are 
compelling national interest reasons. But it is also true that 
what makes science great is when scientists argue passionately 
with each other, go to conferences and lab meetings and argue 
about things and debate things, and then rely on the peer 
review process and the process of exposing the information to 
wide groups of people, who, in today's world, can comment on 
social media and on websites and all over the place to 
eventually lead to this conclusion. And we get there in this 
messy, human, glorious process. That is what makes my job so 
interesting.
    Ms. Ross. And can you just tell us how your journal's 
editorial process safeguards against undue influence?
    Dr. Thorp. Well, our editors make their own decisions based 
on their expertise as to what papers they are going to publish 
only after consulting widely with people who have no conflicts 
of interest in evaluating the paper, and only after they are 
revised extensively to make sure that a group relies on them. 
And then when they are published, we take responsibility for 
mediating any discussions after the fact that may require us to 
adjust the paper.
    Ms. Ross. Well, thank you so much for your time, and I 
yield back.
    Dr. Thorp. Good to see you.
    Ms. Ross. Good to see you.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize, Mr. McCormick of Georgia for 
5 minutes of questions.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Dr. Chair. Appreciate you and 
appreciate you for showing up today, Mr. Thorp. I think it 
takes a lot of guts and balance. I have watched what you have 
written. And you and I don't always agree on everything, but 
one thing I really agree on is the fact that we give fair, 
qualitative analysis of something. This is science to some 
degree, and sometimes scientists have disagreements, but it is 
OK to debate that publicly without squashing one side or the 
other. Thank you for being here when others declined.
    Dr. Thorp. Well, it was not that hard to get here on the 
Orange Line.
    Dr. McCormick. I appreciate that. For people who don't know 
who are watching, that means he is a local. With that said, it 
is interesting to me when we watch the debate over different 
things, some people have discredited things like Cochrane 
Review, which, when I was going through medical school, we are 
having actually journal studies, in journal club, and talking 
about what studies meant the most. Cochrane Review was the gold 
standard. Would you agree that that is one of the more 
important reviews that we have in scientific research and 
analysis of medical studies?
    Dr. Thorp. I am not a physician, so I am not sure I know 
exactly what you are referring to.
    Dr. McCormick. OK. I will kind of go through the Cochrane 
Review because Cochrane Review is something we use when you 
have a whole bunch of experts go over meta analysis of all 
kinds of studies and come up with the most scientifically 
proven theories, whether it be on vaccinations, whether it be 
on medical treatments. It could be on mask wearing. It could be 
on any myriad of different scientific studies based on what 
works best in medicine. It can be with specialties like cancer 
or with virology or epidemiology, all the different things that 
you have written on. Cochrane Reviews is comprehensive. It is 
not focused on one direction or another. It is to gather all 
the different studies and see which ones were done 
scientifically versus which ones were just done with a bias.
    Dr. Thorp. While you are explaining that, I remembered what 
you are talking about, so thank you for that.
    Dr. McCormick. Absolutely. And in my opinion, it is very 
much the gold standard. It was always held as the golden 
standard. It wasn't political. As a matter of fact, when I was 
going through medical school and residency, I don't remember 
politics ever once being measured inside of a scientific 
discussion until now. This unfortunate evolution of COVID 
became politicized, and, of course, now we can't even have a 
good scientific discussion because everything is based on what 
politics you fall. And if the President, whether it be Democrat 
or Republican, chooses one side, of course, you have to choose 
the other side, and that is the unfortunate downstream 
evolution of this debate.
    There was one time, as a matter of fact, we had a 
President, I believe, it was Garfield, who was treated by 
several physicians who didn't wash their hands because at the 
time, that wasn't science. And yet a guy named Lister said you 
should wash your hands, but nobody paid attention, and we 
contaminated the President and he died. That is the evolution 
of science.
    When it comes to this meta analysis, one of the things that 
we would have had was a study on mask wearing for example. And 
during the middle of this, I am an ER physician, treating 
thousands of patients for COVID. I said, you know, if you look 
at this scientifically, if you look at this even from a 
commonsense standpoint, if you are wearing a mask at school but 
you are constantly taking it off, putting it on, putting it on 
desks, and all the things that kids do, you are probably not 
helping things. And of course, we did meta analysis, we did a 
Cochrane Review, and it was shown scientifically not to help at 
all. Matter of fact, it was a dead even wash, and yet it has 
been politicized, and people say, well, that is not real 
science. And ironically, the same thing goes for the way that 
we looked at treatments for this COVID disease and the way we 
talk about medications and isolation and everything else has 
been politicized.
    Could you comment on how the politicization of this disease 
has actually inhibited a good scientific solution for future 
debate on medical procedures?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, first of all, I just want to say we 
published a huge study in Bangladesh on mask wearing that is 
not completely in agreement with that Cochrane Review, but it 
also has plenty in there for people who don't want to force 
people to wear masks because they are only partially effective, 
and everybody could read that if they wanted to. But I think 
the politicization of COVID, you know, if we look back on it, 
is something that we all probably wish we hadn't experienced 
and hadn't contributed to the extent that we did. And I think 
the scientific community contributed to that sometimes, and I 
think politicians contributed to it as well, and it would have 
been nice to have a calmer path through the whole thing. But 
thankfully, science works in a way that got us to a lot of 
things that did work.
    Dr. McCormick. Let me ask you one final question. I am 
running out of questions. I spent way too much time lecturing 
instead of asking the question. Do you think that politicians 
are better suited to make policy on healthcare than doctors and 
healthcare professionals?
    Dr. Thorp. I think that politicians should make policy 
based on anything with the best information that they can get.
    Dr. McCormick. I would make the counter argument that maybe 
politicians stay out of the way of physicians making decisions 
so we can actually get the best results and not have one-size-
fits-all. Thank you. With that I yield.
    Dr. Thorp. Yes.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Mr. Mfume of Maryland for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Mr. Mfume. Mr. Chairman, thank you, and I thank the Ranking 
Member. One of the things that this hearing clearly proves is 
that we are sometimes all over the place more than we need to 
be. And to the extent that we can do Monday morning 
quarterbacking, we all have perfect records, but that is just 
not the way life goes. And it did not go that way for COVID, so 
here we are, once again, both sides of the aisle trying to 
figure out an approach that creates a template and the proper 
history for anybody that comes behind us should we ever be 
faced with something like this again.
    Dr. Thorp, I want to thank you for being here. I, believe 
it or not, I have followed you from way back at GW through the 
days at UNC, and I have had a chance to note some of your 
writings and I have agreed with you in most instances. I think 
the right word that I continue to get for you as I talk to 
people, ``a straight shooter.'' And I spent some time as the 
executive director of the National Medical Association, and 
then after that over at the National Institute on Health 
Minority Disparities at NIH. And then just before I returned to 
Congress, spent 9 years at Research America, where, you know, 
being the largest research organization in the Nation, we get a 
chance to hear all the views that are academic and otherwise.
    But through all of that, that straight shooter tag has 
stayed the same about you. There are people who believe 
strongly in the fact that you bring a sense of balance, even 
though they don't always agree. Dr. Shirley Malcom comes to 
mind as one of the persons that continues to exalt you to talk 
about she believes how fair you are, if I can use that term, 
and I think I am hearing some of that from some of the members 
of the committee today.
    I just want to do a couple of quick things. In July 2021--
make that May 2021--Science published a letter from a group of 
scientists calling for a full investigation of both theories 
for the origin of COVID-19. Could you take a second to describe 
how the letter was considered, No. 1, by the team at Science 
and what effect it had, if any, on your approach to those 
questions?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. So, we had not gotten papers like the two 
that your committee is very interested in that my colleagues 
are not here to talk about that were in their journals. So, as 
I said, we were much more focused on the facts that would help 
us get out of the pandemic, and we respected our colleagues at 
the other journals who published those two papers and really 
didn't think that much of it. So, we were all of the view that, 
or most of us, that it was a natural origin, and there was an 
opportunity for us to focus on other things.
    And then 1 day, we get this letter from a lot of people 
that we respect, including people who are on both sides of this 
debate, saying that there should be a further investigation. We 
were pretty surprised. I mean, I was thinking about the vaccine 
and the drugs, to be honest with you. And so, we got that 
letter, and it was from serious people, and we debated it. And 
we thought, wow, this is a big change, but if these folks are 
all on board with this, this is really, really important, and 
we debated it. Not everybody who works for me agreed that we 
should publish it, and so in the end, and this doesn't happen 
that often because most of the time, my folks make their 
decisions on their own, but it went all the way up to me, and I 
made the final decision to publish that letter.
    And I got a lot of grief from people who said I was 
promoting conspiracy theories and all of this stuff, and you 
can find all of that on social media and elsewhere. But in the 
end, we decided to publish that paper, that letter. We promoted 
it to the 8,000 reporters. It was widely covered, and it was a 
big event in turning the tide toward the consideration of a lab 
origin.
    Mr. Mfume. And then about 13 months later, in July or June 
2022, the Science Family of Journals published a research 
article supporting the zoonotic spillover theory, and it 
appears that article went through several revisions before and 
since the publication. Could you take another moment then to 
share with the Subcommittee what unfolded at Science across the 
timeline and how it illustrates the role of scientific 
publishing and that process?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. That story is a long story, and it is not 
over. So those papers were pre-prints. As has already been 
discussed today, they were widely covered in the media, so we 
knew a lot about them. And one other advantage of pre-prints is 
that we get to see all the discussion that happens when the 
pre-prints are out there before they are submitted to us, and 
that is, in a sense, an additional layer of review.
    So, when they came to us, and they were roughly in the same 
form that they had been in, when they were pre-prints, they 
were revised, and there were significant concerns raised, which 
happens with every paper. The authors had the opportunity to 
address those concerns. We thought their concerns were that 
they were doing a sincere job of addressing them, so the paper 
was sent back to the reviewers. More concerns were addressed.
    And one of the things that happens that is also really 
important when we are doing this, is we are not just deciding 
what is in the paper that you see when you go on the website, 
but we are also deciding what is in this enormous PDF file 
called supporting information. And then data, many, many more 
terabytes of data or megabytes or gigabytes of data that are 
posted and the amount of data that were supporting the paper, 
the number of references in the paper, many rewrites happened 
all of that time. And we knew that those papers were going to 
continue to be controversial because the people who believed in 
the lab origin were going to try to criticize it. And we have 
gone through many rounds of people writing to us and us getting 
more advice about things that we are going to post on the 
paper. And, you know, you might say, why did you do that, you 
signed up for so much work, but we just felt like that was a 
really important service for us to provide to the world to 
maintain that.
    Mr. Mfume. Thank you. My time has expired, but let me just 
say it has really troubled me to watch the vilification of Dr. 
Fauci and Dr. Collins over the last couple of years. And I 
think we have been on the record at least many times on this 
side of the aisle about how that sort of stuff does not help us 
at all. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I now recognize Ms. Tokuda from Hawaii for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Ms. Tokuda. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You know, 
unfortunately, today's hearing does nothing to better prepare 
our Nation for future public health threats, protect the 
American people's health, or enhance our understanding of 
COVID-19's origins. Instead, it is simply a continuation of 
this majority's unsubstantiated attempts to villainize, as has 
just been mentioned, our Nation's public health officials by 
advancing an extreme narrative against them that hinges solely 
on speculation. While the Majority has attempted to score 
political points with these probes, they have not only wasted 
critical time that could have been spent preventing and 
preparing for future pandemics, but they have also further 
politicized the question of COVID-19's origins and the COVID-19 
response more broadly.
    Unfortunately, since the start, as we know of the COVID-19 
pandemic, we have seen a concerning rise in distrust of public 
health officials amongst Americans. A recent survey from the 
CDC found that about a quarter of Americans say they trust the 
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's health 
recommendations not very much or not at all. The public's trust 
in our Nation's public health institutions is critical if we 
are to handle future pandemics and be prepared for them, and 
our ability to work together in times of emergencies to quickly 
save lives and reduce harm.
    As vaccination rates of childhood and routine immunizations 
decline across the country, I have serious concerns as a mother 
that we are heading down a very dark path. Over the last year, 
my Republican colleagues have wielded the power of the majority 
of this committee to amplify extreme views on vaccines. They 
have invited experts who have pushed questionable advice, and 
they have continued on their crusade against our Nation's 
public health officials. These efforts to foster and capitalize 
on distrust and public health for partisan gain will only 
further harm our ability to keep current threats at bay and 
prevent future crises.
    Dr. Thorp, I would like to ask you a few questions about 
this, if you will. From your perspective as the editor-in-chief 
of a leading scientific journal, how does growing distrust in 
our Nation's public health institutions hamper our ability to 
protect ourselves from current and future public health threats 
and pandemics?
    Dr. Thorp. Yes. Well, it is unfortunate, and I think that 
the danger of it is that, as has been said in this room, we are 
spending time having those debates instead of working out what 
is going on, and I think if we could all get to a place where 
there was more trust, that would be a good thing. And I think 
my take on that, which I write about a lot in my column, is 
that, as I have said, scientists need to do a better job of 
explaining how science works, that it is not just facts that 
fall out of the sky and don't change. Science is a work in 
progress. We have well-defined processes for coming to 
conclusions. And we are not perfect, and sometimes we have to 
change the way we are thinking about things. And, again, those 
are the things that make my job enjoyable and interesting and 
compelling, and the science needs to do a much better job of 
helping people understand that. Science is what we know now, 
and it always has been.
    Ms. Tokuda. Right, and we need to make good decisions on 
policies based on real and accurate science. And if I may 
followup on that, and we are talking about trust here, would 
you say that the proliferation of health misinformation, 
whether circulated online, as we have seen, or amplified here 
in Congress itself, plays a role in exacerbating this distrust 
in our public health institutions?
    Dr. Thorp. I do, yes.
    Ms. Tokuda. Thank you. So clearly, we need to make sure 
that we are not doing harm. We need to take a Hippocratic Oath 
ourselves to make sure that when it comes to future pandemics, 
we are ready and prepared to make good decisions. And 
hopefully, that will be the continued work of this 
Subcommittee. Thank you. I appreciate your perspective on these 
matters, and, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you. I now recognize the Ranking Member 
for the purpose of a closing statement, if you would like to 
make one.
    Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Thorp, 
for being here. Again, I truly appreciate your time and your 
frankness in your answers, and in your ability to communicate 
and help understand not just the process, but the importance of 
ensuring that politics does not get infused into the scientific 
peer-reviewed articles that should be based on science and 
methodology, and so that we can better elucidate the 
accurateness of the information. And the more research we do, 
the better. The more we are able to have debates based on 
scientific evidence, the better. The more that we challenge 
current opinions, or current data, the better because if the 
data stands for itself, then it will stand for itself for a 
very long time until more data shows that there is another 
opportunity to do that.
    And so I encourage the scientific community to continue to 
do the research on both, you know, whether this was a lab leak 
or a zoonotic transmission, and move toward also policy 
recommendations to help bolster our surveillance systems around 
high-risk geographic zones for potential zoonotic transmission, 
as well as developing international bodies that can promote lab 
safety and have more transparency in a multilateral aspect and 
then build a system where we can move forward in rapid response 
where we contain a novel virus at the host country before it is 
transmitted throughout the world and becomes a pandemic.
    You know, we want to work on that. We are ready to go. We 
want to focus on that. Those are things that will work to help 
prevent or mitigate the future pandemic. Those are things that 
will help save lives. And 10, 20 years from now, when that next 
potential pandemic happens, people are going to remember that 
we did that. And we will talk about the policies that we 
recommended, that we passed, that we can quantify potentially 
and research the lives saved due to that, but I will tell you 
what. They won't be thinking about 20 years from now when 
people are dying, 1,000 to 3,000 a day, they are not going to 
be thinking about Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins and whether or not 
they colluded or they suppressed the truth, which by the way, 
there is significant--significant--data already showing that 
they did not.
    They are not going to give a damn, but we spent most of our 
origins investigation trying to prove that they did and there 
is collaboration and suppression because they knew it was a lab 
leak theory. And the caveat is that in order to prove that, you 
have to prove that there is lab leak theory. So, there is no 
open mind in this. There is no let's consider both aspects. It 
is focused on proving Dr. Fauci and Dr. Collins suppressed the 
truth, undue influence, as the press release said. So, I really 
do, for the sake of our future, hope that we can have the prior 
scenario that I said, where 20 years from now, people will be 
thanking this Congress for the recommendations and the work 
that we do to help better prevent and mitigate the future 
pandemic through forward-looking solutions that will actually 
save lives. I yield back.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, and, again, Dr. Thorp, I am 
grateful for you being here today.
    When I was asked to chair this Select Subcommittee, there 
were requirements and expectations of this committee. I am 
trying to fulfill those. As you read through what is in the 
official documents that it is hereby established for the 118th 
Congress, a select investigative subcommittee of the Committee 
on Oversight and Accountability called the Select Subcommittee 
on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The Select Subcommittee is 
authorized and directed to conduct a full and complete 
investigation and study and, not later than January 2, 2025, 
issue a final report to the House of its findings, including 
the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, including, but not 
limited to, the Federal Government's funding of gain-of-
function research and a government response. I said from the 
beginning, this is an after-action review, lessons learned. Dr. 
Thorp, we had that conversation: how can we do things better.
    This virus was novel. We didn't know where it came from, 
and we started investigating and looking into science. That was 
our job. That is what we have been doing here. I don't think I 
have once mentioned political party since we have been here. It 
is about finding facts, et cetera. The purpose of today's 
hearing was to have a frank discussion to examine the 
relationship between scientific journals, the government, and 
peer review. And I want to thank you again, as editor-in-chief 
of Science, for being here today, as opposed to Nature and 
Lancet, refused to appear.
    Again, you know, we know how important academic, 
scientific, and medical journals are to collect and disseminate 
information to the public. There is a difference between a 
hypothesis and a scientific fact. The definitions are 
different. Those are the things we have to make clear. Probably 
never before have either of these three journals been read by 
non-scientists as they have during COVID, so it is important 
that we get it right, that we are informing the public of what 
this is, what it stands for, a theory, a hypothesis, a 
scientific fact, an assumption versus a fact.
    And so, we heard today transparency is essential in the 
process. And it is a rigorous debate and the testing of 
hypothesis, not just saying, forget it, let's just move on, 
what are we going to do in the future. That is part of it. 
Don't get me wrong. That is the main mission. One of my main 
missions with this is to get it right and to have suggestions 
or new laws, or whatever we need to do, to make sure that we 
have a system that people in America can trust.
    And as I said from the beginning, I wish this thing came 
from nature because that is a heck of a lot less scary than 
making something like this in the lab and having it escape. But 
we have to look at all of it, and we have spent many hours 
looking at the nature theory as well as the lab leak theory. To 
suggest that we haven't is not true. So, we do these things, so 
we know that the conclusion is published and withstood testing, 
and yet still stand.
    Doctors, professors, researchers, scientists utilize these 
important journals because of the extensive information they 
provide, and research conducted. And if they are in the arena, 
they may have something more to add to it and send you a letter 
on that or show you their science or what they are finding. 
That is how it is supposed to work, so it is essential the 
government doesn't put its thumb on the scale to sway any 
outcome. We are trying to make sure that wasn't the case, or 
was it? But research of all sides help guide government 
decisions as well. We shouldn't necessarily be the ones doing 
all the research, as Members of Congress, perhaps. Maybe we do, 
but you have to look at all sides. So, from our investigations 
here on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, we 
know what happened during COVID-19. Dr. Andersen, who was one 
of the authors of ``Proximal Origins,'' said Dr. Fauci prompted 
this, for us to get together and write this. I didn't make that 
up. It is not a lie. Those were his words that we have gotten 
through our investigation.
    I am going to tell you, I am going to submit for the 
record, this is the interim majority staff report on the 
``Proximal Origins of a Cover Up,'' it is entitled. The 
evidence that I refer to is in here, and I am going to submit 
it for the record in case not everyone on this committee has 
had the chance to read it.
    Dr. Wenstrup. So, a paper is published, and it appears 
there was sometimes a predetermined outcome from the beginning. 
You know, as doctors, we read all kinds of articles, and, you 
know, a lot of times I want to go to the conclusion first and 
then see if they already had the conclusion before they wrote 
their piece and look at things objectively. So, we have to do 
that sometimes, so it is hard to say that government officials 
didn't have any influence, especially on Proximal Origin when 
the record shows that those conversations took place, from 
government officials, saying I am putting you guys together, I 
want you to write this piece.
    Now, just a few days ago, Dr. Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance 
released some emails that included one from an advisor to Dr. 
Fauci, Dr. Morens. The advisor wrote regarding the suspension 
of EcoHealth grant that, ``Tony is now fully aware, and I 
think, and it is, I am told, involved in some sort of damage 
control.'' I didn't write that. I didn't make that up. That is 
in that email. This is part of the things we are investigating 
as we have been tasked to do.
    As the Ranking Member pointed out today, mistrust in our 
public health and public health officials is on the rise today, 
and it is unfortunate, and I want to do everything we can to 
change that. We need that. If the government wants to earn the 
trust of Americans back, it can only be done through 
transparency and reform, to acknowledge what we did wrong, 
innocently or not, so that we can figure out a solution to do 
better going forward. The government will never earn the trust 
back from the Americans by deeming all information that it 
doesn't like as misinformation, nor will it deserve that trust 
if that is what our government is doing.
    Our hearing today was not designed to influence scientific 
journals. It is just the opposite, to better understand how 
articles and letters are published in these journals and what 
is the process so that the public can better understand the 
information before them, better understand what the editing 
process is and reviewed and later published so that they can 
trust it and take it for face value. You clearly pointed out 
today, there is a difference between an opinion and a 
scientific fact because you have to write one every week.?
    Dr. Thorp. Every 2 weeks.
    Dr. Wenstrup. Every 2 weeks.
    Dr. Thorp. You got any ideas for next week, let me know.
    Dr. Wenstrup. I will give you a call. Anyway, Americans 
deserve to see the work and the evidence that lead to the 
conclusion so they can decide for themselves if the information 
presented should be trusted or accurate, and with that, I yield 
back.
    And with that, and without objection, all members will have 
5 legislative days within which to submit materials and to 
submit additional written questions for the witnesses, which 
will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
    Dr. Wenstrup. If there is no further business, without 
objection, the Select Subcommittee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:48 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]