Tucker Carlson guest airs debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was created in a lab

 https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/sep/16/li-meng-yan/tucker-carlson-guest-airs-debunked-conspiracy-theo/

 "It’s hard to be shocked in a moment like this, but you have succeeded in shocking me," Carlson said at the end of the interview. "Unfortunately, this is not the forum for the details of your research; I don’t have the grounding necessary to ask you the right questions."

Scientists do. The consensus of the scientific community and international public health organizations is that the coronavirus emerged from bats and later jumped to humans.

But the doctor’s interview on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" quickly took off, inspiring a rash of social media posts parroting her claims.

 Scientists worldwide have publicly shared the genetic makeup of the coronavirus thousands of times. If the virus had been altered, there would be evidence in its genome data.

But there isn’t. In March, several microbiology, infectious disease and evolutionary biology experts wrote in Nature — a respected scientific journal — that the genetic makeup of the coronavirus does not indicate it was altered. 

Our ruling

During an interview on Fox News, Yan said the coronavirus "is a man-made virus created in the lab."

The genetic structure of the novel coronavirus, which has been shared by thousands of scientists worldwide, rules out the possibility that it was manipulated in a lab. Public health authorities have repeatedly said the virus was not created in a lab. Scientists believe the coronavirus originated in bats before jumping to humans. Experts have publicly rebuked Yan’s paper, and it’s unclear whether it was peer reviewed.

The claim is inaccurate and ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!