Science letter: 18 scientists say lab and zoonotic origins 'both remain viable'

Bloom, Chan, Baric, Relman and colleagues wrote in Science that 'theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,' criticizing the WHO joint study for devoting only 4 of 313 pages to the lab hypothesis. Widely credited with reopening mainstream permission to treat the lab leak as legitimate; signatories explicitly took no position on which hypothesis was more likely — cited by defenders as scientific self-correction working as intended.