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If “It’s Science”—Then Release the Evidence
A perspective from George A. Howard and Jim Haslam
Jean Bolduc’s recent Chapelboro column, “It’s Science,” dismisses the Senate investigation of Dr. Anthony Fauci as a “ridiculous political exercise” centered on a “favorite conspiracy topic.”
We attended the July 29 hearing and our statement was accepted by the chairman for the record. We have also spent years examining scientific publications, federal grants, research proposals, congressional testimony, internal communications and other records concerning the origin of COVID-19.
Based on that evidence, we believe UNC, Duke and their associated researchers and administrators bear substantial responsibility for the research enterprise, institutional failures and concealment that contributed to the COVID-19 catastrophe.
That conclusion remains disputed, but it is not an internet fantasy. It is an evidence-based hypothesis that should be tested according to the scientific method.
Jim Haslam has developed a specific hypothesis in his book, “COVID-19: Mystery Solved: It leaked from a Wuhan lab, but it’s not Chinese junk,” concerning the research pathway that led to SARS-CoV-2 and the roles played by UNC, Duke and their federally funded collaborators. We believe the public record strongly supports it. But like any legitimate scientific hypothesis, it must remain open to confirmation, refutation or revision as additional evidence becomes available.
The central problem is that UNC and other institutions possess important evidence that has not been made available for independent examination.
That evidence is not limited to scientific data and laboratory records. The public also needs to know what UNC’s institutional chain of command knew, when officials knew it, what researchers told them, what warnings or concerns were raised, what decisions were made, and who approved or continued the work.
An institution cannot dismiss a hypothesis as unsupported while withholding the evidence needed to test it. Nor can it cite uncertainty as a defense when its own secrecy helps perpetuate that uncertainty.
In 2026, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia and Haslam provided evidence that Professor Ralph Baric of UNC created SARS-CoV-2. Baric was asked for input, but he didn’t provide any. Baric has now provided two days of sworn testimony, but has yet to provide an alibi. If UNC believes Haslam’s hypothesis is wrong, it should release the relevant records and allow the evidence to demonstrate that. If the records support the hypothesis, the public has a right to
know.
That is how science and institutional accountability are supposed to work.
A False Choice
Bolduc describes the alternatives as natural emergence or a virus “created in a lab and deliberately unleashed on the world.”
That is not the serious research-related origin hypothesis.
The principal question is whether SARS-CoV-2 emerged from coronavirus collection and experimentation, followed by an accidental infection, or from a laboratory-associated release. Deliberate release is not required. A biological-weapons program is not required. The virus need not have been created entirely from scratch.
By substituting the most sensational imaginable scenario for the actual hypothesis, Bolduc makes the evidence easier to dismiss without examining it.
She also invokes Fauci’s statement that two possibilities need not be equally probable. That proposition is true. But probability is a conclusion drawn from evidence, not a substitute for examining it.
The evidence includes years of American-supported research involving dangerous bat coronaviruses; proposals to modify such viruses at a feature that later distinguished SARS-CoV-2; collaborations among American and Chinese researchers; biosafety concerns; missing or withheld records; and early private discussions among leading scientists that were substantially more open to laboratory involvement than their later public statements suggested.
The record also includes the work of UNC coronavirus researcher Ralph Baric, whose laboratory developed advanced methods for constructing and manipulating coronaviruses and collaborated with researchers connected to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
That makes UNC’s role a legitimate subject for scientific and congressional investigation, not a partisan distraction.
Missing Evidence Is Not Scientific Resolution Bolduc cites the World Health Organization’s assessment that zoonotic emergence is more likely. She omits that the WHO has also said the origin remains unresolved and that it lacked important laboratory, biosafety and personnel records needed to evaluate a research-related incident properly.
In 2025, Sachs and Haslam submitted a letter to the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (or SAGO). Citing peer-reviewed evidence, the letter concludes COVID was a bat vaccine developed by Baric’s team. A year later, that debate was covered by Nature.
A conclusion reached without access to critical evidence is not the final word of science. It is an assessment constrained by missing information. UNC is a public university. Its research was substantially supported by public funds. The consequences of the work under examination were potentially global. The university should not demand public confidence while denying independent access to records needed to determine what occurred.
The necessary inquiry must reach beyond individual researchers. It should examine the entire institutional chain of command. What did laboratory leadership report to department chairs, deans, university counsel, research administrators, biosafety officials, senior university executives and the Board of Trustees? What did those officials know about the nature and risks of the work? When did they know it? What concerns were raised internally? What assurances were given to federal agencies, elected officials and the public? Were any records withheld, narrowed, reclassified or routed through legal channels after questions about COVID-19’s origin intensified?
These are not peripheral questions. They are central to determining whether UNC acted responsibly before the pandemic and candidly afterward. A great scientific institution should welcome the testing of serious allegations. It should not ask the public to accept the conclusions of the same institution whose conduct is being examined.
That approach is inconsistent with both the scientific method and the dignity and integrity expected of the University of North Carolina.
The Hearing Raised Document-Based Questions
Bolduc portrays the Fauci hearing as political theater. But the inquiry concerned federally supported research, preservation or destruction of government records, possible inconsistencies in official testimony and efforts to shape public understanding of COVID-19’s origin.
Those are document-based questions. Disagreeing with Senator Paul does not make the documents disappear.
Fauci had the constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Exercising that right is not proof of guilt. But neither is it an answer to the questions.
The Constitution protects his choice to remain silent. It does not require Congress, journalists or the public to treat that silence as vindication.
Nor should Chapel Hill assume that the unanswered questions stop in Washington. They extend directly to UNC’s leadership structure and institutional response.
The public deserves more than scientific papers selected for release and statements drafted by communications offices. It deserves contemporaneous emails, meeting records, safety reports, grant communications, legal reviews, internal warnings and testimony from those responsible for oversight.
Chapel Hill’s Public-Safety Double Standard
Most troubling is what Bolduc leaves out entirely: the local public-safety implications. Chapel Hill has a long history of intense concern over traffic, tree removal, housing density, commercial projects, industrial facilities, cell towers, road construction, fracking, PFAS, Pfiesteria, the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, and other environmental risks. Some of those concerns are legitimate. But their potential consequences are limited regionally. A development project may increase traffic, noise or emissions, or alter a neighborhood. A laboratory accident involving a pandemic-capable respiratory pathogen could kill millions, close schools and businesses, destroy livelihoods, overwhelm hospitals and destabilize the world.
Extreme virology is the most environmentally dangerous research imaginable, even more dangerous than handling nuclear weapons. Relative to many far less consequential activities, high-risk virology at UNC is lightly regulated: oversight is fragmented, heavily dependent on institutional self-policing, and lacks the external permitting, public disclosure, independent review, and community participation routinely required for ordinary environmental hazards.
Last week, UNC placed football general manager Michael Lombardi on leave and opened an investigation after a human-resources complaint. Yet its leaders have shown little comparable curiosity about worldwide questions over whether their research contributed to COVID-19. That contrast looks less like scientific caution than willful ignorance.
We believe the scientific and documentary evidence points back to the coronavirus research enterprise in which UNC and Duke participated. We believe those institutions bear responsibility for enabling dangerous work and failing to provide a full and candid account of their knowledge and conduct.
The Ralph Baric laboratory remains an extraordinary public-safety concern. Institutional prestige is not a biosafety system. Scientific accomplishment is not immunity from oversight. Chapel Hill residents should demand answers.
What potentially pandemic-capable viruses are presently being created, altered or tested at UNC? Who independently determines whether those experiments are necessary? What accidents, exposures or containment failures have occurred? What information is provided to local emergency responders?
Above all, what did the leadership of UNC know, when did it know it, and what did it do with that knowledge? Bolduc titled her column “It’s Science.” On that point, we agree.
Science means developing hypotheses, testing them against evidence, confronting contradictory facts and revising conclusions when the record requires it. Haslam has developed a hypothesis. UNC and Duke should produce the evidence needed to test it.
That means more than laboratory data. It means releasing the institutional record necessary to reconstruct decisions, warnings, approvals and responsibility from the laboratory bench to the highest levels of university leadership.
If the records disprove Haslam’s analysis, release them and allow them to do so. If they confirm or strengthen it, the public has a right to know. Dismissing a hypothesis while withholding the evidence necessary to test it is not science. It is institutional self-protection.
After millions of deaths, silence and deference are no longer acceptable. It is science. Release the evidence. Establish who knew what and when. Test the hypothesis.
George A. Howard ‘89 is a Raleigh businessman, former United States Senate staff member and co-author of peer-reviewed scientific research. He attended the July 29 Senate hearing concerning Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Jim Haslam is an independent researcher and author who has assembled an extensive documentary record concerning coronavirus research, the origin of COVID-19 and the government’s response. He also attended the hearing.
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
