Chinese institutes account for the majority of research papers – 70 percent – published about the Wuhan coronavirus, an unusually high number for China in the field of virology, according to an Oxford study released this week.
The study’s researchers say this suggests that the rest of the world was slow to start research on the virus and that the “Chinese knew something that the rest of the world didn’t,” the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Friday.
For the University of Oxford study – posted on Tuesday on Cornell University’s preprint website, “arXiv.org” – the researchers analyzed more than 3,000 peer-reviewed papers from a database called the Web of Science Core Collection, which contains research exclusively from leading scientific journals. The study found that seven of the ten most prolific institutes that also owned Wuhan coronavirus research in the database were from China. Further analysis led the researchers to conclude that a Chinese government agency is the single-largest funder of Wuhan coronavirus research in the world.
According to Oxford’s non-peer reviewed paper, as of May 16, the National Natural Science Foundation of China – affiliated with China’s chief administrative authority, its State Council – had provided financial support to 124 studies on the Wuhan coronavirus published in top science journals.
University of Oxford scientist Petar Radanliev, the paper’s lead researcher, said the number of studies was greater than the combined number of similar studies on the Wuhan coronavirus funded by the U.S. Department of Health and National Institutes of Health (NIH).
According to the paper’s authors, this was unprecedented, as Chinese researches have not been at the forefront of this particular field of research on virology and epidemiology. The scientists said that since 1900, research on viruses and related diseases has been dominated by Western institutes such as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Oxford University, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University.
This could suggest that “the world was slow in responding with scientific research on Covid-19 [coronavirus],” the Oxford scientists said. The researchers found that China, by comparison, was the “fastest” to act in studying the novel coronavirus, beginning its research as early as December 2019. The scientists cited thousands of research papers posted online since the first coronavirus cases were reported in Wuhan last December.
In the paper, the authors question why the world’s leading research institutions were seemingly delayed in beginning their study of the virus:
This triggers many questions on have the leading organisations on pandemic and epidemic management reacted at the appropriate speed? If so, why are they behind in the production of scientific journal? Has there been a gap in communications and data sharing? Leaving these organizations oblivious to what was happening?
According to the SCMP, the scientists said the study’s surprising results elicited questions such as if the “Chinese knew something that the rest of the world didn’t,” adding that this was speculation.
China has been accused of purposefully holding back information about its initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan late last year, hiding the extent and severity of the epidemic for at least several weeks before notifying global health authorities that a novel coronavirus had emerged in the country.
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