Circular arguments on the origin of SARS-CoV-2

Two recent papers, by Worobey et al. (2022) and Pekar et al. (2022), argue that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from wildlife sold in the Huanan Seafood Market (HSM) with lineages A and B spilling over separately, against alternatives such as a lab accident. Yet they give circular arguments, relying on data itself non-randomly sampled under local authorities’ initial—understandable—assumption of a HSM origin.