A Harvard Medical School study that suggested COVID-19 was spreading in China last August after analyzing hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan has been met with doubts and criticism from scientists worldwide, who noted that the research, without being peer-reviewed, offered no convincing evidence to support its claims.

The study, titled “Analysis of hospital traffic and search engine data in Wuhan China indicates early disease activity in the Fall of 2019”, used satellite imagery of hospital parking lots in Wuhan and data for symptom-related queries on China’s search engine Baidu as evidence, noting that increased hospital traffic and symptom search data in Wuhan preceded the documented start of COVID-19 in December, 2019.

The controversial research was met with negative comments from scientists worldwide, who noted that the study lacks convincing data and scientific research methods to support its claim.

Harvard researchers selected six hospitals in Wuhan to conduct their study, including the Hubei Women and Children’s Hospital, which, ironically, doesn’t even have a respiratory department for adults. The study also ignored the fact that many Chinese, unlike Americans, use public transportation to go to hospitals rather than drive themselves.

Keith Neal, a professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at Britain’s Nottingham University, told Reuters that the study included traffic around at least one children's hospital, and that while children do get ill with flu, they do not tend to get sick with COVID-19.

According to Global Times, three doctors from Wuhan's Zhongnan Hospital and Wuhan Tongji Hospital, which were cited in the Harvard paper, all rejected the paper's claim that they received more patients showing fever or diarrhea symptoms than usual last autumn.

The doctors also denied there had been a sudden surge in traffic around the hospitals.

The credibility of the team’s search engine data has also been challenged by scientists. Though the team claimed that it had obtained data for symptom-related searches likely associated with COVID-19 in Wuhan from April 2017 to May 2020, the analysis was actually based on data from May 2018 to May 2020. Tracing back through searches for "cough" and "diarrhea" in the Baidu system dating back to June 2017 showed a steeper upward curve of searches for those two words in September to November of 2017 and 2018 than the same period in 2019, which contradicts the paper’s claims.

Search engine Baidu also slammed Harvard’s claims, adding that there was no obvious difference in search data for “cough” between 2019 and previous years, while in December 2019 there was actually a drop in searches for “diarrhoea”. The Chinese tech giant criticised the Harvard researchers for not using their data in a more scientific way.

Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told Reuters that the research method has not been validated and is “very indirect and imprecise.” Topol, who was not involved with the research, said he doubts the outbreak began in August, while he and others pointed to genetic evidence suggesting the virus made the leap from animal host to humans some time in the fall.

WHO senior advisor Michael Ryan has also expressed concerns regarding the groundless speculation based on the images and search data, noting that the research has yet to be validated.

“It’s really important that we don’t speculate too much regarding the implications of cars in the car parking lots and then make a jump two or three steps forward into what that represents, because there is no evidence per se that what was supposed actually to happen,” he noted at a WHO press conference on June 10.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying also dismissed the findings when asked to comment at a daily press briefing on Tuesday. "To derive these conclusions from phenomena such as road vehicle traffic . . . is preposterous," she noted.

Although scientists have dismissed the research, media outlets in the US, such as Fox News, have already started to hype up conspiracy theories, fomenting new hostility against China.

Many experts have called the research another attempt to smear China’s international image, with many Chinese experts and netizens accusing Harvard of damaging its time-honored reputation.

"How could such a top-notch university downgrade itself and fall into the US politicians' finger-pointing game? It actually shows that everything in the US, from politicians to academicians, are engaged in this blame game," noted a Chinese netizen on Weibo.