She was searching for data on Gisaid, a virology database, early in March when she stumbled on something unusual. “Last night, I was crying over the horrible things I’m reading about myself on social media,” she says.ĭébarre, a senior researcher at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research, is one of thousands of scientists around the world attempting to trace the virus’s journey before it exploded among humans from late 2019. Since the publication, Débarre has been set upon by online mobs and received threats to her safety. Her findings, which she and her colleagues posted online last week, have illuminated the way forward for identifying the origins of the pandemic – as well as the treacherous path faced by scientists seeking to follow it. “I have a bad work-life balance,” says Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist whose accidental discovery of the files led to confirmation for the first time that animals susceptible to the coronavirus were present at the Wuhan market. The genetic data, from swabs taken at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China, in the weeks after Covid-19 first emerged, were available online just long enough for a Parisian scientist to stumble upon them while working from her couch on a Saturday afternoon earlier this month.

What is a scientist