Scientist who alleged COVID cover-up circulated a faked NIH email, agency says

A scientist charged with research misconduct used a fake email communication with an NIH researcher’s address to support his claims of governmental retaliation, Retraction Watch has learned.  

Last month, we reported on the upholding of a proposed 15-year debarment by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services appeals judge against Argentine chemist Ariel Fernández for falsifying research while a professor at Rice University in Houston. Administrative law judge Margaret G. Brakebusch based that May 2025 decision on findings by Rice sent to the Office of Research Integrity in 2010 and conclusions from ORI’s independent review completed in 2022. 

Fernández denied the misconduct allegations and told us the findings were retaliation by the government for a 2021 paper he wrote supporting a lab origin of SARS-CoV-2. As evidence of the contention, Fernández showed us an email purportedly from National Institutes of Health researcher Joshua Cherry dated June 2021. The email, which appeared to be from Cherry’s NIH address, threatened to resurrect Fernández’s ORI case if he didn’t remove the paper. We could not independently verify the email’s authenticity at the time.  

Last week, an NIH spokesperson told us that, “following a thorough review,” the agency has no record of the email, which Fernández submitted to the HHS Office of Inspector General as part of a complaint about the alleged “attack” on his reputation. (See the submission here.)

“Under federal records management requirements, any such correspondence would be retained in accordance with applicable laws and policies,” the spokesperson wrote in an April 7 email. “Specifically, NIH retains emails for seven years from the date of creation, and comprehensive eDiscovery searches did not identify any such message. As a result, we have reason to believe the email in question is not authentic.”

Cherry, a researcher with NIH’s Fogarty International Center, did not return messages seeking comment.

We reached out to Fernández, but did not hear back.

Fernández previously requested HHS remove the post about the Brakebusch’s decision, writing, “Because the presumption of innocence applies, publishing the recommended decision CR6690 online constitutes defamation,” according to emails seen by Retraction Watch. Fernández also threatened to sue us for defamation in 2013 after we wrote about an expression of concern placed on his 2011 paper in BMC Genomics. 

Rice University leaders started investigating Fernández’s work in 2009 after a graduate student alerted them to a manuscript that included copy and pasted images from articles by different authors for unrelated experiments, according to the Brakebusch’s summary. A Rice investigation panel ultimately found Fernández acted intentionally to “fabricate, falsify and/or plagiarize research that he submitted for publication.” 

ORI received Rice’s report on June 30, 2010, and conducted an independent oversight review of the evidence and findings. Fernández left Rice University in 2011 as part of a 2010 settlement in which Rice paid Fernández $240,000 and Fernández agreed to depart the institution. As part of the terms, Rice waived all claims against Fernández and released him from any liability.  

Eleven years later, on Nov. 9, 2022, Fernández received a charge letter from ORI notifying him of the office’s research misconduct findings. ORI recommended barring Fernández from receiving federal funds for 15 years and sending notice of its findings and the need for retraction and/or correction to the journals of 11 papers.

Fernández claimed the misconduct case was “dead” for more than a decade until after his paper about SARS-CoV-2 published in ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters in 2021. The article supported the idea that SARS-CoV-2 was the result of a gain-of-function modification of a coronavirus, with Fernández asserting that “gain-of function insertions of human-adapted pangolin CoV RBD and furin-associated cleavage site are likely the result of genetic manipulations conducted in a laboratory.” At the time, the paper was met with criticism by some scientists who called the article “conspiratorial pseudo-science.”

Fernández told us he received an email in June 2021 from Cherry telling him to remove the work or face consequences. The purported email from Cherry reads in part: “You need to quietly take down your sars cov g-o-f bull. Or else… we’ll resurrect (and I’ll pad up) your ORI case.”

Fernández sent us the purported email in PDF form and through an apparently forwarded email chain, but told us he no longer had the original email. He also included the email in exhibits sent in November 2025 to the HHS OIG about ORI’s investigation to support what he called “acts of corruption to defraud the United States associated with an alleged COVID-19 cover-up,” according to documents seen by Retraction Watch. 

In her May 2025 decision, Brakebusch wrote ORI’s allegations were supported overwhelmingly by undisputed material facts and recommended HHS affirm the 15-year debarment proposed by ORI.

Fernández’s relationship to Cherry precedes the faked email. Fernández blogged about Cherry in 2018 on his website, writing that Cherry invests in “other researcher’s (sic) downfall.” Cherry has critiqued papers by other scientists on PubPeer, engaging in lengthy exchanges and debates. 

Cherry has also been a frequent subject of the blog “Science Transparency” by Weishi Meng. Started in 2014, the blog says it aims to restore “a healthy environment where the scientific establishment will regain control of post publication peer review.”

Retraction Watch and its founders have also been frequent targets of criticism by Meng, an otherwise unknown author who has no known biography, affiliation or identity. We asked Fernández back in 2014 whether Meng is a pseudonym Fernández is using, and he responded that Meng “is a real person, as far as I know.” Meng writes that sites like “PubPeer and Retraction Watch” sell “like hot cakes, poisoning the waters of scientific endeavor as they focus on career failure.” 

In a 2014 post, Meng interviewed Fernández about one of his papers in Nature and a Retraction Watch story about an expression of concern placed on the article. During the interview, Fernández defended the paper and argued the addendum resulted from a disagreement between authors about the data. Fernández told Meng the problem arose when Cherry contacted him in November 2011 about reproducing his data in the Nature paper. The two exchanged “dozens” of emails and “from then on” Cherry “began challenging my papers,” Fernández said in the interview.

“This fellow Joshua Cherry is behind the attacks on my work and my person,” Fernández said in the blog post. “He seems somewhat obsessed (?) with me for some reason.”

Commenters on Retraction Watch stories have alleged that Meng is a sock puppet for Fernández.

In the comments thread on our previous story about this case, Fernández posted a link to Meng’s March 28 blog entry about “NIH’s Case Against Ariel Fernández in the COVID-19 Cover-Up.” A copy of the purported email from Cherry was included in that post. 

We asked NIH and Cherry if they plan to take any action against Fernández for circulating the fake email, but did not hear back by this article’s deadline.

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