Montagnier has promoted several controversial and unverified claims surrounding vaccinations, homeopathy and the COVID-19 pandemic.[6] For instance, his criticism of the French government's vaccine program prompted widespread outcry in the scientific community.[7] In 2017, 106 academic scientists wrote an open letter “calling [the professor] to order”.The letter read: “We, academics of medicine, cannot accept that one of our peers is using his Nobel prize [status] to spread dangerous health messages outside of his field of knowledge."[8]
A French outlet reported last year that Montagnier inaccurately claimed that the novel coronavirus was man-made and contained genetic material from HIV virus