If solar panels were a net energy negative,
they couldn't be made and operated for a profit[1]. It's such an obvious lie, it's just painful.
Very early solar cells, the type used to power calculators and the like, may have been so inefficient that their lifetime power generation didn't offset the energy cost of their production. That doesn't matter because the scale is tiny, and the portability and the elimination of batteries is the point, not net energy return.
Someone probably got it in their mind that "solar can't work" back in the 1960s or 70s based on this, and refused to budge half a century later when solar is the cheapest form of grid-scale energy.
[1] This is actually a great way to estimate the total energy that went into a product. It must be less than the wholesale price (or cost-of-manufacture), otherwise at least one profit-motived organisation must be selling the product, its raw materials, or the energy inputs below cost and losing money on purpose. Only in rare cases like gov subsidies, state-owned corporations, etc... is this rule violated.