Sick of CFS, do you realize that the PLOS paper was not an innocent inquiry into XMRV, but a politically motivated hatchet job, done on the quick and dirty, aimed at burying the results of the Science article. This was not disinterested science. McClure wanted to be first off the mark and immediately called a press conference to denounce the WPI's results.
As for her remark that " "Nothing on God's Earth could persuade me to do more research on CFS," I bet if God offered her a million pound grant to study the illness, she would without a second thought. And besides, what kind of ethics leads someone to abandon research into an illness affecting upwards of 17 million people worldwide because of a handful of obnoxious letters?
At best Wilhelmina Jenkins is dangerously naive. Her instincts are indisputably bad.
Whoa! Ease up a little, akrasia. I don't
realize the PLOS paper was "a politically motivated hatchet job", but I do
suspect it.
Are you implying that all research scientists are politically savvy and plan their research and their lives around some political goal? Certainly some do -- Wessely comes to mind as the prime example. But the
vast majority are quiet, scientific types, who work with and talk with other quiet scientific types. They don't have a political agenda and they don't talk to the media. Then there's Wessely and Reeves, but they are in a minute minority.
If you listen to the interview on ABC Australia, you'll hear Dr McClure say that her lab got into testing ME/CFS patients for XMRV "accidently" and that "this is not a disease that we have any expertise in or that we work on". They were sent samples by the Kings College people asking that they be tested. Notice that she (or her immediate coworkers) did not select the patient cohort or take the samples themselves. They were
given samples that Kings College told them were from "people who were seriously ill from chronic fatigue". We all know the importance of cohort selection including distinguishing between people with ME/CFS and those with chronic fatigue. It's quite possible that there was, indeed, no XMRV in the samples they were given. Is that their fault, or could it possibly be that they were sent a set of samples that were unlikely to have XMRV?
All they were asked to do was test samples sent to them using their "very sensitive assay", which they did and found no XMRV. So, is their test flawed? Maybe, but they are finding XMRV in prostate cancer patients, so that theory needs further justification. Did they get a bum sample set from Kings College? Interesting question. There's a group that has something invested, politically, in not finding XMRV in ME/CFS patients. How representative of ME/CFS patients was this sample set of "people seriously ill with chronic fatigue?"
If you listen to the interview, you will also hear Dr McClure say, "It was not our mainstream interest....the reason that we rushed into print with this..... was that we had some evidence .... that people were being offered this test .... and much, much worse than that that patients were being offered antiretroviral therapy, the kind of therapy that you would give HIV patients...so we wanted to put a stop to that because we felt it wasn't ethical."
Doesn't it sound to you like some naive scientists were fed a load of bull droppings? They knew nothing about ME/CFS when they tested the samples, they didn't even know the provenence of the samples if they were "blinded".
I suspect we
may find a similar situation with the labs that did some of the testing for the most recent CDC paper. Labs were sent samples and they tested them using methods they are either good at, or were asked to use, or both. They could easily have done an excellent job of
what they were asked to do.
Some perfectly innocent, if naive, scientists may soon end up with egg on their faces (and damage to their reputations) because they accepted their colleagues (Kings College and the CDC) at face value.
And I do feel sorry for
them. Dr McClure is losing my respect as she continues to backpedal while not being willing to say outright that Kings College dumped her in a load of s&!t. Her ego is probably not going to let her admit that she participated in the publication of a bogus paper. That
doesn't mean she had any idea of a nefarious purpose when she got involved.
I'm not defending Dr McClure, nor is Wilhelmina Jenkins, I believe. But I concur with Ms Jenkins' pity for the scientists, who, unused to the politics and deception being practiced, find themselves suddenly in the midst of a fight they know nothing about.
At best Wilhelmina Jenkins is dangerously naive. Her instincts are indisputably bad.
I dispute your "indisputably bad", and raise you a "too politically/media innocent to look for the ugly connotations people can put on her innocent words"