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I think this kind of thinking actually represents a case of not being paranoid enough. In the kind of scenario you are considering, where the retrovirus was spread deliberately, with the knowledge of person or persons unknown, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that such information will ever come to light. Anybody who is capable of perpetrating something such as that, is more than capable of irrevocably covering their tracks. People who pursue this kind of theory may think that everyone else is just being naive, but actually IMO it's they who are being naive about the subjects they're discussing. Would you include the possibility of an attack on the human race by invisible aliens in your theorising? Is that really any less plausible than a successful organised plot by humans to spread a retrovirus through the human race for purposes unknown?
There's just no point in pursuing these kinds of theories; speculating about what is by definition unknowable is a good entertainment and can be an interesting 'thought experiment' or an entertaining speculation...but in practical terms, it's completely pointless. We need to focus on more practical lines of inquiry if we want to make progress.
Yes, all of this is what goes on; those are the observable facts, and everything from then onwards is theorising as to the why. From my reading about the history of the UK's Science Media Centre, about 'The Lobby', etc etc, the whole philosophy of those groups is fairly clearly laid out. It's a clear but rather mundane 'conspiracy' (if one insists on using that word): the philosophy is simply to defend scientific and industrial progress from any kind of public scare about the harmful effects of technology. The powers that be act on the assumption that it's their responsibility to manage these problems, that they act in the greater good, that there will inevitably be problems and casualties, and that it's not possible for an uninformed and illogical general population to engage with those kind of complex moral dilemmas.
The current events in Japan are an illustrative example. Imagine yourself in the position of somebody who has to advise the population of Tokyo whether they should evacuate. Imagine that you knew that if you advised people to do so, more lives would be lost in the panic than would be saved by the evacuation. I'm not saying that's the situation, but it's an illustrative moral dilemma.
When it comes to the psychobabble and the distortion of science in the media, those phenomena can easily be explained by these sort of kneejerk defences of the status quo, and by the tendency of the system as a whole to support theories that are consistent with its own interests. I think the Wessely school just got popular because their ideas were so much more convenient for government. There doesn't need to be any grand plan for things to work out as they have.
I think that's only half-true. Gammaretroviruses are by definition much smaller; an order of magnitude smaller than retroviruses like HIV, for example. XMRV was only discovered in 2006. The sheer scale of the search for new viruses is unimaginable on a human level; it's perfectly plausible that there are still retroviruses that haven't been spotted yet. We're dealing with an absolutely vast search space here.
That doesn't follow at all. This logical leap is a good example of the failure of imagination that leads to an illogical conclusion. It's perfectly feasible that - as now - a whole lot of people in authority just didn't believe Defreitas' theory was a realistic possibility, had a few quick looks for the virus, didn't find it, and gave up on what seemed like a fruitless search. That's a far, far more likely explanation than the idea that all these people - and we're talking about a lot of people here - were involved in a deliberate coverup that has spanned decades and decades. At the very least, if we're being realistic, we have to realise that the vast majority of people involved in the search for DeFreitas' virus can't possibly have been part of some deliberate conspiracy. It's just not plausible that so many people, so many leading scientists, could have such incredibly dark knowledge and it didn't leak out in any form. And if the majority of people were simply innocently doing what they thought was right, then why not everyone?
Nonsense. They are definitely not the smartest people in the world, they are just the most ambitious in their field. They definitely do not have an unlimited budget, they just have a lot of money. They have millions of lives in their hands, and huge responsibility - which means in practice that they are balancing all kinds of impossible equations. At the time in question, they were also trying to deal with the beginnings of the AIDS crisis, at a time when all budgets were under pressure with the first gulf war...there's no infinite pot of money, these things had to be balanced.
And the idea that they "don't make unintentional mistakes" is very strange. These are humans, dealing with questions of huge complexity and uncertainty: of course they make mistakes! The idea that "the people in charge" must be all-powerful, all-knowing, and completely infallible, is quite ridiculous and not consistent with history at all.
This is also illogical, because if they are all-powerful and all-knowing and knew that what has happened would happen, then they would also know that people would notice sooner or later. Conversely, if they are incompetent enough to make the mistake of underestimating the people's ability to start putting two and two together, then they are incompetent enough to have failed to follow up Defreitas' work purely because of that incompetence. At this point, you're trying to have it both ways with regards to the omnipotence of the alleged conspirators...
There's no dispute from me that the stupidity of the system and the whole tale of woe is an epic one, and no dispute that anti-XMRV articles are rushed out frantically and illogically and plastered across the media. We know and understand a lot more now about how and why that sort of thing happens - and it's all about systematic bias and modern scientific practices, not about sinister organised conspiracies.
Yes, there are conspiracies/lobbies to protect industrial interests and to hide inconvenient truths, and I wouldn't rule out the possibility that there may even be people who know and have concealed information about errors and unintended harmful consequences of vaccination programmes (or whatever), that may be relevant to our illness. But there's no need for such theories in order to explain the conservative behaviour of people who seek to deny XMRV; all that's needed really is the observation that people in power - and scientists especially - tend to be extremely conservative people, and the observation that the system acts to defend itself against threats both real and imaginary. There's no need and no purpose in going any further than that.
Ditto, and Amen.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for taking the time for such a detailed repsonse. This thread was a real butt cheek clincher and I had to take a day off.
I agree that people can make mistakes, and agree that I exaggerated a bit on a couple points.
Many good points all around from you, as usual.
Sure would be great to know the whole truth someday, but I would be somewhat satisfied with quality research that results in effective treatments someday soon.
Mark
