Professor: 'I will talk about human gammaretroviruses when there is evidence that they infect humans. As of this moment there is none. As the Lombardi et al. 2009 Science paper stands now, it contains no proof that HGRVs infect humans.'
What do the science-literate people think of this statement? Accurate?
Yes. I don't have enough time to go into details, but this is a thumbnail of how it looks:
I. Scientific Results
A. 2 studies (1 partly retracted) found something. 20+ did not.
B. Of the "second wave" studies, the bigger, higher quality, better design studies which learned from the mistakes of the early studies, there were 4. Of these, 3 found nothing (Knox/Levy, Singh, BWG), and 1 we are still waiting for (Lipkin).
II. Scientific Progress (or Regression)
A. Neither group that had positive results have published a follow on paper of any kinds with new positive results.
B. The main paper has been partially retracted.
C. At least one paper has been published showing contamination in each of the two "success" papers. And the main paper was partly retracted because of contamination.
D. One of the groups with a successful paper, isn't even talking about their research, anymore.
E. A paper has been published showing very clearly how the RV in question was created, and it doesn't mesh with the natural history of ME/CFS.
F. At least one paper has been published showing that the body's immune system would immediately destroy XMRV, if it were present in a person.
III. Scientific People
A. Ask yourself this question: how many scientists though the XMRV-ME link was correct in Sept-Nov 2009? Quite a lot (Coffin and Singh, for example), but now, almost no one still believes it. Just the authors of the original paper, and not even all of them, and maybe half a dozen others.
B. Another way to think of this is as follows. In the last 18 months, how many retrovirologists have changed their minds from not believing the XMRV-ME link, to believing it? I don't think even one. On the other hand, in the last 18 months, how many of them have switched from believing in the XMRV-ME link, to not believing it? Many. This is critical. For the last 18 months the scientific results have been very clear. The more we learn, the stronger the evidence. We get better over time, not worse.
(You'll notice I haven't talked about sloppiness or scientific misconduct. Those are very damaging, too. But in a sense, they don't matter, because since there is no evidence that HGRV exists, the fact that the original paper left out critical information about the use of 5-AZA (scientific misconduct) doesn't really matter. The fact that the original researchers were so sloppy as to reuse a slide with different labels to illustrate a different point, that's just putting a stake into a body that is already dead.
One comment on the 2 vs 20 number. A lot of people without scientific backgrounds (who's only science was in high school) are going to say things like "well those 20 studies didn't exactly reproduce the first two, so that doesn't matter. This kind of argument really shows off their lack of scientific experience. If something is really there, then there are many ways to see it. You don't need an exact repeat of another experiment. Quick analogy: someone tells you "I can hear some one in the next room". You look in the next room, and don't see anyone. You say there is no one there. The other person says you didn't reproduce the experiment exactly you should have listened. But the truth is , that if there was a person there, you would have seen and heard him. Arguing that the 20+ experiments failed to exactly reproduce the first one misses the point: if XMRV was there someone else would have detected it.
Joshua (not Jay) Levy