I thought this an intriguing post from IVI over on ERV this morning:
'#18 "What upsets a lot of people though is the opportunity cost."
Unfortunately the Science mag retraction doesn't help address this, in fact to some extent it actually serves to obscure the problem with the meme "science is self correcting, this is all just business as usual".
Without questioning what went wrong (not least at Science mags peer review level) no one can be certain that there are not to be significant future (and even current), egregious levels of avoidable 'opportunity costs'. The fundamental failure of the WPI process (and it is a charge that could made about the Lipkin work) was the complete absence of a 'prior plausibility test' - that is no one asked and answered the question: 'why should a retrovirus be a single causative factor in a heterogenous condition currently described only by poorly defined symptomology ?'
Had that key question been asked, by both the Lombardi et al authors, and by the the Science mag per reviewers, then the 70% XMRV positive results should have rung alarm bells rather than encouraging acceptence of the data.
"Prior Plausibility" -http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/plausibility-in-science-based-medicine/ is a vital test in the cause of reducing 'opportunity cost' in medical research and the one long term benefit that could come out of the XMRV debacle would be if it were to applied far more widely at all stages of medical science.'
Can lessons be learned? Should lessons be learned? Interesting. In terms of 'this was all a waste of money' I actually don't think that any of it was. IF the association in Lombardi had held up - remember those controls? - then we could have been looking at a human retrovirus which might have been responsible for disease.
So I personally think 'science' did the right thing in responding in the way that they did. Two years might seem a long time I suppose but it was necessary - and as some might say - 'it still ain't over yet'...
Oh Channel 4 News picked this up last night and interviewed Stoye. Don't know if you can view outside of the UK sorry:
http://www.channel4.com/news/study-linking-me-to-virus-retracted