You are absolutely right that an application from Lipkin, especially with cohort samples in hand, should be successful. I wonder if he has submitted an application? The next CFS SEP meeting to score grant proposals is next week.
I think it would be great if a small team of advocates who understand funding mechanisms could get together with Lipkin and work on a letter for congress people. He is a hugely successful scientist with no doubt a spectacular record of getting funding and knows not only how the system is supposed to work but how it actually works and where it would be useful to put pressure, and how. We've got to put his expertise together with our numbers.
We've been having a fascinating discussion with Prof. Jonathan Edwards about the UK Rituximab trial on
this thread and it's interesting how his views on how funding works at his level are different from how the rest of us might view it. I really do think we need advocates working with Dr Lipkin on this to make use of his experience and expertise in getting funding. We need to work with him so we can best help him to help us.
This is separate from the definition issue, to an extent. My point is only that a broken definition (Fukuda) is a significant barrier to quality research. A better/clearer definition with wide support would promote better research. But the advocacy efforts to get a definition are in a separate stream from efforts to get more funding.
I agree it's a major issue but I don't think all research funding must stop while it's sorted out. NIH have announced no funding moratorium while that happens. In particular, I don't think it needs sorting out in order for Dr Lipkin to get the rest of his study funding.
jspotila - I'm hoping there might be a few (one or two or three) well-qualified advocates who will pick this up with Dr Lipkin in the next few days and produce a letter for people to write to their congress people. I don't want to load you down with stuff, even though you'd be a great candidate - but if you're not up for it, I'm hoping you might know people who are!