Sharpening Their Knives. The WPI is loved in the Patient Community but they're really kind of embattled in the research community. Until we get positive studies coming out I imagine that the standard researcher does not a favorable impression of them. They came out of nowhere with a paper in Science!
Can you imagine how everybody else felt about that? Good - very, very good researchers who have been working hard for decades - who know they will never get published in that journal - see this little Research Institute, that hasn't even been built yet, lands an article in the biggest journal in the land.
Not only that but they basically state that they have 'the answer' to one of the knottiest problems in medicine...and that their finding may also apply to an even bigger problem - autism. The news flies around the world - articles in all the major outlets appear...and everyone is saying....WP..what? WP..who? Vincent who? Who are these guys?
Then as time goes on their Research Director publicly lambasts other researchers suggesting, as Dr. Raccinello so vividly put it, 'the rest of the world doesn't know how to do PCR'.
Can you hear the knives sharpening? They were already jealous....
Then a series of problems occurs. The diagnostic test comes out early -and is subsequently changed....the makeup of the patients in the cohort is not what the Science paper said... the PCR tests seem to work at one point and then not anymore......Dr Mikovits is very encouraging to the patient community like no one we've ever seen before but her language in her emails about researchers - some of which get transmitted into the public - is very strong.
A Different Tack - Recognizing that they're a small unknown Institute that, above all, needed to win the trust of their peers, they could've and really should've, kept their heads down and maintained as low key and professional an attitude as possible. Think what a boon it would have been for them in the research community to show that they could maintain their cool in the midst of this huge media uproar.
For the most part I think they did couch their official statements correctly - they were careful not to overstate - and qualified their assertions...the website was fine but then this other stuff would come out - which, naturally, got more attention.
Betting the Farm? - My gut feeling is that it would really behoove the WPI to be right about XMRV because they're invested really heavily in it in alot of ways. If it doesn't work out they may not get support on other issues and, if that's true that's really a shame because the Institute had, and still has, a solid non XMRV research effort. That's what it was built on - they got good federal and state funding for that...they have alot of great ideas.....it would be horrible if the granting agencies start turning up their nose at those things...because they don't like the way XMRV was handled.
If XMRV works out then stylistic problems and breaches of etiquette are not so important[/U]...we've all probably heard of prickly researchers who are at the top of their game despite their breaches of etiquette. As they say winning solves all problems!
I would note that what Dr. Peterson did does not necessarily mean anything about XMRV itself. To some extent the XMRV question is out of the WPI's hands. they kicked it off and the other study groups will resolve it over the next couple of months I would think.