Article: WPI Wins Lawsuit/Science Retracts XMRV Paper/Mikovits Back to Work on XMRV

You can view the page at http://forums.phoenixrising.me/content.php?521-WPI-Wins-Lawsuit-Science-Retracts-XMRV-Paper-Mikovits-Back-to-Work-on-XMRV

 

To pick up on Firestormms point, wildcat, Dr Mikovits research showed that those patients who showed antibodies to MLVs also had a specific immune profile, one that would be expected in a MLV infection from other animal models.

So she went a long way in linking serology, immune reaction and pathogen.

I wonder why people cannot remember this but drop back into the orthodoxies that have been going around for thirty years.

 

It was a quotation from the nature article in March Wildcat as per the linky provided: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110314/full/471282a.html Though that particular bit wasn't the main purpose of selecting the quote of course..

 

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Currer wrote: "So she [Mikovits] went a long way in linking serology, immune reaction and pathogen."

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I agree, Currer. And I am very puzzled as to why so many patients are so eager to prematurely bury retrovirus/virus research.

But I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of still being around in 30 years time - maybe those who have more decades to live have the luxury of being more casual about the snail's pace of ME Causation Research.

 

'RENO, Nev. (KRNV & MyNews4.com) - Dr. Judy Mikovits' next court appearance will be March 15th. Mikovits was a researcher at the Whittemore-Peterson Institute and was studying chronic fatigue syndrome when her team of researchers made a big breakthrough. However, her data is said to be manipulated. She's being charged with felony possession of stolen property and felony unlawful taking of computer data.'

1/10/12: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45949952/ns/local_news-reno_nv/#.Tw1Z5YGcd9w

 

I really wish people would stop wasting money and time on XMRV. Its so sad to see our limited energy and resources being devoted to this kind of research.

 

Quote from Dr Yes, on the other forum;-

"The scientific process depends on experimental replication, yet there hasn't been a single study since the publication of Lombardi et al 2009 that actually replicated a single method from that study. The evidence for retroviral infection provided by viral protein assays and serology remained regardless of any debate about what viral sequences were actually found; the decision to retract the study despite that evidence was a strictly in-house decision made by the editors of Science magazine, and no one else in the scientific community was given the opportunity to evaluate the supposed "lack of quality control", etc claimed by editors of Science. The rest of us have only the confusing claims and counter-claims regarding one figure in the paper, which Judy Mikovits could not defend because she no longer had access to her data, and is facing criminal charges that obviously place restrictions on what she can say about work at the WPI. The question therefore was clearly not settled by the scientific process, but by a strictly editorial one. That may be the editors' prerogative, but to call it a validation of the scientific process is pretty delusional. The partial retraction of Silverman's contribution to the study, and perhaps an author's statement cautioning that the use of the term "XMRV" could no longer be considered valid, are all that was called for at this point."

http://www.mecfsforums.com/index.php/topic,11133.45.html?PHPSESSID=unjnfm36k8rfs7ogvmhvb76nr3

 

The above was one response to the commentary article: 'The scientific method at work: xenotropic murine leukemia virusrelated virus is neither a cause of chronic fatigue syndrome nor a threat to the blood supply published in the journal 'Transfusion' from the American Association of Blood banks.'

There is a thread here as well about it too: http://forums.phoenixrising.me/show...cause-of-CFS-nor-a-threat-to-the-blood-supply

 

"The scientific process depends on experimental replication, yet there hasn't been a single study since the publication of Lombardi et al 2009 that actually replicated a single method from that study. The evidence for retroviral infection provided by viral protein assays and serology remained regardless of any debate about what viral sequences were actually found; the decision to retract the study despite that evidence was a strictly in-house decision made by the editors of Science magazine, and no one else in the scientific community was given the opportunity to evaluate the supposed "lack of quality control", etc claimed by editors of Science. The rest of us have only the confusing claims and counter-claims regarding one figure in the paper, which Judy Mikovits could not defend because she no longer had access to her data, and is facing criminal charges that obviously place restrictions on what she can say about work at the WPI. The question therefore was clearly not settled by the scientific process, but by a strictly editorial one. That may be the editors' prerogative, but to call it a validation of the scientific process is pretty delusional. The partial retraction of Silverman's contribution to the study, and perhaps an author's statement cautioning that the use of the term "XMRV" could no longer be considered valid, are all that was called for at this point."

http://www.mecfsforums.com/index.php...s7ogvmhvb76nr3

Both Dr. Mikovits and Dr. Ruscetti's lab at the Blood Working Group study exactly replicated their methods (or used ones their internal tests suggested were better) and their attempts to do indicated their tests were invalid and hence the paper needed to be retracted.

The fact they their tests didn't work was no surprise though; over 40 labs, including some of the best in the world, using a variety of methods had searched for that virus and had been unable to find it- that in itself was more than enough for me get that this small lab in Reno Nev had made a mistake.

The BWG findings and the Silverman findings which indicated that contamination had taken place clearly indicated that a 'lack of quality control' had taken place. The retraction of both pMLV results by Hanson (who determined that her finding was a contaminant) and Alter/Lo cast further doubt on the XMRV finding. The inability of the WPI to provide genetic sequences that were demonstrably different from the laboratory creation sealed the matter. There are multiple lines of evidence from all directions pointing to the fact that XMRV is a contaminant.

That's not delusion - its an accumulation of a large number of facts which all point to the same conclusion and which made it inevitable that Science retract the paper.

 

The delusion is holding onto the XMRV theory. I know we're all desperate for a cure, but spending money on BS research is not going to get us anywhere. If we want a cure we have to follow the truth. Mikovitz has done nothing but harm to the CFS community and wasted a whole lot of our limited money because she wanted to get famous.