I've spent much of the day moderating this thread while wrestling with the performance problems many of you will have experienced (our apologies for those, we have been working on it).
Having done so, I'd like to add a few comments of my own...
Firtstly, big thanks to Tina for the very informative libel run-down (#109) - I suggest everyone take some time to read that, especially those who fondly imagine that "in my opinion..." or "it's a free country" is an automatic defence...
I've done my best to identify potentially defamatory posts and remove them; there were a couple on both sides of the argument. Even though, before I read Tina's post, I rather thought that only the poster was potentially liable, potentially defamatory posts are also inflammatory and liable to provoke the kind of arguments we don't want to see, so I removed the worst examples. After reading Tina's post, I'm especially glad I did so. Certainly no malice on my part towards either side, and if I've missed anything potentially actionable, I hope somebody will report it, not particularly because I expect legal action, but because posts like that are not wanted here, and it's valuable to all of us to understand where the lines are drawn.
Now to throw in my 2p on the matters we're all speculating about...
The first important point I'd like to highlight is that just about the only thing we can conclude with (almost) certainty is that a crime has been committed. If what has been said about Dr Mikovits' contract is to be believed - and I think what's been said is reasonably clear - then the materials in question are the intellectual property of the WPI (though there may be detail there as to what entitlement Dr Mikovits may have to a copy of the materials, and ethically at least, in my opinion she should have a right to a copy). Given, though, that the materials are ultimately, in law, the property of the WPI, and given that the WPI claim they have disappeared, then somebody has committed a crime. There are some (barely) conceivable scenarios where an honest mistake might have been made, but I think those possibilities are so unlikely that they can pretty much be ruled out. So almost certainly, a crime has been committed.
On the face of it, thinking as an open-minded detective, there is at present no reason to presume that the WPI's claim that the materials have disappeared is necessarily true. It seems no less extraordinary to me to suggest that Dr Mikovits may have stolen them than to suggest that the WPI may have hidden them and claimed they were missing. I have no prima facie reason to believe one party over the other, in a situation where one side or the other appears to be lying. In the absence of any material evidence on the matter, and given that Dr Mikovits is clearly stating that she does not have the materials, then we have no reason to conclude that Dr Mikovits is the guilty party.
Even if we do assume that the WPI's claim that the materials have disappeared is true, this does not necessarily mean that Dr Mikovits has taken them. From the evidence we have seen (precious little), it seems entirely possible that a third party has removed them, and that the WPI have assumed that Dr Mikovits took them; she could have been framed or she could have ended up as the prime suspect by chance - we just don't know. To assume, to any extent, that Dr Mikovits took these materials, is to assume that the WPI are right to be certain that she did so, which assumes that they have certain evidence (not yet produced) that she did. I see no reason to assume that the WPI did not make a false assumption in this matter - for example, they have stated that only Dr Mikovits had access to the materials, but this has been disputed, and claiming perfect security in a setup with (apparently) no adequate backups would seem an excessive basis for this assumption that it Dr Mikovits who must have taken the materials. There appears to be (as far as we know) only circumstantial evidence for that.
If Dr Mikovits did take possession of these materials, then her legal statement that she did not have them seems to be an untruth, and furthermore she must almost certainly, in law, have 'stolen' them. But proving such a theft would appear to require some evidence showing those materials in Dr Mikovits' possession - CCTV evidence or the materials themselves. Given what we've heard about the search of Lily's house, it appears that (all) the materials have not yet been located, which suggests that no such evidence exists, as yet.
So where is all this getting us?
Almost nowhere - except to highlight quite strongly that we ought to conclude that we just don't know. There are three candidates for committing a crime - the WPI, Dr Mikovits, or a 3rd party - and people can accord different percentages to those probabilities according to their own prejudices, but that is all pure guesswork and assumptions.
It's really quite extraordinary to observe how many people have made their assumptions, some of them with considerable certainty, but with no good deductive arguments on either side. To go through debunking all the poor quality arguments would take far too long. But to pick out a few...
- On the question of motive, assuming that Dr Mikovits had motive to conceal and perhaps even destroy the materials because they contain evidence that could be embarrassing or incriminating to herself, is an extraordinary assumption, because such a narrative requires that Dr Mikovits consciously sets out to destroy her own career over a period of years, somehow believing that she can get away with, and benefit from, a monstrous fraud. This scenario has always been extremely difficult to believe, because it has always been obvious, as documented on this forum, that such an enterprise could never hope to succeed, and this surely must have been obvious to Dr Mikovits herself. And yet there have been some opponents of Dr Mikovits on this forum who seem to assume this is the case, and find all other explanations extraordinary, with no apparent recognition that this scenario is itself quite extraordinary. Everyone would do well to recognise that, whatever has happened, it is absolutely extraordinary. All possible explanations are bizarre!
- Again on the question of motive, it is assumed by some that there is no reason for anyone other than Dr Mikovits to have motive to commit a crime here. This in turn requires the assumption that the materials are worthless. And yet the materials are likely to contain data about research about which we know absolutely nothing, and it's worth pointing out that if the materials do have any value in terms of intellectual property, then the value of that intellectual property may well be counted in the billions or even trillions of dollars! What price on information crucial to a commercialisable cure for ME? Information capable of leading to a proof that ME is definitively not psychosomatic has been estimated at a trillion dollars or more, and that's considering only the potential cost to insurance companies of such a finding. Such information could potentially be 'disappeared' and used (years later) to inform future commercialisable scientific developments, or simply hidden if it was too inconvenient for some party. And there are plenty of other possible motives which I won't go into now...but there are certainly potential and plausible motives on all sides.
- All the arguments based on appeals to authority, or personal trust, are no basis for a conclusion, of course. Some may implicitly trust Dr Mikovits, others may (suddenly) implicitly trust the Whittemores, and others seem to implicitly trust that nothing weird, suspicious, or nefarious ever happens except when one person acts alone. But all of those positions of emotional trust are a poor basis for an opinion on an open-ended case. I would not heavily criticise anybody for basing their stance on such faith - in the absence of evidence, all we sometimes have is human factors like trust and instinct - but I'd advise everyone never to be too certain in their faith. And I'll emphasise that much of the dogmatic disbelief in what are labelled, blanket, as 'conspiracy theories', is also an act of faith.
Well anyway, people have their own beliefs about the matter, with varying degrees of certainty, but I think I can honestly say that at this point I'm genuinely neutral as to which of the three extraordinary and bizarre possibilities is most likely, because they all have implications that are just so difficult to reconcile, and they all seem equally bizarre to me at this point.
But I'll finish with one particular aspect that strikes me as odd, based on the information we have heard. According to the timeline provided by Jace (which may not be definitive evidence but appears reliable), Dr Mikovits left Nevada before the writ was even issued. If this is the case, and her leaving the state is the issue on which she has been detained, and she is nevertheless defined as a 'fugitive' while residing in her own home, then she doesn't seem to be hiding very well, and if she wasn't supposed to be outside Nevada when the writ was served, then it seems odd that she would be required to return (what purpose would this serve?), odd that she wasn't asked to return immediately when the writ was served, and odd that we've not seen (as yet) any evidence that Dr Mikovits ever was instructed to remain in Nevada. It seems that the first relevant information we can expect to hear is an explanation of this 'fugitive' question and an explanation of why on earth Dr Mikovits would knowingly disobey such a directive and 'hide' in her own home in the face of certain arrest. Presumably we may expect information concerning those particular issues in the very near future, when the charges are revealed, and an examination of those details might be illuminating, because the weirdness of the entire question seems to me to be fractally reflected in this detail, and so an understanding of that matter might perhaps point to the truth of the whole.
Hopefully we'll get some limited answers soon...but of course all we can do until then is speculate, and try to avoid making any untrue statements on factual matters which could be defamatory to either party.
I hope my cold analysis doesn't seem too under-emotional - I think we are all deeply saddened and stressed by this latest episode - and I hope I've indicated some good reasons to try to reign in that emotion and be very cautious in drawing any firm conclusions at this stage.
