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Lipkin: calls to retract paper are premature

eric_s

Senior Member
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Switzerland/Spain (Valencia)
Yes, but do they have control over the entire process (without being able to cheat, of course ;))? My guess is no. So is their participation enough to be certain this study will be able to decide the question correctly? Unfortunately probably not. I'm not saying the risk for any sort of failure is very high, but it probably exists, and the possible damage would be very high.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Yes, but do they have control over the entire process (without being able to cheat, of course ;))? My guess is no. So is their participation enough to be certain this study will be able to decide the question correctly? Unfortunately probably not. I'm not saying the risk for any sort of failure is very high, but it probably exists, and the possible damage would be very high.

True, the risk is high and the damage. I just don't think the WPI will let them be pushed into a corner by Lipkin if it came to that.
 

eric_s

Senior Member
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I don't know. The Lipkin study has now for some time been promoted as "the answer". So if they fail there, i think it would be difficult. Not lost, if they're right it's never lost, but i'd prefer to not have to go through this.
 

Rrrr

Senior Member
Messages
1,591
Yes, I agree. Even Switzer of the CDC has found it in 3 prostate cancer patients now, and says it's a real wild human virus in his latest research paper.

But now the NCI says xmrv in cancer is dead. so what about switzer finding it?
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
But now the NCI says xmrv in cancer is dead. so what about switzer finding it?

It's a mess basically. Ruscetti is also from the NCI and probably still standing behind XMRV. Then we have Alter at the FDA who has found similar viruses. And then we have the CDC that can suddenly find XMRV and rules out contamination. I see no concensus.
 

justinreilly

Senior Member
Messages
2,498
Location
NYC (& RI)
Thank, Jemal. On the other thread they were discussing Lipkin's reaction to Shin et al., i'm replying to this over here, because it's about Lipkin in general, if it disturbs you and you think it's not in the right place here, tell me.

http://www.virology.ws/2011/05/06/ian-lipkin-on-xmrv/

Was Lipkin really saying something different in private than in public? What i can see here was one private email to Dr. Racaniello, of which Dr. Lipkin probably was aware it will be posted and then Dr. Racaniello's interpretation/opinion.

Or am i wrong? I don't see two statements by Lipkin here.

Eric, here is Prof. R's clarification:
profvrr 3 weeks ago
In my comment, I was not speculating on what I 'thought' Dr. Lipkin meant by his comments. I spoke with him after he sent the email to make it clear what he meant, and I based my comment here on that conversation. Whatever you choose to believe, the study that he is coordinating is exactly the kind of study that he believes will resolve the situation. Note that he says that the results won't be available until the end of 2011.

From Bloomberg article:
Totally Surprised
When that paper came out I was totally surprised and suspicious, Levy said today in a telephone interview. Who knew there would be pressure on the government to do these expensive studies? Ive never been around anything quite so dramatic and misleading and misunderstood for so long. There are financial ramifications, and medical and health ramifications.

Oh boy! 'Suspicious' and 'misleading'!
 

justinreilly

Senior Member
Messages
2,498
Location
NYC (& RI)
Good for Lipkin for saying it is premature to retract.

Who knows any more info relevant to whether Lipkin is or is not biased? Who knows about Lipkin doing the study that supposedly 'definitively debunked' Wakefield? Pls post.
 

Daffodil

Senior Member
Messages
5,875
i hope beiger's study comes out soon. all we need is 1 more positive to put us back on the map ..in a big way. it doesnt matter how many studies say no....its such a low-copy pathogen, if 3 groups found it (or something like it), its real!
 

eric_s

Senior Member
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1,925
Location
Switzerland/Spain (Valencia)
Thanks, Justin. Now i remember that comment too. But we don't really know what happened, it could be that Lipkin said two different things in the email and in the other conversation or that Racaniello is putting a lot of own "interpretation" into the conversation. Absent an appropriately powered study all we have is more confusion. Lol. Lipkin has the answer for this problem here as well :rolleyes:

Levy's comments are rather ridiculous. Wasn't HIV much more dramatic and controversial?

And regarding the "expensive studies"... come on, what they cost is peanuts compared to what they put into all the other illnesses every year. He knows this.
 
Messages
5,238
Location
Sofa, UK
When that paper came out I was totally surprised and suspicious, Levy said...

This has long seemed to be crucial to me. Wessely, Vernon, and many many other ME/CFS researchers immediately did not believe the paper, and never have, though few of them have explicitly stated this publicly. Many people did not believe this for two basic reasons (putting aside, for now, those people who did not and do not believe that ME/CFS is even a real illness). First, they did not and do not believe, for various reasons, that ME/CFS has a viral cause. They believe it is caused by a multitude of factors, that it's a kind of breakdown of the neuro-immune system that can be provoked by many things, and not an infectious disease. They think there is no evidence that ME/CFS is an infectious disease - though I myself think the evidence that it is not is slim to non-existent. Second, they did not and do not believe that ME/CFS cohorts represent a single condition - there are subsets, and they believe there are many different conditions jumbled up together.

This reasoning - that a retroviral explanation did not make sense according to the models that many people have of ME/CFS - explains much of the opposition the WPI have faced.

However, a few things strike me about this situation:

- Seek and ye shall find. And if you are convinced that something is not there, that has to affect the lengths you will go to in order to verify whether it is there or not. And nobody has yet replicated the WPI's methods.

- It's entirely possible for everyone with ME/CFS to be infected with XMRV even if the above premises are true. There has seemed to me to be a consistent lack of imagination from many people who have advanced arguments against XMRV that are not logically justified; many possible scenarios have been overlooked. There are many ways that XMRV in ME/CFS could be correct, despite the above observations. But some of those scenarios are unthinkable to many...

- Above all that though: How can it be that so many top researchers confidently believe they know what ME/CFS definitely is not, when there appears to be no accepted consensus as to what it is? How can so much be known about something about which nothing is officially known? And even more: How can it be acceptable that any consistent finding about ME/CFS must be wrong because we know that ME/CFS is probably a jumble of mixed-up conditions? This means that research into ME/CFS must therefore all be doomed to failure - and indeed that's reasonably likely to be true, it's pretty likely there are indeed subsets, and separate but similar conditions...but to allow research to continue for decades into something you don't believe even exists as a discrete entity, while at the same time research continues to pretend that it is, and researchers continue to research on the basis that it is...and therefore dismiss any clear findings about it because they must be false because the whole thing doesn't really exist as a consistent entity...that is an unconscionable Catch-22, because it allows for no possibility of any progress ever being made.

Anyway, it has always seemed crucial to the whole dynamic that the majority of the interested scientific community immediately took the view that "this can't possibly be right", not for any reasons to do with the WPI, but because it didn't fit their existing beliefs and theories...and it recently also seems crucial to me that while many researchers believe this, few have dared to say so, and meanwhile a great many patients do continue to believe that retroviral infection fits their experience extremely well and makes a lot of sense
 
Messages
2
Hello Mark
'This has long seemed to be crucial to me. Wessely, Vernon, and many many other ME/CFS researchers immediately did not believe the paper, and never have, though few of them have explicitly stated this publicly. Many people did not believe this for two basic reasons (putting aside, for now, those people who did not and do not believe that ME/CFS is even a real illness). First, they did not and do not believe, for various reasons, that ME/CFS has a viral cause. They believe it is caused by a multitude of factors, that it's a kind of breakdown of the neuro-immune system that can be provoked by many things, and not an infectious disease. They think there is no evidence that ME/CFS is an infectious disease - though I myself think the evidence that it is not is slim to non-existent. Second, they did not and do not believe that ME/CFS cohorts represent a single condition - there are subsets, and they believe there are many different conditions jumbled up together.'

Another possibility as to why they are adamant it is not XMRV is because they know what it is. Sorry, another conspiracy theory I know but their bullheadedness does make me wonder.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031