Ah, come on, Eric
Of course we don't *know* what would have happened otherwise, but we can take a pretty good guess judging by decades of experience!
I registered on PR because of the Lombardi study. So did hundreds of others. We started connecting with others from around the globe. How many blogs have been started about ME since? How many media pieces have been published? How many researchers now say "I didn't know this disease before, but it's a serious disease that very likely has immune system/viral invovlement"?
This is *all* due to one family with a sick daughter doing what nobody else wanted to do.
If that's not a reason to at least admit they've done a lot of things right I honestly don't know what would be. Let's see how others will deal with their work being subjected to the same amount of scrutiny and politcs!