I'm going to repeat a few things other people have said, and add a bit.
The first study:
Plosone, Failure to Detect the Novel Retrovirus XMRV in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Involved a respectable scientists & Wessely. Was not a sloppy study, used one method & no culture, and was not a replication study. They speculated this my be due to geographical distribution.
The second study:
Retrovirology, Absence of xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus in UK patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
Involved respectable scientists. Was not a sloppy study, used one method & no culture, and was not a replication study. (DID NOT REALLY PROGRESS SCIENCE BEYOND 1ST STUDY)
The third study:
Prevalence of xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome in the Netherlands: retrospective analysis of samples from an established cohort.
Involved van Kuppeveld & van de Meer. Used one method, and was not a replication study. Omitted important data. Did not pass The Lancet's peer view process, and would have not met BMJ's.
The paper by Van Kuppeveld and colleagues is an unusual paper for the BMJ to publish. As our research highlights page explains, we would usually reject a small case-control study examining the prevalence of a virus in 20 year old blood samples. Instead we fast tracked it.
To accompany the third study was an editorial by McClure & Wessely. They made the following statements.
There has been much talk of different protocols being used in the four studies. These technical differences are irrelevant provided amplification is controlled by inclusion of a "housekeeping gene"—to show that a known human gene can be amplified under the conditions used—and the sensitivity of the assay is known, as was the case in all three European studies.
Although the patients were not well described in the original study, van Kuppeveld and colleagues provide the additional information reported at a conference last year that the patients in question came from an outbreak of chronic fatigue syndrome at Incline village on the northern border of Lake Tahoe in the mid-1980s.
It is possible that XMRV is implicated in the Lake Tahoe episode but does not play a substantial role in most cases of chronic fatigue syndrome elsewhere.
They also referred to the ongoing research as a 'saga', telling readers that the "news was received philosophically by most retrovirologists...". Really! How, "most researchers into chronic fatigue syndrome were also sceptical, mindful of the problems of defining the syndrome..." No mention that it may account for a subset of patients, because the Science paper had used Fukuda & Canadian criteria. They then claimed that, "But if the research community was underwhelmed, people with the syndrome were not." How would they know??? Instead of focusing on the current issue, they then managed to advertise Wessely's own little money spinner of CBT/GET, saying how it is, "a perspective that offers hope to patients and is backed by evidence."
Fiona Godlee, editor of the BMJ, also wrote an article, saying:
So yes, let’s have more research into chronic fatigue syndrome, but let’s make sure it’s good enough research.
Recently we have had Dr. Francis Ruscetti, NCI, saying that he is especially surprised about the fact that the investigators of the UMC St. Radboud at Nijmegen concealed in their publication that the Americans found traces of XMRV in the same blood samples from the Dutch patients. "I don’t know how they get away ethically with this," said Ruscetti. "I don’t think that is good science." He also made it clear that the WPI, the NCI and the Cleveland Clinic applied four procedures in their research. "In those negative studies they only tried one." And ventilated his annoyance over what he calls the "whispering campaign" about contamination. According to the Nijmegen researchers, the Americans contaminated or polluted the Dutch blood samples.
Also, Dr. John Coffin has said it is not clear that they are "true" replication studies.He also dispelled the criticism of some researchers that the blood samples in the Science-published study could have been contaminated, pointing to the authors' comment that the patients had an immune response to XMRV. "The presence of antibodies is an important confirmation that patients were infected and that contamination was not an issue,".
It seems that all three of the main complaints go back to van Kuppeveld and colleagues. The whisper campaign about contamination, rumours about the patient cohort used in Science, and concealed data. Therefore I cannot see how anyone can say that the researchers of the third study are not incompetent. As for McClure & Wessely, they failed to do their research and find out whether van Kuppeveld and colleagues were correct. Why didn't they ask? This should never have been published by the BMJ. Now McClure claims that she can find XMRV in prostate cancer patients (unpublished), but still, she found none in the controls used for the CFS study. She must be questioning her own abilities by now, or realising that it is a difficult retrovirus to find.
This all bring us back to the CAA. Yes Dr. Vernon (and Dr. Mikovits) are on the DHHS task force, but this is no reason not to advocate on behalf of patients, and clearly state they were not replication studies. Coffin can do it, and he also counters the contamination issue. Ruscetti also, he makes it clear that they only used one method and speaks out about Nijmegen's unethical behaviour. I think this all comes down to a conflict of interest. It just isn't good enough.