Article: Researcher Confesses, Implicates Dr. Mikovits in Theft of Materials From WPI
- Thread starter Phoenix Rising Team
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I'm sorry that impression was given. The article says the WPI provided evidence that Dr. Mikovits had engineered the theft of the materials if she had confessed the sentence would have read Dr. Mikovits confessed.
Dr. Mikovits was reportedly under an order not to talk about the case. Her attorney, however, had laid it out in full stating that she never took the documents or had anything to do with taking them. Pfosts version does not support that but if she stays with that statement she will have, as they say, her day in court, and will hear more from her side.
Pfost is a researcher at the WPI and a co-author of the original Science paper. The only thing I know of him is that he made a splash when he stated in an interview that major labs studying XMRV did not know how to do basic aspects of PCR correctly. I believe he is a graduate student (??)
Yep, thanks Sean, I fixed it.
I can't imagine that Ruscetti was aware of this. a) he would be receiving stolen property and b) what could he do with them? Unless he acknowledged that he got them from the WPI - which would implicate him in receiving stolen properties - how could he use them in his lab? Samples and cell lines do not just appear out of the air - in scientific research they all have to come from somewhere and be labeled appropriately.
What has really upset me is the fact that the WPI has been laid out to hang for the past month and a half and particularly in the last couple of days and only now - after her research assistant has confessed - is Dr. Mikovits or rather her husband - calling for people with CFS to lay off the WPI. I do get that Lily is asking patients to do that for Dr. Mikovits sake though not for the WPI's. It's been a rough, rough couple of months for the WPI and now it looks like they were right all along........
I wouldn't say that.
They made a lot of mistakes in all this too. Some of that is understandable, as they were scientific novices, but it does look like there were problems with the way that the WPI was run. Even when I was at my most positive about XMRV, I thought it was a mistake for the WPI to behave in a way which would so undermine them if the finding turned out to be the result of error. It seems like Peterson had similar thoughts, and I'm sure that they were privy to them.
Regardless of how Mikovits has treated the WPI over the last couple of months, they had already done a lot to undermine themselves.
According to exhibit 3, these were to be sent to Ruscetti prior to the firing.
Cort, I'm wondering if you can tell us your source for this, because it contradicts what ScienceInsider said in their article? http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/controversial-cfs-researcher-arr.html
Please bear in mind folks that, regardless of how you view the impact of Dr Mikowits' past actions on the ME/CFS community, we are very distant observers to this affair and have no way of knowing the truth or otherwise of the various statements.The justice process will take its course.In the meantime please remember when alleging fraud, theft, lying or personality disorders that there are real people's reputations and livelihoods at stake.Personally, unless I had direct knowledge of relevant facts, I'd just keep quiet.
You know Vincent van Gogh could slice his ear and after he departed his art is most admired. So Mikovits maybe is a bit eccentric. The irony here is she apparently orchestrated activities which weren't kosher to be able to continue her research elsewhere (and meanwhile sink WPI) but in the end she's finished any hope of her ever being associated with formal science (even if she was on to something)
Who knows maybe working under a pseudonym she can help but formally, I don't think that's possible. What a waste.
Judging my own feelings on this I think WPI still have smelly hands in this. If Judy was brittle or have snap like tendencies but yet is brilliant, human resources/human working knowledge should pick up on this and use the brilliance appropriately. Who knows what you read is true or not but was she really not taking a salary? Yeah that's a real awful person, research for free for a cause you believe in. That's certainly worthy of scorn.
Who knows maybe working under a pseudonym she can help but formally, I don't think that's possible. What a waste.
Judging my own feelings on this I think WPI still have smelly hands in this. If Judy was brittle or have snap like tendencies but yet is brilliant, human resources/human working knowledge should pick up on this and use the brilliance appropriately. Who knows what you read is true or not but was she really not taking a salary? Yeah that's a real awful person, research for free for a cause you believe in. That's certainly worthy of scorn.
Agreed. It has not gone well. I just saw this on Facebook from Rebecca Artmann, former patient rep to CFSAC
I'm sure this must be true to some degree - although I would point out that Simarron, the CFI, the PHANU group at Bond U in Australia, the Montoya group at Stanford and one new group - to be announced soon, I am told - have all come on board recently.......so while we've taken a hit in some things are brighter than they have been for quite awhile.
That was my understanding based on what I read somewhere and from talking to someone associated with the case but I removed that from the piece because I'm now unsure of it. I'm in the process of removing it from my posts as well.
One of the allegations in Max Pfost's second affidavit Exhibit 2 that I found disturbing was the part about Judy Mikovits asking him to look for materials to discredit Dan Peterson. If true (and bearing in mind that I don't know if Max Pfost is at all credible), that sounds really vindictive.
This whole thing is very disheartening. Regardless of who's at fault, and I suspect there's fault on both sides, it's the patients who are ultimately the losers. This is a disease that doesn't need any more bad press, and this situation is more like a TV melodrama than science at work. No wonder the likes of Trine Tsouderos are jumping on this story; another opportunity to make ME/CFS and the people who suffer from it look bad.
This whole thing is very disheartening. Regardless of who's at fault, and I suspect there's fault on both sides, it's the patients who are ultimately the losers. This is a disease that doesn't need any more bad press, and this situation is more like a TV melodrama than science at work. No wonder the likes of Trine Tsouderos are jumping on this story; another opportunity to make ME/CFS and the people who suffer from it look bad.
One of the allegations in Max Pfost's second affidavit Exhibit 2 that I found disturbing was the part about Judy Mikovits asking him to look for materials to discredit Dan Peterson. If true (and bearing in mind that I don't know if Max Pfost is at all credible), that sounds really vindictive.
This whole thing is very disheartening. Regardless of who's at fault, and I suspect there's fault on both sides, it's the patients who are ultimately the losers. This is a disease that doesn't need any more bad press, and this situation is more like a TV melodrama than science at work. No wonder the likes of Trine Tsouderos are jumping on this story; another opportunity to make ME/CFS and the people who suffer from it look bad.
Sounds unrealistic to me since they hadn't even begun seeing patients for which to bill m-care. And yes, short of knowing all the facts, it does appear vindictive, and as such would be a contradiction of claiming to care for the well being of the patient community. I sure hope that proves to not be the case.
btw, whatever happened to Dr Bhakta who I thought had been hired as one of the first clinical MD's at wpi?
No wonder the likes of Trine Tsouderos are jumping on this story; another opportunity to make ME/CFS and the people who suffer from it look bad.
There are a few things that I really don't like about the way Trine writes about CFS; her willingness to generalise about patients, take quotes off forums without speaking to the poster and treat as if they are representative of 'patients', etc... but her scepticism of Mikovits and XMRV now seem justified, and I expect she received much criticism for that earlier on. No-one's perfect.
This is messy to say the least! However, professional ethics are the foremost responsibility in any professionals career. Once we cross the line with the ethics, we become subjective to be discredited in our endeavors to find the true answers we so desperately need. I will hope that Dr. Judy is cleared of all charges, and the truth does reveal the missing details to allow her to continue to do honest to goodness research again. It is sad that all the Simon Wessely's in research have not been the ones dismissed for maligning the progress of fast diagnosis, and medication for full restoration of this illness misery. In stead those who's work we have come to respect are pushed into such questionable behaviors that leave us stranded even more. It is shameful that medical care/science and governmental support has come 25 years and no practical help for the suffering, debilitated people who have lost their lives waiting for a ray of hope of some discovery. Dispair is our demise and power plays are not helping! This just interferes and delays the progress we need and demonstrates what has been going on behind the facade of our Governments superficial investment in us, the CDC CFSAC meetings with no real power, NIH's lack of real commitment to fund our needs and the competition amongst advocacy organizations. Must we still fall further behind now and wait while the rest of life passes us by? I agree this will cause any real medical practitioner or scientist to continue to deny the reality of our fate. Who would risk developing their career on an illness that will lead to being investigated by their State professional ethics boards and potentially have their Medical License suspended, or revoked? Felony's are automatic issues to have an ethics investigation and the consequences are serious, beyond the possible civil and criminal damage, to a highly qualified person's professional reputation. How many times have I heard public testimony of supportive professional medical experts, either with this illness or not, who showed interest in advocating for us, or was actively involved in helping us to improve our hope of any quality in life today with their dedicated professional knowledge and experience, who was blackballed professionally? ME and CFS will not find accurate answers until the power plays and financial hoarding take a back seat to the people truly in need.
I second that. None of us really knows the truth, and it's not useful to speculate.
the newspaper named in this link, is allowing comments to be posted. Go for it.
This is a very regrettable situation but, really, how is it going to impact further research? There have never been any significant resources allocated to investigating this illness - "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" dealt the death blow to that - not even in the immediate wake of the Science paper (well, there were the millions that were "redirected" by the CDC, but let's not go there...). How has that situation worsened because of this? Had governments been sitting up and paying attention in a real sense somewhere? Did the psych camp issue an apology?
I reserve judgement on what is going on in the Mikovitz/Whittemore scrap until later, though I personally believe that there has probably been some wrongdoing on both sides, emotions have flared, and things have escalated out of proportion as they tend to do in intellectual property disputes. I really don't believe there are any true villians here. Business mismanagement is not a crime (though it probably should be in some cases), and neither is trying to protect the integrity of one's work - perhaps in law, certainly not in a moral sense. As none of us have enough real information on what has happened to base an opinion on, we can only speculate.
Reporting on it in these forums seems very heavily biased one way or the other regardless though, which doesn't do much for the cause. The one this thread is attached to seems to want to paint Judy Mikovits in a bad light, and you have to wonder why that would be. It's terribly one-sided reporting. As an earlier poster said, a bit of unbiased reporting wouldn't go amiss (or words to that effect).
I reserve judgement on what is going on in the Mikovitz/Whittemore scrap until later, though I personally believe that there has probably been some wrongdoing on both sides, emotions have flared, and things have escalated out of proportion as they tend to do in intellectual property disputes. I really don't believe there are any true villians here. Business mismanagement is not a crime (though it probably should be in some cases), and neither is trying to protect the integrity of one's work - perhaps in law, certainly not in a moral sense. As none of us have enough real information on what has happened to base an opinion on, we can only speculate.
Reporting on it in these forums seems very heavily biased one way or the other regardless though, which doesn't do much for the cause. The one this thread is attached to seems to want to paint Judy Mikovits in a bad light, and you have to wonder why that would be. It's terribly one-sided reporting. As an earlier poster said, a bit of unbiased reporting wouldn't go amiss (or words to that effect).