"The scientific process depends on experimental replication, yet there hasn't been a single study since the publication of Lombardi et al 2009 that actually replicated a single method from that study. The evidence for retroviral infection provided by viral protein assays and serology remained regardless of any debate about what viral sequences were actually found; the decision to retract the study despite that evidence was a strictly in-house decision made by the editors of Science magazine, and no one else in the scientific community was given the opportunity to evaluate the supposed "lack of quality control", etc claimed by editors of Science. The rest of us have only the confusing claims and counter-claims regarding one figure in the paper, which Judy Mikovits could not defend because she no longer had access to her data, and is facing criminal charges that obviously place restrictions on what she can say about work at the WPI. The question therefore was clearly not settled by the scientific process, but by a strictly editorial one. That may be the editors' prerogative, but to call it a validation of the scientific process is pretty delusional. The partial retraction of Silverman's contribution to the study, and perhaps an author's statement cautioning that the use of the term "XMRV" could no longer be considered valid, are all that was called for at this point."