Yeah, we could debate until the cows come home. Let's look at the bigger picture. Science is showing that xmrv is a contaminant, not harmful and not related to CFS/ME/Prostate Cancer. That does not mean another RV/virus whatever isn't responsible but specifically talking about xmrv.
In terms of turning back to the bigger picture, that's always important as well, of course, you're quite right. And what you say in this quote is not unreasonable, though I would be cautious with some of those conclusions.
I would agree that without doubt it has unexpectedly emerged that XMRV is a widespread contaminant.
I don't however think there is any evidence that it is not potentially harmful, thought clearly if it's so widespread it isn't casually affecting humans and causing them to die in some new and obvious way. But the question of whether it may be harmful if it did get into humans, or whether it may have got into some humans and may have been harmful (in short or long term), is not resolved. We can't detect it by most conventional means, in the blood, and results that seemed to do so now seem questionable. But it's still quite possible that it's infected people, been quickly cleared from the blood, and taken up residence elsewhere, either harmfully or harmlessly. There's literally no evidence either way on that point. But if it
hasn't ever infected a human, then how can we possibly say it wouldn't be harmful if it did? What would happen if you got injected with it, or a derivative, in a vaccine cultured in a contaminated environment? Unknown. You can't have it both ways on infectivity and potential harmfulness: If it has never infected anyone, you can't say it wouldn't be harmful if it did.
Whether it is related to CFS/ME/PC in any way, I am still not certain that question is laid to rest. Science has swung that way and is pointing that way, and there's no question that contamination is a more significant factor than anyone ever realised, and this confounded many of the results. There's a strong case that all the detection was due to contamination, but there is still much to be explained - like why the batch contamination always affected patients rather than controls? Nobody (to my knowledge) has reporting finding loads of XMRV in controls and none in patients: the odds of the results I am aware of being so one-sided due to chance are less than 1% (flipping a coin 7 times and every time it's heads), so an explanation of that is required. I prefer to wait for Lipkin's results, and I also prefer to not make overly definitive statements even then.
Mark, I have to admit that in this thread, I find your defensiveness and inablity to see that sometimes with this DD we get foggy due to pain, exhaustion, whatever, so it doesn't warrent the personal criticisms from you. Perhaps just stating the facts? You gave me this advice and it's helped me keep my perspective.
Barb, I'm sorry that this discussion, or argument perhaps, has felt like a personal criticism to you at times. I can see why, because I have been pretty relentless on it in the last couple of days, I happen to have a day off and I so rarely get time to post, which I enjoy. And I don't want you to feel like I'm having a go at you personally, I don't mean to. I don't have anything against you personally, and I quite accept that the fogginess doesn't help matters and it's frustrating for us all to have to function well below our capabilities. I'm also sorry that I've been relentless on the facts of the matter and haven't been a bit more friendly and conversational too, along the way.
But I have tried very hard to just state the facts, and I think that for the vast majority of the time, at least, I have done so. You accuse me of defensiveness, but actually I have simply mentioned points on which you were wrong, and when I did so - repeatedly - you didn't accept that. To me, it seems that you have been very defensive yourself, because I have pointed out where you were wrong, clearly, with evidence, repeatedly, and you've still continued to disagree.
That has been extremely frustrating for me as well. I appreciate that you've accepted some of those points now, and I do understand that it might be difficult for you to think these things through and it takes time. But if you're struggling like that, please understand that it can be very frustrating for others too, to state corrections like these and have them disputed, and it might help if you take a little more time to look at what I've said, try to understand it, and decide whether I'm actually right, before posting to say you still think I'm wrong and you want that to be an end of it. To be honest, it has felt rather disrespectful at times, because I have only been trying to explain where you were in error, and you didn't seem to entertain the possibility that I might actually be right, you just argued back. That did feel like you didn't think it was worth listening to what I was actually saying.
Now: to be fair to you, I think it is entirely understandable and forgivable why you formed those incorrect impressions about what Singh's criticisms applied to. This is very complicated and technical. The criticisms were presented all mixed up together in the paper, and they didn't distinguish between which applied to positive and which applied to negative studies. Some of them were actually quite complex to distinguish, I found, and one or two were ambiguous or undetermined. Yet it was quite possible to read that paper as you did, and assume that the first section criticised the negative studies and the criticisms then moved on to focusing on flaws in the positive ones - it does read a bit like that and I think it's been valuable to pick that all apart and distinguish them because the final analysis was a little surprising even to me. It's actually quite damning of the methodology of the other negative studies, much more so than of Lombardi et al and Lo et al, and it wasn't presented that way at all. Furthermore, Racaniello's bullet point summary doesn't highlight that point either, and it does leave the reader open to imagine that those criticisms are really a criticism of those nasty, bad, weak, load of old rubbish positive studies that have been winding everyone up - if that's what one believed, then that's how one would tend to read it. But the opposite is in fact the case. I think that's really interesting to notice and analyse, how that sort of thing happens - it happens all the time.
So I can quite see how you got to thinking that, but really I honestly do think it would be well worthwhile for you to take a step back, take some time, and think this one through honestly and fairly and observe how you misinterpreted this, and how unfair that misinterpretation was to the positive papers. I do think you should do that really, because we are indeed all only human, we all make mistakes and get things wrong, and if we can recognise and admit that then we can learn an enormous amount in doing so. There should be no shame in that, and certainly no hard feelings from me over it. And please try to understand that if you post on threads like this stating that black equals white and stick to your guns relentlessly when clear evidence is presented to the contrary, then it's inevitable that there are going to be people who keep arguing with you: I was only arguing with you because you were wrong on a few points of fact, and there was no matter-of-opinion about it, even if we disagree on the matter of opinion on the wider picture, and despite the fact that you may well be right in your conclusions.
In that spirit of admitting where we are wrong, I'll try to ask myself what I've done wrong myself on this thread. Well, for a start I've let myself get carried away writing, which I enjoy and rarely get the chance to do, but there are still other things I should have been doing instead. And I've not managed to take enough time to be gentle in saying what I've said. So I do want to stress that, although you were wrong, that doesn't mean I'm angry with you about that, or that I want to give you a hard time. So I'll try to make space to be more sensitive to that in future.
But then we are only human. Take care.
Indeed we are, and please don't think there are any hard feelings in this from my side. I'm sorry if I was tough on you.
