Again, this seems like a post hoc rationalization to me. I grant that the original paper might be insufficient to reconstruct her precise methods. But unless I'm mistaken, the ultimate goal of science is to move our understanding closer to the truth and not merely to preserve egos and tear each other limb from limb for having the audacity to lack perfect foresight in publishing an initial finding.
Imagine a group that tries to reproduce the Lombardi results and comes up empty. (Perhaps they did their very best to reconstruct precise methods from the published paper, or perhaps--as seemed far more common--they decided to do their own thing, maybe even going so far as to defy basic sensibility by doing something like excluding patients with signs of infection. Either way, it doesn't matter.) This group has a choice. They can a) defiantly publish their results under the presumption that their isolated efforts were sufficient and cannot have overlooked important details known to others or b) email/call/meet Mikovits (or others with requisite expertise and/or success) to see if there might be un-published or unanticipated ways of improving your methodology. In my opinion, one of these is far more conducive to scientific progress while the other, the one we've seen chosen repeatedly, is antagonistic and counterproductive. The only group I recall choosing the latter route is that of Dr. Hanson, who did subsequently improve their ability to find evidence of the virus, albeit inconsistently still.
