Congratulations on completely misunderstanding my post! Anyway as I pointed out Dr Singh explains this very well
Control populations were often small, with as few as 43 in one study (25), and patient and control samples were often collected at different times, sometimes several years apart (11), leaving open the possibility that patient samples might have been handled more, and thus possibly contaminated more easily, than control samples. Additionally, in all except a subset of samples from one study (12), the identity of the samples was not hidden from the investigators.
She also explains why the nested PCR at the WPI is
probably contaminated, using the wrong methodology.
Contamination in labs is very, very common, actually; despite our best efforts, there's rogue DNA all over our labs and the products we use, and when it happens in experiments we just shrug it off - even if it's contamination with a novel human retrovirus that was created in the lab and has spread unintentionally through an unknown process.
Contamination of PCR is very common, by it's nature it's very easy to contaminate, I'm not really sure what you're complaining about. Recombinant retroviruses are a worry as I've already said but if the WPI findings are the result of contamination, as
seems increasing likely then it means that XMRV infection is not correlated with ME. That's what I meant by does it matter where the contamination came from.
Actually, RedRuth, I think Mark understood your post perfectly well. He was addressing the attitude that comprises the core of your position: a palpable antipathy toward open, honest, fully evidence-based reasoning. Instead you are engaging in selective use of evidence and biased supposition to stuff the gaps. This stuffing of the (self-selected) gaps with plausibility instead of evidence is classic
pseudoskepticism.
You are also trying to argue using a rhetorical device that I would call "semantic ratcheting," whereby the case for relative certainty of some
assumed (not evidenced) conclusion is built by subtle and successive use of increasingly stronger adjectives. It is like the rhetorical version of the
frog in boiling water. For example, person A claims that it's
possible that gravity could cease tomorrow (which is vacuously true given the fundamental uncertainty of everything in science). Person B then quotes them and says it is
probable that this will happen. Person C continues on with it being
likely, etc, until we arrive at
indisputable. I have taken the liberty of bolding your usage of this device above in transferring a vacuous point (the possibility of contamination) into a truth of such apparent certainty that it can be assumed without investigation. This is neither science nor skepticism.
To be honest RedRuth, it has been apparent to me since you first started commenting here that you were not interested in honest discussion, but rather in trumpeting anti-XMRV talking points, rationalizing bad science, and engaging in biased dissembling. Despite that, I am impressed with how extremely patient a number of posters here have been.