As comprehensive as this study may be, it still raises questions and fails to address others.
It will be interesting to see Singhs belief as to how and or whether, this study impacts her previous work.
I think Alex raised an important point, which may gather steem as Singh comments on the impact of this study on her other work - and that is - identifying all potential sources of contamination in labs.
Is it a replication study of Lombardi et al or not? I am yet to read the current study but I would only say this.
A patent was taken out by the University of Utah, and referenced the names of a couple of the authors of this study and their work in relation to XMRV. The purpose of a patent it to lay claim to a novel process. The process, subject of the application - must be distinguishable in some way from what was pre existing, for the patent and intellectual property rights to attach. At least that is my understanding of how they operate.
Unless I was mistaken, I thought this patent covered Shin, Singh et al processes re XMRV in CFS.
Therefore, if the process used in this study are the same as those detailed in that patent, then it would have to be said that there was sufficient deviation from methods used by others (ie lombardi et al) on this occasion - to rule out the current study as a true identical and replicative study.
It will be interesting to look at this matter more closely as I read the study.