I have no idea who Pagel is or why the reporter would contact him. In situations like this, though, I see 'Colorado,' and I think James Jones. I don't want to jump to conclusions. I always wondered, though, if Jones, one of the worst at CDC, knew Lisa Corbin & that was how she ended up on CFSAC. Again, pure speculation.
NIH probably shouldn't be thought of as 'responsible' for rubber-stamping this piece of garbage, but they do have to be accountable. It's especially interesting given what Brian Vastag mentioned that Francis Collins said to him about 'skill sets' or whatever it was.
Even if he hadn't said such a thing, the public announcement followed by this is absolutely damning. They deserve zero slack as far as I'm concerned. This is BS, period. But Healthday articles getting plastered all over the place, when they're this bad, I don't want to sound paranoid, but it's difficult to believe this happens by accident. One simple Google search would've showed the reporter that Science covered David Tuller's blogs, and said it was a controversy. We can't know if the piece originally mentioned this, but whether it's the reporter or the editor, even if it's likely it was just status quo on the Library end, it's like a multilevel failure of something that's very similar to peer review.
But now people are starting to pay attention.
