New TWIV March 6: "Contaminated prostates, absolute truth, and bleached worms"

[urbantravels]

http://www.virology.ws/2011/03/06/t...m_campaign=Feed:+VirologyBlog+(virology+blog)

I haven't had a chance to listen yet - I am extremely short on spoons at the moment. Has anyone had a listen? I worry when I see that Alan Dove is on the panel, because I know how biased he is, but I'm curious to know what Prof. R. has to say about the newest "contamination" salvo. He did a blog post about it already, but I wonder what his latest thoughts are.

 

[Rooney]

Urban travels, thanks for posting this.

I enjoyed the talk as it seemed balanced. Here are a few quotes: "Strange paper." "Did they call Silverman" to work out the differences? We don't know. They may have. Sorting that out takes time and journals want to publish interesting papers. "Interesting finding". Strong evidence of contamination. But not yet proven contamination.

What must be done now is replication of the integration sight of patients. Need to use new equipment.

 

[urbantravels]

Glad to hear it seemed balanced. Doesn't seem to go much beyond what he put in his blog post - "This possibility can and must be addressed experimentally."

Bit of a side note, but you know what I haven't seen lately? Much if any media play on this paper (new Towers on prostate tumors) or anything else that's recently been put forward about "contamination." On the other hand, I just saw a mini-spate of new coverage in the WSJ ( Dockser Marcus on Lyndonville and the XMRV debate, and Leonard Jason on cohorts) and the NYT (Tuller on case definitions.)

Which way is the wind blowing today? It's getting harder and harder to keep track.

 

[Esther12]

Not that much on XMRV stuff... I feel like their points on statistical trickery were of more relevence to understanding CFS research.