I sent an email to Dr. Francis Collins (head of NIH) several weeks ago, and got a reply (this week) from the Office of Research on Women's Health. The main paragraph reads,
"You expressed concern with the delay in publication of the paper written by Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Harvey Alter of NIH, and their coworkers, about their studies on the Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus (XMRV). As typically occurs in the process of publishing scientific findings, the authors are presently addressing issues raised during the peer review of the manuscript and expect publication soon."
I hadn't mentioned Dr. Lo in my letter, but this reply confirms that he's a co-author, at least. The reply didn't really answer my questions or concerns (I wasn't really expecting that anyway), but at least it does give a bit of information. I'm not sure what "soon" means to a scientist, but I hope it means "a few weeks" and not months. But if the authors are still addressing peer review issues as of this week (assuming the reply had the latest information) would publication in August still be possible? I suppose it would depend on the extent of the latest peer review issues and how many changes are made in the revised manuscript.
"You expressed concern with the delay in publication of the paper written by Dr. Shyh-Ching Lo of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Harvey Alter of NIH, and their coworkers, about their studies on the Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus (XMRV). As typically occurs in the process of publishing scientific findings, the authors are presently addressing issues raised during the peer review of the manuscript and expect publication soon."
I hadn't mentioned Dr. Lo in my letter, but this reply confirms that he's a co-author, at least. The reply didn't really answer my questions or concerns (I wasn't really expecting that anyway), but at least it does give a bit of information. I'm not sure what "soon" means to a scientist, but I hope it means "a few weeks" and not months. But if the authors are still addressing peer review issues as of this week (assuming the reply had the latest information) would publication in August still be possible? I suppose it would depend on the extent of the latest peer review issues and how many changes are made in the revised manuscript.