Dr. Vernon's writings were not 'comments' they were part of a scientific paper
You are 100% right!
If you can't handle a researcher accurately reflecting the state of the research at the time and you hold that researchers statements against them as if they were written today than you lack credibility in my opinion. You're taking things out of context.
Cort, if you can't handle arguing for someone without changing what they said, then I think you are the one who lack's credibility here.
Dr. Vernon said:
the outcomes of pathophysiological research have generally featured delineation of what CFS is not - a muscle disorder, a retroviral infection, a recognised psychiatric disorder, a known autoimmune disorder, etc.
I'll use synonyms in order to show this sentence again, in other words. It's not as accurate as the original quote, but since you're changing the original quote into what you want it to sound like, I'll show you that the dictionary does not accept it:
the outcomes of pathophysiological research have mostly presented a description of what CFS is not - a muscle disorder, a retroviral infection, a recognised psychiatric disorder, a known autoimmune disorder, etc.
So, Dr. Vernon did not "accurately reflected the state of the research at the time", not only because there was (and still is, ofcourse) no proof that "CFS is not a retroviral infection", but also because she did not talk about "a state of research at the time" - she said that the research is description of ME/CFS by the studies until than described it as an illness that is not caused by a retrovirus - although there was no study that described that (not finding something does not mean that it's not there, and every scientist knows that) and there was also a study that wasn't replicated but found that some kind of a retrovirus is linked to ME/CFS.
I also didn't see where V99 "holded researchers statements against them as if they were written today". We do not say that it was written today. This would have been a very silly thing to do, and I don't think anyone at the CAA is silly. We say that:
1) Dr. Vernon mislead people with her peculiar statment in that document.
2) We obviously supsect that maybe she's biased. I mean, after all, she said that "CFS is not [...] a retroviral infection". Probably she was way more sure about that than about CFS being a psychiatric condition, since she only said that it is not a "recognised psychiatric disorder".
3) We can obviuosly see that she have an interest in making research about retroviruses causing ME/CFS to disappear - because what if the public knows that she have already stated in the past that research show that it is not a retroviral infection? Would there be so much difference between her statement and "Dr." Reeves statements about CFS not being connected to viruses?
4) We wonder if there is such a big difference between her opinion's and "Dr." Reeves opinions. He said in the article to which I've linked before that CFS is not connected to viruses and that outbreaks of CFS does not occur, it's just a case of hysteria. She says that "CFS" (as she for some reason calls it, although even the organization of which she is from calls himself "The CFIDS Associatiob of America") "is not [...] a retroviral infection", but she does not dismiss the option of it being a psychiatric condition and only say that it's not a "recognised" one.
