Judy Mikovits in jail.

(Reposted from my Tumblr.)

Two years ago, researcher Judy Mikovits was riding high atop a wave of promise.

She had published one of the most discussed papers of the year in one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world.

Her team’s findings were hailed as a potential breakthrough for an illness — chronic fatigue syndrome — that had long frustrated researchers. She was invited to speak at scientific conferences around the globe. Adoring patients crowded her at her talks.

Now, in a stunning twist, Mikovits is sitting in a California jail cell, held without bond, awaiting an arraignment hearing Tuesday. An arrest warrant issued by University of Nevada at Reno police lists two felony charges: possession of stolen property and conspiracy.

She was fired in September, and this month her former employer filed a lawsuit alleging she had wrongfully taken lab notebooks, a computer and other proprietary data. Other researchers have discredited her work, and the journal Science, which published her study, is investigating whether the data were manipulated.

The only constant is the patients who continue to rally around her.

“Remember that we are behind you every step of the way, even whilst you sit alone in jail wondering what will come next,” one person wrote on a blog called OslersWeb.

(source: Trine Tsouderos, Chicago Tribune)

Well, what in the seven hells is this now? Could this scientific soap opera get any more bizarre? Never mind, forget I asked.

“The only constant….” Yes, the only constant there will ever be are the patients who have completely abandoned critical thinking in favor of hero worship. These are the exact same types who continue to lionize Andrew Wakefield despite his incompetence, fraud, and penchant for giving colonoscopies and spinal taps to children without consent or approval. No matter whether Mikovits is found to have committed two federal crimes, or defrauded the entire ME/CFS community, these patients will be “behind [her] every step of the way.”

I’m pretty sure if Mikovits killed an ME/CFS patient with an XMRV-infected mouse, in front of two CCTV cameras and a network TV crew, this particular subset of the community would claim she’d been framed. Why am I not writing as much about ME/CFS anymore? Because these very people have completely worn me out with their ridiculous bullshit. I loathe having to be associated with them and I’m no longer going to sugarcoat it.

Happily, science has moved on to many more interesting research angles. What are these die-hards going to do when a cure or treatment comes from, say, gene research and not XMRV, I wonder? Admit they were wrong? I eagerly await that day for a number of reasons.