Another Chronic Fatigue Study Retracted

After Science pulls the original article linking a mouse virus to the chronic fatigue syndrome, PNAS follows suit, yanking the only other study supporting the link.

Written byBob Grant

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XMRVCENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

Just before 2012 dawned, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences retracted a 2010 paper claiming that chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is related to a murine virus. Seven coauthors, among them researchers from the US Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, signed the retraction, which stated that while the blood samples they collected from CFS patients were not contaminated, they had failed to support the initial findings with follow-up studies. The move came after Science retracted the first paper—published in 2009—to posit a link between the syndrome and a mouse virus.

The retraction deals another significant blow to the hypothesis that the mysterious syndrome is related in some way to murine viruses. The PNAS paper was the only published account to ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
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From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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