Chronic Fatigue Researcher Arrested

Judy Mikovits, notorious in the scientific community since she claimed to link a mouse retrovirus to chronic fatigue syndrome, has been arrested and is being held in jail.

Jef Akst

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Days after the news broke that chronic fatigue researcher Judy Mikovits was being sued by her former employer for allegedly taking data not rightfully hers, the biologist is now in jail. She was arrested Friday (November 18) in by Ventura County, California, sheriffs on felony charges that she is "a fugitive from justice," and is being held without bail, ScienceInsider reported.

The drama started two years ago when Mikovits published a paper claiming that she had found a link between XMRV, a mouse retrovirus, and chronic fatigue syndrome. The study was highly controversial, and its conclucions have since been widely discredited. Then in late September, the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease (WPI) in Reno, Nevada, fired Mikovits. Last week the institute filed a lawsuit ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.
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