Two papers linking XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome retracted

Mike posted on a paper refuting the possible link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome over a year ago.  Now it appears that both the 2009 Science paper and  2010 PNAS paper supporting such a link have been retracted.  The reasons for retraction of each paper appear to be very different.  For example, the story of the Science paper authors' possible image manipulation described by blogger Abbie Smith is pretty fascinating.  A great description of both retractions and related media reports can be found for both the Science and PNAS paper at Retraction Watch.  All of this is very unfortunate for the scientific community and especially the affected patients.

Sources:

Retraction of Lombardi et al., Science 326 (5952) 585-589 in Science 23 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6063 p. 1636 

NY Times, David Tuller 12/26/2011

h/t Ivan Oransky at Retraction Watch Blog 12/26/2011

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