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Christine Massey FOIs's avatar

Just to clarify, the challenge put forward in the Settling the Virus Debate Statement is quite different from what Jamie is doing. In the challenge, we proposed that 5 labs, all blinded to each other, would each be provided 5 clinical samples from 4 groups of patients (20 samples in total per lab, all coming from the same 20 patients). They would be asked to see if they could fake-isolate an (imaginary) virus (using their cell culture process where they absurdly interpret CPE as evidence of a virus), and provide images showing CPE (if present) and EM images showing "the virus" (if they think there is one).

Then the results from the 5 labs would be compared to each other (to check for their consistency with each other) and to the categories of the patients (to see if the labs agree with the diagnoses or lack thereof that the patients had received). If they miraculously passed this challenge, they were encouraged to then to proper scientific experiments with a proper IV, etc.

The discussion between Andy and Kirsch wasn't about Jamie's experiments.

One other note: to properly test a virus hypothesis, if a virologist is adding fluid from a patient that they think contains a virus to a culture, then the control culture would also need to contain that same fluid minus the particles suspected of being a virus (which would require the particles to be purified). So this is also a little different from what Jamie is doing. He isn't testing a virus hypothesis, rather he is showing that you don't need to add anything at all from a patient in order to get CPE.

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Ben Musclow's avatar

Really appreciate your succinct writing! Keep it up

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