I couldn't agree more, but you'll still get a sizable number of folks claiming that since scientists make mistakes, all their findings are suspect. That leaves the door open for picking and choosing only that research which supports your own pre-determined view, and that is the very opposite of what science stands for.

You could only say it is self correcting if evidence has been shown that does correct previous evidence.

The Lo et al. paper that found polytropic MRVs are associated with ME has not been shown to be wrong in any way. There is no evidence of contamination or errors, same as for the other polytropic MRV paper, Lombardi et al.

In fact it is now obvious that every negative paper failed to look for the viruses the other four labs separately identified, instead they looked for a xenotropic virus called XMRV and worse only a synthetic strain of that called VP62.

RAND is a large corporate think tank, hardly scientific. Their reports aren't peer reviewed. Notice it was the city of LA's lawyers, not other scientists trying to reproduce the experiment, that caused the fuss. RAND simply caved to political pressure and retracted their article.

How much does anyone want to bet that the "revision/retraction" was paid for. Even as a "think tank" they were an impartial reviewing commitee, which went against the views of those that were in power, then magically it was revealed that the findings were "wrong and miscalculated" Someoneat RAND forgot to add the $ into the equation is what I think.

Anectodal evidence does not a compellling case make.

Did you know that if you wait a bit without having an enema your cold will go away too? Amazing! Doing nothing makes colds go away! In fact, I just recently did this myself. I could market this!

Does what you eat affect your brain? Yes. Any doctor would say yes. Your blood is shared everywhere in your body, bowels, lungs, and fingertips. But the brain has a special mechanism called the blood-brain barrier which selectively allows only certain kinds of things to get through. In fact, washing out your intestines with water is a really bad idea because it clears out all the nutrients that your gut WAS absorbing to help keep you healthy, including those the brain likes. Your large intestine is really good at cleaning out the stuff it doesn't want all by itself, I promise.

Wakefield's conclusion from studying a total of seven (7!) young children with IBS was that their vaccines caused their autism. It's complete BS. The sample size was way too small to prove anything conclusively; Wakefield also selected his subjects, rather than studying a random sample from the population. And while many autistic kids do have IBS, there is no evidence either is caused by a vaccinne--kids develop autism who haven't had the MMR vaccine, and most kids who've had the vaccine (in addition to not dying from measles or whooping cough) don't develop autism. Hundreds of studies have refuted his findings, and have found a much stronger connection between autism and genetics and autism and (womb) environmental factors than autism and MMR or autism and IBS. It's a travesty that this disgustingly self-serving paper it was ever published at all. In fact, not only was Wakefield's paper retracted, he also lost his medical license. The guy's. A. QUACK.

Unfortunately, Harry, what you have provided is a good reason to investigate, but no good reason to conclude, a connection between plain water enemas and the symptoms of your cold. Since your evidence is specific to you, in particular, it is possible that you are mis-diagnosing yourself as having a cold in the first place, and that you do not, in fact, have a cold. There may be other factors, like changes in environment, diet, medication, and even clothing, that you are including as part of your "enema treatment" that are, in fact, having a greater impact on your percieved symptoms than the enema itself.

And then, as CJ-2001013 points out, you may just be healing yourself and attributing the healing to the treatment when there is actually no connection whatsoever.

What I would encourage you to do is to find other scientists to follow, and forget Mr. Wakefield (that's right, I did not call him Dr. Wakefield... I do not feel he deserves the honor). If there are other physicians and scientists who are willing to investigate your reports, that is a good thing. If they actually use science to do the investigation, that is better.

One bit of advice: please remember that a biased person can get years of training, and end up with a Ph.d. That doesn't erase their biases. The training gives them one mechanism to prove or disprove their ideas. That mechanism is science. They may choose to ignore the principles of science and assert false conclusions. They may choose to assert those conclusions under the cover of science. The fact that someone has a "Dr." in front of their name does not mean that everything they say is gold. Look for 20 people with "Dr." in front of their name, all INDEPENDENTLY confirming the findings, before you start making changes to your life. Everyone is fallable. Some people are liars. Unquestioning faith in one person's words is as bad for science as it was for religion.

Oh how I love these right-wing conspiratorial accusations.

Dig through Nature's archives sometime. You can find hundreds of papers on global warming - everything from arctic sea-ice measurements to atmospheric-CO2 histories as recorded in tree rings to global temperature measurements and atmospheric modeling. And the data is there. There's warehouses full of it.

People seem to think that if research groups aren't mailing out booklets like AT&T does iPhone bills that they haven't "released their data." But if you took ten seconds out of your paranoid day to look for it, you'd discover that it's out there, and it's overwhelming.

Oh how I love everyone that has a different opinion declares triumph over a right-wing conspiracy.

There has been many retractactions about global warming. Are you a part of a left-wing conspiracy?

The globe has cooled and warmed thousands of times before man ever walked this planet. Another right-wing conspiracy I'm sure. We all know right-wing conpiracies preceeded humans by millions of year.

The question is, what contribution to global change is man responsible for. There are no facts on this question. Just theories. None have ever been proven or disproven, scientifically.

The data is not there. Just suposition. That is all you have.

CO2 ranks fourth in green house gases. Where as water ranks #1 and is a bigger contributor to warming then the next 5 gases all added together.

You say, CO2 has increased, temprature increased (not substanstiated at all) therefore CO2 is the culprit. That's not science. That's politics.

And here is an idea you need to ponder, global cooling is dangerous and global warming is beneficial. Global warming indeed makes more geographical areas suitable for growing. Thereby feeding people. Global cooling, however, makes for less planting and less food.

So get off your high horse and do some reading and get your facts straight.

You went to public schools didnt you CJ? Read 'My Two Mommies' instead of your science book perhaps?

First off, the accusation that there is no data to support global climate change is false. "economykiller" is an idiot. There is no lack of data.

The second response, from "I took it differently," starts by essentially agreeing that global climate change is happening. That respondant does not question the data that says that climate change is happening, or that CO2 has increased. He or she questions whether people are responsible or even whether climate change is in fact harmful.

Scientific American reported this month that Global Warming may, in fact, reduce the infectiousness of malaria.

But that doesn't mean that climate change is not happening. It is happening. The problem for our systems of manufacturing and energy production is, are we causing it?

Unfortunately, that same respondant is not willing to consider science either. He or she appears to agree that greenhouse gasses are responsible for climate change. That is a step in the right direction. But then he adds that water may be a bigger contributor to climage change than CO2. By considering the science of systems, and not just high school biology class, "took" may discover that the difference between "primary cause" and "secondary cause" is quite substantial. Increasing water in the atmosphere may increase global climate change, but any water increase would occur as a RESULT of prior climate change, and may in fact, hasten the increase in global temperature. Addressing water is useful, but if you don't address the cause of the original climage change, you cannot get ahead of the problem.

If all the Greenhouse gasses that could be causing climate change, scientific inquiry has shown that CO2 is one of the primary causes. There may be other molecules and compounds involved. Given the fact that most of the changes in CO2 come from energy and manufacturing systems that also release the other possible culprits, we should look at those systems as a source, and not just at CO2. CO2 is a useful measure, and a good bell-weather number to use, but it doesn't have to be the only one... as long as we understand that the systems that produce CO2 are also producing other problematic compounds. If we reduce one, we will reduce many possible causes.

"took" then asserts that the causes of global climate change may be part of the natural biology and/or geology of the earth. Here, we see, politics rise its head again. This is fairly simple to disprove. Many studies have already done so. In fact, so many scientists have considered and discarded this idea that it is not even considered an accepted theory. None of the impartial scientific community has, through their elected councils, boards, or venues, have promulgated the idea that the current change in climage is natural. This idea is so easy to refute that college-level science classes regularly go through the discussion and reach the obvious conclusion: Our current changes in climate are not natural. A good set of lecture notes, written at the college level, can be found here: (search in bing for "Global warming man or myth")

He or she then attempts to suggest that an increase in global temperature would be beneficial. At this point, he descends into politics again. The measurement of benefit is a political act.

What we know is that changes in global temperature will have a huge impact on human life, animal life, plant life, and geological processes. We have seen examples already and many more will come. Storms will get bigger, last longer, and cause more damage as cities that were designed for one system of weather find themselves coping with altogether different systems of weather.

There is no scientifically developed measurement of the "benefit" of global climate change. There are some politically developed measures, and every one that has been released to the public shows that global climate change will NOT produce positive benefits in the next 100 years. Trillions of dollars will have to be spent to mitigate the effects of climate change (rising sea levels, changes in weather patterns and water flow patterns, changes in crop yeilds, changes in the incidence of specific diseases). A tiny proportion of these changes will reflect positive benefits. The vast majority will be spent attempting to pretend that human life can continue in precisely the way that it had been before the climate changed.

Every dollar we spend today reducing greenhouse gasses will likely save a hundred more dollars in the future that would have to be spent mitigating the change causes by the gasses. No rational person would choose to wait unless he or she was convinced by a well orchestrated and well paid group of people who will benefit in the short run... mostly companies that have a lot to lose if we move away from systems of energy and manufacturing that create CO2 pollution. Respondant "took" has been convinced by propoganda. That is unfortunate. If this individual were willing to read actual scientific materials (even "simplified" materials like Scientific American and Popular Science), and turn off the propoganda sources like Fox News, perhaps he could realize how badly he or she has been mislead.

They used to say the earth was flat for thousands of years.

They used to execute people who said otherwise.

That's what happens when you mix politics and science.

Its not. The real disease is called ME, CFS is only an invention of the 1980s that now hides many diseases including ME, which is neurological.

Having reduce the disease to a symptom people like yourself have been incorrectly told by doctors that this is what you have. Doctors don't have the time to read up on the history and science behind ME so they have no idea how easily manipulated they are.