Bob's statement was a fair and accurate assessment of the data. He was
quoting my "Bee Culture" article of Oct 2007.
But Peter faithfully quoted what the authors said. When questioned about
the Nosema/Kashmir correlation, Jeff Pettis explained that they did not do
any "multi-pathogen analysis". What this means is that IAPV was merely the
best (single pathogen) match if one ignored the N. ceranae/Kashmir
correlation.
I was at all those meetings. I was invited to attend to write a series of
articles for "Bee Culture".
See Table 2. Here's the paper, (free registration required for non-AAAS
members):
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5848/283.full
(Tables never survive listserv unscathed, so let me simplify below:)
IAPV: Found in 25 of 30 (83.3%) CCD colonies
IAPV: Found in 1 of 21 (4.8%) non-CCD colonies
Kashmir: Found in 30 of 30 (100%) CCD colonies
Kashmir: Found in 16 of 21 (76.2%) non-CCD colonies
N. ceranae: Found in 30 of 30 (100%) CCD colonies
N. ceranae: Found in 17 of 21 (80.9%) non-CCD colonies
The combination of IAPV, KBV, N. apis, and N. ceranae was found in 23 of 30
(76.7%) CCD colonies, and none of the non-CCD colonies.
Now, it is true that the "false positive" rate for the N. ceranae/Kashmir
combo looks bad, but one must note that the sampling method was a one-visit
deal, with no follow-up, so the small number of samples said to be from
"Non-CCD colonies" were not verified as such by going back later to see how
those "non-CCD" colonies had faired. This calls into question the attempt
to define "false positives" versus "true positives", and the "positive
predictive values" calculated in Table 2.
So, I stand by my article of Oct 2007, but more to the point, by December of
the same year, Jay Evans, a co-author of the IAPV paper, and the amazingly
talented Judy Chen of USDA Beltsville published an unconditional
refutation/retraction as an article in ABJ, rather than submitting it as a
paper to "Science", which had published the paper being retracted/refuted:
"Historical presence of Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus in the United States"
American Bee Journal 10/29/07
http://www.in.gov/dnr/entomolo/files/IAPV.pdf
Which said "Our results show that IAPV in the U.S. predates both... CCD and
the importation of Australian package bees." They merely looked at some
slightly older samples, and lo and behold.... IAPV everywhere.
There were numerous other problems with the IAPV ("Ian's Annoying Pet
Virus") paper, and one can read about them here if you care:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
