> I don't expect the paper to solve CCD--if it did, USDA would have > released the info. No one at the USDA has the ability to "release the info", as it is not solely USDA work. The involvement of multiple entities and multiple researchers requires all to agree on "what to say", and too much has been "said" already, from the point of view of someone who wants a paper published in one of the many journals that demand "exclusive first publication rights". Merely finding a suspected proximate cause does not in itself "solve" anything. Note that we don't have any "cure" for any of the well-known viruses that have been around for years. I also think that it is highly premature to claim that the virus or viruses claimed to be linked to CCD "came from Australia". It is possible that the problem came in on AHB that hitch-hiked to the USA via uninspected cargo containers and/or uninspected cargo ships. It seems much more reasonable to think that CCD symptoms were shrugged off as "absconding" in "managed" AHB colonies than to claim that CCD went undetected in Austrialia, or imply that anyone deliberately ignored the problem. But regardless, the days of bees arriving at US ports without sampling, inspections, and tracking to the end-user are over. Stow-away hives have to die. Imported bees have to be inspected at port-of-entry, not withstanding the condescending reassurances of the WTO approach to what they want to call "biosecurity". > ...the different viruses which are now causing problems were > known long ago but were more of a "laboratory" curiosity than > something that was causing problems. After mites arrived, > that changed. I don't know how "long ago" you mean here, but I'd be interested in hearing who found what when using which technologies, as viruses were not very easy to tell apart until recently. > But it will be very interesting to see Jerry B and the Army > fire up their IVDS machine to look for whatever Lipkin found > by metagenomic analysis. No, it would be the REVERSE in a perfect world populated by honorable people, as Jerry B and the Army freely offered their findings to all and sundry in the USDA-ARS Beltsville meetings months ago. The fact that Lipkin and his cohorts have made no effort to cooperate with other "team members", not even to the extent of privately comparing simple parameters like particle sizes, indicates that the increasingly-inaccurate term "team" has now proven itself to be a mere expression of wishful thinking. If the fabled paper does not give credit where credit is due on this point, you will witness a unique form of Kabuki theater rarely seen in beekeeping circles. It will be an actual scandal, where Lipkin and his co-authors stick their fingers in their ears and say "La la la, I can't hear you" while the Army offers tersely-worded statements about their findings of months ago, and how amazingly similar they appear to the highly-publicized, yet still hard-to-pin-down findings rumored to be in "the paper". Other science writers have asked me to explain the lack of pre-prints under the usual "embargo" or "non-disclosure agreement", as the pre-release of a paper under such restrictions is the normal and customary approach for even science of the most significant sort. The game is simple - science writers need lead-time to prepare articles, so the system operates on the basis of trust and reputation. If you want to play in this space, you play by the rules. The actions in regard to this specific paper are somewhat "childish" in the view of many, as this is not the Manhattan Project. All I can offer is that the quotes and statements that have been offered are either: a) Examples of slip-ups, where too much was said to writers with no experience in science writing by researchers with only limited experience in dealing with "the press", explaining the lack of the usual controls like non-disclosure agreements. (This theory would explain the fragments appearing in obscure publications written by obscure authors.) b) Deliberate attempts to get some pre-publication hype and thereby generate interest in a paper that is likely to be more speculative than authoritative. The press hype over CCD has been massive, so the attention given to this paper's authors could be career and reputation-enhancing if enough "anticipation" can be created. (This would explain the New Yorker article, where the publication was not obscure, and the author was a regular staff writer.) I'm not going to make accusations of "manipulation" when it is still possible to ascribe the "leaks" to simple miscommunication and inexperience, but other science writers have much more cynical views of the situation. My crystal ball is on the fritz, but my money is on the guys who found something, and openly informed everyone involved in the "CCD meetings" of their findings. While "first to publish" certainly does establish "priority", the refusal to compare notes indicates a reckless disregard for the need to give credit where credit is due. I expect that every story written about "the paper" will note the "surprising absence of any mention of prior work". Regardless of the tempest in a trebuchet around the credit due, the one thing we can expect and demand as a result of this paper is a reconsideration of port-of-entry inspections on WTO-mandated imports and port-of-entry inspections of cargo to detect stowaway bees. I was one of a tiny number of people who called for inspections back when the WTO-mandated imports of live bees were approved back in the 2002-2005 timeframe, http://bee-quick.com/reprints/apis_bc.pdf http://bee-quick.com/reprints/regs.pdf so perhaps a few more people will start to get with the program, and demand that USDA-APHIS be instructed and funded to treat bees as what they are - live animals that can carry viruses and pests like small hive beetles. ****************************************************** * Full guidelines for BEE-L posting are at: * * http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm * ******************************************************