I expect the Parks and Pagliucas will take a closer look at cranial interventions. It was last April these two families chipped in £10 million. The news now, 6 months later, is only the Pagliucas chipped in more, upon another layer of "growing evidence". So it still looks all very promising. A steep learning curve.
"PolyBio is actively supporting this project... to determine evidence... This study builds on growing evidence... Early findings presented by Dr. Murakami providing evidence... At the Harvard / MIT Martinos Center, Dr. Mario Murakami and the VanElzakker lab... a phenotype similar to that seen in ME/CFS..
In the early rounds, it did seem strategic at the time - very excitable - whooping it up to engage the more established ME/CFS researchers, then obtain exciting video interviews with them, as if collecting their endorsements for presentation to funders.
However, the money doled out by PolyBio is tied up in contracts with people and organisations expecting results. Yes, it is possible to keep people hooked on a misleading promise with alarm thrown in, forking out for nothing, again. That is why personal wealth tends to be tied up, with safeguards, and shared interests in common.
Now it seems largely up to several well-known USA researchers who need to protect their profession from disrepute, start drawing a line, retract their own mistakes in a scientific manner and call out the "preliminary" research that is so misleading.
I think the apple fell for Newton, and penicillin cropped up in a lab, so we can still expect someone to trip over an unexpected phenomenon and recognise it, on the cheap, while we wait for the UK to buckle down and Germany to hold on. Australasia may flirt with an unproven therapy. France got the point and saw it squelched, but in the open. We certainly are waiting for something unprecedented to happen in our life-times.
The funding - if is not a tax write-off and not money-laundering- then funders do not want to get hooked, gambling on pie in sky. We all heard about the pet scams when there is always another payment for an animal lover to make before the exotic bird or dog can be released and shipped.
I do not find PolyBio's researcher Dr Murukami credible. I doubt that Michael VanElzakker can give him credence for long. He cannot string his science together. He says things like:
"...post chronic inflammatory conditions after an infection" (Dr. Murukami). ???