WTW58: Just Hand Over the Cell Line

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: And welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 58, somehow, part 3 on episode 2 of John Ronson's things fell apart, but I'm telling you, that's the beauty of the Gish gallop. That's the beauty of putting out bullshit is it takes exponentially longer to unravel it, it just does, and so that's, but that's been, like, what our show is. It's like, we're, no we got time. Our show should be called, like, no, no, well, wait, we'll, we'll go through it rather than just be like, oh, it's so bullshit, I can't even keep up. It's, no, we're gonna, we're going to go through it all anyway. I'm Thomas, that's Lydia. How are you doing? It's

0:00:50 Lydia: Of a singular episode. Yeah.

0:01:06 Lydia: Yeah.

0:01:19 Lydia: Good. I have nowhere to be. So I'm ready to.

0:01:22 Thomas: The biggest lie you've ever told. We have, like, a hundred places to be, right now, oh

0:01:24 Lydia: I know. I know. But I want to be here. I want because I want to listen to the craziness that's about to happen. Because not only do our shows take exponentially longer than the source material, when someone like Judy, Judy, it's even worse. It's even worse. I can't believe it.

0:01:43 Thomas: God, yeah it's crazy. I can wait to get more into to it. So as we last left off, uh, was like, well, yeah, it's maybe it's not fraud, but like, it at the very least, it, Ronson shouldn't have just put in that guy saying, well, it's definitely not fraud. Okay, not fraud, um, at the very least. But as we'll learn, that I think the case is even stronger than that for it being maybe fraud. So let's hop on over with Jenessa, uh, after this break, which you can avoid, of course, by going to patreon.com/wherethereswoke. So

0:02:06 Lydia: Yeah.

0:02:16 Lydia: It.

0:02:18 Jenessa: So that article by Cohen and Ensorink, where they say, yeah, there's this partial retraction, but without casting blame, but the exact same day, it comes out September 23 of 2011. Judy is at a conference presenting on her findings because Judy is not going to let it go. Is a conference where she ends up claiming in front of everyone, like XMRV, autism, XMRD, dementia, Alzheimer's, like she's just going off. And also says, hey, so in some patients, you can find XMRB just immediately. And then in other people, it's not immediately there.

0:02:58 Thomas: Until I unscrew this little vial and drip a few things on it that you find it.

0:03:03 Lydia: Oh

0:02:59 Jenessa: Oh God, you don't know how right you are. You have to treat them with 5-aza and then you find it. So the thing about that is this is a chemo treatment drug that is known to reactivate endogenous and, and cause them to be expressed where they were otherwise not detectable or active. And people are like, well, yeah, yeah, Judy, if you put five aza we know

0:03:05 Lydia: God. Why'd you do that? Oh

0:03:34 Thomas: Huh. If you drop, quote, virus-making juice on the thing, yes, you get more viruses.

0:03:36 Jenessa: Yeah. Pretty much. Um, she puts a, a photo up of a gel. Um, like, look, look at the banding on this. Um, turns out people scrutinizing, viewers who are getting increasingly, uh, with, uh, beating this drum, take a quick look and go, hey, that's the exact same gel from the 2009 paper.

0:04:03 Jenessa: But this time it's not been cropped. And if I zoom in, I can see handwritten 5 -AZA, meaning at the time someone took this photo, that drug was being used on the sample. So in the 2009 paper, here's how that gel was labeled. We talked about the Wells on top, like there's these little lanes that the the genes are going to go down through and make their little vertical bands. So in well one, we have N for normal, well two, N for normal, while three, one, two, three, five, indicating a number, you always assign your patients like a random number so that they're, you know, confidential. So that's meant to be CFS patient one two three five, and we see XMRV. Oh my god. And then, uh, well four, and for normal, well five, and for formal, well six, one two two three six, a CFS patient, xmv. Oh god. Well seven, and for normal, and then well eight is a standard that has, like, pieces of DNA of known sizes that you can compare against. Here's that same, what we know, know for sure to be the same gel. Like, you can tell there's

0:04:18 Lydia: My God. Oh

0:05:21 Jenessa: Even a spot where somebody stabbed it on accident with a pipette and you can see where the stain, like, hit. It's for sure the same jail. Here's the labels when Judy presents it a second time. Well 1, N for normal. Well 2, 2095. Well 3, 2095 plus 5-AZA. 4, N from normal. Well 5, 1, 6, 7, 4. Well 6, 1674 plus 5-AZA. Well 7, N for normal. Well 8 standard. Which means now it's not Wells 1 and 2 were normal and Well 3 was a chronic fatigue patient. Well 1 is normal. Well 2 is a chronic fatigued patient. And Well 3 is that same chronic fatigue patient treated with 5 -AZA. Now I see it.

0:05:21 Thomas: Wow, jeez, oh my god,

0:05:28 Lydia: My God.

0:06:13 Thomas: Wait, and is the idea that that was, like, the actual labeling back when she first did it?

0:06:18 Jenessa: Yes. Yes. Because that is handwritten, or a part of that is handwriting on the image. So we, if it's handwritten there, that has to be what was there when you took the picture. This is what causes the full retraction against the author's wishes. Oh

0:06:19 Thomas: Oh Oh my god.

0:06:39 Lydia: Wait, against your wishes.

0:06:41 Jenessa: Yes, for a rare, rare instance, uh, journal says it is clear the authors are not going to come to an agreement on a statement about this retraction and we're just going to do it ourselves. It's retracted. You're welcome everybody.

0:06:57 Thomas: Wow, that's not a good sign.

0:06:58 Jenessa: And that's when Silverman goes public, going, "Hi, I've been requesting this for months, just so everyone knows," like, he is trying to clear his name at this point.

0:07:07 Thomas: Jeez.

0:07:08 Lydia: That's crazy.

0:07:09 Jenessa: Yeah, this is the best, best, most kind interpretation is a level of incompetence. No, I mean, no, right? No.

0:07:10 Lydia: Poor guy. There's

0:07:17 Thomas: Nah, it's not possible. Yeah, no, there's no way. That's intentional. There's no, way.

0:07:21 Lydia: No way.

0:07:23 Jenessa: Yeah. You will find multiple, multiple sources call this clear fraud, like period. So

0:07:28 Thomas: Okay. Yeah. Well, that sounds like clear a fraud to me.

0:07:32 Lydia: Debunked.

0:07:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:33 Jenessa: Yeah! Yeah, like, to me, I am personally pretty convinced at this point that she may well have spiked those samples, and then it also looks pretty clear that, whether or not that happened, she super definitely mislabeled this figure in the 2009 paper and concealed that she was actually using a drug that magnifies the virus and sure enough. This is how, like, the studies that were showing it's not replicable, one of the things they did to be like, like, "Can we put this thing to bed?" They sent around to, like, nine different labs. "Okay, here's the, we're not, it's all blind. We're not going to tell you which is which. There are positive controls that definitely have XMRV in this vial. There are negative controls that definitely don't.

And then there are CFS patients and there are healthy controls and we're going to send it out to you. And other labs are reliably detecting it in the positive, like the known known tester. They are not detecting it anywhere else. And so that's showing the test is sensitive enough to pick up XMRV in the known positive, but not too sensitive that it would pick it up in a negative control. Except Judy's lab and Rossetti's lab seem to just pick it off sometimes,

0:08:01 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:09:00 Jenessa: And they seem to, but they pick it up in a negative control sometimes too, and they, they can't reliably detect the virus when you blind them to it, but they'll find it in a narrative control sometimes.

0:09:14 Thomas: Wait, at what point was that?

0:09:16 Jenessa: Is during this figure is revealed, but during this whole fiasco, it, like, it is pretty clear that Judy's lab and Resetti's lab were doing something the other labs weren't doing that was leading them to find it in negative controls and not find it in the positive control sometimes, and other labs were able to be much more reliable. So to just say this just looks like a genuine mistake, yeah. And leave it at that

0:09:19 Thomas: Okay. Boy, sure doesn't to me sure

0:09:50 Lydia: Yeah.

0:09:50 Jenessa: No. And I cannot emphasize enough how much this is, like, on her Wikipedia page. This is, is, like, every, this level of detail I just gave you. No, but allegations of fraud, it's on her Wikipedia, yeah,

0:09:51 Thomas: Doesn't.

0:09:51 Lydia: Helps

0:10:01 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, enough to. Yeah I mean that's honestly that's our method. You can start with Wikipedia as a as a research tool.

0:10:11 Lydia: Point you to the right places.

0:10:12 Thomas: It tells you a lot of stuff.

0:10:12 Lydia: Yeah, right.

0:10:14 Jenessa: Source, you click the source on Wikipedia, and it takes you to the details I am giving you, I am not doing in -depth, yes, so this is where it gets even, oh god, it, okay, so So this is what's even, you could look at that and just think, so Ronson said, is this a genuine mistake? And Ensrank said, like, I don't, I think it, I Don't think it was foul play.

0:10:19 Thomas: Yeah you could have called anyone Anyone up who is a part of those sources that you're talking about? Maybe if you're a journalist, right? Boy, even more. Well, yeah.

0:10:46 Jenessa: And maybe Ensrank is just like a journalist who wrote his biggest piece the day Judy was presenting that bullshit figure. And who knows, came

0:10:57 Thomas: So you're saying he wrote his piece and it came out before that massive piece of evidence.

0:11:01 Jenessa: Out that day.

0:11:02 Thomas: Well, yes, but it's not that hard to... We're not in the 1800s. Like, you can easily, hey, update on this web page that has this piece.

0:11:03 Jenessa: Oh yes. My gonna die. This was in the actual, like, paper publication. Oh

0:11:15 Thomas: Okay. Hey, next paper publication. Got a correction to issue. You, yeah, that's not hard. Yeah.

0:11:17 Lydia: Yeah right. Exactly. And

0:11:16 Jenessa: Okay. Now, now, this is the part where I'm gonna get mad. Science, the journal, the people who published this clearly bullshit paper that got rich that they had to retract against the author's will they have put a bunch of Ensorink and Cohen's reporting about this behind a paywall. Are you kidding me? The reporting on your fuck up is behind a paywall. Oh, oh, dare you. I was so mad, I was livid, like, you are the ones who caused this and you're putting regarding the for-the-average-reader explanation of what went wrong here behind a paywall. Oh, I went and got the important parts from, I checked the pieces, but, like. In terms of how many pieces by Ensorink I would have had to dig through to double-check did Ensorank ever later come out and say. And then eventually it was like, you know what? I have a job. And whether or not answering ever changed his mind about this or kept reporting on her answering is not the topic of this documentary. I'm moving on.

0:11:34 Thomas: Like a non-consensual retraction. Oh Wow. Wait.

0:12:32 Lydia: He had the opportunity to to address that more firmly when when Ronson was interviewing him, but he decided to take the wishy-washy space Right.

0:12:32 Jenessa: Oh Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

0:12:40 Thomas: This is way later Yeah. Or the somewhat misled on what he was saying. We don't know for sure.

0:12:48 Lydia: Right. Yeah. We don't know how it was cut. Yeah, yeah.

0:12:49 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:49 Jenessa: Yeah. So I don't know the extent to which answering knows about every single one of these pieces, or what he would say if we did, like, an uncut interview of just, like, do you know about this? What is your personal opinion on it? And I also don't know that I care what Ensorink's personal opinion is on it. He's a random journalist at science. He's not a researcher on the paper.

0:13:07 Lydia: Yeah.

0:13:06 Thomas: Well I would still want their journalists to do a good job. That seems pretty easy once

0:13:15 Jenessa: Yeah, fair, fair point, fair. Think they were probably, you working for the journal that published the paper, like who knows what.

0:13:23 Thomas: You've issued a full retraction, I really see what is in it for you, like, you almost want to blame it, you'd want the person to be more like devious, because that gets you off the hook more so

0:13:34 Jenessa: I mean, that makes sense to me, honestly.

0:13:37 Lydia: Like you were tricked too.

0:13:37 Thomas: I I doubt Yeah. I I don't know. Who knows? Yeah. Like, you say that part doesn't matter so much. What really matters for our purposes today is this was all easily available to at least include in your reporting and, like, have it inform your podcast, even if you don't want to, like, out and out make the claim that she's full of shit. Like, you can at least maybe not make the blame the other way so strongly without referencing any of this or making the listener aware of any of it. You

0:13:38 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:00 Jenessa: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And

0:14:04 Lydia: Exactly. Like, it's so easy to add a little epilogue sort of thing, and you, like, any documentary you watch, at

0:14:11 Thomas: Don't mean epilogue, it's a podcast. You do it. Yeah.

0:14:13 Lydia: No, but like, but documentary watch, you know, like, you, you get the storytelling narrative of it, and then there will be those sort of, um, things at the ends where it's like, well, they assert this, you know, when reached for comment, they asserted this, etc. etc. And they're able to kind of, like, um, those additional nuggets of information to the viewer. And I think podcasts have the same responsibility that if they are reporting on a story, that unless it's going to be labeled as fiction or, like, you very clearly say, this is from the point of view of this particular person and we're not going to fact check anything, we're just going to listen to them share their life story, then fine. But that's not what I think Ronson is trying to do with this project from

0:14:59 Jenessa: I totally agree. I think like this is, if this was, hey, here's how Judy, known liar, tells her own story. I'd be like, you know what? I, of fascination and knowing my money is not going to her. Cause like, I'm not going to go watch Plandemic and let her get my money. Have a fascination with these people.

0:15:06 Thomas: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

0:15:22 Jenessa: I coming out of her mouth if I can hear it and, like, just hear it and go, well, this is probably all bullshit, but here we go. I love a good ghost story, like, yeah, why not tell me all about it. Um, so that would be fine, but I think you're totally right. My listen to this, I hear this is what happened and not this is how Judy portrays it

0:15:31 Lydia: Exactly.

0:15:43 Thomas: It's very decisive Yeah, it is. Narrator voice which is like the, you, a structure standpoint of the media that am to believe, like, well, that voice is telling me what happened, you know, like that is telling the truth, right?

0:15:45 Lydia: Yeah. That's

0:15:45 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Exactly, exactly. So, okay, that's the little piece we get in the podcast, is just the interaction with n strength, like, no, you think this is a genuine mistake? Oh yeah, I don't think it was foul play. And then we move on. Um, thing that got me into this was the interview on Knowledge Fight. He will triple down on this. Um Oh My god.

0:16:12 Thomas: Right. That's right. Really?

0:16:17 Jenessa: It's bad. So there's like a pretty, I don't know how long this section is actually, because I listened to it on half speed while I transcribed it. What you're gonna hear here is, uh, is, uh, of the hosts of Knowledge, by, uh, the other host isn't around. He's interviewing Ronson about what happened in this episode, and, um, I think you're gonna hear Jordan, uh, make some very astute observations about what's not lining up in this story. Basically, I think he really, he asked the questions I was asking and then I was, that's what sent me down this path was

0:16:16 Lydia: So crazy I

0:16:45 Thomas: Interesting. Oh,

0:16:48 Jenessa: Hearing this interaction. What

0:16:49 Clip: Part, you know, looks at is whether or not she was doing this to get revenge on a medical community that, you know, that wounded her. Is that at the roots, you know, that personality, you know? I will, I will say this, uh, in, in looking this up, um, so I don't know, if I don't know if you saw this, uh, weirdly enough, but there was an episode of Nevada Newsmakers, uh, in 2007, uh, I'm a huge Nevado Newsmakers fan, uh, I got, all I got, something so fascinating about that. All right, so, uh, Dr. Judy and the Whittemores were being There's actually a clip from that in the show. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh, go, go, sorry. No, and the thing that I find so interesting about it, uh, is at one point she says, um, they were telling me about stuff and I said, I knew it was a virus, and then I went to Nevada, right? And I find that fascinating because that suggests to me that I don't think she even did the study at all, right?

0:18:11 Clip: Yeah. Like not even, not even the fake one. That's, I think that's the real reason she's got giving the samples, is there's not even a fake virus in there. There's no fake virus. Is a lie. The thing is, there was, it wasn't just Judy Mikovits on that XMRV, um, the paper that got published in Science. There were people from the Cleveland Clinic, there were people from the National Cancer Institute, so there were definitely legitimate scientists involved in that study, right? But that's the next part of this. If those people were involved, why is it that she's the the only one who has a sample?

I don't know how they, um, wrote their paper. Like, I don't know the answer to that. Like, I don't know um I don't know whether or not all of the testing was done within the Wittimer Peterson Institute and then the paper version of it was then sent out to the Cleveland Cleric. I mean, maybe or maybe not, like, I honestly don't know. But see, that's the, that's... That's where I keep coming back to, why was she in jail for five days? This is stuff that it's like, there are these little assumptions that I feel like are being made that are like lies that are covered

0:18:11 Lydia: My God.

0:18:56 Thomas: Interesting question okay

0:19:06 Lydia: So, I don't know whether or not you didn't read it, but I think

0:19:39 Clip: Up by the surface lies, if that makes sense, you know? So much so that you don't even ask the question. Like, there's no way, there'S NO WAY that she would just make up the whole thing, right? Oh, no. And nobody's accusing her.

0:19:48 Lydia: It's a good book. Oh, no. And nobody's accusing, even,

0:19:54 Clip: Even Martin

0:19:54 Lydia: You know, that's the way it's being used by our community, you don't have to say anything about it.

0:19:55 Clip: Ensling, who's the guy at Science who was heavily involved in debunking her studies,

0:20:01 Lydia: He doesn't have anything to say about it, he just thinks it's good.

0:20:02 Clip: He doesn't think she made it up. He thinks it was a genuine mistake. I disagree. I am the one person that is telling you, I believe wholeheartedly she made up from the jump. I think she was scamming these people from the job. That's my theory on this. I, I, I, yeah, I just, I'm not sure that I agree with you. It's a big, it's hugely, it's, yeah. I didn't see any evidence to, to support that theory. Uh, you know, basically, you know, the conclusion I came to was the, the XMRV, you know, this mouse virus, ended up contaminating the materials that she was using in her experiments, and that's why she mistakenly thought that the XMRV was in the blood samples. Right, that makes sense. That sounds like a reasonable series of events that would take place that would happen to a reasonable person That leads to stuff happening, right? That's, to me, that sounds crazy. You're telling me that the person who is in Plandemic, who's lied about her biography over and over and over again. Who's lied over and over, and over again! Is it somehow telling the truth about one thing?

0:21:03 Lydia: Wouldn't happen to me.

0:21:29 Clip: I mean, I also don't know what her life was like when she worked at the National Cancer Institute in Virginia. I don't have that. She could have been unimpeachable there. Totally! And I looked into it, and it says she has this thing in her biography where she thinks she's fought against against bovine growth hormone stuff, you know? Like, yes, there's something about her kind of overselling, you know, the AIDS research that she, I mean, obviously now she says all of this stuff about Anthony Fauci that's all, you know,

0:22:00 Lydia: Just want to confirm, though, and this could just be on the side that Ronsan is saying that it was the mouse cell line, even though publicly we know that that's not the case. He

0:22:01 Thomas: Fucking christ weird

0:22:12 Jenessa: I'm hearing, yeah, he He says it's this XMRV, this

0:22:12 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:22:15 Lydia: Repeats that it ended up in her sample from the mouse cel line is what he's saying, and that's not true. Wow.

0:22:21 Jenessa: Yeah.

0:22:24 Clip: Not going to be able to talk about her until somebody deals with what happened in the 80s, you know? I mean what happened in the 2000s, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. You know, it started before we met her, if that makes sense. Yeah, undoubtedly. Yes, I mean, the fact is, the way she describes that conflict that she has when she's refusing to hand over the cell line, like, you know, when I listen to her tell that, I'm on the Wittenberg side. Like, hand over this cell line. Just hand over that fucking cell line! So, yes, so she was clearly, you now, So it's clearly difficult. So, but, I mean, that's such a big question. Why?

0:23:13 Clip: If everybody's worked on this paper, are you saying that nobody else has a copy of this cell line? And if nobody else hasn't, has a couple of this sell line, that says some scary things to me.

0:23:25 Clip: That is a really interesting point you raised there, Jordan. Like, there were 15 authors to this study. And I'll say, I don't know how, you know, I, I don't know how that study came to be written. Like, I don't know who was involved in the experiments, who just checked the paperwork. I, I think you make a very good point. I'm

0:23:44 Jenessa: Where bringing this all together is basically, you're hearing Jordan question exactly what I was questioning. It's like, how can it be, when you're listening to the podcast, you're hearing, well, and then people are demanding she turn over this cell line for testing, how can it be that she is the only person with the cell line and I was like, that doesn't make any sense, and there's just these long pauses, and then there's, well, I don't really know how the paper was written, and I'm like, call them, like, call anyone, call, do your job, call the other authors. I think you're right. He, he genuinely sounds stumped, except for, you know, there's the parts where he's saying, like, Jordan says she have just made the whole thing up, and

0:24:07 Thomas: Yeah. That'S a good point. Yeah, in fairness, in this moment, anyway, it, sounds like John had not considered that point. Like

0:24:17 Lydia: Right.

0:24:36 Thomas: Well, What was interesting is, let me ask, ask you on that part. I initially took that as, I actually think Jordan was being sarcastic, and then Ronson took it literally and was like, yeah, no, it's not made up, and then Jordan was like, except it could be, you know? Like, was that what happened, or did I read that wrong?

0:24:38 Jenessa: Yeah, well So here's how I wrote it, was, so Jordan says, like, there's no way she would just make up the whole thing, right? And and go ahead.

0:24:59 Thomas: Yeah. So Sorry, I remember now I

0:25:01 Jenessa: Hey,

0:25:02 Thomas: Think he was saying, similar to this has happened in my life a little bit, where people are like, well, they have this assumption, no one could be that dishonest, so, so therefore, you know, I'm going to color it a certain way. Whereas I think John interpreted that as him just saying, well, she couldn't have made this up, which is not the same thing.

0:25:21 Lydia: Like an earnest comment.

0:25:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:21 Jenessa: Yeah. Jordan is clearly saying, I think she made this up, I think this is BS, and Ronson replies to that, oh no, and nobody's accusing her. Yeah.

0:25:22 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, oh

0:25:25 Thomas: Yeah. So that's him taking it genuinely when really Jordan was not making that point. Yeah.

0:25:37 Jenessa: To make sure it's clear, people are accusing her. People are definitely accusing her, and he says, and nobody is accusing her. And even Martin Enserink, who's the guy at Science it's like, okay, so you're relying on a journalist who has second, third hand knowledge, and therefore you You have fourth-hand knowledge, and it's like, there are people accusing her, and that's in her Wikipedia.

0:25:41 Thomas: Yeah. Good point. Yeah. Yeah. Mm -hmm.

0:25:42 Lydia: Cool.

0:26:00 Thomas: Very weird.

0:26:01 Jenessa: This is how this all jumped off for me, is I heard that interaction, and I went, this can't be how it works. This can't be true. There are 13 authors, and I thought, well, what I'm going to look up is, there's this thing where, people don't always realize this, some papers, not all papers, you can find, this author just wrote the manuscript. Script, this author, you know, this author collected the data, and that's it. Yeah,

0:26:08 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:25 Thomas: Interesting. Are you telling me I could get on some major scientific papers by like getting some people coffee or something? I be one of the one of the listed this scientist in quotes, made sure the AC was working good, not a good temperature, you know, supported back rubs, couple back rugs were pretty critical in this research.

0:26:37 Jenessa: This is a concern. I

0:26:44 Lydia: There you go

0:26:46 Jenessa: Mean, know, the generous interpretation of a lot of this is, like, people need publications, and people did contribute something intellectual here, you go, and that is how you end up with a paper with 24 authors

0:27:01 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. I'll give them a quote that's misattributed to Einstein and say, hey, this is your inspiration.

0:27:02 Jenessa: Yeah. Perfect.

0:27:07 Lydia: Right.

0:27:08 Thomas: And then I've contributed something intellectual. Sorry. No, don't distract. So you're saying that sometimes you're able to actually see who did what.

0:27:11 Jenessa: Yes. Exactly. So I thought, ah, yes, what is clearly going on here is Ronson, who is not a scientist, doesn't realize that, uh, you can sometimes find this, and not every paper has it, and sometimes it's not on the PDF of the paper, sometimes it is on the website where the paper is hosted. And I'm like, I'm going to be sneaky and find it, and I am going to find maybe Maybe what it is, is only Judy collected the data and everybody else involved, like, analyzed the data, or like she collected it and gave them a digital file, but she didn't give them a physical cell.

0:27:53 Lydia: Exactly.

0:27:49 Thomas: Or it's like, hey, Judy handled all the fraud and we did everything else. Could be what, what it says, yeah. They

0:27:56 Lydia: Oh,

0:28:01 Jenessa: Yeah, possibly. So I was like, maybe that's the answer to this question. I'm a little frustrated that this person doesn't have it, but maybe it's because my experience as a scientist, I'll find this that your average journalist wouldn't. And it turns out it was just on the announcement about the retraction. It says Silverman, yeah

0:28:20 Thomas: Wanted to get it straight, okay, uh, while we're retracting this, um, let's get something absolutely clear here, well

0:28:21 Lydia: My god. So

0:28:22 Jenessa: Yes. Silverman did the analysis and confirmed contamination, like, this is not an unknown of, like, well, why didn't she turn over the cell lines? Is it an accident? Was there, there definitely was contamination. It wasn't, she needs to turn over the cells, other people had the cells. This is known. Add

0:28:42 Thomas: Wait, Oh, oh, that's not what I was expecting. So I thought, so we were trying to answer a question of why would she be the only one who has the thing, and was thinking you were going to say, yeah, she was the only one who did the thing. You're saying no, she wasn't the only woman who had the thing. What? What? So how did we even get what the fuck or Is it just a result of her insisting that, no, what happened here? Okay.

0:29:05 Lydia: But nobody like nobody and

0:29:03 Jenessa: The cells. Oh, this is what transitions us into the part about the arrest. So what is really going on here is, on the one, we've got two issues being conflated. On the one side, the part about confirming contamination of these samples for the paper in 2009 that will get get retracted in 2011. Judy doesn't need to turn over those cells because Silverman has that data and Silverman does confirm contamination, and you can find that anywhere and everywhere, because Silverman wanted everyone to know that he confirmed the contamination and wanted his name off of this.

0:29:41 Thomas: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:55 Lydia: Disavowed Yeah.

0:29:56 Jenessa: Yes. So the question Jordan is asking, why can't other people turn over the cells? The answer is other people could turn overthe cells and did turn over the cells and confirm contamination. So this whole, oh, Judy, yeah, this thing about turn over the cells, what is happening? What you're probably doing is getting stream of consciousness from Judy. The reason Judy got fired is because after this was going on, the paper has not yet been retracted, but it's looking bad. In the meanwhile, basically unrelated, a box shows up at the lab with a different cell line having nothing to do with this. It's from Japan and

0:29:56 Lydia: Yeah. Okay.

0:29:57 Thomas: Okay. Hmm. Huh. But What is this other part where he says he was on the side of the Whitmores or whatever? Hmm.

0:30:09 Lydia: Okay, what?

0:30:44 Thomas: But

0:30:44 Jenessa: It's addressed that it's supposed to go to Dr. Lombardi, the first author on the paper. She decides that, no, it will not be, God damn it, it's my research, and my cells. Don't give it to him. I'm in charge. He shouldn't be doing this. And that's how she gets fired. That's unrelated.

0:30:57 Lydia: Wow.

0:31:08 Thomas: It's also just an unrelated experiment, like, it has nothing to do with what

0:31:12 Jenessa: It's like the next thing they're gonna do, basically.

0:31:14 Thomas: Oh.

0:31:14 Lydia: So So she just decided to take somebody's mail? That's so petty.

0:31:19 Jenessa: This is what transitions us into how she's going to get fired and arrested. Unrelated.

0:31:22 Lydia: Yeah.

0:31:24 Thomas: God. All right, well, next time on Where There's Woke, let's find out why this definitely above-board person was arrested and all that. What the hell? Okay, this is crazy. We're

0:31:26 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:34 Lydia: So messy.

0:31:38 Jenessa: All we're at, at this point, um, everything's kind of popping off in terms of people don't believe this study, people are getting very suspicious, but nobody's really accused anybody anybody of anything, except we find out Silverman behind the scenes is going, I'm very concerned.

0:31:57 Thomas: We backtracking a little? Oh, okay. Well, he's, has he issued his full retraction, he stuff, or, okay?

0:32:03 Jenessa: The full retraction has not happened yet.

0:32:05 Thomas: So we're backtracing a little bit in our timeline, right?

0:32:07 Jenessa: Little bit to get to what is this whole thing about the turning over of the cell lines? What is this hole thing about, like, because Because eventually, we know, we've heard in the story, Judy gets arrested. And it's like, Jordan is saying, like, why would someone be in jail for five days for taking their own personal notebooks?

0:32:15 Thomas: For No reason Yeah.

0:32:33 Jenessa: Doesn't

0:32:33 Thomas: Because even if it's a civil thing, like, I'm not the lawyer, but that, how would you be in jail, jail for five days? I mean, it could be.

0:32:40 Jenessa: Really sound like it adds up, does it?

0:32:40 Thomas: Yeah. No, it doesn't.

0:32:43 Jenessa: No. Would you like to hear what happened from the affidavit of a Mr. Max Faust, her research assistant and alleged accomplice in this?

0:32:53 Thomas: Oh, accomplice. Okay. Well, so is this a reliable narrator or?

0:32:56 Jenessa: Yeah. I I'm gonna just read it and you're gonna tell me because Oh boy it Is a sworn. I do hereby swear under penalty of perjury that the following assertions are true. I have personal knowledge of the matters herein, blah blah blah. Okay.

0:33:00 Thomas: Okay. It's a sworn affidavit.

0:33:11 Thomas: I've seen some real bullshit affidaviots in my recent life, though. So just letting you know it.

0:33:16 Jenessa: True. So A lot of this is where it's gonna get us is, um, really gonna get to probable cause for arrest, is where this affidavit is supposed to get you. And you can judge for yourself, you know This does not have to necessarily get us to a criminal conviction. This is what we're going to use for the arrest warrant. So Um, worked for Judy Mikovits. Uh, she was my boss at WPI. On or about September 27th, 2011, there was a package delivered to the laboratory at WPI from Japan, the package which was addressed to Dr. Vince Lombardi. I opened the package and discovered that it contained cell lines that he was not allowed to have, according to Mikovits. I called Judy Mikovits and informed her about the cell lines from Japan addressed to Dr. Lombardy. Mikovits informed me that she, quote, would take care of it.

I've since been told by Annette Whittemore, the founder, president, and CEO, that Dr. Lombardi was indeed allowed to use the lines from Japan. On or about September 29, 2011, I went to the dentist from approximately 8:30 a.m. to noon, then I returned to WPI. Approximately 12:30, I asked Mikovits if I could go home because my teeth hurt.

Approximately a week before this, I previously agreed to assist Mikovits in moving her personal items from her then residence at the Palladio at 3:30 p.m. that day. Mikovits agreed to let me leave work at approximately 1 p.m. but she reminded me I was to meet her at the Palladio to help her move and then drive her to the airport to rent a car as we previously agreed at approximately 2:30 p.m. I received a text message from Dr. Lombardi that asked me where I was. I informed him that I was in the Howard building on the University of Reno Nevada campus, even though I was at home just

0:33:27 Thomas: Okay. Wow. All right. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

0:35:06 Jenessa: Picturing this kid in the police station being like, I told him I was in the lab but I was home. And they're like, get to the part where you stole shit. Like, we don't care. Like my

0:35:17 Thomas: I'm gonna fails class if I, yeah, we don't care, yeah.

0:35:20 Jenessa: Hurt. Like, who cares? Dr. Lombardi asked me to meet him at the WPI laboratory about a package. So he just said, I'm at the lab, and he's at home, and he said, I'm not at the laboratory. And I'm like, I'm like, cool, meet me at the lav. And he was like, damn it. So I contacted Judy Mikovits by her cell phone and informed her that Dr. Lombardi was looking for the cells. Dr. Mikovits said she would, quote, handle it. I texted Dr. Lombardi and instructed him to contact Mikovits. I forwarded the text to Mikovits and said, see you at 3:30. A short time later, when I was still at my home, a residence owned by the Mikovits, Judy, guess he rents from her. I called and said she had been fired for insubordination and insolence. She was very angry. She stated she'd had enough of WPI. She stated that Dr. Lombardi has no right to do research work, he should only be doing clinical work. I know who

0:35:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:58 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah.

0:35:59 Lydia: Wow. Why?

0:36:16 Lydia: Does she get to decide that

0:36:17 Thomas: What Is that even about, like, I don't even, I mean, maybe we don't need to get into it, but so

0:36:21 Jenessa: Knows what's going through this woman's head.

0:36:23 Thomas: She's I mean, yeah, she just is clearly, something's wrong with her and she's has some bad. Is this a totally unrelated conflict, her and in Lombardi, right?

0:36:24 Jenessa: Yeah. Okay. So I know of a lawsuit she will go on to file that will try to connect these that ends in 2020. I don't know if at the time she thought these were all connected. She has a very conspiratorial belief later on, so she stated that WPI would go down and that I should get out too. Drove Mikevitz to the airport to rent a car, but she forgot her driver's license.

0:36:50 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe. Okay.

0:37:03 Jenessa: I drove her back to the Palladio where she retrieved her license, and we again returned to the airport where she rented a Jeep Compass. We again met at the Palladio, where we packed many things into the car. I met Judy at the Sierra Tap House at 6 p.m. Mikovits stated she planned to move the grants from WPI. She stated she was going to try to move The R01 grant, that's like a fancy science grant, and the Department of Defense grants and stop the Lipkin study. Now, the Lipkins study is one that is in the process of debunking her.

0:37:22 Thomas: Oh.

0:37:36 Jenessa: The whole XMRV thing.

0:37:35 Thomas: It is for debunking what? Oh Okay. Wait, so wait, her lab, her own lab is in the process of debunking her? Well

0:37:41 Jenessa: No, the Lipkin study is out of a different lab in the NIH, I want to say, or the CDC.

0:37:53 Thomas: Then, oh, okay. I thought she was saying she's trying to take the grants with her, that. What was that

0:37:57 Jenessa: Yeah. She's trying to take grants with her from WPI to somewhere else and also stop the Lipkins study. I'm assuming unrelated.

0:37:58 Thomas: Oh I linked them. Okay, sorry. I linked those two things.

0:38:08 Jenessa: No, of course she reasonably did, because she's raving about a bunch of different things at once, and they don't have anything to do with each other.

0:38:09 Thomas: Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

0:38:17 Jenessa: So I expressed some skepticism to Mikevitz about whether she could take the research in samples, and stated that Dr. Lombardi would take over the projects and continue on behalf of WPI. He is correctly understanding how grants work here. Grants are attached to the institution. Mikevitz stated that she was in charge of the research at WPI, so technically it was her research and she could move it somewhere else at any time.

0:38:33 Thomas: Don't

0:38:44 Lydia: No.

0:38:44 Thomas: Think that's how that works. Yeah.

0:38:45 Lydia: No.

0:38:45 Jenessa: No, No, no. Before I left the Sierra Tap House, Mikeviz gave me the keys to her desk and the keys of her office in order that I could gain access and take the WPI materials for Mykovitz. Mykovits then directed me to remove samples from the lab at WPI and all the notebooks from WPI containing irreplaceable research and data and provide them to her at a later date. Kept her laptop computer with the information from WFI with her. I left her at approximately 7:30 p.m. on November 29, 2011 and did not see her again until October 16, 2011. Between 4 and 5 a.m. on September 30, 2011, I went to WPI to attempt to obtain samples and notebooks for Mikevitz. I was unable to gain access, so I left and returned at approximately 8 a.m. and parked near the loading entrance. I attempted to gain access to the lab to obtain the samples, however, it was on lockdown and I could not obtain access.

This, I don't know why he says this. I had the door key in my left hand and the desk key in my right hand, and I went to Mikovits's office and retrieved the materials in less than a minute. I took between 12 and 20 notebooks for Mikovitz. I put half the notebooks in a backpack and carried the remaining out, juggling, locked the desk drawer and the office door and took the keys. Took the notebooks to my car and concealed the notebooks, and then went through the front entrance at WPI and asked the employee at the desk what was going

0:40:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:14 Jenessa: On. So I don't know, Ocean's One is returning to the scene of the crime Five minutes later and I was informed the lab was locked and we were all to go on vacation, so I left at 9 a.m. They Clearly they just fired Judy, and they're like, everybody get the fuck out of here.

0:40:18 Thomas: Yeah. The

0:40:31 Jenessa: I drove the notebooks to my mother's home where I stored them in her garage. Honor

0:40:26 Thomas: Fuck. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. Wow. Wait, sorry, was this a grad student, who's this again? Live

0:40:40 Jenessa: Is us. I tried so hard to find more information on this man. If you Google him, the first hit is this affidavit, and he has tried

0:40:51 Thomas: Your life in such a way, ladies. Ladies and gentlemen, that the first result for you is not your sworn affidavit. I'm just saying.

0:40:54 Lydia: Yeah. He's

0:40:53 Jenessa: Oh My god, he has successfully gone underground. I can't find Was he a bachelor's student? Was he a

0:41:03 Thomas: Okay. But, yeah, it sounds like he's, like, she's, I mean, it Sounds like she's of kind abusing her authority a to make this poor guy do some stuff he probably shouldn't do. And he's naively doing some, like tricks to try to do all this stuff. Up and, and it sounds like, it seems like Greg move, I'm wrong. What happened is, he's like, oh shit, this was wrong. Hey, let me tell you everything, police or something, you know.

0:41:06 Jenessa: Oh

0:41:09 Lydia: Young. Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:19 Lydia: Oh

0:41:29 Jenessa: God. I'm just picturing him, like, in his pajamas crying in a police station like He's, I Just, I'll never get over, because my teeth hurt, like No one cares. All right, whatever. On or about October 16, 2011, Mikevitz flew back to Reno for the purpose of retrieving the notebooks and WPI property. Requested that I set up a new separate email account for our secret communications about WPI, and she would do the same. New email address is jnaprilann18 at gmail.com. My new email is mafost at gmail.com, that is just his name.

0:41:29 Thomas: Yeah. I'm just a lab worker. I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:42:08 Thomas: Top

0:42:09 Jenessa: His secret special email address. It's just first initial, middle initial, last name, etch email. Great job, everybody. Mike Devitz has repeatedly asked me to send items from the lab and to send them to Dr. Frank Rossetti. Many of the items requested, I know, many of the atoms requested are irreplaceable. I did not send her additional items. On the 16th, I gave her all of the notebooks I took from WPI on September 30th. She informed me she would store them in a safe location. Mikevitz rented another car and drove the notebooks to the Los Angeles area. Note that we are in Reno, Nevada. She's taking them to Los Angeles, California. Mikeviz informed me, she was hiding out on a boat to avoid being served with papers from

0:42:10 Thomas: Secret Hmm.

0:42:26 Thomas: Interesting. Oh

0:42:57 Lydia: Wow.

0:42:57 Jenessa: WPI. I don't know what, like, I said this to my partner and he was like, does she think those, that's international waters like she's not gonna get served, like Genuinely.

0:42:58 Thomas: My god, god.

0:43:07 Lydia: Yeah.

0:43:05 Thomas: Maritime law Baby, gold fringe on the flag. I wouldn't put it past her. I really wouldn't

0:43:13 Lydia: Yeah. She's just off the coast of California.

0:43:16 Thomas: Yeah. Like I'm also starting a gambling casino in this boat. Who's

0:43:16 Lydia: Yeah. The

0:43:18 Jenessa: I don't know. This is all like a Coen Brothers movie at this point. Um, I provided her with the WPI materials. I turned in her keys and other employee materials to WPI. I told WPI Mike if it says just mailed me the keys, which was not true. Uh, page here. Mike if it's retained a black laptop, laptop she used while at WPI that contains information belonging to WPI. She has purchased a new computer since that time. She's been in contact with Lipkin through others, including Rossetti. The one who's busy debunking her.

0:43:57 Lydia: NIH Yeah.

0:43:58 Jenessa: Yep. She'd been in contact with Lipkin through other including Dr. Rossetti and others about transferring grants and research projects away from WPI based on the information she has stolen. The end of our affidavit of Max Faust, who you will find, good luck, find more information about this man.

0:43:53 Thomas: Lipkin. Oh Right. Yeah. How

0:43:58 Lydia: Let's

0:44:16 Thomas: The Fuck.

0:44:17 Jenessa: I want to know. I

0:44:17 Thomas: Would that logic work? Hey, can we transfer these grants under a finder's keeper's rule or possession is nine-tenths of the law rule? What was that last sentence? Can we transfer them on the basis of I stole it so mine? So

0:44:27 Jenessa: Don't I Don' Don't, I... there's no logic in this place.

0:44:37 Thomas: And once again, we're gonna have to cut in to be the killjoys. We're your chaperone parents saying, "Hey, enough partying. You gotta cut it out for part three. Yeah, yeah of this series, but that's okay because There's more partying to come. We are We're not all bad because we're like hey come over tomorrow smoke some more pot with us. It'll be fun party party. Cause next time in part four, which is the final Jenessa part. Well, I should put final in quotes. Cause you just never know.

0:44:44 Lydia: It's Curfew.

0:45:06 Thomas: Like it might be that like another month goes by and we're like, wait, we need to say more, but for now the final Jenessa part of this and the final officially the breakdown episode of episode two. Part four, the final part, or is it, of this one, because we're going to do a little bonus about it, but it's the final official part. Uh, going to talk about this, being arrested and we're going to GET INTO HOW NOT ONLY UNRELIABLE SHE IS IN TELLING THAT STORY, but also in Ronson, just not doing a good job with it. It's not, it's bad. It's

0:45:06 Lydia: You never know that's true.

0:45:23 Lydia: Not great

0:45:42 Thomas: NOT good, not a good JOB.

0:45:43 Lydia: Skepticism.

0:45:45 Thomas: So it's really fascinating. What really happened with this arrest and, uh was it as bad as Judy makes it out to be and reminding you that this is like the linchpin in John Ronson's theory that like, but for this arrest, that was this great injustice that happened to her. She was just living and she's normal. She's just like going to be a totally normal scientist person making drinks at a yacht club or whatever. But no, this happened and that turned her evil or whatever, and we'll see how well that that stacks up. Yep. On the next Where There's Woke, everything I just said, because I forgot to say, well, on the next where there's woke before I said it.

0:46:25 Lydia: You're