Book 'Er, Danno

Researcher Judy Mikovits has been in the news in some way for the past two years, says ScienceInsider's Jon Cohen. First, her team's work appeared in Science in October 2009, saying that chronic fatigue syndrome could be tied to a novel mouse retrovirus called XMRV. Then, after other research groups tried to replicate her results, Mikovits was again under the spotlight after she and her team participated in a multi-lab study of XMRV and failed to reproduce their results. Then, this past September, Science partially retracted Mikovits' original paper. And now, Cohen says, she is in jail, awaiting extradition from California to Nevada. The details of the arrest are unclear, but Mikovits' attorney tells Cohen that Mikovits is being extradited to face a civil lawsuit filed against her by the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease where she worked until she was fired in September. "On 4 November, WPI filed suit against Mikovits, alleging that she had wrongfully kept her laboratory notebooks and other information about her work for the fledgling institute on her laptop, in flash drives, and in a personal e-mail account," Cohen says. Mikovits' attorney denies that her client has any of these items in her possession.