Judy Mikovits, who led the research linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a mouse retrovirus called xenotropic murine leukaemia virus related virus (XMRV), has been sacked from her job, and Science, the journal that published the paper, is investigating allegations of image manipulation.

Dr Mikovits’s dismissal as research director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada, came on 29 September, the day before the allegations were made on a graduate student’s blog.

A BMJ email to her received no reply. But, according to the ScienceInsider blog and the Wall Street Journal’s health blog, the authors of which say they saw letters that had passed between Dr Mikovits and institute’s president, Annette Whittemore, the sacking was not …