“If something is real, you should be able to find it using different techniques,” said Dr. Traboulsee, currently conducting research on the Zamboni hypothesis. “It shouldn’t be completely technique-dependent.”
Dr. Zamboni also has resigned from a major study led by the Italian MS society, citing reasons that society chair Mario Battaglia says “are not justified.” And he has attempted to reinterpret findings that appear to undermine his own.
Last month, one of his closest allies, Buffalo-based neurologist Robert Zivadinov, reported blocked veins in barely half of the latest MS patients he has studied, as well as almost one-quarter of his healthy test subjects.
Therefore, he concluded, CCSVI does not cause MS. But Dr. Zamboni objected, arguing that, even though so few patients had blocked veins, the study actually reinforced his theory.
“He’s shifting his criteria around – first, it was 100 per cent; now he’s taking anything to be conciliatory,” said Steven Novella, assistant professor of neurology at Yale University.
“He obviously is hugely invested in this conclusion.”
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