Sometimes when it sounds too good to be true... Are there any real researches behind this project?
That was a complex project that required a lot of special technology, much of which we developed ourselves, to make and characterize micro-particles.
CV Herst, Pete Lloyd and I (all part of the Aradigm founding team) have been working together at Immunity Project since the beginning - Pete is an ME (UC Berkeley and Davis) who built and operates our precision spray drying system for sphere manufacturing. CV got his MPH at Berkeley in Med Micro and his PhD from North Western in Mo Bio later doing a post doc at MD Anderson. He has extensive experience working with HIV in both the diagnostic and lab research setting requiring handling the virus in cell culture.
And when you're evaluating science, the paper itself, in the literature, is the only real way to evaluate it's quality.
This is incredibly short-sighted. Overvaluation of the literature is exactly why people pollute the literature with fraudulent results. It's why paper reviewing process and citations are polluted with political machinations. Ultimately, science is the entire corpus, from experimental design, through data collection, and presentation of work as papers. Reification of the publication process quietly enables researchers who keep everything up to publication a black box.
Moreover because some NIH grants fund clinical trials doesn't mean that all (or even the average) NIH grants have that level of scrutiny
Am I to magically observe their experimental design and data collection? Or do I evaluate their work like I do all others - through the literature they present?
And then yes, do squishy stuff like "judge their character", "talk to their postdocs", "ask around about professional opinions". It's a conceit to operate as if science isn't a human endeavor.
Also you are now conflating the specific case of this project with the general case. Read their INDA, if you are really itching for details.
I'm really not conflating anything. I'm very skeptical of any project getting this much attention that doesn't have some papers published. It's not the only step, but it's a step, and one that hasn't been done yet.
But, as an infectious disease epidemiologist, I'd be thrilled if I were wrong, and they were somehow paragons of vaccine research operating in stealth mode.