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By PIA CATTON

The union representing New York City Opera singers and production personnel on Thursday filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, a move that has the potential to derail the company’s plans, announced last Friday, to leave Lincoln Center for a less expensive venue.

At the heart of the union’s charge is that the opera company didn’t negotiate before announcing the move. The failure to bargain about the effects of the move leaves employees without knowledge of how much guaranteed work they will have in the coming year, according to Alan Gordon, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists.

“They can’t not bargain with us and move,” said Mr. Gordon.

City Opera spokeswoman Maggie McKeon said: “The filing is without merit.”

The charge also addresses that the company has a continuing obligation to negotiate a next contract. The current contract expired in April but continues until a new contract is established.

Previously, the opera’s employees were guaranteed 26 weeks a year of work—a reduction from 28 weeks in earlier agreements. If the company moves to smaller venues and reduces the number of full-scale operas it performs, the guaranteed work could potentially diminish further.

Typically, employees are notified about the upcoming season two weeks before the end of the current season.

The company hasn’t announced its full plans for next season, but after last Friday’s board meeting the company said it expected to present three full-scale operas, two medium-scale operas and three concerts at locations that have not yet been determined.

AGMA’s charges could lead the national labor board to request an injunction preventing the company from moving.

City Opera also has an upcoming contract negotiation with the musicians union, Local 802. That contract expires on May 31.

Said President Tino Gagliardi: “I expect to hear from them soon. They need to give us some information.”

Write to Pia Catton at pia.catton@wsj.com

By AMY DOCKSER MARCUS

Editors of the journal Science have asked the co-authors of a 2009 paper that linked chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus called XMRV to voluntarily retract the paper.

But in written response Friday, study co-author Judy A. Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease said “it is premature to retract our paper.” The letter was reviewed by the The Wall Street Journal.

The study raised patients’ hopes that if a virus was linked to chronic fatigue syndrome, a treatment might be found. Public-health officials were alarmed by the possibility that supposedly healthy people might unknowingly be infected with a contagious retrovirus. The federal government began an ongoing effort to evaluate whether the nation’s blood supply was safe, work that continues.

In the May 26 letter to Dr. Mikovits and her co-authors, also reviewed by the Journal, Science editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts and executive editor Monica Bradford cited concerns about the validity of the findings, saying other scientists hadn’t been able to replicate them, among other reasons.

Dr. Mikovits, who confirmed the letters, said she hadn’t received a response in return. Dr. Alberts and Ms. Bradford at Science couldn’t be reached for comment.

After the 2009 study, other published studies showed that some anti-retrovirals approved for use in HIV might also be effective against XMRV. Some doctors began prescribing anti-retrovirals for chronic fatigue syndrome patients.

The concern about the blood supply led blood banks to bar patients with chronic fatigue syndrome from donating. An advisory committee to the federal Food and Drug Administration recommended last year that the FDA bar people with chronic fatigue syndrome from donating. The FDA hasn’t weighed in on the recommendation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, published studies reporting they didn’t find XMRV in chronic fatigue syndrome patients. Other papers found that substances used as part of the process to detect XMRV might be contaminated, raising the possibility that this may explain the positive findings in the 2009 Science paper.

In the letter to the study authors, Dr. Alberts and Ms. Bradford suggested the paper be withdrawn “in light of the growing number of research papers from independent investigators who have either failed to replicate your original finding that XMRV is associated with chronic fatigue syndrome and/or who have provided evidence that laboratory reagents are widely contaminated with the virus.”

The letter added that two additional papers that “cast further doubt” on the 2009 paper’s findings will be published on June 2 in Science, and that Science will be publishing what it called an editorial expression of concern about the 2009 paper. “At this juncture, Science feels that it would be in the best interest of the scientific community” for the co-authors to retract the paper, the letter stated.

An editorial expression of concern, while falling short of the journal outright retracting a paper itself, raises a red flag to the scientific community that serious doubts exist about a paper’s findings and can make it harder for researchers to obtain funding or publish papers, says R. Grant Steen, a medical communications consultant. He has published papers analyzing 742 English language research papers that were retracted from the PubMed database from 2000-2010.

The 2009 study in question, led by investigators at Whittemore Peterson in Reno, Nev., and including researchers from the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic, generated enormous attention among scientists and patients. The researchers reported they found the retrovirus XMRV in a majority of 101 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating condition that involves cognitive dysfunction and severe pain. The authors also found the virus in nearly 4% of 218 healthy people used as controls in the study.

Dr. Mikovits said it was still too early to know the reasons for the differing results in different labs, and that the Institute was looking forward to participating in a major study under way by the NIH and led by Columbia University scientist Ian Lipkin to help clarify the matter.

Write to Amy Dockser Marcus at amy.marcus@wsj.com

The mood before the Foundation Fighting Blindness’s Dining in the Dark event was similar to the atmosphere before the curtain rises at a show. Guests anxiously anticipated the main attraction—the room would go dark, entrees would be served and guests would eat without seeing for 30 minutes.

The lights-out experience happens around the country, both to raise awareness for the blind and to enhance sensory perception of eating. This week, a dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park raised $450,000.

Blind servers worked the room by way of a rope maze strategically laced around tables. Guests, sighted and not, came up with guidelines: fill your wine glass before dinner, never let go of your fork and, a controversial point, don’t be afraid to use your hands. One blind waiter, Rick Mendez, alleviated concerns about diners spilling on themselves: “Nobody is going to see you.”

Diners were warned: turn cellphones off, or spoil it for everyone. But as soon as the lights went down, cellphone screens flickered like fireflies in the pitch-dark ballroom. At times it was light enough to make out faces and the silhouette of a steak. “New Yorkers do this more than anyone,” said James Minow, the foundation’s chief development officer, who has dined in the dark 25 times. (At a recent San Francisco dark dinner, no one violated, he said.)

Guests floated concerns into the darkness: Without seeing, would they eat too much? A vegetarian wondered for a moment whether she might unknowingly eat meat (fortuitously, she ended up with pasta). When light returned, the dinner was quickly hailed as a success. “It was eye-opening,” said Debi Mittman, wife of the event committee chair Evan Mittman (who is blind). She meant that figuratively, of course.

—Jen Wieczner

By MARSHALL HEYMAN

Alan Roche

Lisa Plepler, Linda LeRoy Janklow and Andy Borowitz

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Alan Roche

Robert and Alison Pruzan

Benefits can get dry, so many employ emcees for comic relief.

At a fund-raiser at the American Museum of Natural History for ArtsConnection, a nonprofit that brings professional artists into more than 100 schools and also hangs children’s artwork in corporate buildings, those duties fell to Andy Borowitz. He’s the man behind the Borowitz Report, as well as the creator of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”

“He’s also one of my husband’s clients,” said Linda LeRoy Janklow, who founded ArtsConnection 32 years ago and is married to literary agent Mort Janklow.

Alan Roche

A Chinese dancer at the benefit

Ms. Janklow said that despite hard times in the city, “we have not cut one program. We are still going strong.” She added that she stays involved because “I really love it and I see what it does. This is what helps get students to come to class.”

The evening honored Robert A. Pruzan, the co-founder of Centerview Partners as well as the vice chairman of ArtsConnection.

There was something of a Chinese theme at the party. David Monn decorated the tables with Chinese lanterns; appetizers included summer rolls and wontons; parting gifts were giant fortune cookies and several children performed a traditional Chinese dance at the top of the evening.

But back to the humor: Mr. Borowitz spoke about his childhood in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where arts education was deemed more important than sex education, a philosophy he agreed with. This meant that growing up, he thought that menopause “was the break prostitutes take between clients.” Later he learned the real definition.

By MARSHALL HEYMAN

Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee has brought us such contemporary classics as “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “The Ice Storm” and “Brokeback Mountain.” He is currently working on a film version of the bestselling book “Life of Pi.”

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Mason Lee of ‘The Hangover 2′

On Friday Mr. Lee’s son, Mason, who turns 21 this week, hits screens in a prominent role in “The Hangover 2.” Mason is a rising senior at NYU studying acting; he took a semester off to make the film in Thailand and now lives in Chelsea. Marshall Heyman spoke with the actor:

Had you seen the first “Hangover” before you auditioned for the movie?

About three times. The first time with my brother [a visual artist living in Brooklyn] and my dad. We all thought it was really funny.

When did you decide you wanted to be an actor?

When I was watching Jackie Chan and Jet Li movies in our apartment in White Plains when I was 6. I would jump off the couch and do high-flying kicks like Jet Li. I started doing our local Shakespeare group when I was a freshman in high school and my junior year I played Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Did your dad making films make you want to act?

I don’t think that really factored into me initially wanting to become an actor. I told him and he had some words of wisdom about what kind of a life I’d be getting into and he definitely shaped my artistic perception.

What credits did you have before “The Hangover 2?”

I was in “The Wedding Banquet.” I played a baby. My dad directed that. And then when I was in fifth grade I did a short film called “Chosen” where Clive Owen played a BMW driver. You can see it on YouTube. My dad needed a little kid, sort of a golden child or a Dalai Lama. I had one line and it was awfully delivered. Then I did a couple of student films, but “Hangover 2″ was quite a big jump.

What did you learn on “Hangover 2″ that you didn’t learn in acting class?

That a large portion of the business has less to do with your talents and more about your resourcefulness and willingness to adapt and break away from whatever plans you had. There are a million things that are out of your hands or can distract you from what you’re working on.

And what did you learn at school that you applied to making the movie?

In acting training, there’s a lot of focus on focus and how well you can concentrate.

Does your dad want to work with you again?

I’m sure he’d be open to it but I don’t know if I’d be that open to it. I’m not positive it’d be the best for our father-son relationship. When it comes to his movies, he has all of the control.