Good questions. Here are my answers:

1. For short sellers, at this point, there isn't much money to be made from the downside, and the upside risk is great for short sellers, so my theory (and it's just a theory) is that they are trying to deny the company funding without dilution to force the company to partner, merge, be bought, etc. If you look at pre-clinical and clinical biotechs that don't have an approval yet, a high percentage (about 95%) partner, merge, or get bought out.

2. I think we will get funding through partnership or buyout-licensing of an indication. The company just to keep doing what it's doing and keep it's eye on the ball. That means avoiding litigation and costly battles but playing ball and playing nice with the powers that be.

3. I don't know if there is naked short selling going on. But at any rate, there is definitely regular short selling going on, and the best way to combat that is by what the company is doing (publishing papers, agreements, trials, data, approvals, etc, the kinds of things others have pointed out).

With the upside risk so great, there are few other explanations for the short selling other than to try to influence the company to partner up, merge, license, etc. This could easily be done through proxies to do the short selling.

Partnering, merging, licensing is okay as long as we can get compensated for working with the other players