5 ms·

It's absolutely jumping to conclusions, but so is blindly believing the people saying that the impact of it is low, when those very people are the authors which

by orlp 4y ago

It's absolutely jumping to conclusions, but so is blindly believing the people saying that the impact of it is low, when those very people are the authors which would be impacted. I'd say we'll have to wait and see.

civilized 4y ago
I agree. It's a technical question at this point, and with all the attention now on it, there seem to be favorable conditions for a thorough investigation.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  That is not what I got from the comments there. What I got was "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead on amyloids!" When it is finally proven that interfering with amyloid synthesis never has any desirable effect of any kind, what will these people do instead of fooling with them?
  - civilized 4y ago
    This is a bit against Hacker News rules so I'm going to say this once and only once. You run around commenting on many diverse fields that no single human could possibly be an expert on simultaneously. These comments come with a consistent attitude: your position is obviously right, and only evil or self-interested establishments stand in the way of that being acknowledged. There are many other human beings who are just as smart as you or smarter, and just as invested in truth and goodness. Is it likely that you have the royal road to these things?
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      I do not, in fact, comment on the overwhelming majority of topics. Here I have asked earnest questions. It is a fact that every drug tried to interfere with amyloids, over decades, failed miserably, if not actually made things worse. Why do you object to my asking them?
      - civilized 4y ago
        "What will happen when my beliefs are proven true" isn't really a question, in the same way that "do you still beat your wife" isn't really a question.
        ncmncm 4y ago
        We have literal decades of evidence that interfering with amyloid synthesis has no desirable effect on Alzheimer's patients. That is painfully and (expensively!) clearly the way to bet. Is it possible, in principle, that by some miracle a magical new way of interfering with amyloid synthesis will turn out to fix everything? Sure. But the question remains the same. What would they all move on to, then? They should be moved onto that thing right away. Something where actually getting somewhere useful is not important. If I were hiring biochemists, I own I would not count an amyloid research background in an applicant's favor. If you can see some reason to think otherwise, please explain. ("Not easily frustrated", maybe?) Recall that we are discussing tens of billions of tax dollars poured down that rathole. All the comments posted in response to the fraud just assumed that fooling with this or that amyloid was still the key. There was no hint of doubt about their program, evident. Somebody should be asking questions about a future direction. Criticizing me for asking it is criticizing exactly the wrong person. The people who should have been asking the unpleasant questions, and deserve sharp criticism for not asking them, are the ones still dispensing themselves NIH grants.
        civilized 4y ago
        Have a look at the comments on this post and let me know what you think after that. https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/sylvain-lesne-who-found-av56-accused-image-manipulation https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/sylvain-lesne-w... Starting with just Dr. Ashe's comment at the top: > Based on my published work (Liu et al., 2015; Ashe, 2020), it is clear that there are two general forms of Aβ, type 1 and type 2. One particular form of type 1 (referred to in our papers as Aβ*56 and in the Science article as “toxic oligomers”) was shown by my lab and others to impair memory function in mice. The type 2 form of Aβ is the one found in amyloid plaques. It is this latter form that drug developers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully targeted. There have been no clinical trials targeting the type 1 form of Aβ, the form which my research has suggested is more relevant to dementia. Mr. Piller erroneously conflated the two forms of Aβ. There's a lot of interesting comments after Ashe's as well.

by orlp 4y ago

civilized 4y ago

I agree. It's a technical question at this point, and with all the attention now on it, there seem to be favorable conditions for a thorough investigation.

ncmncm 4y ago
That is not what I got from the comments there. What I got was "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead on amyloids!" When it is finally proven that interfering with amyloid synthesis never has any desirable effect of any kind, what will these people do instead of fooling with them?
- civilized 4y ago
  This is a bit against Hacker News rules so I'm going to say this once and only once. You run around commenting on many diverse fields that no single human could possibly be an expert on simultaneously. These comments come with a consistent attitude: your position is obviously right, and only evil or self-interested establishments stand in the way of that being acknowledged. There are many other human beings who are just as smart as you or smarter, and just as invested in truth and goodness. Is it likely that you have the royal road to these things?
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    I do not, in fact, comment on the overwhelming majority of topics. Here I have asked earnest questions. It is a fact that every drug tried to interfere with amyloids, over decades, failed miserably, if not actually made things worse. Why do you object to my asking them?
    - civilized 4y ago
      "What will happen when my beliefs are proven true" isn't really a question, in the same way that "do you still beat your wife" isn't really a question.
      - ncmncm 4y ago
        We have literal decades of evidence that interfering with amyloid synthesis has no desirable effect on Alzheimer's patients. That is painfully and (expensively!) clearly the way to bet. Is it possible, in principle, that by some miracle a magical new way of interfering with amyloid synthesis will turn out to fix everything? Sure. But the question remains the same. What would they all move on to, then? They should be moved onto that thing right away. Something where actually getting somewhere useful is not important. If I were hiring biochemists, I own I would not count an amyloid research background in an applicant's favor. If you can see some reason to think otherwise, please explain. ("Not easily frustrated", maybe?) Recall that we are discussing tens of billions of tax dollars poured down that rathole. All the comments posted in response to the fraud just assumed that fooling with this or that amyloid was still the key. There was no hint of doubt about their program, evident. Somebody should be asking questions about a future direction. Criticizing me for asking it is criticizing exactly the wrong person. The people who should have been asking the unpleasant questions, and deserve sharp criticism for not asking them, are the ones still dispensing themselves NIH grants.
        civilized 4y ago
        Have a look at the comments on this post and let me know what you think after that. https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/sylvain-lesne-who-found-av56-accused-image-manipulation https://www.alzforum.org/news/community-news/sylvain-lesne-w... Starting with just Dr. Ashe's comment at the top: > Based on my published work (Liu et al., 2015; Ashe, 2020), it is clear that there are two general forms of Aβ, type 1 and type 2. One particular form of type 1 (referred to in our papers as Aβ*56 and in the Science article as “toxic oligomers”) was shown by my lab and others to impair memory function in mice. The type 2 form of Aβ is the one found in amyloid plaques. It is this latter form that drug developers have repeatedly but unsuccessfully targeted. There have been no clinical trials targeting the type 1 form of Aβ, the form which my research has suggested is more relevant to dementia. Mr. Piller erroneously conflated the two forms of Aβ. There's a lot of interesting comments after Ashe's as well.