4 ms·

Interesting article. From an non-researchers perspective, I find a couple points extremely disturbing. - The failure to notice and act on the faked data in the

Interesting article. From an non-researchers perspective, I find a couple points extremely disturbing. - The failure to notice and act on the faked data in the Lesné papers is still a disgrace, and there’s plenty of blame to go around among other researchers in the field as well as reviewers and journal editorial staffs. - Every single Alzheimer’s trial has failed. I strongly suspect there is more fraud, just because of human nature. It looks multiple checkpoints are failing. We also have the replication crisis going on. It's pretty clear at this point incentives are misaligned at every level of the research pipeline. It's a bad time for this highly public research failure. The general public's faith in experts is dropping, and maybe for good reason. As the economy, and quality of life deteriorates, I think we will see the public demand "results" from experts.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
It's also possible that Alzheimer's is an incredibly challenging disease and the tools we have to deal with it are suboptimal. People have a hard time distinguishing failure from malice, unfortunately. It's understandable to want someone to blame.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  One way for something to be extremely challenging is for it to be impossible
- stuckinhell 4y ago
  I agree. However I also think, we are seeing evidence of malice, greed, and maybe desperation in these acts of scientific fraud. Experts need to quickly define what malice in their respective fields means. Then most importantly they need to act on it and restore integrity, discipline, and show results. Otherwise the general public will define it and act on it themselves.
- naasking 4y ago
  It is a hard disease to study for sure. The hardest part of it is that there's no effective test for it, you just have to check for a somewhat vague constellation of symptoms over a person's entire lifespan. I think a big part of the obsession with the amyloid plaques hypothesis is that it was the only issue that was consistent among patients that they could actually test for, so rather than continuing the harder work of searching in the dark for something better, researchers latched onto exploring how and why that was associated with Alzheimer's. And it makes sense in a way, there's obviously something going on and figuring out why the plaques are produced should provide some mechanistic insight into what's going on. And that's true, in the same way that capturing all of the EM emissions from a laptop will provide some insight into what's going on inside the laptop, but that information will likely only be useful if you already have a good mechanistic model of a laptop's inner workings (people have successfully read data across an air gap this way). I suspect that's what will happen with amyloid plaques as well, ie. plaques will only make sense retrospectively.
zubiaur 4y ago
A lot of systems are based on trust. The checkpoints are sometimes in place not so much as a thorough verification but rather as a signaling mechanism, a vote of confidence. While I do think that a better aligned system of immediate incentives can ameliorate the symptoms, it's only a patch for moral behavior.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

It's also possible that Alzheimer's is an incredibly challenging disease and the tools we have to deal with it are suboptimal. People have a hard time distinguishing failure from malice, unfortunately. It's understandable to want someone to blame.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
One way for something to be extremely challenging is for it to be impossible
stuckinhell 4y ago
I agree. However I also think, we are seeing evidence of malice, greed, and maybe desperation in these acts of scientific fraud. Experts need to quickly define what malice in their respective fields means. Then most importantly they need to act on it and restore integrity, discipline, and show results. Otherwise the general public will define it and act on it themselves.
naasking 4y ago
It is a hard disease to study for sure. The hardest part of it is that there's no effective test for it, you just have to check for a somewhat vague constellation of symptoms over a person's entire lifespan. I think a big part of the obsession with the amyloid plaques hypothesis is that it was the only issue that was consistent among patients that they could actually test for, so rather than continuing the harder work of searching in the dark for something better, researchers latched onto exploring how and why that was associated with Alzheimer's. And it makes sense in a way, there's obviously something going on and figuring out why the plaques are produced should provide some mechanistic insight into what's going on. And that's true, in the same way that capturing all of the EM emissions from a laptop will provide some insight into what's going on inside the laptop, but that information will likely only be useful if you already have a good mechanistic model of a laptop's inner workings (people have successfully read data across an air gap this way). I suspect that's what will happen with amyloid plaques as well, ie. plaques will only make sense retrospectively.

zubiaur 4y ago

A lot of systems are based on trust. The checkpoints are sometimes in place not so much as a thorough verification but rather as a signaling mechanism, a vote of confidence. While I do think that a better aligned system of immediate incentives can ameliorate the symptoms, it's only a patch for moral behavior.