4 ms·

"First off, I’ve noticed a lot of takes along the lines of “OMG, because of this fraud we’ve been wasting our time on Alzheimer’s research since 2006”. That’s n

"First off, I’ve noticed a lot of takes along the lines of “OMG, because of this fraud we’ve been wasting our time on Alzheimer’s research since 2006”. That’s not really the case, as I’ll explain..." I'm not seeing the explanation. The Amyloid hypothesis was weakening in 2006 and a series of apparently ground-breaking but actually fake results gave new life over a significant period of time. Yes the author says: "the main inaccuracy in that statement is that we’ve been actually been wasting our time in Alzheimer’s research for even longer than that." but the problem is testing a false hypothesis and discarding isn't a waste of time, it's how science should work. Fraud and forgone failures, of course, are how science shouldn't work. And yes, there's lot of fraud around but I don't see how this isn't especially damaging.

nl 4y ago
> I'm not seeing the explanation. It's in there: > But my impression is that a lot of labs that were interested in the general idea of beta-amyloid oligomers just took the earlier papers as validation for that interest, and kept on doing their own research into the area without really jumping directly onto the 56 story itself. The bewildering nature of the amyloid-oligomer situation in live cells has given everyone plenty of opportunities for that! The expressions in the literature about the failure to find 56 (as in the Selkoe lab’s papers) did not de-validate the general idea for anyone - indeed, Selkoe’s lab has been working on amyloid oligomers the whole time and continues to do so. So labs wanted to work on this for their own reasons, not because of this result. > Did the 56 Work Lead to Clinical Trials? > That’s a question that many have been asking since this scandal broke a few days ago. And the answer is that no, I have been unable to find a clinical trial that specifically targeted the AB56 oligomer itself So there weren't even any wasted clinical trials. Basically his point is that maybe this drew some extra researchers into that area, but it was a worthwhile area anyway. The fact that nothing worked isn't particularly relevant because nothing has worked for Alzheimer's anyway.
- mkl 4y ago
  You can escape the *s with \ (i.e. \*56) to fix the formatting of *56.

nl 4y ago

> I'm not seeing the explanation. It's in there: > But my impression is that a lot of labs that were interested in the general idea of beta-amyloid oligomers just took the earlier papers as validation for that interest, and kept on doing their own research into the area without really jumping directly onto the 56 story itself. The bewildering nature of the amyloid-oligomer situation in live cells has given everyone plenty of opportunities for that! The expressions in the literature about the failure to find 56 (as in the Selkoe lab’s papers) did not de-validate the general idea for anyone - indeed, Selkoe’s lab has been working on amyloid oligomers the whole time and continues to do so. So labs wanted to work on this for their own reasons, not because of this result. > Did the 56 Work Lead to Clinical Trials? > That’s a question that many have been asking since this scandal broke a few days ago. And the answer is that no, I have been unable to find a clinical trial that specifically targeted the AB56 oligomer itself So there weren't even any wasted clinical trials. Basically his point is that maybe this drew some extra researchers into that area, but it was a worthwhile area anyway. The fact that nothing worked isn't particularly relevant because nothing has worked for Alzheimer's anyway.

mkl 4y ago
You can escape the *s with \ (i.e. \*56) to fix the formatting of *56.