A Scandal

A new book has just come out which shows how dementia research has wasted decades and millions in funding by wasting time concentrating on one line of enquiry at the expense of all others – a line of enquiry based on falsified data and followed relentlessly for the funding it attracted. This is a major scandal.

A New book highlights the researches of Professor Matthew Schragg who found that a university laboratory led by young and rising stars in the field delivered apparently falsified data forming the core of the leading hypothesis about the disease. This data was deliberately faked using Photoshop to alter images.

A summary of the events might go like this: for decades, something called the amyloid hypothesis has dominated research into Alzheimer’s and dementia and billions of dollars were pumped into this line of research. Scans and pathology showed that patients with dementia had clumps of sticky protein – called amyloid plaques – between the neurons in their brains and researchers presumed that these might be cause of the disease’s symptoms. This became the main line of inquiry although it never delivered on its early promise. Many people with amyloid plaques didn’t have signs of dementia. Something seemed to be missing.

And then came what seemed like decisive proof: a 2006 paper from the University of Minnesota, which went on to become one of the most cited in the field, showed that a sub-type of amyloid led to memory impairment. It wasn’t until 2022 that scientific sleuths discovered that key images on which the research relied might have been Photoshopped to fit the hypothesis.

It was found that hundreds of important Alzheimer’s research papers were based on that false data, and, as it held out the hope of cure and, it, attracted vast sums of money from government and other sources. Schragg’s research was driven by an indignation at the institutional tolerance, in research establishments and technical publishing, of the false data. It appears that these amyloid plaques are symptoms of dementia rather its cause.

None of this false research was random or a matter of chance, it was for personal gain or institutional funding, even although personal safety was in issue. It is to be recalled that in addition to unwarranted funding, tens of thousands of patients had been drawn into clinical trials to test dubious research findings and related new drugs.

At first, the scientists fought back against the claims, but the 2006 paper has now been abandoned along with much work based on its findings.

The whole scandal is a morality tale for our time, and it is very well told by Piller, and the book is modestly priced given the great effort that went into the investigations, and the narrative.

The book is Charles Piller Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, Icon Books, 352pp, £20 and there is an interview with him  here