Investigative book shakes medical community by revealing fraud in Alzheimer's research

Alzheimer has risen to become one of the most common causes of death among the elderly worldwide with billions of dollars having been invested in Alzheimer's disease research. Yet a cure remains far in sight and the available treatments offer only limited success in slowing cognitive decline. A new explosive investigative study accuses the industry of relying on fraudulent science which may have misdirected the field for years.

Investigative journalist Charles Piller examines how the medical community focused on one primary theory for the cause of Alzheimer's: the amyloid-beta plaques. According to an article, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, these protein clumps were observed between the brain cells of deceased Alzheimer's patients. By the 1990s, the "amyloid hypothesis" dominated research, despite numerous drug failures in improving cognition, even if they cleared these plaques.

In his recently published book "Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s", he reveals that many influential studies backing this hypothesis, published in top journals and funded by government grants, were based on falsified data.

In late 2021, Piller met Matthew S. Schrag, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, who uncovered manipulated images in key Alzheimer’s papers. Some of these papers supported simufilam, an experimental treatment that later failed. Schrag also identified manipulated data from a landmark 2006 Nature study from the University of Minnesota, which initially bolstered the amyloid hypothesis. This study, one of the most-cited in Alzheimer’s research, was retracted last year.

The author of Doctored reflects on the consequences of focusing too narrowly on the amyloid hypothesis. He suggests that had more attention been given to alternative theories, progress might have been made in Alzheimer’s research. The intense focus on amyloid led to a scientific "monoculture" where alternative viewpoints were met with skepticism. As the idea became dominant, researchers felt compelled to support it to succeed, despite the mounting evidence that it may be incomplete or flawed. 

This "groupthink" effect, driven by significant investment from both national health institues and pharmaceutical companies, made it difficult to challenge the prevailing theory. As a result, substantial funding continued to flow into anti-amyloid research, limiting exploration of other potential causes of the disease.

By Nazrin Sadigova