[ZoomerCretin]

> First there was the beta amyloid theory

First? Isn't the beta-amyloid cabal still blocking all Alzheimer's research unless the researchers find a way to even tangentially support that long disproven theory?

[light_hue_1]

It was not a cabal. It was scientific fraud.

Karen Ashe and Sylvain Lesné at Minnesota published a fake paper that redirected billions of research into the trash bin. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/faked-beta-amyloid... Amazingly both still have their jobs for life, both still publish, Ashe is still a member of the National Academy of Medicine, both are still getting grants.

[atombender]

This is a mischaracterization of the scope of the fraud. Lesné clearly committed fraud, but his work was not foundational. The fraud did not "redirect billions".

[eesmith]

As unavoidable mentioned, there are viral theories.

In Science, from July, "Can infections cause Alzheimer’s? A small community of researchers is determined to find out. Following up tantalizing links between pathogens and brain disease, new projects search for causal evidence", https://www.science.org/content/article/can-infections-cause...

[pfdietz]

Yet another reason to get your shingles vaccine.

[unavoidable]

I mean, that's the point - in pharmaceutical sciences there's _so much noise_ including fraud that it's really only easy in hindsight to pick out "the guy" who was the "genius". It's hard to take one story like this and make it a repeatable success.