THERE IS A SPECIAL PLACE IN HELL FOR PEOPLE IF TRUE: Critical elements of leading Alzheimer’s study possibly fraudulent
The UK GUARDIAN is reporting:
Critical elements of one of the most cited pieces of Alzheimer’s disease research in the last two decades may have been purposely manipulated, according to a report in Science.
Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia globally, according to the World Health Organization. The highly influential paper, which was published in Nature in 2006, has helped guide billions of dollars in US federal government research into Alzheimer’s, according to Science.
The study, which looked at cognitive decline in mice, proposed that a specific amyloid protein may be responsible for cognitive decline. The hypothesis has since dominated the field, and researchers have worked for years to understand the mechanism by which such proteins may lead to decline.
But it goes on..
But a neuroscientist in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University professor Matthew Schrag, said in a Science article that he and other reviewers have identified as many as 10 papers on the protein that deserve deeper scrutiny. The report also cited other prominent researchers who have had difficulty replicating results of the studies on the specific proteins.
“I focus on what we can see in the published images, and describe them as red flags, not final conclusions,” he told Science, when revealing his role as a whistleblower. “The data should speak for itself.”
The heart of the matter is whether images in multiple papers were manipulated to better support a hypothesis, with the work of researcher Sylvain Lesné under particular examination. Lesné, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, is now under investigation by the university.
His co-author on several papers is Dr Karen Ashe, also a University of Minnesota researcher and one of the most prominent Alzheimer’s researchers in the country. She described the potential manipulation of images as “devastating,” to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, but criticized the idea that her research into amyloid proteins singularly guided federal and drug company spending.
You can read the full story on the GUARDIAN..
There is a special place in hell for people who would be purposely in manipulation. Mistakes will happen. Sometimes a hypothesis will prove wrong–but it is a working guess..
However deliberant fraud in the face of a disease that wastes people away to an awful state? Unforgivable if true..
There was a certain scene from the Stephen King made for TV adaptation of STORM OF THE CENTURY.. IN one particular scene, Andre Linoge takes on the form of someone’s mom who was wasting away in a nursing home. She tells her son that he never came to visit her or cared for her before she died.. And she tells him hell is repetition. And when he got to hell his eyes would be eaten over, and over, and over again.
Perhaps that is the only comforting thing that could be said in the wake of this news..