alt Hacker NewsI know that it is very important for HN folks to be angry. But as someone who has a parent with this disease, I would like to be certain that the amyloid hypothesis is definitely not correct before we throw it entirely out with the bathwater. These simplified “one researcher caused an entire field to go astray for decades” explanations are much too pat for me to have any confidence in them.
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> These simplified “one researcher caused an entire field to go astray for decades” explanations are much too pat for me to have any confidence in them.
Right, monocausal explanations in-general will set-off my skept-o-sense too; but then my mind made me think of another example: Andrew Wakefield (except that AW succeeded more at convincing Facebook-moms than the scientific establishment - but still harmed society just as much, IMO)
The amyloid hypothesis is absolutely not correct. We know this unequivocally.
Amyloid deposits correlate with Alzheimer’s, but they do not cause the symptoms. We know this because we have drugs which (in some patients, not approved for general use) completely clear out amyloids, but have no affect on symptoms or outcomes. We have other very promising medications that do nothing to amyloids. We also have tons of people who have had brain autopsies for other reasons and found to have very high levels of amyloid deposits, but no symptoms of dementia prior to death.
Alzheimer’s isn’t caused by amyloids.
My uncle died of the disease, and I work in neurotech/sleeptech, specifically in slow-wave enhancement which is showing promise in Alzheimer's.
I 100% agree with you that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one. Data being falsified and the hypothesis being wrong are two different things.
> These simplified “one researcher caused an entire field to go astray for decades” explanations are much too pat for me to have any confidence in them.
Anyone who believes that an entire field and decades of researched pivoted entirely around one researcher falsifying data is oversimplifying. The situation was not good, but it’s silly to act like it all came down to this one person and that there wasn’t anything else the industry was using as their basis for allocating research bets.
Researchers spent decades already on it and couldn't get results for a reason.
A lot of people should be mad at Marc Tessier-Lavigne, not just HN folks. He lied for personal gain at the expense of scientific progress and millions of patients who suffer