<story><title>A prospective Alzheimer’s trial reports</title><url>https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/10/a-prospective-alzheimers-trial-reports</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ISL</author><text>As I tell my students all the time -- properly-executed, an experiment that doesn&amp;#x27;t work is not a failure.  If you don&amp;#x27;t internalize this idea, you will find experimental physics to be psychologically untenable.&lt;p&gt;If you build an experiment (at any scale) to test out an idea that you think is going to work, and it doesn&amp;#x27;t work, &lt;i&gt;you made progress&lt;/i&gt;. Now you know something really essential -- that thing that seemed like a well-motivated idea has some kind of unknown flaw. With that in hand, you can proceed to try something better, whether it is a refined approach or something entirely new.&lt;p&gt;Without doing the experiment, that well-motivated idea would still look like something worth trying.&lt;p&gt;If a large team of people were willing to spend years and lots of resources on an Alzheimer&amp;#x27;s clinical trial, it was likely to be because they thought it had a real chance of working. If it didn&amp;#x27;t work, we all benefit from their effort.</text></comment>
<story><title>A prospective Alzheimer’s trial reports</title><url>https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/02/10/a-prospective-alzheimers-trial-reports</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>streptomycin</author><text>&lt;i&gt;As that last-linked blog post makes clear, I don’t find that evidence compelling, and most certainly not compelling enough to approve the drug as it stands. But with the way the FDA is behaving these days, God only knows what’s going to happen. People are investing on just that basis, although rarely stated in quite those words. But if you can look at the ruins of all the attempts to show efficacy with anti-amyloid antibody therapies and decide that the Biogen&amp;#x2F;Eisai data represent a real ray of hope, you have a sunnier disposition than I do.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I share the cynicism! Early drugs targeted amyloid plaques because it seemed like a good idea. But after so many failures, I can&amp;#x27;t think of any reason so much time and money is spent on a failed hypothesis other than hoping for a false positive. Because a false positive, even with very modest results, would result in a ridiculously profitable drug given the complete lack of Alzheimer&amp;#x27;s treatments we currently have.</text></comment>