<story><title>How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarted-progress-toward-cure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cockatiel_day</author><text>This article is 100% true.&lt;p&gt;My first job out of college 10 years ago was in a lab focused on Alzheimer’s research. Our Principle Investigator made an art of writing grant applications for studies that would appear to be in line with mainstream theory, but were really intended to test theories he actually thought were worth testing, presented in results as an “interesting” aside. He believed the amyloid theory had been conclusively disproven.&lt;p&gt;He explained to me that people like him work for decades, quasi-retire into positions accepting grant applications, and have a conscious or unconscious agenda to preserve or validate their life’s work. His money quote was “science is like the Catholic Church, a lot of nice sentiments but full of people”.&lt;p&gt;I don’t have any evidence or examples, but I suspect this dynamic is not limited to Alzheimer’s research.&lt;p&gt;Another anchor to research not mentioned in the article is how much sponsoring universities take from research labs. To put a university endorsement on our research, which is needed to be credible, the university took half (half!) our grant money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>el_cujo</author><text>This has been my experience more-or-less as well. Any graduate student that does anything even alzheimer&amp;#x27;s adjacent at the school I used to work at absolutely had to have a certain two researchers on their dissertation committee and they would 100% not let you progress without throwing a bone to beta-amyloid in your proposal (along with heavily pushing you to pander to some of their personal pet theories).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a sunken cost fallacy at this point, people have build entire careers on the beta-amyloid stuff and they will NEVER accept an alternative because it would make them irrelevant. These same people hold a lot of power in the field.</text></comment>
<story><title>How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure</title><url>https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarted-progress-toward-cure/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cockatiel_day</author><text>This article is 100% true.&lt;p&gt;My first job out of college 10 years ago was in a lab focused on Alzheimer’s research. Our Principle Investigator made an art of writing grant applications for studies that would appear to be in line with mainstream theory, but were really intended to test theories he actually thought were worth testing, presented in results as an “interesting” aside. He believed the amyloid theory had been conclusively disproven.&lt;p&gt;He explained to me that people like him work for decades, quasi-retire into positions accepting grant applications, and have a conscious or unconscious agenda to preserve or validate their life’s work. His money quote was “science is like the Catholic Church, a lot of nice sentiments but full of people”.&lt;p&gt;I don’t have any evidence or examples, but I suspect this dynamic is not limited to Alzheimer’s research.&lt;p&gt;Another anchor to research not mentioned in the article is how much sponsoring universities take from research labs. To put a university endorsement on our research, which is needed to be credible, the university took half (half!) our grant money.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wavepruner</author><text>&amp;quot;I suspect this dynamic is not limited to Alzheimer’s research.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Agreed, I think it is a universal problem in science.&lt;p&gt;I have an illness that has been curable for decades now, but this cure is treated with hostility by the medical establishment. I look forward to the day when the cabal of my illness collapses. Hopefully then I will be able to talk about what happened without people getting angry.</text></comment>