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How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

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Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#121

Post by SiempreViernes »

elfexec wrote: post #86
rooundio wrote: post #5

Unfortunately true for most scientific communities and the reason why the current academic system is badly broken and talented young minds decide to quit academia before even submitting a dissertation.

Academia was always broken. Despite the current undeserved reputation as academia being open to debate and new ideas, the opposite has always been true. Academia has its sordid history of dogmaticism and hero-worshipping. And progress in knowledge usually advanced in spite of academia rather than because of it. Go read about the battles between Newton and Hooke or even Newton and Leibniz. The doctor who first suggest…

> Isn't it interesting how academics attack each other like religious people attack each other?

Maybe it is if you don't know that academies started as religious institutions, but knowing the history I would rate it as an amusing anecdote.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#122

Post by SiempreViernes »

dnautics wrote: post #118
aaron695 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was, however, no conspiracy or "cabal". These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track. No one thought the weapons of mass destruction were fake and lied and said they were real. The conspiracy was "These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track." so did not allow competing theories. Exactly the same with the VW emissions issue. This is exactly how conspirac…

The funny thing about that conspiracy is that the WMD were real. Hussein had them, and and its true that he didn't give them up, and he refused access. Here's the but: they were found by the US, under seal exactly in the place of record according to the UN. It's pretty clear that Hussein wasn't actively developing it anymore. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334

Um, the article talks about the removal of an unrefined ingredient for a weapon, not exactly finished weapons.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#123

Post by [deleted] »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #122
dnautics wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing about that conspiracy is that the WMD were real. Hussein had them, and and its true that he didn't give them up, and he refused access. Here's the but: they were found by the US, under seal exactly in the place of record according to the UN. It's pretty clear that Hussein wasn't actively developing it anymore. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334

Um, the article talks about the removal of an unrefined ingredient for a weapon, not exactly finished weapons.

[deleted]

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#124

Post by scottlocklin »

frogger23123 wrote: post #98
ncmncm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, which drove suspicion of a bacterial link. It could be quite complex -- bacteria helping herpes, or herpes helping bacteria into the brain, and the brain responding to one or the other or both with inflammation and plaques. And maybe something else involved, like inadequate or excess dietary intake of something like sugar, or trans fats, or PCBs, or glyphosate. We need to explore many, many possibilities.

Gum disease is linked to carbohydrates, which aligns with the "type 3 diabetes" hypothesis. (carbs feed bacterial overgrowth)

Gum disease is also linked to being old, just like Alzheimers disease, heart disease, baldness, wrinkly faces, diabetic disease and lots of other things. Sermon: people are really, really shit at linear regression.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#125

Post by DarkmSparks »

aaron695 wrote: post #114
svara wrote: post #100

A super interesting article, but the title is pure clickbait. In this day and age, feeding into the narrative that science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary is downright dangerous. Reality is much more nuanced, and the article actually does a good job of detailing that. In some sense this all started from the very beginning, from when Alzheimer's disease (AD) wa…

> There was, however, no conspiracy or "cabal". These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track. No one thought the weapons of mass destruction were fake and lied and said they were real. The conspiracy was "These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track." so did not allow competing theories. Exactly the same with the VW emissions issue. This is exactly how conspirac…

Really interesting observation, fascinating to see it described as "emergent behaviour". WMDs were known to be fake from the start though, they were just stealing Iraqi oil, and David Kelly lost his life trying to expose it - could you suggest a better example?

Article is great to, came to post something along the lines of "no it wasn't a conspiracy", but the article summerises exactly what happened under the picture - "Amyloid plaques have long been the suspected cause of cognitive decline experienced by Alzheimer’s patients. Drug companies have spent billions of dollars creating amyloid-targeting drugs, yet they’ve all failed"

->They went "all in" on bad science.

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#126

Post by michaelbarton »

Certhas wrote: post #112
michaelbarton wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary Just one data point, but in my experience in academia that was almost exactly how I found it. The exception that it wasn't a team sport because there's only space for one first author. My feeling is that the recognition and 'impactfulness' tied to being successful in academia are antagonistic to conducting unbiased res…

I completely agree with your second sentence, but also with the OPs statement that there is no conspiracy to suppress correct results. There is intense competition to be right. There is intense competition for funds, so being perceived to be promising is hugely important. But at the end of the day I haven't really ever seen any explicit attempts to suppress uncomfortable results.

I agree, that's fair. I don't think it's an explicit conspiracy. However there are some practices that do end up suppressing results. One particular example is that lack of publication of negative results because there is no incentive for doing so. You can imagine a scenario where similar experiments are repeated over and over again in different laboratories because no one writes up the negative result. After all what's the incentive? Not so bad for a few wasted weeks of PhD students time but potentially more damaging for large drug clinical trials?

Ben Goldacre's bad science is a great book on this topic. He's an entertaining speaker too. He describes a solution to that particular problem which is registering a clinical trials beforehand.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/oct/07/ben-goldacr...

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#127

Post by temac »

dnautics wrote: post #118
aaron695 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was, however, no conspiracy or "cabal". These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track. No one thought the weapons of mass destruction were fake and lied and said they were real. The conspiracy was "These were simply people who were convinced they were on the right track." so did not allow competing theories. Exactly the same with the VW emissions issue. This is exactly how conspirac…

The funny thing about that conspiracy is that the WMD were real. Hussein had them, and and its true that he didn't give them up, and he refused access. Here's the but: they were found by the US, under seal exactly in the place of record according to the UN. It's pretty clear that Hussein wasn't actively developing it anymore. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334

Your source for the belief tha Iraq had WMD is an article explaining they had yellowcake? Even a youtuber made some and processed it (and this was completely legal)

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#128

Post by mathgenius »

elfexec wrote: post #86
rooundio wrote: post #5

Unfortunately true for most scientific communities and the reason why the current academic system is badly broken and talented young minds decide to quit academia before even submitting a dissertation.

Academia was always broken. Despite the current undeserved reputation as academia being open to debate and new ideas, the opposite has always been true. Academia has its sordid history of dogmaticism and hero-worshipping. And progress in knowledge usually advanced in spite of academia rather than because of it. Go read about the battles between Newton and Hooke or even Newton and Leibniz. The doctor who first suggest…

Let's not forget Ludwig Boltzmann, who derived the thermodynamic properties of gases assuming the existence of atoms:

' In 1904 at a physics conference in St. Louis most physicists seemed to reject atoms and he was not even invited to the physics section. Rather, he was stuck in a section called "applied mathematics" '

Things did not end well for Boltzmann [1].

And my favourite, John Bell, who was the first to understand the consequences of entanglement, in 1964. These ideas were met with derision by the mainstream for decades (citation needed.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#129

Post by [deleted] »

dnautics wrote: post #115
svara wrote: post #100

A super interesting article, but the title is pure clickbait. In this day and age, feeding into the narrative that science is just another competitive team sport where people compete with whatever means necessary is downright dangerous. Reality is much more nuanced, and the article actually does a good job of detailing that. In some sense this all started from the very beginning, from when Alzheimer's disease (AD) wa…

I think the evidence goes deeper than that. Humans with downs syndrome, which duplicates the APP gene, evince symptoms of Alzheimer's as they reach their 40s.

[deleted]

Re: How an Alzheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure

#130

Post by LoSboccacc »

morsch wrote: post #94
LoSboccacc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to climate predictions we'd be underwater today in pescara but they would have not be an issue as we would also have dief of all the cancer from the ozone layer depletion. change is real, damn this winter we got 15+ degree Celsius instead of the ten cm snow we usually got when I was a kid, the local effects are quite evident, and the trajectory spells real dangers, but past predictions were definitely overs…

You mention the ozone layer depletion as evidence of past exaggeration when in fact it's evidence of how a concerted, international effort can deal with an environmental issue.

here the thing: these are both true, by definition, states reacted and people didn't cook up. but people only see what resonates with their belief and immediately attak anyone poking at the notion that it'll happen again for co2, despite all the evidences from the past
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